Pontius President

What a way for President Obama to display his contempt for both the American people and for Congress. Saturday's pullback from an immediate bomb-a-thon was one of the weirdest simultaneous acts of ass-covering and imperial power-grabbing in the entire history of his presidency.

 The performance: Do a quickie Pontius Pilate, wash that blurred red line of blood clean from your hands and punt the case for bombing Syria and its environs right over to Congress. Be sure to double-signal your absolute lack of concern over all  the thousands of victims of Assad's alleged chemical attacks by not calling Congress back to Washington for emergency session and an immediate vote. Pontius is not very Punctual, is he? Oh, and fail once again to order that our stockpiles of gas masks be sent to Syria post-haste. They may not protect the skin of Syrians from mustard gas and Napalm, but they might at the very least protect a couple thousand pairs of vulnerable lungs. Also fail, once again, to share your dubious intelligence on impending attacks with  actual potential victims of same. Safety and security must not get into the wrong hands, is the alleged concern of our rulers.

Cover all your bases along with your ass. Make sure that all the blame for either attacking Syria and thus unleashing a broad mid-East war will be ascribed to Congress, or conversely, that the failure to attack Syria which then sparks further mass poisonings will be ascribed to Congress. Meanwhile, outdo George W. with the repulsive chest-thumping routine, braying that as Temporary Emperor (Temp Emp) you are still The Decider. If Congress fails to act within your as-yet blurred bloody timeframe, you have still retained the right to unilaterally attack. You'll go it alone, if that's how it must be. You'll do it your way, because as Richard Nixon so famously told the newly-late David Frost, "If the president does it, it's not illegal."

But let's face it. Obama would almost have certainly have faced threats of sanction by (at least) the Tea Party Impeachment Brigade had he acted alone, as well as condemnation by the United Nations and the international community. After days of pushback and polling, he dipped his scolding finger into the water, held it up, and decided that the winds of public opinion were not blowing in his favor, after all. David Cameron is not to Barack Obama as Tony Blair was to George Bush. The Obamas may have just gotten a brand new puppy, but it's not a poodle. As a matter of fact, Obama is fast becoming a neutered alpha-dog in search of a pack.

The White House Draft Resolution for the use of military force, for its cynical part,  sounds nothing at all like the limited, surgical strike with which the Obama administration has been stroking the nation to gain its consent. It's pure Orwellian schizophrenic doubletalk, translatable as War For Peace:

Whereas, on August 21, 2013, the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus, Syria, killing more than 1,000 innocent Syrians;

Whereas these flagrant actions were in violation of international norms and the laws of war;

 

(Remember that all the "evidence" thus far is courtesy of the truthy National Security Agency. The jury is still out as to who exactly carried out the attacks.)

 

Whereas the United States and 188 other countries comprising 98 percent of the world's population are parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which prohibits the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling or use of chemical weapons;

Whereas, in the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003, Congress found that Syria's acquisition of weapons of mass destruction threatens the security of the Middle East and the national security interests of the United States;

Whereas the United Nations Security Council, in Resolution 1540 (2004), affirmed that the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons constitutes a threat to international peace and security;

Whereas, the objective of the United States' use of military force in connection with this authorization should be to deter, disrupt, prevent, and degrade the potential for, future uses of chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction;

 

(It's illegal to start a war simply to deter the bad behavior of governments we don't happen to like. Please note all the wars we didn't start against horrendous governments which have tortured and killed their own citizens in the very recent past. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt all come to mind. But they're our "friends.")

 

Whereas, the conflict in Syria will only be resolved through a negotiated political settlement, and Congress calls on all parties to the conflict in Syria to participate urgently and constructively in the Geneva process; and

Whereas, unified action by the legislative and executive branches will send a clear signal of American resolve.

SEC. ___ AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES

(a) Authorization. -- The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in connection with the use of chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in the conflict in Syria in order to --

(1) prevent or deter the use or proliferation (including the transfer to terrorist groups or other state or non-state actors), within, to or from Syria, of any weapons of mass destruction, including chemical or biological weapons or components of or materials used in such weapons; or

(2) protect the United States and its allies and partners against the threat posed by such weapons.

(b) War Powers Resolution Requirements. --

(1) Specific Statutory Authorization. -- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.

(2) Applicability of other requirements. -- Nothing in this joint resolution supersedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.

 

As noted above, the fact that Obama did not call Congress back for emergency session gives lie to the "urgency" rationale used in the document. The White House persists in couching military action in terms of "sending a message" while at the same time contradicting/absolving itself by insisting that the only solution to the strife is diplomatic and political. Obama might as well boast that he'll charge into the United Nations with guns blazing. Bullets, Bromides and Bathos --  it's all getting as blurred as his hackneyed red line.

