Friday, September 30, 2005
The Purest Neocon by Tom Piatak
What the mutual embrace of Hitchens and the neocons tells us is that Hitchens’s assessment of neoconservatism is essentially correct: the regnant force in American conservatism today is warmed-over Trotskyism, which views America merely as the embodiment of the ideology of global revolution. This is, admittedly, a depressing conclusion. But there is hope. Hitchens spent the first half of his ideological career riding a dying horse. He may have just started riding another one.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Neocons Claim: New Orleans Looting and Rapes Exaggerated by James Buchanan
Just a few months ago, the neocons began a campaign to reinvent the reality of the Iraq War. Several neocon pundits effectively declared: “Things are just fine in Iraq, just a tiny amount of rebel activity. It’s that darn biased media which is focusing on a few unpleasant events.” Apparently the Iraqi rebels get Fox News (or perhaps the Internet) and found out about this neocon propaganda campaign. Naturally, they resented the attempt to belittle a rebel movement that took years to build up and which has been fighting toe-to-toe with the most powerful military in the world. The big mouths of the neocons inspired the rebels to step up their offensive to demonstrate the truth of the situation.
Neocons Proclaim Iraq a Success by Charles Coughlin
Believe it or not neocons have decided that we don’t have an “insurgency” problem in Iraq; we have a “reporting” problem. Those darn journalists keep mentioning the almost daily car bombings with dozens of victims and they don’t focus on all the “good things” our military and Halliburton have been accomplishing such as schools, sanitation plants and electricity (which the Iraqis had BEFORE we bombed their country). One neocon windbag was bloviating that the casualty total in June was surpassed by a couple previous months so therefore things are just fine. If the best the neocons can do is compare the current disaster with the Ramadan offensive, then they’ve got nothing and they should quit insulting our intelligence with their attempts to spin a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
The Joy of Schadenfreude- by Justin Raimondo
Let's start with the neocons' reactions to the gigantic antiwar march held in Washington this past weekend: if you like your humor dark – and I do – you'll get a horse laugh out of poor old David Horowitz, whose bile threatens to eat away at his insides until all that's left is a hollow husk:
Speaking of cartoons, another symptom of the ex-leftist-turned-neocon syndrome is the tendency to become a caricature of oneself, and surely Christopher Hitchens fits the bill in this regard. His reaction to the weekend's massive antiwar mobilization is that it represented a Popular Front of "fascism, Stalinism, and jihadism."
Speaking of cartoons, another symptom of the ex-leftist-turned-neocon syndrome is the tendency to become a caricature of oneself, and surely Christopher Hitchens fits the bill in this regard. His reaction to the weekend's massive antiwar mobilization is that it represented a Popular Front of "fascism, Stalinism, and jihadism."
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
It's Happening Now by Karen Kwiatkowski
The soldiers’ words advise us not to believe the senior spokesmen at the Pentagon because these spokesmen have been lying for a good long time. The soldiers’ words do not echo, and in fact contradict, the foot-stomping and fist-raising rhetoric of the neoconservative voices in the White House and Congress and at the American Enterprise Institute. The soldiers’ words warn their younger friends and relatives to stay far away from the deadly and immoral grip of federal service in uniform.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Imperialism - a note to the good people of the U.S.A. by Robert Thompson
Like the Romans, the Neo-con Empire currently has its client or puppet "rulers" in some parts of the world which are subjugated to its over-reaching rule, with classical examples being the government of Mr Anthony Blair in the United Kingdom as well as those whose financial depedency forces them to obey orders, such as Poland, Pakistan, Egypt or Jordan, while at the same time it has much more direct rule over other lands. It is currently uncertain where the real power lies within this Empire, and it may be in the artificial "state of Israel", which has first call on the loyalties of many of those holding power in Washington D.C., or it may perhaps actually be somewhere inside the U.S.A. This site of the real power is irrelevant, since the same people or group of people operate in both places and move around with bewildering and even dizzy frequency.
AIPAC Orders Democrats Not to Appear at Anti-War Rally
Anti-war protest in Washington, DC today. Very few Democratic members of Congress to appear. Reason: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), according to Democratic insiders on Capitol Hill, put out the word that any member of Congress who appeared at the protest, where some speakers were to represent pro-Palestinian views, would face the political wrath of AIPAC. According to Democratic sources on the Hill, Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts was the chief conveyor of the AIPAC warning to his colleagues. At the time of this report, three members of Congress were to address the anti-war protestors: Reps. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), John Conyers (D-MI), and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA). The word is that AIPAC will direct its massive campaign support to Woolsey's neo-con and pro-Iraq war primary challenger, California State Assemblyman Joe Nation, who has strong connections to the Rand Corporation, one of the Pentagon's chief war-making think tanks. Woolsey represents California's Marin and Sonoma counties.
