Wednesday, May 25, 2011

From The Honorable Sis. Cynthia McKinney: Another War On The Horizon While Africa Burns???

From The Honorable Sis. Cynthia McKinney: Another War On The Horizon While Africa Burns???


May I say a big thank you to you?  Because this week I have seen proof that you really read my messages and respond to the information they contain.  I have seen that people have done additional research on some of the items I have addressed recently, mainly Ivory Coast and Libya, and I am pleased that my research stood up to the additional tests.  Now, I have a puzzling item that could use some explication and I thank Dr. Randy Short for bringing this to my attention:

1.  AFRICOM's new leader, General Carter Ham made an interesting statement that no one in the special interest press (Junious Ricardo Stanton calls it the mind control apparatus) seems to have picked up on.  Here's the story and I've highlighted the real news contained in it that is being ignored everywhere and why does this article not mention the General's AFRICOM leadership:

Ham said it was important for the U.S. to turn control over to NATO because many of the troops involved in the Libya strikes are preparing to go to Iran or Afghanistan or have just recently returned from the warfront.

Now, is this a typo?  I don't know.  But, I've checked this story in many different places and each iteration says exactly the same thing:  Iran!  Are our troops preparing to go to Iran?  What conclusion are we to draw from this?  Here's the entire article:

General Says US May Consider Sending Troops Into Libya As Part Of Any International Force

By Lolita C. Baldor, The Associated Press – 2 days ago

WASHINGTON — The U.S. may consider sending troops into Libya with a possible international ground force that could aid the rebels, the former U.S. commander of the military mission said Thursday, describing the current operation as a stalemate that is more likely to go on now that America has handed control to NATO.

But Army Gen. Carter Ham also told lawmakers that American participation in a ground force would not be ideal, since it could erode the international coalition attacking Moammar Gadhafi's forces and make it more difficult to get Arab support for operations in Libya.

He said NATO has done an effective job in an increasingly complex combat situation. But he noted that, in a new tactic, Gadhafi's forces are making airstrikes more difficult by staging their fighters and vehicles near civilian areas such as schools and mosques.

The use of an international ground force is a possible plan to bolster the Libyan rebels, Ham said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Asked whether the U.S. would provide troops, Ham said, "I suspect there might be some consideration of that. My personal view at this point would be that that's probably not the ideal circumstance, again for the regional reaction that having American boots on the ground would entail."

President Barack Obama has said repeatedly there will be no U.S. troops on the ground in Libya, although there are reports of small CIA teams in the country.

Pressed by Sen. John McCain, a leading Republican, about the situation in Libya, Ham agreed that a stalemate "is now more likely" since NATO took command.

Ham also disclosed that the U.S. is providing some strike aircraft to the NATO operation that do not need to go through the special approval process recently established. The powerful side-firing AC-130 gunship is available to NATO commanders, he said.

His answer countered earlier claims by the Pentagon that all strike aircraft must be requested through U.S. European Command and approved by top U.S. leaders, including Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

Ham said that process still applies to other fighters and the A-10 Thunderbolt, which can provide close air support for ground forces, He said that process is quick, and other defence officials have said it can take about a day for the U.S. to approve the request and move the aircraft in from bases in Europe.

Overall, he said the U.S. is providing less than 15 per cent of the airstrikes and between 60 per cent and 70 per cent of the support effort, which includes intelligence gathering, surveillance, electronic warfare and refueling .

Recent bad weather and threats from Gadhafi's mobile surface-to-air missile systems have hampered efforts to use the AC-130 and A-10 aircraft for close air support for friendly ground forces. Ham said those conditions, which include as many as 20,000 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, contributed to the stalemate.

Ham said he believes some Arab nations are starting to provide training or weapons to the rebels. And he repeated assertions that the U.S. needs to know more about the opposition forces before it would get more deeply involved in assisting them.

Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, complained that the lack of knowledge about the rebels is a U.S. intelligence failure.

"It strikes me as unusual and maybe something that Congress needs to look at further, that our intelligence capabilities are so limited that we don't even know the composition of the opposition force in Libya, " Cornyn said.

Ham said it was important for the U.S. to turn control over to NATO because many of the troops involved in the Libya strikes are preparing to go to Iran or Afghanistan or have just recently returned from the warfront.

"While we can certainly surge to meet operational needs," Ham said, "there is a longer-term effect if greater numbers of U.S. forces had been committed for a longer period of time in Libya and it would have had downstream operational effects in other missions."

Separately, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said U.S. envoy Chris Stevens' talks continue with the Libyan opposition in Benghazi.

