Rhymes With 'Democracy', Starts With An 'H': NYT Laughs About One Hoax While Perpetrating Others

The New York Times has been having a good laugh over some other "news" outlets which were fooled by a fairly simple hoax. In the words of Richard Pérez-Peña:

A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate [sic] hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.
...

The pranksters behind Eisenstadt [Eitan Gorlin and Dan Mirvish] ... say the blame lies not with them but with shoddiness in the traditional news media and especially the blogosphere.

“With the 24-hour news cycle they rush into anything they can find,” said Mr. Mirvish, 40.

Mr. Gorlin, 39, argued that Eisenstadt was no more of a joke than half the bloggers or political commentators on the Internet or television.

Yeah, sure. But whether or not this hoax is "very elaborate" probably depends on the scale of the hoaxes you're used to dealing with. It's actually quite small compared to some of the hoaxes the New York Times has been perpetrating simultaneously.

Consider, if you will, Michael Cooper's treatment of Sarah Palin as serious:

A Surprise News Conference After a Campaign Without One

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska did something [in Miami] on Thursday that she had not done in her entire campaign as the Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee: she stood behind a lectern and held a news conference.

She was asked what had changed.

“The campaign is over,” she said.

Yep. Now that she can't possibly do the McCain campaign any more damage, she's allowed out in public. And we're not howling with laughter?

Granted, the question-and-answer session lasted only four minutes, and for only four questions.

Four minutes? Four questions? And that qualifies as a "news conference"?

But after it ended, Ms. Palin did allow herself a look back, as she addressed a session of the Republican Governors Association conference and told conferees that she had managed to keep busy since their last conference.

“I had a baby,” she said. “I did some traveling; I very briefly expanded my wardrobe; I made a few speeches; I met a few V.I.P.’s, including those who really impact society, like Tina Fey.”

"I very briefly expanded my wardrobe"? Is this woman for real?

And, yes, she spoke of Joe the Plumber, the Ohio man who briefly dominated the McCain-Palin campaign and its talk of taxes.

I would be laughing so hard I couldn't type.

The conference has been dominated by soul searching among Republicans worried about their future after last week’s poor Election Day showing.

Soul searching? Come ON!

To that end, Ms. Palin was again asked whether she would run for president in 2012.

And she ducked the question. But who's counting?

“The future is not that 2012 presidential race; it’s next year and our next budgets,” Ms. Palin said. It is in 2010, she said, that “we’ll have 36 governor’s positions open.”

Ms. Palin tried to play down her celebrity (even after a week in which she was featured in interviews on NBC, Fox News and CNN). In her speech, she tried to shift the focus from herself to the work that Republican governors must now do, including developing energy resources and overhauling health care.

“I am not going to assume that the answer is for the federal government to just take it over and try to run America’s health care system,” Ms. Palin said. “Heaven forbid.”

She implored her fellow Republican governors to “show the federal government the way,” while also reforming their own party.

“We are the minority party. Let us resolve not to be the negative party,” ...

Are we kidding? Did Michael Cooper not just watch the same campaign we did? Why is he not screaming with laughter? Why is he not holding his ribs? How can he possibly type this stuff?

Ms. Palin said. “Let us build our case with actions, not just with words.”

Too funny! It's just too funny.

Let's not just call Bay-rack O-Bamma a terrorist! Let's shoot us some moose! Let's bomb us some Ay-rabs! Let's connect with Middle America!

And if that doesn't get you going, scoot over to Washington, where Mark Mazetti has been transcribing the holy utterances of CIA Director Michael Hayden.

Hayden, as CIA directors must do in the bogus War on bogus Terror, treads as fine line as you're likely to see. On one hand, he has to claim credit for progress -- Americans like to think the hundreds of billions they spend every year on "security" might be buying them something. On the other hand, he has to claim that the situation is increasingly serious -- otherwise why would we keep increasing his budget?

So we get doubletalk like this, from Mark Mazzetti:

C.I.A. Chief Says Qaeda Is Extending Its Reach

Even as Al Qaeda strengthens its hub in the Pakistani mountains, its leaders are building closer ties to regional militant groups in order to launch attacks in Africa and Europe and on the Arabian Peninsula, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency said Thursday.

The director, Michael V. Hayden, identified North Africa and Somalia as places where Qaeda leaders were using partnerships to establish new bases. Elsewhere, Mr. Hayden said, Al Qaeda was “strengthening” in Yemen, and he added that veterans of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan had moved there, possibly to stage attacks against the government of Saudi Arabia.

He said the “bleed out” from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also extended to North Africa, raising concern that the countries there could be used to stage attacks into Europe. Mr. Hayden delivered his report in a speech to the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington, and it offered a mixed assessment of Al Qaeda’s ability to wage a global jihad.

He drew a contrast between what he described as growing Islamic radicalism in places like Somalia and what he said had been the “strategic defeat” of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia — the network’s affiliate group in Iraq.

