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The Campaign Cash Behind the Afghanistan Escalation
President Barack Obama is scheduled to deliver a speech to the nation tonight from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., in which he's expected to announce he's sending up to 35,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
In this photograph taken on July 2, US Marines from the 2nd Battalion, wait for helicopter transport at Camp Dwyer in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Medics and air force pilots at the main US base in Afghanistan are gearing up for the grim reality of the new US war strategy -- a likely escalation in the number of casualties in an increasingly bloody battlefield. (AFP/File/Manpreet Romana) Anti-war groups are already planning protests against the escalation. United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of more than 1,400 local and national groups, is holding numerous protest actions around the country today and tomorrow, as is the anti-war group Code Pink.
Some are calling the president's plan to ratchet up the war a betrayal of the Democratic base, which overwhelmingly opposes sending more troops. For example, a recent Gallup poll found that 60% of Democrats want the president to begin reducing troop levels in Afghanistan.
But while the president may be showing disloyalty to his political base, he's remaining faithful to the defense industry interests that so generously funded his campaign.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org database, the top recipient of defense industry money in the 2008 election cycle was Barack Obama, whose haul of $1,029,997 far surpassed Republican contender Sen. John McCain's $696,948.
During the 2008 cycle, the industry contributed a total of $23.7 million to federal candidates -- far more than the $17.4 million it invested during the 2006 cycle or the $18.1 million in the 2004 cycle.
The top five defense industry contributors during the 2008 elections were Lockheed Martin at $2.5 million, Boeing at $2.1 million, Northrop Grumman at $1.8 million, and Raytheon and General Dynamics at $1.7 million each.
And it appears their investment may be paying off: The Associated Press reports that analyst Howard A. Rubel of the global investment bank Jefferies & Co. sent out a client note today stating that the fiscal 2010 Defense Department Budget will likely boost demand for precision munitions, communications gear, helicopters, armor and surveillance systems.
Among the companies whose stock Rubel rated as "Buy"? General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman.
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66 Comments so far
Show AllEisenhower was truly a prophet. The US has become the world's latest imperial bully. No longer are we a nation with an army. We are now an army (and an air force, and a navy, and a marine corps) with a nation that supports it (them). I used to be proud to be an American. Now I am ASHAMED.
Jim Shea
If you are not ashamed, then you have not been paying attention!
Sad but true.
Ditto that, Jim Shea. You are exactly right, and I feel the same shame, where once upon a time I was a proud American.
When Michael Moore, Bill Maher and Howard Zinn organize a call to shut-down the Pentagon and the Capital, I'll go. Otherwise, these others will flop, flounder and opposition will fade after people have blown off a little steam and "twittered out".
Just like these past 8 years, these meek little protests will do little but waste energy, time and resources. Sorry, but bongo-beaters, and clowns and pink costumes won't do. After tonight, the time for theatre and cleverness is over.
You either step-up and challenge them face to face, or you sit back and talk, blog, joke, or make pointless films
Gandhi wrote, 'that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.'
The glaring truth is nothing, nothing at all has worked to stop these people.
Obama has failed his supporters, the nation and humanity.
Well said.
no doubt moonpie well said. your right its time to step to the
plate and begin mass demonstrations! something tells me they won't
notice as they are pl;anning even more death and distruction!
Right! Unless and until the left wing in Amerikkka becomes radicalized and energized,things will only get worse.
The left wing needs to infiltrate the political system. Quit being outsiders whining about how horrible it all is. Do something to get inside the system and change it. If you think you're going to overthrow it somehow, you're inviting a breakdown of civil society. That's not what we want unless you want dead children in the streets here.
"The left wing needs to" blah blah blah The left wing the right wing there is NO POLITICAL SYSTEM ! there are the war profiteers,the rigged Diebold machines the five fams (trillionaires) who make decisions, as to who heads what government and which coup is next and how things on the planet are to be run. Then there are the Corporations, their lobbyist serfs and lets not forget
GENOCIDE, WAR WAR HERE A WAR THERE A WAR EVERYWHERE A WAR WAR POLICIES! ALLEGIANCE TO MONEY AND ONLY MONEY. That's what the HUMAN RACE is up against in a NUTshell!
True quote from Mahatma Gandhi. He also said: " non-violence is not cowardice".
Agreed. But this demand has been made thousands of times even on Common Dreams. I've made it myself a few dozen times. "The glaring truth is nothing, nothing at all has worked to stop these people," is absolutely true. And yet all we ever get is one hysterical post after another screaming "WAKE UP AMERICA!" and calling everyone "sheeple."