The Antiwar Majority by Justin Raimondo
The neocons of both parties are experts at working the bureaucracy and manipulating the machinery of government and the two parties in order to push their agenda over and above the will of a largely uninformed majority. That's how they got us into Iraq in the first place, and that's how they intend to keep us there. Yet they are far from being all-powerful: there are several chinks in their armor, and among them are the checks and balances the Founders wrote into the U.S. Constitution. They cannot seize power for any length of time without the Congress of the United States, which must fund, approve, and oversee the foreign policy pursued by this president and his appointees. They can withhold the money and their approval: they can also see to it that the entire story of the Iraq debacle – down to the embarrassing details – is exposed to public view.
Verfremdungsaffekt and Political Commentary by Paul Gottfried
Allow me to speculate! Dorrien can’t stand the fact that I, together with others on the Old Right, had anticipated by decades the attacks he’s now launching. We on the right have been making critical observations that only accredited leftists in Dorrien’s ideological box are permitted to publish. It is therefore necessary to vilify or treat dismissively those on the wrong side of the spectrum whose ideas the Left wishes to copy. Contrary to those deluded paleos, who still nurture the hope that reasonable journalists on the left will join us against the neoconservatives, Dorrien’s contemptuous reference to me show exactly what one can expect from the other side.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Bush's neocon cadre falls apart by JIM LARSON
Along with Mr. Shulsky, Mr. Luti had been credited with making the neoconservative vision prevail over the views of the CIA and the State Department. One Pentagon adviser said, “Shulsky and Luti won the policy debate. They beat ’em – they cleaned up against State and the CIA,” Mr. Hersh reported.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Wolfowitz Sends His Gal to State Dept. — To Work With Cheney's Daughter
Shaha Ali Riza, lately in the news as World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz's Saudi-born girlfriend, has been assigned to the U.S. State Department. The move, which has not been announced by either huge agency controlled by the Bush regime, means that she'll be working with Dick Cheney's daughter Liz Cheney, a top official in the key Near East Affairs bureau.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Cheney Revives Parvus 'Permanent War'' Madness by Jeffrey Steinberg, Allen Douglas, and Rachel Douglas
It was never a secret that the ranks of today's Washington neo-conservative war-party are filled with former first and second generation Trotskyists—personified by Irving Kristol, the former Shachtmanite Trotskyist, self-described "Godfather" of the entire neo-con apparatus, and the father of Weekly Standard editor William Kristol. What was ignored was the fact that both they and Vice President Dick Cheney are still fanatically committed to former Bolshevik minister of war Leon Trotsky's doctrine of "permanent revolution," and to the kind of permanent war which Cheney has created in Iraq, and is preparing to launch, very soon, as nuclear-armed warfare against Iran, and similarly permanent warfare against Syria, in South America, and elsewhere as soon, and as often as possible. It is this doctrine, which most historians associate with the name of Josef Stalin rival Leon Trotsky and his followers, which is presently the most immediate threat of mass-murderous violence to the world as a whole.
Uncertain Anniversary for Iraq War Champions by Jim Lobe
But that unity began to fray even as U.S. troops were flowing into Iraq. Sensing that Rumsfeld, in particular, was not committed to using the kind of overwhelming force – and keeping it there – necessary for "transforming" Iraq (and the region), Kristol and Kagan, among other neoconservatives, began attacking the defense secretary and have repeatedly called for his resignation.
Thoughts on the Retirement of Douglas Feith by Karen Kwiatkowski
I never regretted not having a retirement ceremony, given the neoconservative hijack of my place of employment, the Pentagon and the intelligence process. There would be no end-of-tour medal, because my nomination package was still sitting on Doug Feith’s desk when my first mainstream media criticism of the Pentagon business hit the Knight Ridder newspapers in early August 2003. I’m not sure which was better reading – my list of achievements as a staff officer in OSD, or my coming-out missive. My list of OSD achievements, in typical civil service style, was expansively exaggerated. In retrospect, my coming out missive was understated and careful.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
The Neo-Cons' Unfettered Access to America's Secrets by Wayne Madsen
U.S. intelligence sources report that the one Israeli who is considered an extreme threat to U.S. national security is former Prime Minister and current Prime Minister hopeful Binyamin Netanyahu. Not only has Netanyahu visited convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard in his North Carolina prison cell and advocated strenuously for his release but he was once overheard by an ex-CIA agent as saying to a group of his supporters, “Once we squeeze all we can out of the United States, it can dry up and blow away.” Considering the damage the neo-cons and their Israeli facilitators are causing for U.S. national security, Netanyahu may soon have his wish.