Fortunately, Hayden has two things going for him. First, by the nature of the bogus war, failure guarantees success, and success guarantees failure. If the CIA fails to eliminate the threat of terrorism, it guarantees success in the budget struggle. And if it succeeds in eliminating a few terrorists every now and then, the inevitable "collateral damage" -- innocent civilians horribly slaughtered or maimed -- guarantees an upswing in anti-American sentiment: nascent terrorism, and just what the bogus warriors need to keep their bogus war alive.

Second -- and far more importantly -- the width of the line he's trying to walk is made irrelevant by the fawning coverage he knows his words will receive. It doesn't matter if he doesn't make any sense, because he knows he's not going to be challenged on it. This wasn't a potentially adversarial situation, like Sarah Palin's four-minute "press conference". It was a speech before a committed body of like-minded war-mongers, the Atlantic Council of the United States.

So, for instance, nobody in the audience would have been prepared to corner Michael Hayden and ask him whether the "growing Islamic radicalism" in Somalia is occurring because of or in spite of the atrocities committed against the Somali people by Americans and their Ethiopian proxies.

Atrocities? Oh, yes! From rendition and torture to bombing convoys of fleeing refugees! Somalia has been brutalized in recent years, without any Congressional debate, without any acknowledgement from either of the presidential candiates, and without any pretext, viable or otherwise. If I were running the CIA, I wouldn't want to talk about Somalia at all -- except possibly at a place like the Atlantic Council of the United States.

Mr. Hayden pointedly refused to give details about the strikes by remotely piloted aircraft, or even to acknowledge that they occurred. He did say that the recent killing of senior Qaeda operatives had disrupted the group’s planning and isolated its leadership.

In mid-October, a missile fired from an American drone killed Khalid Habib, the latest senior Qaeda planner to be killed this year in Pakistan.

“To the extent that the United States and its allies deepen that isolation, disturb the safe haven, and target terrorist leaders gathered there, we keep Al Qaeda off balance,” Mr. Hayden said.

This is so meaningless, it's almost not worth discussing.

To the extent that my aunt has balls, she could be my uncle.

It's just worthless. But Mark Mazetti doesn't care. Keep the paychecks coming!

The radicalization of Pashtun tribes, and their strengthening ties to Qaeda operatives, date in part to the decision by the Pakistani president at the time, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to raid the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad in July 2007, the C.I.A. director said.

Now there's some history for you! All the way back to the summer of last year!

In fact, the radicalization of Pashtun tribes, and their strengthening ties to Qaeda operatives, date in much more significant part to decisions made in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s by our bipartisan foreign policy "elite". But Michael Hayden is not about to say that. And Mark Mazzetti isn't about to say it either.

As for questions, forget it. Hayden didn't even answer the easy ones.

At the end of his remarks, Mr. Hayden deflected questions about whether he would consider remaining at the C.I.A. during the Obama administration and declined to say whether President-elect Barack Obama had asked him to extend his tenure.

“This is the business of the transition team,” Mr. Hayden said. “This is the business of the president-elect.”

If nothing else, it's nice to know there's something that the CIA director wants to leave in the hands of the president-elect! Not that it's likely to do anyone any good.

But closer to the point: The CIA created al Qaeda! The CIA's friends in Pakistan have been maintaining al Qaeda for all these years. And Pakistan's most feared "terrorist" leader is almost certainly a CIA asset. But you won't read anything about any of that from Mark Mazzetti, or from the New York Times, or from the "liberal media" in general.

But what the heck? They're putting out ridiculous manure, selling millions of copies, and making a living; we're telling the truth whenever we can find it, for free, and counting our readers in the hundreds.

Maybe that's why the NYT laughs at the blogosphere!

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Pass The Cheese: Iraqi Soldier Kills Two American Soldiers

An Iraqi soldier shot and killed two American soldiers and wounded several others yesterday on the outskirts of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, according to various sources. Details are sketchy, except in Australia.

Reuters published a very mysterious report by Tim Cocks:

Iraqi soldier kills two U.S. soldiers

An Iraqi soldier went on the rampage at a joint security station in northern Iraq on Wednesday, shooting dead two U.S. soldiers and wounding six, the U.S. military said.

The U.S. military said the soldier opened fire on the Americans at the station -- one of many in which Iraqi and U.S. troops operate side by side -- in the city of Mosul.

"The soldiers were in the courtyard ... an Iraqi soldier entered and shot two soldiers, killing one, mortally wounding another, and then spraying the others," said U.S. army spokeswoman for northern Iraq Major Peggy Kageleiry.

"He was engaged by counter-fire and killed," she added. A local morgue said it had received the body of the Iraqi soldier, riddled with bullets.

Here's the mysterious part:

Two local police sources and an Iraqi army source, all of whom declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject, said a quarrel had broken out between the Iraqi and U.S. soldiers at the joint station.

But Kageleiry denied there was any altercation between the soldiers before the shooting.

"The U.S. soldiers had no conversation with this soldier and there was no interaction of any kind before they were murdered," she said.

And that was that. Sources who declined to be named said a quarrel had broken out, but the Pentagon spokesman denied it.

So what caused the incident?