Many of us get the idea that we MUST go beyond blogging, thinking, talking, screaming and warning each other about the dire future awaiting us all if we don't Do Something. But no one seems to have any clear understanding of exactly what that something is. When enough people get together in an organized way that requires months and months of planning, funding, bickering and finally converging somewhere, it's just another protest march that is ignored by the media and forgotten in two days.
Of course, these "actions" are organized and set in motion by dozens of organizations, peace groups and countless committees that can never somehow manage to coalesce into one big effective organization that might have some clout. It's just an array of little splinter groups who refuse to work together on anything but YET ANOTHER march. So "do something" has come to mean next to nothing. Call Congressmen? Give me a break. They don't give a damn what we think. Call the White House? Yeah, they'll certainly listen. We need to join together, but we seem constitutionally incapable of this, so the bastards have us on the ropes.
Take your money out of the big banks. Put it in local community banks. Go to Solari.com, and listen to the wisdom of Catherine Austin Fitts. We can do this one thing. By "your," I am refering to anybody who yet hasn't.
Other than divesting from the corporate machine, the MIC, and relocalizing as you say, I don't think there really is anything that we can do.
Also, I cannot help but see that the whole machinery is going to come down crashing. It is our move to build up the alternative to it as we move forward.
They have to hang themselves with their own rope. And that's exactly what they're doing. It's unfortunate that they will hang a whole lot of others in the process. But, again, what else can we do? Divesting and relocalizing is the only way out.
Moving your money from a big bank to a small local bank is . . . next to nothing, though it IS something, but very damned little. This does not a revolution make. Listening to yet another guru tuned in to the vibrations of the universe or whatever also is . . . been there, done that. Wisdom from some mountaintop I can get just sitting out back of my house watching the sunrise.
Effective protests require risk by great numbers. The numbers aren't there because people have been too comfortable. We're carrying on 3 active wars, but who is feeling it here yet except, of course, for the returned wounded. Most of us go about our daily lives as if nothing is happening.
The other part is that people are so easily manipulated as they were during the last election. Anyone who took a close look at Obama's voting record favoring corporations, the millions collected from defense, Wall St., etc. would have known that he was no progressive. His speeches were full of references to bombing Afghanistan and Pakistan. And yet those who voted for him insisted that he was a "progressive" who had to play the game in order to win. I even saw T-shirts with his image along that of MLK's--sheer delusion. The only thing they have in common is a darker skin pigmentation.
There is a steadily growing international movement for free public transport. Your town or city can have it for 60 basis points of tax. This is the achilles heel of the fossil-fuel industry. Check it out.
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http://frepubtra.blogspot.com
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FIRST OF All EVERYONE CHRISTMAS IS UPON US ! DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT SHOP!Maybe to not shop is like a pee in the ocean but think of it.It will make a LITTLE LITTLE DENT in CORPOROCRACY LA LA LAND.If you must get into the xmas hoax,do so non commercially Don't support the rubbish, that they, the billionaires would have you buy to further enrich them!Switch off the xmas hoax bombardment of commercials. No more brain washing and if you simply must spend,send the money instead,to Amy Goodman.At least she tells the TRUTH.RARE! NEW YEARS RESOLUTION No more mind polution resolution.The masses need to hear Amy Goodman's guests and their SANE coverage of life on the planet.
PEACE AND GOODWILL TO ALL Commondreams.org contributers!
Obama-political whore
War is a racket. Healthcare is a racket. Banking is a racket. And not once has the liberal people's president done a thing to help the people. No matter what else happens, your credit card rate (if you have one) has gone up, not down. Your healthcare premium (if you have it) has gone up not down. And now the aptly named Obey says you need to be taxed to pay for this war you don't want because you're really getting a free ride if you aren't actually in it, totally ignoring the destruction of the working and middle classes.
I have just got to laugh at this point. The United States of America vastly outspent the entire world in defense. We spent trillions. And yet we have no one to defend us. Ironic, isn't it? Who needs bin laden when we have armies of financial thieves and defense contractors who are bankrupting us? Who should we call, Ghost Busters? Holder? FBI? CIA? The Pope? Wilbur? Buler? Anyone?
The Democrats are so bad that only the shade of Richard Nixon can save us. He, alas, got us out of Vietnam. RN, Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you...
By today's standards Nixon was a liberal--paranoid and criminal yes, but liberal just the same.
Gerald Ford, not Nixon, got the United States out of Vietnam.
More accurately, the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people and the persistent and increasingly militant antiwar protests in the United States and throughout the world got the United States out of Vietnam.