 

And, as the excellent blog Moon of Alabama lays out, Obama is blithely assuming for himself unlimited war powers in the initial draft, nearly as sweeping as the Authorization for Use of Military Force in all its overreach. Obama gets to decide what is "necessary and appropriate". The sky is truly the limit. After all, Syria is just one chunk of real estate in the open-ended forever war on terror. And most likely, Syria is simply the proxy/excuse for attacking Iran, punishing Russia for supporting Iran (and for protecting Edward Snowden) and giving Israel pretty much everything it wants.

 

And speaking of Snowden.... notice that the corporate media are all but ignoring the surveillance state scandals and abuses now that War Fever has erupted? Obama can now meet with Putin on his own bellicose terms. He can tell the rest of the world to stop complainin' about being spied on, lest maybe he takes it into his head to bomb the hell out them someday for something he just "knows." By the time he's done, we'll be just begging to be surveilled because it feels so damned good to be kept safe from the real terror and blowback that Obama (and possibly a complicit Congress) will soon be unleashing upon us.

 

Meanwhile, I admit to taking a certain perverse pleasure in witnessing our 9% approval rating Congress being thrown the hot potato of Syrian intervention. The hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance echoing under the Dome will be deafening. It should make for some pretty good C-Span TV, bringing into stark relief the differences between the actual debate conducted last week by the British Parliament, and the autistic posturing of individual American politicians torn between dialing for dollars, appeasing AIPAC, justifying austerity at home and profligacy abroad.

 

There is also a perverse sort of pleasure to be taken in watching the politicians actually groveling to thank President Obama for deciding not to commit a war crime right away, so graciously bestowing upon them the democratic opportunity to give him carte blanche to commit untold war crimes, as they have done so many times before. Pontius Pilate is transformed to Punctilious Pilate, and the liberal world swoons.  Glenn Greenwald:

It's a potent sign of how low the American political bar is set that gratitude is expressed because a US president says he will ask Congress to vote before he starts bombing another country that is not attacking or threatening the US. That the US will not become involved in foreign wars of choice without the consent of the American people through their representatives Congress is a central mandate of the US Constitution, not some enlightened, progressive innovation of the 21st century. George Bush, of course, sought Congressional approval for the war in Iraq (though he did so only once it was clear that Congress would grant it: I vividly remember watching then-Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joe Biden practically begging the Bush White House to "allow" Congress to vote on the attack while promising in advance that they would approve for it).

We should probably thank our lucky stars that at least we now have time to contact our local Congress Critters and force them to come out of their cash-glutted recess holes just long enough to hear our anti-war sentiments. Perhaps Obama will get his Coalition of the Willing after all -- a coalition of legislators who can demonstrate the political will to thwart what appears to be an increasingly unstable and power-drunk Commander in Chief. Let Obama be the start of something new -- the Temp Emp whose gorgeous egged face fails, for once, to launch a thousand Tomahawk Missiles.
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Obama's Grotesque Nightmare Speech

The standard hypocrisy emerging from the lips of Barack Obama was more jarring than usual Wednesday, as he struggled to pay tribute to the civil rights struggles of yesteryear while still staying true to his own right wing ideals. For all his phony black preacher-speak adulation of Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, and the cinematic stereotype of struggling black folks (Pullman Porters, chambermaids and shoeshine boys), Obama simply couldn't resist getting in his usual dig about personal responsibility, and what he perceives to be the chronic whining of the oppressed:

Legitimate grievances against police brutality tipped into excuse- making for criminal behavior. Racial politics could cut both ways as the transformative message of unity and brotherhood was drowned out by the language of recrimination. And what had once been a call for equality of opportunity, the chance for all Americans to work hard and get ahead was too often framed as a mere desire for government support, as if we had no agency in our own liberation, as if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child and the bigotry of others was reason to give up on yourself. All of that history is how progress stalled. That's how hope was diverted. It's how our country remained divided.

Even professional misanthrope Newt Gingrich couldn't have made the dripping disdain implicit in this paragraph any plainer. Black-on-black violence, rather than being a desperate symptom of crushing poverty and lack of opportunity, is rendered into an "excuse". Stop complainin'! Get off your butts and stop asking for government welfare (which that other "New Democrat", Bill Clinton, effectively destroyed anyway, with the help of Newt). Starvation is no excuse for not raising your kids to be upstanding American citizens beholden to flag and authority. Blame yourselves, not your oppressors. It's the authoritarian way.

Of course, there were myriad other hypocrisies and self-condemning truths sprinkled throughout Obama's faux-lofty rhetoric. Some examples:

Lincoln himself understood the Declaration of Independence in such terms, as a promise that in due time, the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men and that all should have an equal chance.

(Not today. Maybe someday. Gradually, the war on drugs that singles out minorities disproportionately may stop. But not on my watch. Gradually, someday, in due time, the rights of people will take precedence over the rights of corporations. Sarah Palin may be a dolt, but she sure was right about that "hopey-changey" thing being a complete canard.)

For over a decade, working Americans of all races have seen their wages and incomes stagnate. Even as corporate profits soar, even as the pay of a fortunate few explodes, inequality has steadily risen over the decades. Upward mobility has become harder. In too many communities across this country in cities and suburbs and rural hamlets, the shadow of poverty casts a pall over our youth, their lives a fortress of substandard schools and diminished prospects, inadequate health care and perennial violence.