___

Associated Press writers Pauline Jelinek and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2011 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

2.  Another important lesson being learned now is how one can identify special interest press that might happen to occupy space on the political spectrum other than the far right  The same tactics used by the far right are used by everyone else with political real estate to protect--they just use different personalities!  The personalities selected are the ones who can be relied upon to stay within the narrow confines of a pre-determined script--free thinking and critical analysis on a case-by-case basis are not permitted.  Therefore, special interest press tend to highlight the same people over and over again in much the same manner as President Obama has recycled certain personalities from the Clinton Administration.  The same people making the same policies tends to provide continuity and closed mouths when especially needed.  At a time of such unmitigated criminality, this quality in the political leadership and in the press is particularly useful when an operation is being carried out and the public has no need to know--from the vantage point of the wrong-doers.

Larry Pinkney of BlackCommenttor.com forcefully pulls the cover off of this tactic in the following piece:


Exclusive: Cornel West And Other Such Political Opportunists
By Larry Pinkney
Posted on April 8, 2011 by Larry Pinkney

“Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward all research.”—Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz]

“Beware of the naked man who offers you clothes.”—African Proverb

The most insidiously dangerous of all systemic gatekeepers are those who masquerade as progressives or so-called leftists but who in reality act as the fifth column for the maintenance of U.S. Empire abroad and internal repression at home.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this can be found in those alleged ‘progressive’ members of the Black and White ‘intelligentsia’ who urged the struggling, everyday, Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people of this nation to support the 2008 then U.S. presidential candidacy of the corporate-backed, war mongering, silver tongued Barack Obama.

Thanks in no small measure to support from black systemic gatekeepers such as Cornel West, Amiri Baraka (aka Leroi Jones), Al Sharpton, and Henry Louis Gates, et al; Barack Obama became and was installed as the 44th president of the United States—the first nominally-black head of the U.S. Empire. It is now the year 2011, and the poor and disenfrachised people of all colors in this nation are suffering increased economic austerity, massive joblessness and home foreclosures, the largest incarceration rate in the world, a de facto police state, an extension and expansion of the unconstitutional ‘PATRIOT Act,’ a continuation of the outrageous ‘extraordinary rendition’ program, the continuance of the U.S. gulag at Guantanamo, and last but by no means least, the bloody U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and now north Africa.

The above-mentioned systemic gatekeeping opportunists knew full well by the middle of the year 2008, that Barack Obama was the darling of the blood sucking U.S. corporate/military elite. Nevertheless, they supported him and urged others to do so. They shamelessly urged that Obama be supported whether “critically” or otherwise. Thus, these systemic gatekeepers did all in their power to neutralize, ignore, marginalize, or stifle those, including Black Agenda Report’s Glen Ford and Bruce Dixon, The Black Commentator’s Larry Pinkney and Dr. Lenore Jean Daniels, and former U.S. Congresswoman and 2008 Green Party presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney and her running mate Rosa Clemente etc., who for at least four years now, have been repeatedly disseminating the clarion call as to the enormous systemic dangers of supporting the corporate groomed and backed Barack Obama. On the other hand, the systemic political opportunists, and most particularly those of the Black and White intelligentsia masquerading as ‘progressives,’ were well aware of the fact they were urging everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation to go against their own interests and court economic and political disaster in the person of Barack Obama.

Early in the year 2008, The Black Commentator published as its cover story a piece titled, Barack Obama and the Euphoria of Madness, which stated in relevant part that, “Many Black Americans and our Brown and Red sisters and brothers, will, I fear, come to be deeply disappointed in Barack Obama, once he demonstrates who he really is. There will be no peace or justice under an Obama presidency, should such come to pass. Even the majority of white Americans, with the exception of the corporate liberals and conservatives, may yet come to realize that Obama’s interests are corporate interests; they are not the needs and interests of everyday people, who represent the overwhelming majority of this nation and the world . . . Now, more than ever, is the time to be critical thinkers, not blind followers.”

Some of these previously-described political opportunists are still supporting Obama, while others of them, most notably (Dr.) Cornel West, are now cynically hedging their bets by pretending that they have had an epiphany—only recently becoming cognizant of who and what Obama really is.

