Monday, December 23, 2019

THE AFGHANISTAN PAPERS

  THE AFGHANISTAN PAPERS


 A secret history of the war
"In a cache of previously unpublished interviews and memos, key insiders reveal what went wrong during the longest armed conflict in U.S. history.

For 18 years, America has been at war in Afghanistan. As part of a government project to understand what went wrong, a federal agency interviewed more than 400 people who had a direct role in the conflict. In those interviews, generals, ambassadors, diplomats and other insiders offered firsthand accounts of the mistakes that have prolonged the war.

The full, unsparing remarks and the identities of many of those who made them have never been made public — until now. After a three-year legal battle, The Washington Post won release of more than 2,000 pages of “Lessons Learned” interviews conducted by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Those interviews reveal there was no consensus on the war’s objectives, let alone how to end the conflict."

 * * * * * 

Part of the Main Stream Media propaganda machine surprisingly reveals important information about the farce that is U.S. foreign policy. The rest of Main Stream Media pretends not to notice.

That war is a racket has been obvious to objective observers of history, and followers of independent journalism for over a hundred years.

Noam Chomsky - The Crimes of U.S. Presidents 
(Interview on YouTube)

* * * * *

Tomgram: William Hartung, Lessons From Battling the Pentagon for Four Decades 
(TomDispatch.com)

"The other day, after a three-year legal struggle, the Washington Post broke a story about a secret Afghan War project of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Its focus was hundreds of interviews with American figures -- from top officials and generals to lesser actors of every sort -- involved in that misbegotten conflict. The overwhelming conclusion reached in private by the very people who prosecuted that never-ending war: that the American people were eternally lied to and kept out of the loop when it came to the “progress” being made there at any moment since 2002. As the Post put it, “In news conferences and other public appearances, those in charge of the war have followed the same talking points for 18 years. No matter how the war is going -- and especially when it is going badly -- they emphasize how they are making progress.”

I already hear the gasps of TomDispatch readers. Okay, I’m kidding (in a grim sort of way). While it's significant that the Post is doing a six-part series based on those previously hidden interviews, the story is being presented as a kind of Pentagon Papers of the twenty-first century.  After all, it features admissions that the U.S. dumped untold amounts of money into Afghanistan over 18 years to no positive effect whatsoever, creating a staggering kleptocracy and corruption on a titanic scale, while essentially building nothing of value or ever achieving actual “progress” in the war against the Taliban. It was, in a word, all lies (sometimes backed by fake or manipulated statistics), constantly promoted by key government officials and U.S. military commanders one after another after another after another.

TomDispatch is proof, however, that this set of revelations, though interesting, adds up to anything but a Pentagon Papers. If you happened to be reading this site or others like it instead of the Washington Post in these years, just about all of this would already have been obvious to you, a set of commonplace conclusions, discussed repeatedly."

* * * * *

 

CHRIS HEDGES


"Chris Hedges talks to Spenser Rapone, former combat veteran and US Army officer, about the Washington Post’s series the ‘Afghanistan Papers’. Drawing on thousands of pages of international government documents about the war in Afghanistan, the series exposes the lies, deceit, mismanagement, waste, corruption, fraud, and failed schemes that both Democratic and Republican administrations pursed in Afghanistan, the longest conflict in US history (18 years and counting), which has claimed tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money."

BONUS VIDEO

 The Afghanistan papers, voter suppression in Wisconsin, digital reputation scrubbing 

 (Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp)

Whistleblower Proves Tulsi RIGHT On Syria & Afghanistan Wars 

(The Jimmy Dore Show)  

Sunday, December 8, 2019

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

DANNY HAIPHONG ON FAKE NEWS

"According to Robert Sirvent and Danny Haiphong, Americans have been exposed to fake news throughout our history—news that slavery is a thing of the past, that we don’t live on stolen land, that wars are fought to spread freedom and democracy, that a rising tide lifts all boats, that prisons keep us safe, and that the police serve and protect.

Thus, the only “news” ever reported by various channels of U.S. empire is the news of American exceptionalism and American innocence. And, as this book will hopefully show, it’s all fake."

* * * * * *
Danny Haiphong's interview with Jimmy Dore was exceptional, genuinely so, not the usual fake narrative we're accustomed to:

How The Ruling Class Implements It’s Agenda with Danny Haiphong 
 (The Jimmy Dore Show - YouTube video)

Friday, December 6, 2019

BERNIE 2020

BERNIE 2020

I started supporting principled independents over the shills in our corporately-controlled political parties after the disastrous Clinton Administration.
 
I liked Bill Clinton initially, I voted for him, but I was also not paying much attention. When I was young I described myself as apolitical; I was a registered Democrat, always voted for Democrats, but considered politics so dull I hardly thought about it. Back in the 80s and 90s I was a perfect dupe. I had picked a team and halfheartedly rooted for them every four years during the U.S. Presidential Super Bowl Shit Show Extravaganza.
 
 I finally started paying attention during the ridiculous Clinton impeachment hearings. Although I've always been strongly opposed to the conservative/right-wing mindset, I now thank the Republican Party for something.
 
  The Republican-led Clinton impeachment circus ignited my political fire. I became aware that the impeachment was over a nonsense issue, instead of far more significant corruption and serious crimes perpetrated by the Clinton Administration, here and abroad. The same is now happening to Trump. There are myriad and tremendously compelling reasons that Trump should be impeached, unfortunately these crimes do not stray from the norm, they are bipartisan crimes. The phone call is weak tea by comparison. The most likely result of the current impeachment circus will be to make Trump more popular.
 
I've been around since the 60s; every administration in my lifetime could have been convicted of war crimes, and violations of The Constitution and their oaths of office. The establishment needs to be voted out and the Constitutional crime of bribery needs to be rationally defined.

* * * BERNIE 2020 * * *

Bernie Sanders is not perfect, his Congressional voting record is very good, but not spotless, and his capitulation to the DNC in 2016 after they screwed him over, though anticipated, was disheartening. The whitewashing of the DNC's systemic election rigging at every level continues to amaze me.
 
I'm a registered Green, so I cannot participate in my state's primaries. Rather than disingenuously registering as a Democrat, I hope there's enough of them with a brain to get Bernie on a ballot I'm permitted to use.

I would have loved a Ralph Nader presidency. Bernie Sanders is sadly not Nader, but he's the very first serious contender for president that excites me. He would be the first Democratic presidential candidate I've voted for since 1996. I even donated to his campaign! If our corrupt media and the DNC successfully suppress the Sanders Campaign, I'm going Green again.

* * * BERNIE 2020 * * *
 
 P.S. I support Bernie knowing that problems in America and throughout the World are not only beyond his ability to solve, they are likely beyond solving, period. But I'd rather encourage a decent guy, than hate a partisan tool.