(Obamian verbal gymnastics at their best, in which he feels our pain, acknowledges all that is wrong in America. But not a word about how his own Wall Street-friendly policies have contributed to growing income disparity and wage stagnation, and how he himself has championed  the corporate privatization of schools. In Chicago, for example, displaced minority students are being herded like sheep to their new non-union charter schools by $10/hour escorts -- to protect them from all that black-on-black violence, dontcha know.

And with that courage, we can stand together for good jobs and just wages. With that courage, we can stand together for the right to health care in the richest nation on earth for every person. (Applause.) With that courage, we can stand together for the right of every child, from the corners of Anacostia to the hills of Appalachia, to get an education that stirs the mind and captures the spirit and prepares them for the world that awaits them. (Applause.) With that courage, we can feed the hungry and house the homeless and transform bleak wastelands of poverty into fields of commerce and promise.

(Even as he spoke, his administration was meeting with Republicans in desperate hopes of making yet another deal to reduce a deficit that has already been cut to the point of no return for the millions of people whom austerity has already victimized. Obama called for good jobs and just wages, but failed to renew his call for a higher minimum wage, failed once again to note that his own policies have contributed to America becoming that bleak, vast wasteland. He spoke like a candidate for office rather than the leader of the country. Typical, but especially grotesque given the setting and the occasion for Wednesday's speech.)

And now, for a final thunderclap of presidential cognitive dissonance:

And because they kept marching, America changed. Because they marched, the civil rights law was passed. Because they marched, the voting rights law was signed. Because they marched, doors of opportunity and education swung open so their daughters and sons could finally imagine a life for themselves beyond washing somebody else's laundry or shining somebody else's shoes. (Applause.) Because they marched, city councils changed and state legislatures changed and Congress changed and, yes, eventually the White House changed. (Cheers, applause.)

Because they marched, America became more free and more fair, not just for African-Americans but for women and Latinos, Asians and Native Americans, for Catholics, Jews and Muslims, for gays, for Americans with disabilities.

America changed for you and for me.

(He got elected, so everybody celebrate and bask in his glory. Never mind that in 1963, the economy was healthy, labor unions were still strong, and wages were still relatively robust, taxes were progressive, and there was still actually such a thing as the middle class. Never mind that the NYPD has now secretly designated Muslim mosques as terrorist organizations, and that the Obama administration has praised police spying against innocent Muslims. Never mind that Obama is still considering the stop-and-frisk NYPD Commissioner as new head of Homeland Security. America has changed, all right. And not for the better.)

New York Times columnist Charles Blow has written a brutally honest piece about MLK's magical transformation from "Dangerous Negro" with ties to Communism, to the cultural icon now so acceptable to the authoritarian likes of Barack Obama. To his credit, Blow did not join in the liberal veal pen cheering of Obama's Speech. Decrying the nostalgia of the old-timers and the new old-timers at Wednesday's staged retrospective, Blow writes:

Yet there remains a sort of cultural complacency in America. After young people took to the streets as part of the Arab Spring, many Americans, like myself, were left wondering what had become of American activism. When was the last time our young people felt so moved that they took to the streets to bring attention to an issue?

There were some glimmers of hope around Occupy Wall Street and the case of Trayvon Martin, but both movements have lost much of their steam, and neither produced a clear leader.

So as we rightfully commemorate the March on Washington and King’s speech, let us also pay particular attention to the content of that speech. King spoke of the “fierce urgency of now,” not the fierce urgency of nostalgia.

(I was struck by how old the speakers skewed this week during the commemorations.) What is our fierce urgency? What is the present pressure? Who will be our King? What will be our cause?

As many readers pointed out, it was the Obama Administration itself which crushed the Occupy movement. And the "Trayvon Movement", which initially included a boycott of tourist dollar-dependent Florida by millionaire black entertainers, simply fizzled.... because, well, Capitalism. My comment, in answer to where all the new dissenters may be:

Now that the Occupy movement has been stymied, the most dangerous Americans are independent journalists and whistleblowers. It takes at least a generation to declare a subversive a hero. So someday, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden and a whole host of subversives who are still little kids might get their own national holidays. This of course is if America as we know it survives for another generation, and "the nation" hasn't been rendered into just another chunk of wasteland real estate, pillaged and despoiled by the multinational capitalists who own the world in all but name.

Two of the speakers at Wednesday's ceremonies have recently spoken out strongly about the steady downward spiral of human rights in America. Jimmy Carter, who has publicly railed against our government's campaign of kill lists and drone terror, recently observed that this country no longer has a functioning democracy. And Civil Rights icon John Lewis praised Snowden, comparing him to Thoreau and Gandhi, before suddenly walking back the accolades and claiming he was misquoted by The Guardian newspaper. I suspect that some higher-up must have given him some friendly advice. Lewis, you may remember, was asked to "tone it down" once before, in the first March on Washington.