In a nauseating display of opportunistic alacrity, Cornel West, while being interviewed by Marina Portnaya of Russia Today television (broadcast on April 4, 2011), had the unmitigated audacity to state that Barack Obama is “becoming a pawn of big finance and a puppet of big business,” as if he somehow did not realize three years ago that Barack Obama is a “puppet” and a “pawn,” and he was even then, back in 2008, an obvious Wall Street, corporate-backed “puppet” and “pawn!” It was Cornell West himself who was among those ‘intellectuals’ who urged everyday people to “critically support” Obama, which terminology is, in and of itself, a ridiculous contradiction in terms—something like the the phrases ‘military intelligence’ or ‘friendly fire.’ One does not support, “critically” or otherwise (no matter what his or her color), a person who is a systemic creation and has no de facto motivation other than personal ambition; and it defies all reason to assume that Dr. West, this pontificating, academically well adorned intellectual, was somehow intrinsically unaware of this.

Moreover, Cornel West, in this Russia Today interview, without so much as flinching, stated that people in this nation in these years under Obama have been “sleep walking.” Yet, Dr. West, opportunistically neglected to point out that he himself is among those who are responsible for what he described as the present “sleep walking” state of mind of the ‘American’ people. He needs to clearly and consistently acknowledge his own role in helping to facilitate and bring about this mental/political stupor [i.e. “sleep walking”], and its concomitant dangers and horrors.

Finally, Dr. West, when asked to explain his heretofore political support for Obama (which was in addition to that of an inordinate and enormous amount of known corporate financial support) gave the utterly pathetic response that many “ordinary people gave him [Obama] money too” as if that justified his actions. Dr. West’s response failed to mention that the support for Obama from “ordinary people” was, in part, due to his (and others of a similar ilk’s) support for the man that he now conveniently characterizes as having become “a pawn of big finance and a puppet of big business.” What cynical opportunism and manipulation!

Perhaps, the so-called “radical democratic awakening in the American Empire” to which Cornel West made reference in the Russia Today interview, will include an “awakening” to how persons such as himself sold out the needs, hopes, and dreams of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people nationally and globally. The severe damage that alleged “leaders,” including Cornel West, have done to everyday people of all colors is not negligible and is extremely reprehensible. There is absolutely no excuse for it. Will Dr. West put his finger in the air again to sense which way the political winds are blowing? Is yet another political flip-flop in the making on the part of Dr. West?

Politically conscious people await Cornel West’s acknowledgement and public self-criticism for his dastardly role in facilitating the “sleep walking” and the pimping of the pain of the everyday ‘American’ people. If there is even any possibility for redemption of, or trust for him, he must do this. He cannot pretend that he has stood with the people all along. He has not.

Now that Barack Obama has announced that he will run for re-election with his billion dollar campaign war chest, thereby blatantly checkmating any in the Democrat Party who might have envisioned challenging him, it is, more so than ever before, incumbent upon everyday people to seek, and creatively build, serious alternatives to the death grip of the corporate Democrat and Republican Parties. We must begin at the local level while simultaneously building a national everyday people’s network.

As we everyday people struggle to bring about much-needed systemic change, we must always be aware not only of government actions to neutralize this legitimate struggle, but also of those who masquerade as ‘progressives’ and/or leftists but who are really political snakes and bandits.

We’ve much work to do. Onward then, my sisters and brothers! Onward!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book). Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.

3.  And meanwhile, in the good ol' U.S.A., a Black or Brown man can get beaten up by the police and go to jail for almost nothing, yet high crimes and misdemeanors committed in Washington, D.C. every day continue to go unpunished:

(http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/news/local_news/man-arrested-paper-towel-dispute-marta-station-20110406-ap-es)

Man Arrested In Paper Towel Dispute At MARTA Station

Updated: Wednesday, 06 Apr 2011, 2:32 PM EDT
Published : Wednesday, 06 Apr 2011, 8:23 AM EDT

ATLANTA, Ga. - A man police say grabbed paper towels from a maintenance cart at a rail station in Atlanta and used them to blow his nose wound up in jail.



A police report says a man identified as Alfred Murphy grabbed the towels at a MARTA station Monday afternoon, and a transit system police officer told him he couldn't do that.

The report says Murphy said he was entitled to them because he'd paid his fare.

It says the officer asked Murphy to leave and instead he picked up a police phone and complained about being assaulted.

The report says officers were summoned, and that Murphy “then became violent and began to struggle while holding on to the telephone receiver.” The report says he hit one officer in the face, cutting him on his forehead and under his right eye. According to the report, Murphy also punched another officer in the nose.

Murphy was arrested and booked into the Fulton County Jail early Tuesday morning on charges of battery, obstruction and hindering of a law enforcement officer and criminal trespassing. It was also discovered that he was on probation. He remained in jail on Tuesday afternoon.