CNN gave some indication of what might have sparked it, but not until the fifth paragraph of this story:

Spokesman: Shooter in Iraqi uniform kills U.S. troops

A man in an Iraqi army uniform opened fire on U.S. troops in Nineveh province Wednesday, killing two soldiers and wounding six others, a U.S. military spokesman said.

The six soldiers were in stable condition as of Wednesday night, the U.S. military said.

The U.S. military has not confirmed the identity of the shooter, but initial reports indicate that he was an Iraqi soldier, the military said in a statement.

The gunman, identified as Barazan Mohammed of Mosul, was killed in the ensuing exchange of fire.

An Interior Ministry official said an Iraqi soldier in a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol opened fire on a group of U.S. soldiers in the same convoy after one of the American troops slapped an Iraqi soldier.

But the U.S. military disputed that, saying in a statement, "there was no altercation between the U.S. soldier and the Iraqi soldier."

Where is CNN journalistically on this one? Reuters hints at three sources but gives no details of the cause of the incident; CNN hints at one source and gives one sketchy detail, but isn't sure whether or not the killer was an Iraqi soldier. The US military line is prominent in both stories, and not much else ...

James Hider of The Australian takes a different approach, disregarding the Pentagon statement entirely:

Slapped Iraqi soldier shoots dead two US troops

AN Iraqi soldier on foot patrol with US forces in the northern city of Mosul shot and killed two American soldiers and wounded six more, the worst such case yet of US-trained local troops turning their guns on their allies.

The Iraqi soldier, identified as Barzan al-Hadidi, was part of a joint daytime patrol on the streets of the dangerous city, considered to be one of the last strongholds of Al-Qa'ida and its local allies in Iraq. He was quickly gunned down by other members of the patrol, officials said.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry said the soldier opened fire after he had been publicly slapped by an American colleague. Many Iraqi men, especially in the military, are intensely proud and conscious of any perceived slight to their honour.

“Two soldiers were killed and six wounded in a small-arms fire attack in an Iraqi Army compound in Mosul today. Initial reports indicate the attacker was an Iraqi soldier,” the US military said.

“The situation is fluid and still under investigation, so the casualty figures may change,” it added. A local morgue which received the Iraqi soldier’s body said it had been riddled with bullets.

Hider even provides some historical context!

There have been instances of Iraqi soldiers opening fire on their US mentors and comrades in the past, but never to such a deadly extent. Insurgents have also used Iraqi army uniforms to infiltrate joint bases in the past. One of the worst cases was in Mosul in 2004, when a suicide bomber dressed as an Iraqi soldier blew himself up in an American army mess hall, killing more than dozen US soldiers.

Today’s severe breach of discipline highlights the dangers of joint patrols with an Iraqi army still being shaped by the US military, and on to which Washington hopes to shift the burden of security [sic] as it draws down its forces [sic] in Iraq under the future presidency of Barack Obama.

Those security challenges have loomed larger in recent days, with a spate of bombings and shooting recalling the dark years that Iraqis had hoped were finally behind them.

Two dozen people were killed in attacks across the country yesterday, 12 of them in a combined car bombing and roadside booby trap in eastern Baghdad. In what is becoming a familiar pattern, the first explosion targeted a police patrol and the second concealed device cut down those who ran to the aid of the stricken security forces.

Sixty people were wounded in the twin blasts.

And so on. It's a style of reporting you just don't see in the USA.

Clearly, James Hider or his editor or both have had enough of the Pentagon denying everything, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. To them, the US military spokesman's statement denying any quarrel was not even worth mentioning. And it's easy to see why. The US military has a long tradition of lying about "conditions on the ground", covering up evidence of atrocities, and attempting to control the public's perception of the world through pressure on (or ownership of) the people who report the news.

None of this is new; it's been going on for decades. The techniques may be more sophisticated now, but the goal is still the same, and the effort is larger than ever. So it's not hard to see it: it's hard not to see it. That's not the problem.

The problem is: if you mention it, you don't work anymore. And everybody knows it.

An unidentified Pentagon spokesman says the moon is made of Parmesan cheese. The Iraqi Minister of Science and Technology says no, it's made of rocks and dust. Who are you going to believe?

Look at it this way: The Iraqis are a primitive and spiteful people who barely know enough to wash themselves, who would never tell you the truth about anything, and who would be better off if we liberated them, even if it meant we had to destroy their country and give all their oil to the vice president.

And maybe we're not perfect, but we're damned close, and anybody who says different is a lousy terrorist.

So the moon is made of Parmesan cheese. And even if you can prove that it isn't; even if it's obvious that it isn't; so what? You'll never see anyone say that on TV. You'll never read it in a major newspaper. The best you can do is write a letter to the editor that will never get published, and if you're lucky you'll only wind up on the no-fly list.

Or else you can write it on a blog that only a handful of people will ever read. Go right ahead. Shout into the hurricane.

But in the meantime, your fellow Americans will be grating that cheese, eating it on spaghetti, putting it in their salads, and never even noticing that they're eating rocks and dust...