As the late revolutionary philosopher Frantz Fanon so saliently observed, "Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it."

The Four Stages of Neocon Arousal

A Neocon with the apt name of Major Gen. Spider Marks went on CNN Wednesday to give Wolf Blitzer and his sidekick Tom Foreman a stimulating tutorial on the Four Stages of Attacking Syria. Marks's presentation did not, of course, in any way crib from Masters and Johnson's Four Stages Of Human Sexual Response. But it definitely seemed to arouse Wolf Blitzer, judging from the feverish glitter in his bespectacled eyes and the rosy flush erupting behind his fuzzy white beard, as the scenario for wanking Syria was laid out before him, in the form of a colorful map. All shiny and decked out in bright colors. Lying helpless on the floor, in a darkened studio.

CNN did not disclose that Gen. Spider Marks (not to be confused with Col. Tick Bites) is a paid shill who made millions as a private contractor during the Iraq occupation. He's been exposed before, most notably by the New York Times in its Pulitzer-winning blockbuster, as one of a whole army of Pentagon-controlled apparatchiks paid to go on TV and pimp out war. And like the comic book hero by the same name, he just keeps coming back.

And this time, not to be outdone by Miley Cyrus, Spider gave the audience its money's worth. Although he lacked a phallic finger with which to display an estimated 50 Syrian sweet spots on the map, he made do with twerking it, military-style,with his foot.

The Four Phases of Neocon Arousal, as outlined by Spider Man:

1) "Getting in position". Battleships manned, artillery aimed. The grooming phase is complete, so let's move on, Wolf.

2) "Staging": a.k.a. the Plateau Phase. Excitement, though mounting, was being kept under strict control as President Obama finished up his speech at the Lincoln Memorial. But the ships are getting ever closer to the tempting Syrian beaches. Planes are circling just outside the restricted area. The tension is palpable. The Tomahawks are pulsating. The NSA Peeping Toms are ogling. Tom Foreman is breathing hard. The corporate media tom-toms are throbbing.

3). "Execution Phase". Crescendo. Fire Away. Shock and Awe.  The Military-Industrial Complex orgasms from every direction. Defense stocks surge. Mission Accomplished. America Got Testosterone!

4) The "Stability Phase." Syria, whipped into a quivering 50 Shades of Gray stupor, smokes a cigarette. The Americans sneak out without so much as the promise of a phone call.

But never fear, Spider reassures us. There are probably plenty more surgical strikes where that one came from. After all, this is only the first time. As the usual craven, unidentified White House flack tells it, the whole purpose of wanking Syria is to appear just "muscular" enough to avoid getting mocked.

So there you have it. The show must, and will, go on. Fear of political embarrassment dictates it.

The Dream and The March

 

 

 

Open Thread -- please share your thoughts and links. To get you started:

 

On this 50th anniversary of the rally for rights and jobs, let's remember that immediately after Martin Luther King's iconic I Have a Dream speech, the USG went into full clinical paranoia mode, stepping up their surveillance of him. He was considered a "dangerous Negro," a subversive, back in the day. That radicalism cannot even be tolerated by the current PTB, who've stepped up their surveillance of all the brothers and sisters, black and white alike. But the bowdlerization of MLK continues apace: from pro-labor socialist anti-war preacher to touchy-feely personification of Kumbaya. Otherwise, how could a trio of temp emps (former/current presidents) tolerate giving their own touchy-feeling speeches in his honor?

 

Economist and humanist Joseph Stiglitz has cut to the chase: the march was not just about racial injustice, but about economic injustice. The racial animus is still alive and well, albeit muted and dog-whistled, but the economic injustice is getting louder and more blatant by the day. Wealth disparity, with the neo-feudalism it engenders, is the de facto policy of the multinational shadow government of unfettered capitalists now ruling the planet. As Stiglitz writes in a New York Times op-ed,

In so many respects, progress in race relations has been eroded, and even reversed, by the growing economic divides afflicting the entire country.

The battle against outright discrimination is, regrettably far from over: 50 years after the march, and 45 years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, major United States banks, like Wells Fargo, still discriminate on the basis of race, targeting the most vulnerable of our citizens for their predatory lending activities. Discrimination in the job market is pervasive and deep. Research suggests that applicants with African-American sounding names get fewer calls for interviews. Discrimination takes new forms; racial profiling remains rampant in many American cities, including through the stop-and-frisk policies that became standard practice in New York. Our incarceration rate is the world’s highest, although there are signs, finally, that fiscally strapped states are starting to see the folly, if not the inhumanity, of wasting so much human capital through mass incarceration. Almost 40 percent of prisoners are black. This tragedy has been documented powerfully by Michelle Alexander and other legal scholars.