Their Patience and Ours by GARY LEUPP
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad says that the U.S. is "running out of patience" with Syria. That's nothing new; U.S. officials have been saying that for several years now. After President Bush's January 2002 speech joining together Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil," evil Undersecretary of State John Bolton huffed and puffed about a second tier of evildoing nations: Syria, Libya and Cuba. The neocon program is obviously to create a string of client-states in what it calls the "Greater Middle East"---an empire dripping with oil, bedecked with U.S. military bases, spread-eagled for U.S. corporate investment, warmly receptive to Israeli advances.
Monday, September 19, 2005
Enough Already With the Neocon Voodoo Experiments in Iraq by By Ahmed Amr
George Bush needs to acknowledge that he has lost control of the situation in Iraq. If he has a lick of sense, he must immediately abandon the neo-con agenda to redraw the map of the Middle East. Their brand of voodoo political science has proven a recipe for disaster for both Americans and Iraqis. Once the neo-cons are tossed aside, he should go cold turkey on the roulette wheel, scout Iraq for the nearest exit and bring the troops home. Enough already with the neo-con voodoo experiments in Iraq.
Post-Neocon Neolibs Have No Use for al-CIA-duh by Kurt Nimmo
In other words, the Bushian “war on terror” is alienating milquetoast neolibs, or those who do not subscribe to the neocon worldview of globalism with its back-to-back invasions and embarrassing public relations disasters. Soros, as a Hungarian-born Jewish-American currency speculator—and, through his Quantum Fund, a facilitator of the Latin American drug trade (neoliberal globalism and the international banking “industry” depend on such mega-profitable and tax-free rackets to augment their ill-gotten gains)—would rather overthrow pesky and recalcitrant nations (for instance, Venezuela) through less visible, more covert behind-the-scenes activity. Soros, through his Open Society Institute, would rather subvert elections—as he did in Georgia by lavishly funding members of the anti-Shevardnadze Otpor (Resistance) movement (see Georgia revolt carried mark of Soros, Globe and Mail)—and paint a thin veneer of legitimacy over rigged elections, something the neocons don’t have the patience to do. Soros did much the same in Ukraine when he poured millions into the campaign against Viktor Yanukovych in favor of Viktor Yushchenko, a central banker with ties to “Old Europe” and the globalist European Union scam.
Friday, September 16, 2005
The Imperial Delusion by Justin Raimondo
A major victory for the neocons was the consolidation of their dominance over the contemporary conservative movement. The main conservative think tanks and periodicals came to be dominated by them on account of neoconservative links to the big foundations, such as Olin, Scaife, Bradley, and others, which subsidized neocon scholars, founded and promoted neocon publications, and starved the neocons' opponents on the right, driving them out of the mainstream institutions and relegating them to only a few small think tanks and periodicals.
America Has Fallen to a Jacobin Coup by Paul Craig Roberts
As Professor Claes Ryn made clear in his book, America the Virtuous, the neoconservatives are neo-Jacobins. There is nothing conservative about them. They are committed to the use of coercion to impose their agenda. Their attitude is merciless toward anyone in their way, whether fellow citizen or foreigner. "You are with us or against us." For those on the receiving end, the Nazi and Jacobin mentalities come to the same thing.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Next Stop: Syria by Justin Raimondo
Anyone who really believes that Hurricane Katrina will divert this administration and the neocon cabal that has seized control of our foreign policy from pursuing their dreams of Empire is a fool. A new conflict will divert attention away from the incompetence surrounding the response to Katrina: the devastation and Bush's clueless efforts to ameliorate it will only encourage the White House to leave us with a lasting legacy of fresh horrors in the Middle East.
Will Katrina Bring an Isolationist Revival? by Jim Lobe
The article, entitled "Invasion of the Isolationists," noted that Republican support for the Iraq war has been confined to only two sectors – "the neoconservatives (who lack a political base of their own but who provide considerable intellectual firepower) and from … 'Jacksonian America' – American nationalists whose instincts lead them toward a pugnacious isolationism."
Monday, September 12, 2005
The George Bush White House has presided over three national debacles: 9/11, the war in Iraq, and now Katrina's destruction by Eric Margolis
National war fever and the lust for revenge that followed the 9/11 attacks allowed a small group of closet totalitarians, a cabal of neoconservatives and end-of-world religious fanatics to assume a dominant role in the Bush administration. They hijacked its foreign policy, and steadily pushed the U.S. into war.