MARTA released the following statement about the incident:

“The incident in question, which includes charges of battery against a police officer, is a criminal matter that will ultimately be decided in the courts. We haven’t received any complaints about the use of excessive force in this case. If we do, we would investigate it thoroughly. The MARTA Police Department is one of the top law enforcement agencies of its kind in the nation and our officers do an exemplary job of making sure our customers and employees are safe. MARTA officers aggressively patrol our stations, facilities and vehicles, and are required to use their best judgment and discretion at all times.”
------
4.  Whatever happened to the principle of representation??  Taxation without it sparked one revolution, maybe we need another one now.  How can only one out of 535 Members of Congress get it right about Ivory Coast and is willing to go public about it?  Senaor Jim Inhofe, not a victim of "groupthink" on this issue, gets it right, but where are the rest of them while President Obama pulls the trigger that puts more of Africa on fire:
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/US-Senator-Obama-Administration-Wrong-on-Ivory-Coast--119369709.html

US Senator: Obama Administration 'Wrong' On Ivory Coast

Peter Clottey  April 06, 2011


    Ouattara Forces Resume Fight for Presidential Residence in Ivory Coast
    EU Adds New Sanctions on Ivory Coast's Gbagbo
    Ouattara Forces Attack Gbagbo Home in Ivory Coast

A U.S. senator says President Barak Obama’s administration “got it wrong” in its handling of the ongoing crisis in Ivory Coast following violent clashes between rival forces, which has left hundreds dead and tens of thousands fleeing the West African conflict.

In a VOA interview, Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma says the Obama administration is backing the wrong side in the conflict and offered to provide evidence that it was mathematically impossible for Alassane Ouattara to win the disputed November presidential run-off vote over embattled President Laurent Gbagbo.

“I do know that the French have always had pretty much control of the government in the Ivory Coast and that’s just the way the French operate, until President Gbagbo got there and, of course, the French have been running against him ever since that time. And, the current opponent, Ouattara, is no exception; he is the chosen one by the French and, quite frankly, they rigged the election,” said Inhofe.

Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma

“I have shown on the Senate floor how they took the margin of victory that went to Ouattara… what precincts they stole that vote at and how they miscalculated it. How is it statistically possible for the primary election for Gbagbo to have received thousands and thousands of votes in that northern part of Cote d’Ivoire and then, in the run-off, he got zero? Statistically, that is impossible,” he added.

However, Inhofe acknowledges that his concerns about what he calls a “stolen election” have been overtaken by current events. Inhofe, who is also a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says France is leading the charge to force Gbagbo to step down and cede power to Ouattara.

“The French have come in and I don’t know how many thousands of people they have killed because they won’t quantify it. They killed over a thousand in Deukoue, a town in the western part, and those were the people who are Gbagbo supporters. And they said that wasn’t us that killed the people, but it had to be because Gbagbo had no troops there. So it’s a reign of terror by Ouattara and it’s supported by the French... [I] am afraid I’m losing this one, but somebody has to tell the truth,” Inhofe said.

“Absolutely, they [Obama administration] had it wrong. They are wrong and I have sent letters to the secretary of state and to the administration giving them evidence of the election. It was totally ignored and so I criticized my own administration, as well as the French,” he added.

Inhofe also says the United Nations violated its charter by using military force against Gbagbo loyalists.

“They went in and immediately assumed that it was a legitimate election and, yet, we have all the evidence to the contrary. By the way, there are a lot of people in Africa who agree with me,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ouattara forces launched an assault on Gbagbo’s home Wednesday after he refused to admit electoral defeat and surrender. The forces met strong resistance from pro-Gbagbo troops, despite the fact that most solders from the regular army have laid down their arms.

Witnesses say they heard gunfire and explosions from the compound where Gbagbo, along with members of his family, is believed to be holed up. The fighting died down around midday Wednesday. Witnesses say the Ouattara forces retreated.

Aides to Ouattara say the fighters have been told to capture Gbagbo alive.

A Gbagbo spokesman said U.N. and French forces were involved in the assault, an allegation French officials have denied.


5.And finally, because the news is so bad and I'd end up crying all the time, this one from Chuck Noyes gave me a laugh to share:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lpAqiGSp29c#at=28
President Obama we do not expect harmful levels of radiation to reach the U.S.mpg

6.  And for me, I'm about to watch "Marie Antoinette:  the Last Queen of France"
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/marie-antoinette-the-last-queen-of-france/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TopDocumentaryFilms+(Top+Documentary+Films+-+Watch+Free+Documentaries+Online
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Silence is the deadliest weapon of mass destruction.

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