... because if they ever stopped and looked at what they were eating, they would begin to understand that they've been eating rocks and dust all their lives, thinking it was food -- just as their parents taught them. They'd have to come to grips with the fact that they've worked their entire lives to buy rocks and dust, and they'd realize that they've been feeding rocks and dust to their children, and their grandchildren ... and they can't do it. They just can't do it. They'd rather keep eating rocks and dust, pretending it's cheese, and talking about how good it tastes.

It takes courage to ignore the Pentagon line entirely. Three cheers for James Hider and The Australian. It's not exactly difficult to put American journalism to shame. But it's a good thing somebody's doing it.

On the other hand, Hider didn't remind his readers that the US invaded Iraq on false pretenses, in an act of war that is clearly a crime against humanity and punishable by death under the Geneva Conventions. He didn't even hint that American trooops in Iraq are a destabilizing force, or that the talk of a draw-down might simply be campaign rhetoric.

He didn't mention the pressure Iraqi collaborators are under, as their friends and neighbors see them as traitors. And he didn't ask any potentially damning questions, such as: If the American administration is so concerned about the security of Iraq, why did they invade in the first place?

Hider even managed to slip in a bit of thinly veiled racism, noting that

Many Iraqi men, especially in the military, are intensely proud and conscious of any perceived slight to their honour.

Of course, American men aren't intensely proud and conscious of any perceived slight to their honour. Especially in the military!

And being slapped in public by a soldier from the country that destroyed your country wouldn't be a real slight to your honour, would it? Only a perceived one, right?

Maybe it was enough to say the dead Iraqi soldier was slapped.

Pass me some of that cheese, will you?

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Beyond Sick: Canada Mourns A Fallen Psycho Warrior

The American way of war has come to Canada, and it's incredible what a dose of manure can do, even in the cold!

Here's a case study in the process by which a government can take a menace to society, put him in a uniform, and ship him halfway around the world where he can be a menace to some other society until he gets himself killed there and comes home a national hero.

Either sheer ignorance is sheer bliss, or Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star had to be very, very careful writing the story of Darryl Caswell.

Under the headline "Loved son a family's loss, a nation's hero", and with the sub-title: 'Why didn't he get one more ticket?', Daniel Dale's ode to a national disgrace begins this way:

Darryl Caswell took out a loan to buy his baby, a Honda CBR600RR sport motorcycle painted orange. He didn't spend $13,000 to drive slowly.

At least Daniel Dale is upfront about the fact that Darryl Caswell was just the sort of fellow you'd avoid if you wanted to live a long and healthy life. Unfortunately, some other people were not so lucky.

Near Bowmanville [Ontario], his home-town, and near Petawawa [Ontario], where his Royal Canadian Dragoons were based, Caswell careened through the streets, sometimes in excess of 150 kilometres [93 miles] per hour, seeking thrills, courting danger, "this orange blur," his stepmother says, on dark, small-town nights. Darryl being reckless. Darryl being Darryl.

Darryl being Darryl? Seriously? That's it?

"Careening through the streets" of a small town "in excess of 150 kilometres per hour"? Please!

He was a menace to society. He didn't care if he killed himself.

He didn't care if he killed anybody else, either.

Seriously.

Families of innocent people killed by "thrill-seeking", "death-defying" assholes like Darryl Caswell mourn in every city and town of any size, yet their grief is never immortalized like the grief Canadians are expected to feel for this "national hero".

Seriously.

In the summer of 2006, Caswell got a speeding ticket – another speeding ticket – riding the bike near Peterborough. His superiors, unamused, issued a warning: one more ticket, no more Afghanistan.

Why do they give maniacs tickets for repeatedly driving more than three times the speed limit in a residential area?

Why don't they just throw them away and lose the key, before the maniacs kill somebody?

Because they have a better use for maniacs like Darryl Caswell.

Caswell burned his tires. He put the Honda in storage. At the end of January 2007, he deployed to Kandahar.

Caswell was headed to the war. And that's why his superiors were unamused.

"Caswell's gonna kill somebody", they must have thought. "Let's make sure it's not one of ours."

On the home front, more than a year later, his father is still deep in denial.

"They said, `One more speeding ticket, you won't be able to go on the mission,'" says his father, Paul. "You wonder, why didn't he get one more ticket?"

Paul Caswell, 49, is a conveyor belt inspector and repairman. He has worked for 30 years at Bowmanville's Goodyear plant. He speaks plainly, grieves quietly. But he has questions, "the what-ifs."

He is a father still trying to accept, more than a year later, that his son was in that country on that patrol in that vehicle on that road at that moment.

It couldn't be any other way. Parents who raise maniacs are always in denial.

In 2004, Darryl worked at Goodyear for six months. For a young man who needed speed, factory work was numbingly mundane. He joined the army. Less than three years later, he was in Afghanistan. Less than five months later, his body was transported home.