 

 

The Case of the Case-Making Secretary

From your Secretary of State of Rage, John Kerry, came the opening salvo in yet another front in the Everywhere War. He strove in vain to move the public bellicosity appetite scale all the way from Nine to Ten Percent. It was a heroic effort, replete with two centuries of American jingoism and bathos. He had to have reached into the very depths of his tepid core to come up with so much feigned outrage. (italicized bits are just my own mutterings.)

Text of John Kerry's Getting Ready for War speech:

Well, for the last several days President Obama and his entire national security team have been reviewing the situation in Syria. (They've had months and years and countless rounds of golf in which to review the situation, but there you go.) And today I want to provide an update on our efforts as we consider our response to the use of chemical weapons. (Our minds are already made up, but I am making this rare public TV appearance to give our machinations the patina of pretend-transparency.) 

What we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world. It defies any code of morality. Let me be clear. The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. By any standard, it is inexcusable. And despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured, it is undeniable. (Pay no attention to the thousands of deaths by American drones of people with whom we are not even at war, and what Norman Pollack describes as the ongoing Murder by Proxy of Egyptian citizens, using American-made weapons bought by American taxpayers for the enrichment of our military-industrial complex. Those, apparently, are "moral actions". We pretend to have moral standing to condemn chemical weapons use because that is the one atrocity we have never used against others. As far as you know. And egging other countries on, like we did to Iraq back when we liked them, doesn't count. We are only vehemently opposed to chemical weapons when it suits our own self-interest to be. )

The meaning of this attack goes beyond the conflict on Syria itself. And that conflict has already brought so much terrible suffering. This is about the large-scale indiscriminate use of weapons that the civilized world long ago decided must never be used at all, a conviction shared even by countries that agree on little else. (As self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe, we are highly discriminating killers. Other little countries may kill just for the fun of it, and enjoy the pain they impose, but not us. We  ascribe a transcendant Biblical meaning to all our tawdry endeavors. We kill from duty and for profit. God is on Our Side. We derive our entire meaning from magical thinking.)

There is a clear reason that the world has banned entirely the use of chemical weapons. There is a reason the international community has set a clear standard and why many countries have taken major steps to eradicate these weapons. There is a reason why President Obama has made it such a priority to stop the proliferation of these weapons, and lock them down where they do exist. There is a reason why President Obama has made clear to the Assad regime that this international norm cannot be violated without consequences. And there is a reason why no matter what you believe about Syria, all peoples and all nations who believe in the cause of our common humanity must stand up to assure that there is accountability for the use of chemical weapons so that it never happens again. (Here we go into Righteous American Exceptionalist Preacher mode, which operates thusly: Repeat the initial phrases of the sentences as a litany. There is a reason, there is a reason, there is a reason. Pound that insipid moral outrage into the pliable hearts and minds of America. Shock and Awe, Baby! Shock and Awe. Forget that the United States chose to ignore the world-wide ban on torture, too. After all, now we only outsource it. And force-feed prisoners while we're at it.)

Last night, after speaking with foreign ministers from around the world about the gravity of this situation, I went back and I watched the videos — the videos that anybody can watch in the social media, and I watched them one more gut-wrenching time. It is really hard to express in words the human suffering that they lay out before us. (I always use my sonorous voice dripping with condescending gravitas whilst dictating American dictates to the petty dictators of our client states. And we absolutely need the American people to watch the war-porn videos playing in an endless loop on CNN. Do not, however, watch that gut-wrenching video leaked by Chelsea Manning of murder-by-American soldiers. When we do it, it's not an atrocity. And whoever spills the beans on our righteous slaughters gets sentenced to 35 years in prison.) 

As a father, I can’t get the image out of my head of a man who held up his dead child, wailing while chaos swirled around him, the images of entire families dead in their beds without a drop of blood or even a visible wound, bodies contorting in spasms, human suffering that we can never ignore or forget. Anyone who could claim that an attack of this staggering scale could be contrived or fabricated needs to check their conscience and their own moral compass. (We, the murderous tyrants of the world, always bring up the fact that we implanted our sperm into eggs as justification for killing people. Being fathers who love our own privileged spawn gives us the right to kill the children of our enemies who, by the way, are never victims, but always collateral damage. We never check our own moral compasses. Probably because we lack moral compasses.)



Pakistani Man Grieves Over Child Victims of American Drone Attack


What is before us today is real, and it is compelling. (But don't look at the photo above. Look at my stern visage as I compel you into blind acceptance.)......

So I also want to underscore that while investigators are gathering additional evidence on the ground, our understanding of what has already happened in Syria is grounded in facts, informed by conscience and guided by common sense. The reported number of victims, the reported symptoms of those who were killed or injured, the firsthand accounts from humanitarian organizations on the ground, like Doctors Without Borders and the Syria Human Rights Commission — these all strongly indicate that everything these images are already screaming at us is real, that chemical weapons were used in Syria. (The facts may not be all in, but we know, we just know, that the Assad Regime is behind this awfulness. Because when facts are lacking, we always bring on the bathos. George W. knew in his gut there were WMDs. When it comes to a case for war, guts and profits rule. Facts drool. And just look at who's providing us with all the intel. It's that least-truthful unprosecuted perjurer himself, Director of Intelligence James Clapper. So there you go.)