By next spring, Iraq and Afghanistan will have cost at least $260 billion (US). Add some $200 billion for 9/11; and now a $100-billion-plus cleanup bill for Katrina, and even the mighty America is staggering under huge financial blows. These, and Bush's reckless deficit spending, are producing an onrushing tsunami of inflation.
By next spring, Iraq and Afghanistan will have cost at least $260 billion (US). Add some $200 billion for 9/11; and now a $100-billion-plus cleanup bill for Katrina, and even the mighty America is staggering under huge financial blows. These, and Bush's reckless deficit spending, are producing an onrushing tsunami of inflation.
Katrina, Iraq, and the End of 'National Greatness' by Justin Raimondo
Hurricane Katrina has blown away the pretensions of the "National Greatness" neocons, as well as their dreams of glory at home and abroad. The bitter winds of a cold realism are sweeping away the cloudy delusions of self-infatuated intellectuals whose Walter Mitty-esque dreams of glory are paid for in the blood of other people's children, never their own. And not a moment too soon…
A Monopoly on Life by Butler Shaffer
Western civilization will not be saved by the same forces that are destroying it. Einstein said it best: “a problem cannot be solved by the same thinking that created it.” Neocons and other deluded minds continue to dream of empire, as though the arrow of time can be reversed and, in the process, resurrect the fantasized world of Roman emperors or Napoleon. While the pretenders at various Washington, D.C. think-tanks continue to fancy themselves in purple and ermine robes, the realities upon which the world functions will continue their incessant march toward the decentralized, horizontally-networked systems that are rapidly displacing the command-and-control vertical structures that have long dominated mankind.
Friday, September 09, 2005
Doughlas Feith's Platinum Parachute by Evelyn J. Pringle
So this was another sweet setup. Feith was deciding who would get contracts, at the same time that his middleman law partner, Zel, was hustling up business deals in Iraq for rich clients. Of course, for members of the Bush war profiteering club, this was merely business as usual.
Neocon Pundits Malign American Muslims by Louay Safi
Gaffney belongs to a small but vocal group of militant pundits, driven by deep seated hate of Islam and Muslims, and bent on maligning Muslim leaders and organizations in a bid to marginalize and isolate mainstream American Muslims. Gaffney joined two other well known Muslim Bashers, Daniel Pipes and Joel Mowbary, in demonizing ISNA and the leaders of the national Muslim organizations that met Ms. Hughes.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Sarbazan's Shirin Neshat to Bush: Keep Ahmadinejad and the IRI Regime Out of America
Shirin Neshat of Sarbazan, an organization devoted to the unsung heroes of the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces of yesteryear, tells George Bush that admitting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the United States for a UN appearance in New York next week is an egregious mistake.
Paleo-conservatives can certainly affirm the atrocious character of the IRI regime in Iran, even as they cringe at the perilous character of the reported Bush Administration plans to militarily preempt Iran, as reported by Philip Giraldi in Pat Buchanan's The American Conservative.
Mark Dankof of BATR risks the prediction that war between the United States and Ahmadinejad's Iran will break out before the end of 2006. Given the history of bungled Western interventions in Persia, Afghanistan, and Macedonia in the last century, and the documented incompetence of the American Homeland Security cadre in New Orleans and the southwestern U. S. border, the only conclusion is that political, economic, and military catastrophe are around the corner.
Mr. Dankof plans on covering the anti-Ahmadinejad demonstrations for BATR in New York.
Paleo-conservatives can certainly affirm the atrocious character of the IRI regime in Iran, even as they cringe at the perilous character of the reported Bush Administration plans to militarily preempt Iran, as reported by Philip Giraldi in Pat Buchanan's The American Conservative.
Mark Dankof of BATR risks the prediction that war between the United States and Ahmadinejad's Iran will break out before the end of 2006. Given the history of bungled Western interventions in Persia, Afghanistan, and Macedonia in the last century, and the documented incompetence of the American Homeland Security cadre in New Orleans and the southwestern U. S. border, the only conclusion is that political, economic, and military catastrophe are around the corner.
Mr. Dankof plans on covering the anti-Ahmadinejad demonstrations for BATR in New York.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Thomas Jefferson--Neocon? by Adam Young
Christopher Hitchens, the British immigrant, Vanity Fair columnist and convert to the neocon cult, has published a short biography of Thomas Jefferson as part of HarperCollins's “Eminent Lives” series. Hitchens, who apparently sniffed the changing aroma and the whiff of fascism in the air in America in the late nineties, adroitly begin his migration into the neocon fold with a book savaging Bill Clinton, always a reliable front for mesmerizing the deluded Reich-wing herds. By choosing Clinton as an enemy, Hitchens, the atheist and Marxist, gained acceptance among the brain-dead mainstream conservative movement, officially pledged to the Bible, God and the Cold War Military-Industrial Complex.