"Why couldn't I have kept him at Goodyear? Why didn't he want to stay there? Good job for me all these years," Paul says. "Just wasn't for him, all black and dirty. He was doing what he wanted to do, but you ask yourself, `what if?' You hear there was supposed to be a minesweep that day. Minesweep was supposed to go down and clear the path first. But it got behind or broke down or something, so they went anyway. And that's when Darryl hit it, and that was the end of it. You'd think today's technology – you can check out your backyard on Google – why can't they be watching those guys and see when they're burying bombs and stuff?"

Paul now rides the Honda.

And isn't that just perfect?

Darryl Caswell's grieving father -- who apparently hasn't progressed to asking why Canadian troops are occupying a nation halfway around the world, which never attacked Canada, or any other NATO country, and never planned to do so -- now drives his late son's suicide machine.

And he wishes his country could establish 24/7 wall-to-wall surveillance in Afghanistan, so more maniacs like Darryl don't get killed there. Seriously.

Daniel Dale's tale turns to Caswell's brother, Logan, who was celebrating his 12th birthday when he got the bad news about his brother's death in Afghanistan.

The phone rang at the Caswells' comfortable Bowmanville house on June 11, 2007, Logan Caswell's 12th birthday. Trooper Darryl Caswell, Reconnaissance Squadron, 2nd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, had promised his little brother he would call.

"I was waitin' for that call," Logan says. "Waitin' and waitin'..."

But Darryl, 25, was not on the line. The call was not for Logan.

While leading a supply convoy north of Kandahar City, the Coyote reconnaissance vehicle Darryl drove had struck an improvised explosive device. Less than two months before he was to return home, he was dead.

"I just thought to myself, it had to happen on my birthday," Logan says. "I didn't even cry. I just screamed."

It's a horrible thing, and you have to scream with him.

But even as Logan Caswell was screaming, the word was being passed down from Ottawa: "We've lost another psychopath; fire up the tribute machine."

Darryl's body, like the bodies of the 56 Canadian Afghanistan casualties before him, was flown to the military's base in Trenton, then driven west for an autopsy in Toronto. His family trailed the police-escorted hearse to the coroner's office, Paul and his wife, Christine, at their "lowest," Christine says, Darryl's death "finally real," their devastation mitigated only by the throngs of people who lined Hwy. 401 overpasses, wearing red and holding flags, to pay their respects.

For all but two of the repatriation convoys since Darryl's, Paul and Christine have stood on an overpass themselves. They wear red. They hold flags. From above, they watch strangers re-enact their nightmare.

"It's hard when we go, because it brings everything back," says Christine. "But we go because we know what it meant to us."

The military propaganda machine couldn't have better representatives than its very own victims:

Christine, a vivacious 46-year-old with blue eyes and blonde hair, married Paul in 1993. This Saturday afternoon, she wears a red Support Our Troops shirt, three pro-troops wristbands. A heart pendant, pictures of Darryl and Logan inside, hangs around her neck.

The families must go through hell; that's a given. So their pain is assuaged by the most vicious of fiction.

This fiction is a phony salve that leaves a permanent infection on the surrounding communities. And the disease spreads through intense government PR efforts which drive propaganda such as the piece we are now reading.

She can smile, now, when she flips through the Darryl photos she has placed on the coffee table of their family room. ("He loved his turkey and dressing. Darryl was meat and potatoes." "He was small but he was mighty. Strong as an ox." "Him and his dad, boot camp graduation. Darryl loved that photo. They had a special bond.")

She can laugh, now, when she tells Darryl-being-Darryl stories. ("Logan, remember when Darryl chased the chicken?")

"I'm getting to that point where I have a lot of good memories," she says. "I don't cry as much. Logan was getting sick of me crying."

Sick? This is way beyond sick!

Unfortunately, it is becoming more typical all the time.

The death of a soldier is unlike the death of anyone else. Darryl, a life-long daredevil, might well have died pursuing a private adventure. But he died in Kandahar, in a war of choice he deeply supported but millions of Canadians oppose.

A war of choice? Whose choice?

Have we sunk so low that our governments can now start, or join, foreign wars that are opposed -- on solid moral grounds -- by millions of people, yet perfectly ok for those who choose to fight, and who are called national heroes for doing it?

We have, you know. You bet we have.

We have sunk a lot lower than that.

And so the Caswells' loss, so deeply personal, was also both public and political, a subject for introspection and a catalyst, like 96 other soldiers' deaths since 2002, for national introspection. Darryl, their son, was now a national hero. For months, there were plaques to receive, ceremonies to attend, politicians to meet, interviews to do.

Some might be asking themselves questions like, "How long must this go on?"

The answer appears to be "Forever. The endlessness justifies the meaninglessness."

In November, Bowmanville High School honoured Darryl, a graduate, in its Remembrance Day ceremony. In May, a street in a new Bowmanville subdivision was named Darryl Caswell Way. Later in May, his name was added to Bowmanville's cenotaph.

"It's all great," says Paul. "Everybody has just been great. It's a great honour for the town. But it gets to be – we didn't really have a chance to have down time, to grieve normally. We didn't have a whole lot of break, with the town, the media and everything. We tried to be good with the media, get his name out there, let 'em know. But we've gotta get on with our lives, get some normalcy back."