Moreover, we know that the Syrian regime maintains custody of these chemical weapons. We know that the Syrian regime has the capacity to do this with rockets. We know that the regime has been determined to clear the opposition from those very places where the attacks took place. And with our own eyes, we have all of us become witnesses. (All the world's a stage, so we hereby demand that you believe everything that is presented to you on your TV. Again with the repetition, the better to grind it all into your brains. We know, we know, we know. And also, we know.)

We have additional information about this attack, and that information is being compiled and reviewed together with our partners, and we will provide that information in the days ahead. (We'll present this as a cliff-hanger, in collaboration with our partners at CNN and MSNBC and even FoxNews. Stay tuned for further infotainment and filmed atrocities for your viewing pleasure.)

Our sense of basic humanity is offended not only by this cowardly crime but also by the cynical attempt to cover it up. At every turn, the Syrian regime has failed to cooperate with the U.N. investigation, using it only to stall and to stymie the important effort to bring to light what happened in Damascus in the dead of night. And as Ban Ki- moon said last week, the U.N. investigation will not determine who used these chemical weapons, only whether such weapons were used, a judgement that is already clear to the world. (The part of the propaganda wherein the war-mongers pretend to be human and humane. American officials are never cynical, nor do they ever attempt to cover anything up. It only took them 60 years to reveal that the CIA was behind the ouster of the Shah of Iran, for example.)

I spoke on Thursday with Syrian Foreign Minister Muallem, and I made it very clear to him that if the regime, as he argued, had nothing to hide, then their response should be immediate: immediate transparency, immediate access, not shelling. Their response needed to be unrestricted and immediate access. Failure to permit that, I told him, would tell its own story. (Just as we always reassure our own people when it comes to NSA surveillance: if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.)

Instead, for five days the Syrian regime refused to allow the U.N. investigators access to the site of the attack that would allegedly exonerate them. Instead, it attacked the area further, shelling it and systematically destroying evidence. That is not the behavior of a government that has nothing to hide. That is not the action of a regime eager to prove to the world that it had not used chemical weapons. In fact, the regime’s belated decision to allow access is too late and is too late to be credible. (Mind you, the identities of the snipers have not been determined. They couldn't possibly have been Al Qaeda, whom we alternately bankroll and kill, depending on their location.)

Today’s reports of an attack on the U.N. investigators, together with the continued shelling of these very neighborhoods, only further weakens the regime’s credibility. At President Obama’s direction, I’ve spent many hours over the last few days on the phone with foreign ministers and other leaders. The administration is actively consulting with members of Congress, and we will continue to have these conversations in the days ahead. President Obama has also been in close touch with the leaders of our key allies, and the president will be making an informed decision about how to respond to this indiscriminate use of chemical weapons. (This is the part of the propaganda in which the picture is painted of kinetic crisis at the highest levels of the government. They are on the phone non-stop, buzzing like self-important little bees, as they make informed choices based on stuff they want to hear.)

But make no mistake: President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people. Nothing today is more serious, and nothing is receiving more serious scrutiny. (Unmanned predator drones are apparently not heinous weapons, nor are the Pakistani, Afghan, Somalian and Yemeni children being rendered into bugsplat by them among the world's most vulnerable citizens. As former Press Secretary Robert Gibbs once pointed out, they committed the crime of being born to "irresponsible" parents.)

Thank you. (Now excuse me as I go pour champagne on the flames that are consuming my soul.)

"There exists among men, because they are men, a solidarity through which each shares responsibility for every injustice and every wrong committed in the world, and especially for crimes that are committed in his presence or of which he cannot be ignorant. If I do not do whatever I can to prevent them, I am accomplice in them. If I have not risked my life in order to prevent the murder of other men, if I have stood silent, I feel guilty in a sense that cannot in any adequate fashion be understood juridically, or politically, or morally. . . . That I am still alive after such things have been done weighs on me as a guilt that cannot be expiated." -- Karl Jaspers.

Smoke, Shills and Shrillionaires

(Say three times fast.)

Well, knock me over with a Lucky Strike. Michael Bloomberg, lord mayor of the fiefdom of New York, 10th richest American plutocrat, 20th wealthiest man in the universe, is taking on the Transpacific Partnership (TPP). More specifically, he is taking on President Obama's "cave" to Big Tobacco, which is demanding the right to spread cancer and sell ciggies to kiddies the wide world over. Under the new agreement, the tobacco cartel will be granted the power to actually supersede local laws governing the sale of its products.

In an op-ed published in today's New York Times, Bloomberg writes:

The early drafts of the agreement included a “safe harbor” provision protecting nations that have adopted regulations on tobacco — like package warnings and advertising and marketing restrictions — because of “the unique status of tobacco products from a health and regulatory perspective.” This provision would have prevented the tobacco industry from interfering with governments’ sovereign right to protect public health through tobacco control laws.  