Nixon escalated the war to unprecedented atrocities, including the invasion of Cambodia.
van 6:29 ----- do not forget the draftees who fragged ( killed with grenade)( I do not condone violence) their officiers, the troops were in a near state of total rebellion..
A little naeive dr wu? Heinrich the kiss of DEATH inger was the WARLOCK IN CHARGE of tricky and dragged Viet on five years more than it had to be, making VAST profits for the five fams!
Obama's decision to ratchet up the violence and crimes against humanity is an absolute betrayal of all humanity as well as those that elected him president. However, these naive folks should have or ought to have known that the 'two' political parties are rife with deceit and are in league with the fascist elements of the corporate culture. They are gradually and with full in-depth and complex plans transforming the U.S. into the entity of their untold making. Believe me , if you knew what the final product of the making is you would be doing everything within your power to stop them!!! Wake up Americans!! Get real and stop your leaders from the war crimes that they are sanctioning and commissioning with your money!!! Everyone that does not do their level best to stop these monsters will be partially responsible for the grave injustice of these horrific crimes and will be held accountable in the annals of history and the cosmic laws of divine justice. Remember that the good Lord advised that sins are of two kinds: commissions and ommissions....to not do something when ones knows that a wrong is being done is to engage in a sin of ommission. So don't think your off the proverbial hook by staying uninvolved, that is a very dangerous illusion!!!
Comments also posted to Malalai Joya's article:
As Santayana said, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
There are many, too many, reasons Afghanistan is called the "Graveyard of Empires" as noted in Michael Moore's letter to Obama. Sadly, we are now poised to repeat a long, deadly history there.
My numismatist brother Paul Terpstra has collected coins of MOST of the empires that met their end (as imperial powers) in roughly the region we now call Afghanistan. He notes: "A partial list of them occurs below. Overlapping dates indicate times when multiple empires were simultaneously munching on different parts of the poisoned bait..."
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: 1979-1989
The British Empire: 1837-1919
The Mughal Empire: 1525-1709
The Timurid Empire: 1370-1506
The Il-Khanate: 1245-1332
The Mongol Empire: 1221-1245
The Khwarezmid Empire: 1215-1221
The Delhi Sultanate: 1206-1221
The Ghurid Empire: 1186-1202
The Ghaznavid Empire: 970-1186
The Abbasid Caliphate: 750-970
The Umayyad Empire of Arabia: 637-750
The Tang Dynasty of China: 620-637
The Hepthalite Kingdom: ca. 400-580
The Sassanian Empire: 224-561
The Kushan Empire: 135-240
The Kingdom of the Western Satraps: 020-405
The Indo-Scythian Kingdom: BC140-AD020
The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom: BC250-BC048
The Mauryan Empire: BC305-BC232
The Seleucid Empire: BC323-BC250
The Empire of Alexander the Great: BC328-BC323
The Archaemenid Empire: BC550-BC328
For corrections additions: Paul.Terpstra@Illinois.gov
Thanks for that list Doug ,we can just add the late great U.S.A. to the top and hope that our War Weary troops don't smoke too much poisoned Black Opiated Hashish. peace
An impressive list.
All the blind Clinton supporters are getting what they wished for, Hillary was an adviser to Obama, and she was in favor
of this oil war. What country is paying her husband Bubba
for all that dough he is raking in?
The big corporate boys almost always hedge their campaign contribution bets. They did this in the 2008 election cycle (particularly to the Democratic Party's favor) in anticipation that there was real grassroots voter disgust with the excesses of the Bush/Cheney regime. The war profiteers will similarly hedge their contribution bets when Obama comes up for reelection in 2012 - secure in the knowledge that what was good for the Pentagon machine appropriations flow under the Dems will stay good, or probably get even better, if the Repugs do slither back into power.
Heads they win. Tails we lose. Boeing and big pharma, GE and Goldman Sachs. Samo samo. Even Rupert Murdoch of the Faux News GOP spin machine supposedly tossed some loot in the Obama-Biden ticket's direction last fall, once the handwriting was on the wall.
In terms of long term raw domestic partisan calculation however, the beltway DLC braintrust is making a fatally flawed gamble. The big corporate boys are fickle. Unlike the proverbial "good" Cook County politicians who stay bought, these guys don't dance for very long with the gal they brung. The Republicans know this. That's why Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and their cohorts in crime still smile from exile with a twinkle in their eyes.
When the moment of reckoning comes, big corporate America will thank team Obama for their four years of bipartisan open mindedness, turn their backs, and return to their business-as-usual roots where the profit margins can only be even greater, the risk of meaningful oversight over access to the public money trough even less. Independent swing voters and the disillusioned grassroots base of the Democratic Party will bolt to a third party candidate (where ballot access makes it possible), take to the streets, vote for the GOP out of pure payback spite, or simply stay home. As usual, the Dems will never know what hit them. The mainstream media pundits too will draw all the wrong conclusions.