It's all great! It's great for the town to be assosicated with a dead menace to society -- as long as it was a foreign society.

It's great for the family of the dead thrill-seeking menace to be feted all over the place. But enough is enough.

Framed photos of Darryl used to hang throughout the house's main floor. "Too much," says Christine.

They moved the photos to a corner of the basement. They seek a better balance between remembering and forgetting.

"You don't want people to forget about him," says Christine. "He's our son. We don't want anyone to forget about him, or who he was as a person. But we're at a point where we've gotta heal."

I cannot disagree with that sentiment. I only wish Christine knew how true it was.

They really do have to heal -- not just from the loss of their son but from a lifetime of propaganda.

They know nothing. They've been through all this and they still have no clue.

And that's why their government can take advantage of them the way it has.

And that's why they're continuing the tradition.

Three months or so after the phone call, Logan had his room painted in camouflage, a mural of his brother driving the Coyote armoured vehicle on the wall opposite his bed.

Framed photos of Darryl sit on his shelves. Darryl's T-shirts hang amongst his on his rack. Beneath his television, there are the shoot-'em-up video games he and Darryl played for hours, the ones he can't bring himself to play alone.

For several months after Darryl died, Logan slept on the floor in the basement recreation room, near the pool table, or at the foot of his parents' bed. "I have a chair in my room," he says softly, "and all I saw every night was him sitting, playing video games. Creepy. I don't really believe in ghosts, but..."

Creepy is right! This is creepy on a generational scale. And it's so American.

Canadians used to pride themselves on not being Americans, and not being like Americans, either. At least some of them used to.

Canadians used to pride themselves on being peacekeepers. Sorry about that, cold friends! This is the post-9/11 world, you know. You're all Americans now!

The family couldn't handle the rebellious kid but maybe the Army could. And maybe that was a good deal, for them, for a while:

As a teenager, Darryl lived in Bowmanville with Christine and Paul and in Sarnia with his mother Darlene and younger sister Jolene Cushman.

In high school, Christine says, he was sometimes a handful – an angry kid who had trouble following rules he did not create himself. He drank. He skipped school.

But he matured dramatically, perhaps never more noticeably than after he joined the military. "We couldn't believe the change when he completed basic training. ... He was so obedient, so sharp, very disciplined, well-mannered," Paul says. The man whose arms were covered by tattoos, who drove his 14-tonne Coyote so fast his comrades called him "Ricky Bobby," the name of Will Ferrell's deranged NASCAR driver in the film Talladega Nights, now told Christine how to fold laundry.

This is a public service message for parents of unruly teenagers:

See what they can do for your young psycho in Basic Training: they can teach him to act obedient, sharp, disciplined, well-mannered ... and they can even make him fold laundry!

They need to train him in obedience so they can get him to do what they want him to do: go overseas and kill and maim people he otherwise would never have even heard of.

Some soldiers need to be trained to overcome the fear of death. Darryl Caswell apparently wasn't one of them.

Some soldiers need to be trained to overcome the fear of killing. Darryl Caswell apparently wasn't one of them, either.

The Army loves guys like Darryl Caswell. All they had to do was whip him into line, teach him how to fold his laundry, teach him how to obey orders, and ship him out.

The lucky ones come home without the box, of course. Instead they come home physically wounded, or psychologically ruined, or both.

It's a horrific waste of human life; and that's not even counting the damage they inflict!

And all for a lie. Or a pack of lies.

To the end, Darryl thought of himself [...] as a work in progress.

Only in Afghanistan did he "find" himself, he wrote in his last journal entry, dated June 7, 2007. He had not yet shed his "dark shadow," he wrote in an earlier entry; he was not yet able to show people his "true self."

But he was close, he wrote June 7, and closer than ever to being the man he wanted to be. He had a new appreciation for life in Canada and for his family's love. He had a new desire to start a family of his own. He was going to walk the streets of his country with a newfound "sparkle and glow."

"It's like everything I do is new, and my life has been reborn," he wrote. Four days later, it was over.

And now all that remains is the private grief and the public adulation.

Paul says he tries to keep busy to keep his mind off his son. Christine says she thinks about him from morning to night. Too often, she says. A little less and things would be easier.

But a little less is hard. Hwy. 401, 1,500 metres from home, is the fastest route to work. When the weather is nice and she is not running late, Christine takes Hwy. 2 instead. The Highway of Heroes makes her cry.

It really is very sad -- but not in a way this Toronto Star report would ever actually tell you.

One of the comments posted on the Star website got it just about almost right, in one respect, anyway:

My sympathy to the family who lost a loved one. Your son was doing very necessary and noble work in Afganistan. It's hard for Canadians to really understand the work being done in Afganistan because it is not really covered by the media. Thank you to our troops for representing Canada in such a positive way internationally. I'm proud to be Canadian.

There's a nugget of truth in there, and even though it's in nega-talk, it applies to both Canada and the United States:

It's hard for anyone to really understand the war crime in progress in Afganistan because it is not really covered by the media.