(snip) 

This week, however, the Obama administration bowed to pressure from the tobacco industry and dumped the safe harbor provision from the trade compact. The tobacco industry was joined by other business interest groups that were fearful that the safe harbor provision would lead to other products’ being singled out in future trade accords.

So instead of the safe harbor, the Obama administration is now calling for a clause requiring that before a government can challenge another’s tobacco regulation under the treaty, their health authorities must “discuss the measure.” The administration will also try to ensure that a general exception for matters to protect human life or health (typical in trade agreements) applies specifically to tobacco regulation.

But these are weak half-measures at best that will not protect American law — and the laws of other countries — from being usurped by the tobacco industry, which is increasingly using trade and investment agreements to challenge domestic tobacco control measures.

Obama, a known nicotine addict himself, will effectively allow a flood of cheap cigarettes into third world countries, where in some locales, the rules are already lax: 

 
He's going to need all the help he can get funding his presidential library, paying for his daughters' educations, weddings, his homes, their condos, second homes, third homes, ad infinitum. The once-secretive shilling is now right out there in the open. And why limit himself to only one Kill List? 

Every human rights organization and public health advocacy group out there, it seems, is up in arms over the president's latest sellout. But Bloomberg's the guy with the heft. Obama once even offered him the presidency of the World Bank. So, as I responded in today's Times comment thread,

Maybe when Mayor Bloomberg leaves office, he can go full Glenn Greenwald and start publishing exposés on the rest of the super-secret, corporation-friendly awfulness contained in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. As a member of the Club, he is welcome where the rest of us (even members of Congress expected to give it a quickie carte blanche) are not. If he will do that for the hoi polloi, and rip the curtain of deceit away from the global capitalist cabal, I might even forgive him for evicting Occupy from Zuccotti Park.

So -- what about the reckless epidemic of fracking for natural gas, most of which will be exported to other countries for the enrichment of a few, rather than stockpiled here for our own future use?

What about the importation of foreign food from countries where they don't necessarily believe in inspection? What about the deal that will shield corporations from lawsuits in domestic courts? How about the clause giving drug companies permission to withhold life-saving medicine from impoverished countries?

How about it, Mr. Mayor? Channel FDR, and be a traitor to your class. It's never too late.

For the latest information and best coverage of the ongoing corporate coup known as the TPP, check out Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. Since the USG's adherence to the will of the world's business cartels hinges upon Congressional approval, pressure on our reps may do the trick. Obama has yet to secure their permission to unilaterally sign any deals. It's not too late, especially given parallel anger over the NSA spying revelations.

This all ties in, too, to Paul Krugman's excellent column on bubbles and deregulation, on oligarchs gone wild, running from one crisis to the next. My comment:

Transnational capitalism rules the world. And it's super-government run amok. It's the force behind the epidemic of social austerity and corporate deregulation, endless wars and constant surveillance of restive populations. Heads of state are mere brokers, competing for Super Government's business, outbidding each other to offer the most natural resources, the most legal immunity, the most generous corporate welfare. They offer up their increasingly desperate human labor pools, who are forced to work longer and longer for less and less.

The corporate leeches feed, and keep moving. They hide their trillions in their offshore accounts and watch smugly from afar as the toxic bubbles they leave behind fester and burst, and societies crumble. They are never held accountable. They do, after all, own the world.

Well, almost. According to a 2006 UN report, the world’s richest 1% own 40% of the world’s assets, with those in the financial and internet sectors comprising the “super rich.” The top 10% of the global super-rich, a third of whom call the USA home sweet home, own about 85% of the planet's total assets. The bottom half of the population (3 billion people) own less than 1% of the world’s wealth.

In America, the president is now asking Congress for free rein to negotiate yet another massive giveaway to the global super-rich in the form of the ultra-secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership. Because, for the financial predators who run the place, too much is never enough.

Here's Lookin' At You, Kids

Every Way You Look At This, You Lose

(graphic by Kat Garcia)

Where have you gone, Barack Obama? The nation turned its lonely eyes to you. Woo, woo, woo. But now your approval rating among the young has plummeted to an all-time low, thanks in large part to the NSA spying revelations. You seduced the young folks, and now they've abandoned you for Edward Snowden.

And then there's that little matter of a 65% summer unemployment rate among teenagers. And new college graduates who can't find decent jobs. A whole lost generation of the permanently indebted is ending up in part-time, low-wage hell. They're sleeping in mom and dad's basement. That is, if mom and dad are lucky enough to have jobs themselves, and still have a non-foreclosed home, and basement.

What's that you say, Mr. Obama? You just want to learn a little bit about us for your files? Maybe that's why you're embarking on yet another propaganda bus tour, visiting elite colleges located smack- dab in the middle of Long Depressionville. You'd like to help us learn to help ourselves. Look at you -- all we see are your sympathetic eyes and all we hear is your melodious voice. (When it comes to the president, son, let me just describe him in one word: Plastic. He's a Wall Street robot. And he drones on, and on, and on. From Buffalo all the way to Yemen.)