Oh well. Time to go trim the tree and listen to Barack's West Point speech. I hear the dogs of war yelping in the distance, eager to be let slip once again for a run beneath tonight's full moon.
Bill from Saginaw
Good Analysis Bill
.Always same camel different saddle .If China ,today, invaded this country and five chinese ran across our lawn to attack,we instinctively would run for anything,even the baseball bat to defend what we hold dear,family I assume.We have been attacked!Complacent,priveleged America is and has been under attack.The economic slaughter began,the profiteers attack and attack some more and we barely respond, held captive and hypnotized by the media's magic lies.
Now we have the amazing arrogance of the( history of coke addiction ),blackmailed bribed black man wearing his white WAR hat,just like those other corrupt,on the take black leaders of Africa that destroyed their own people, putting more nails in the USA coffin.
The hole has been dug.Americans sooner or later are going to have to run for their bat.Uncomfortable but America as we KNEW it,is gone gone gone!The doomed dead dollar signifies what is yet to come.Today's dollar is the new Peso.We have been transformed to a third world country.Do we have jobs,new industries,are we the leaders in education,do we have the highest standard of living?We may not even have tha highest standard of BOMBS anymore.China has figured out how to destroy our precious space satelites,required to destroy the planet.FRIGHTENING.READ JAMES PETRAS NUCLEAR EXTERMINATION MADE RESPECTABLE.HILLAHUN and INSANE McCAIN want to bomb IRAN!Seventy MILLION Iranians go up in smoke!We might as well bomb ourselves because if HILLAHUN AND OBOMBA AND INSANE MCCAIN get their wish we do NOT exist.A guarrantee.I'd bet the farm on it!
for what it is worth: a petition to end the war
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/161/t/288/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=746
1. The Obama campaign raised over $ 1/2 billion, so the $1million from the defense industry doesn't loom very large at all.
2. Many of the Empires that Doug and his brother list were defeated by other forces, e.g., the Mongols,(the Abbasids defeated the Ummayyads who went on the Cordoba and founded a great civilization) so things aren't quite so simple in the area of Afghanistan as he would have us believe.
3. I'll be on the street tomorrow, with our "pitiful little protest" but somebody has to be out there until moonpie decides to get off the couch and contribute his magnificent strength to the campaign.
Hi ACEwing, I was in Cordoba. Once the largest city in the world. Nice mosque they have there, complete with baroque cathedral inside it.
You need to subtract all the small donations because they do not buy loyalty, then look at the Large ones to see who he is beholden to.
The MSM doesn't show the mistreatment of protesters by police. For that matter, they barely mention the protests.
As a long time reader of non-corporate and international press, this should come as no surprise.
I have repeatedly read that two parties do not exist in this country, merely the illusion of two parties. There exists only one party: the "Permanent War" party. Its tentacles stretch from DC to Wall Street. According to stats I've read profit ratios for munitions easily dwarf those of more conventional "peaceful" commodities.
So, if "democracy is participation," we are deep trouble. For "our betters" abide by Bismarck's maxim, "for a ruling elite to survive in a democratic state, it must provide the illusion of participation..."
The election of Obama is a testament to our rulers' continuing ability to provide that illusion.
Look! Up in the sky!
Yeah, it IS falling.
My God, My God, what have we done? Unleashed a war profiteering monster with no loyalty to God or Country.
I believe war Profiteering is still a Federal Capital Crime { enacted during WWII)
How come everybody is saying you do this, you do that, you have to learn, you have to act?
How about some WE, folks.
How about taking some responsibility, if not for the evils, then at least for the solutions. Nobody is too good to refuse to do that.
All the war protests in the world ain't gonna do nuttin' to deter the warmongers. As the saying goes "he with the most weapons wins"
Now this is what wars are all about! A real bonanza for all the slime that make a killing on killing.
Protesting with signs will not get attention in this visual age. maybe a bit of civil disobedience like sit-ins in the places that matter, "Lady Godiva style".That will get some attention from the sex obsessed media.
Here we go again....a new War Prez.....Sure " Change we can Dream of "
A Criminal March of Folly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fWXwWtwwbo
That he is making his announcement at West Point and not in DC, in a civil hall, is a major statement, one which appears intentional.
It says that he holds his allegiance to the military and the MIC, not the people.
It says that the war machine is his center, not democracy.
It says that the people and democracy can go f**k themselves.
I HOLD ALLEGIANCE TO THE MONEY!