So let's take a look at some of the things the media won't tell you:

Afghanistan has never attacked Canada.

Afghanistan has never attacked any NATO country.

The NATO mission in Afghanistan is based on more lies than you can count, even if you start counting as recently as 9/11. But the American subversion of Afghanistan has been going on for almost 30 years.

On July 3, 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed a presidential finding authorizing funding for a clandestine operation in Afghanistan, which was known as Operation Cyclone, also known as The Bear Trap.

Under Operation Cyclone, Americans working through friendly overseas cutouts recruited the baddest Islamic bad guys they could find, trained them in terror, gave them equipment, money, vicious primitive ideology and logistical support, and infiltrated them into Afghanistan via Pakistan.

Once in Afghanistan, the newly minted Islamic terrorists -- whom we called freedom fighters -- began to stage attacks on the Soviets just across the border. The idea was to lure the Soviets into Afghanistan, and bleed them dry. The devastation of Afghanistan, the incredible cruelty to be inflicted on the Afghan people, the horrible suffering they would endure for decades; none of these were part of the "equation".

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December of 1979. And they did terrible damage. Americans made sure the "freedom fighters" remained well-supplied, well-motivated, and well-supported. The Soviets continued to bleed. And the Afghan people continued to suffer.

In 1980, Carter lost his bid for re-election; Ronald Reagan took over in 1981 and opened the spigots. Freedom-fighters everywhere were welcome to unlimited American aid, as long as they were terrorizing communist countries, or countries that bordered communist countries, or countries in which people had heard of communism. The flow of money, weapons, and ammunition into Afghanistan increased dramatically -- and went on for years. And so did the suffering.

If ever America were to move -- hypothetically, of course -- in the direction of positive change, it would necessitate facing up to the reality of the most horrible crimes of our past, and fomenting terrorism surely must rank as one of them. Deliberately luring a second country into invading, occupying and destroying a third country ranks right up there, of course.

Much more has happened since then, of course. The "freedom fighters" we supported stopped being "mujahideen" and became "al Qaeda", and they turned against us, unless maybe they didn't, and either they did things or else they only got blamed for things that other people did. We may never know; but remnants of these Afghan freedom fighters appear to have been used by western intelligence against the Russians in Bosnia and Chechnya, and in other terrorist attacks as well ...

... including the most famous one.

And in October of 2001, without offering the world any evidence implicating Afghanistan in the "terrorist attacks" of the previous month, George Bush attacked Afghanistan, using war plans that were already sitting on his desk as the twin towers disintegrated, and then he dragged NATO into his war crime of naked aggression, and here we stand. All these years later, NATO continues to pound on Afghanistan, and the lie has become: We are needed there until we can stabilize Afghanistan.

But the truth of the matter is that Afghanistan has been a dangerous, unstable, terrorist-infested place for the past 30 years, precisely because the Americans have wanted it that way. The idea that Americans could somehow stabilize Afghanistan is absurd.

But that's ok, because the Americans don't want to stabilize Afghanistan anyway; now they want to own it. And they won't be happy until they do. But that will never happen, which suits them fine, because they are not in this war to win, only to fight. Fighting is more profitable, for those who don't have to do the fighting. And you know who won't have to do any of the fighting.

Instead, the killing and the dying are contracted out to young rebels who can't stand a day without a jolt and a half of adrenaline, to whom life means nothing, especially the lives of others. And when they come home in a box, they become national heroes.

A closing comment from the Toronto Star website encapsulates the insanity that has taken hold of us all, in one way or another:

Lest we forget...

People here disparaging the war against Afghanistan don’t have a clue about the history of the Afghan war-mongers. You have never been invaded by these people. But people who have suffered at the hands of the Moghals or Afghan kings ought to know. Why do you think Canada’s freedom isn’t challenged today? Just imagine if the Iraqi’s or the Taliban’s or any of the Muslim nations had the firepower the west has today, it would all be over for the western world. They would use every conceivable weapon to annihilate this world. That has been seen for 500 brutal years in South Asia. The British did rule south Asia but were never even a fraction as ruthless as the Islamic kings. So we ought to be grateful to these soldiers who are keeping us free for hundred more years to come.

In case you didn't catch the logic, it goes like this:

We have to kill all the people in all the Muslim nations, even though they don't threaten us, and even though they can't threaten us; because if they could threaten us, then surely they would do so.

Such is "progress" in the Great White North.

Once the true north strong and free, now simply martys on the road to hell.

Happy Remembrance Day, O Canada.

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Come, Let Us Celebrate Our Monsters

Ninety years ago today, on November 11, 1918, World War I finally ended.

Of course it wasn't called that at the time; it was called The Great War.

How could anyone have known it would be the first of many?

Who could have guessed that barely twenty years would pass before the beginning of the next one?

The day when peace finally arrived was given the name Armistice Day. Thereafter, it was commemorated every year with solemn ceremonies and sacred vows of "Never Again".

In many English-speaking countries, November 11th is now called Remembrance Day, and it's still commemorated every year with solemn ceremonies and sacred vows.