Since the success of Obamacare hinges upon those millions of healthy young people signing up and paying up in order to keep premiums low for everybody in the pool, and Obama's popularity among young people is rapidly eroding, will Edward Snowden now also be blamed if the Affordable Care Act falls flat on its insurance-predator bum?

It's too early to tell if such P.R. efforts as the "Young Invincibles" campaign to sign up healthy young people for Obamacare will have any effect. It's Not Always Sunny in Young America, their slogan goes. No kidding. You think your life is an economic disaster now, just wait until you get run over by a truck while you're reading about the latest NSA dirt. So buy, buy, buy.

Meanwhile, from The Hill:

Some polls show a double-digit drop in Obama’s approval rating since Edward Snowden revealed NSA secrets, weakening the president ahead of fall fights with congressional Republicans over the budget and immigration.

Polling taken by the Economist and YouGov finds a 14-point swing in Obama’s approval and disapproval rating among voters aged 18-29 in surveys taken immediately before the NSA revelations and last week.

(snip)

“Younger voters tend to believe the Internet should be an area of free speech and free communication, and the idea that the government is looking into what you’re doing is distasteful — and particularly distasteful if run by a president they voted for,” said Julian Zelizer, a political science professor at Princeton University.“The narrative also goes against the fundamentals of President Obama, representing status quo politics and more of the same kind of policies that existed under President Bush, so Obama ceases to be an agent of change,” he added.

So is it any wonder that Obama is now suddenly pivoting to the college tour circuit in yet another one of those folksy, homespun bus trips? The email he sent out to "supporters like me" last night was full of vague platitudes wrapped in a warm fuzzy blanket of bromides: 

Michelle and I know exactly how tough it can be to pay for higher education. By the time we finished paying back the loans we took out to go to college and grad school, I was on my way to being a U.S. Senator.

I believe that anyone who works hard should have the same opportunities that our educations gave us. That's why, as President, I've made it a personal mission to make higher education more affordable -- and why I'm going to be visiting school campuses later this week.

Whenever Obama begins a spiel with "Michelle and I", get ready for the next big onslaught of unadulterated bullshit. And sure enough, his latest announcement is replete with colorful charts showing how expensive college is getting, with not one hint about how he actually plans to fix this.* But I imagine his plan will include giving immediate tax breaks to obscenely-salaried college presidents who vaguely promise to stuff more tech courses into their curricula, the better to prepare new hordes of grads for $11/hour jobs at an Amazon Fulfillment Center, or maybe even a non-unionized job in an Ikea factory in a right-to-work state. Those hard-workin' families aiming to put their kids through school are sure to be thrown another crumb of a tax credit as well, just to give the crap that now-familiar "balanced approach" patina of populism. (He won't ask the strapped students of America to pay another penny more in tuition unless boards of trustees first agree to put up a jobs bulletin board in all the dorms.)

But here, as Barbara Garson points out in an excellent piece in TomDispatch, is the ugly reality:

21% of the jobs lost during the Great Recession were low wage, meaning they paid $13.83 an hour or less.  But 58% of the jobs regained fall into that category. A common explanation for that startling statistic is that the bad jobs are coming back first and the good jobs will follow.  

But let me suggest another explanation: the good jobs are here among us right now -- it’s just their wages, their benefits, and the long-term security that have vanished.

Obama, you may remember, once suggested a hike in the minimum wage to a miserly $9/hour. Not only has he seemingly abandoned even that pathetic goal, he has never put the onus of blame for high tuition and low wages on the real culprits: corporate welfare behemoths like Walmart and G.E., and the political donor class bribers, who once upon a time actually did fund state schools through a fair, progressive tax system. Nor will he blame his own Wall Street-friendly, misguided austerian policies, put in place after the financial meltdown.

A White House press flack, with the ironic name of Josh Earnest, was coy about exactly what Obama will announce later this week. The president doesn't "want to give the secret away now.... but it'll be good" he promised the other day. "Stay tuned."

I reckon Obama is still busy stashing it in the propaganda pantry with all the rest of his verbal cupcakes. It's a little secret, just the plutocrats' affair. Most of all, he's got to hide it from the kids.

 

 

Update: Watch for Obama's approval ratings to erode a little more each day that he doesn't pardon, or commute the sentence of, Bradley Manning. May his black bus be greeted by protesters galore.

 

*Update 2 (8/22): The White House snuck the New York Times a cupcake before dinner (an advance copy of talking points.) I wasn't all that far off in my predictions. It seems Obama's big plan is to rate colleges based on affordability, percentage of low-income students, and amount of post-graduate debt -- and eventually/maybe/ someday give them less federal aid if they don't meet his small-bore criteria. All of this, of course, hinges upon Congress acting on his bold plan to give greedy colleges 50 lashes with a wet noodle. Oh, and don't forget a Thomas Friedman-esque internet connection for every hard-workin' student.