Katrina and the End of Illusions by Justin Raimondo
You have to give the neocons credit – through rain, through sleet, and through the stormiest of hurricanes, even so debilitating a one as Katrina, they keep their powder and their talking points dry. And their main talking point, in the wake of what David Brooks is calling "the anti-9/11," is… Rudy! Rudy! Rudy! Both Brooks and Andrew Sullivan were beating the drums on the Chris Matthews Show Sunday morning, decrying this administration's pathetic performance and hailing Rudy Giuliani as the neocons' latest great white hope: "On Sept. 11, Rudy Giuliani took control," swooned Brooks in his Sunday New York Times column.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Tragic costs of Bush's Iraq obsession by Michael Lind
The horror in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast, and the chaos along the US-Mexican border, join anarchy in Afghanistan and Iraq as proof of the bankruptcy of the Bush doctrine. Mr Bush’s neoconservative strategists wanted a crusade for US hegemony in the Middle East and the world; as “national greatness conservatives,” some might have been willing to pay for it with higher taxes. But Mr Bush’s political base consists of conservatives and libertarians united by a crusade to cut taxes. The attempt to establish American global hegemony without paying for it was a disaster – actually, several disasters – waiting to happen.
The folly of empire by Vox Day
Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable ... People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government.
Monday, September 05, 2005
BATR's Mark Dankof Writes Rockville (MD) High Principle on Justin Raimondo Death Threat
It may also be said that this scenario goes beyond the morally irresponsible actions of Mr. Calderon in suggesting the legitimacy of violence against Mr. Raimondo and the other commentators in question. It also strikes at the heart of the evaporation of respect for the First Amendment and public expressions of decent, rational dissent from the policies of one George W. Bush and the neo-conservatives like Mr. Horowitz, who support the direction in which the President has taken this country---a direction, I might add, that is now acknowledged by the majority of the American public to be as disastrous as the demonization of dissenters is concurrently despicable.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Why I Do Not Support The Troops by Lucinda Marshall
For the last four years, the anti-war movement has been seriously handicapping itself with its 'We support the troops but we're against war' mantra of qualified dissent. Initially, the phrasing of this message was a reflexive attempt to fit into the context of pro-militarism created by the Neocon spinmeisters who quickly established a flag-waving, 'Support our troops' litmus test in the aftermath of the tragedies of September 11th.
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Impeach Bush Now by Paul Craig Roberts
The Bush administration is damned by its gross incompetence. Bush has squandered the lives and health of thousands of people. He has run through hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars. He has lost America’s reputation and its allies. With barbaric torture and destruction of our civil liberty, he has stripped America of its inherent goodness and morality. And now Bush has lost America’s largest port and 25 percent of its oil supply. Why? Because Bush started a gratuitous war egged on by a claque of crazy neoconservatives who have sacrificed America’s interests to their insane agenda.
Friday, September 02, 2005
History Isn't Over, but the Neocons Might Be by Chris Moore
Whether these ideologues are pushing their war against "Islamofascist" bogeymen in order to scapegoat Muslims for the consequences of Washington's insane foreign policy, or to protect big business' profit margins, or to perpetuate Israel's iron-fisted rule over the "threat" posed by stateless Palestinians, the Iraq war has demonstrated that such schemes are destined to blow up in the faces of those who are commanded to carry them out – which is why parents across the U.S. refuse to allow their children to sign on to the charade.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Putting Up With Silliness by Paul Gottfried
There are two reasons, or so it seems to me, that neocons get away with their distortions and exaggerations. One is the generally bad education of today’s journalists, or the degree to which ideological fervor outweighs any concern with the accuracy of the statements they make.
But there is a second and more significant reason that neocon errors do not easily come to light, except on websites like this one. It is the same reason that the national press routinely ignores persistent rightwing opposition to neocon-Republican crusades for global democracy. The liberal media are ecstatic to have a neocon-controlled opposition.
But there is a second and more significant reason that neocon errors do not easily come to light, except on websites like this one. It is the same reason that the national press routinely ignores persistent rightwing opposition to neocon-Republican crusades for global democracy. The liberal media are ecstatic to have a neocon-controlled opposition.
Origins of the Species Neo-Con by Roger Morris
Tracking the genealogy of the cabal of neo-conservatives who have so disastrously dominated foreign policy under George W. Bush, journalists have followed a political bloodline back to the 1960s, to cold war pamphleteers like Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, and – more respectably if also more tenuously – to the postwar University of Chicago political theorist Leo Strauss.
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