But in the USA, November 11th is now called Veterans Day, and its primary function is to glorify the President, even though he's a deserter.

Its secondary function is to glorify the fools and killers who put more stock in shameless and transparent propaganda than in their own consciences, or who had no consciences to begin with; who cared more for obvious lies than they did for humanity, or who hid gleefully behind those lies to enjoy the thrill of killing, without any legal consequences; who claimed to be Christians but somehow managed to ignore all the Commandments, but still believed their faith in Christ would see them though the Pearly Gates no matter how many innocent people they slaughtered; and who now suffer the inevitable consequences (though they suffer far less than their innocent victims).

In civilized countries on November 11th they mourn their dead. In America we worship hired killers.

What should be a day of somber reflection becomes an endurance test: Can you survive 24 hours of it without retching? I can't. I never could. And every year it gets worse and worse.

Just once in my life I would like to hear the following conversation:

Do you support the war?

No. I don't support the killing of innocent people for any reason at all.

Do you at least support the troops?

No. I condemn killers-for-hire no matter who hired them.

Just once!

But no! Instead people say "We don't support the war, but we do support the troops!" ... as if that made any sense at all.

You want to know why our government treats us like fools? Because we are, that's why.

We might as well say "I hate plumbing but I support the plumbers."

We might as well say "I hate torture but I support the torturers."

If we can't even obtain that much clarity in our own minds, how can we expect anything better for our children?

And speaking of our children ...

How many times have you heard a grieving mother say: "I gave them my sweet little boy and they turned him into a monster!"

Just once I would like to hear the response: "Well of course they did! What did you think you were doing, sending him off to finishing school?"

Officially, there are more than four thousand Americans dead from a nasty little war of choice, started by a nasty little president we didn't choose. Unofficially I keep hearing whispers that perhaps the total is more like twenty or thirty thousand.

Our government admits there are something like thirty thousand Iraqis dead from the same cause. But reliable reports indicate the number is much greater than a million.

This is just from one war, one war of choice, one war among many. All over the world, decade after decade, the USA has inflicted similar suffering in countless countries. In every case, the reasons we were told justified the war turned out to be false. So why were we fighting? Why were we killing and maiming innocent people?

For oil. For bananas. For cocaine. For aluminum. For coffee. For opium. For overseas bases. For international status. And for more oil ... always more, always more, always oil ...

In solemn remembrance of 1918, it's time to open our eyes to the simple fact that this has been America's most important "contribution" to world civilization: Death and destruction, murder and mayhem, and more grief than anyone can possibly endure -- or even imagine.

When will it end? When will our sweet little boys stop signing up to become monsters?

The song was wrong. It should have gone like this:

Mothers, don't let your babies grow up to be soldiers.

[A slightly different version of this essay appeared in this space exactly one year ago. A slightly different version of that essay appeared in this space exactly two years ago. When will we ever learn?]

Democracy Now!: On Veterans Day, 15 Vets of Iraq and Afghanistan Face Trial for Antiwar Protest

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Obama's Promise: Change You Can Wait For!

Barack Obama, the most "transformative figure" who has floated to the top of our national cesspool in more than two generations, continues to show his hand, and it is not attractive -- or surprising.

The support it's been getting from the donkey party insiders is even less attractive, and less surprising. None of this is a surprise at all, except, apparently, to the vast majority of the allegedly dissident political bloggers of the supposedly angry somewhat left, who have a rude awakening ahead of them (if they ever wake up at all).

In other words, the bells of change are tolling, but they aren't tolling for you.

They're tolling against you.

As the AP reported via the IHT:

John Podesta, who's handling Obama's preparations to take over in the White House on Jan. 20, said on Sunday that Obama ... was working to build a diverse Cabinet likely to include Republicans and independents — part of the broad coalition that supported Obama during the race against Republican John McCain.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been mentioned as a possible holdover.

"He's not even a Republican," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said on CNN. "Why wouldn't we want to keep him? He's never been a registered Republican."

Who cares if Bob Gates is the leader of the world's biggest gang of war criminals? Not Barack Obama, clearly. And not Harry Reid, either.

"Why wouldn't we want to keep him? He's never been a registered Republican."

If that's the criterion, we're in for some fun, aren't we?

Obama had already shown his intentions, as if they weren't clear enough, by selecting Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff.

Emanuel's recent background has been summarized as follows:

Emanuel was a political and policy aide in Bill Clinton's White House. Leaving that, he turned to investment banking, then won a Chicago-area House seat six years ago. In Congress, he moved quickly into the leadership. As chairman of the Democratic campaign committee in 2006, he played an instrumental role in restoring his party to power after 12 years in the minority.

But then again, this summary comes from FOX, and as usual it neglects to tell you something important. In his role as chairman of the Democratic campaign committee in 2006, Rahm Emanuel made sure that no Democratic congressional candidate received any support at all unless he (or she) toed certain very clear lines.

Thus were progressive candidates such as Clint Curtis and Robert Bowman hung out to dry: Curtis because he knows our elections are rigged and Bowman because he knows that 9/11 was an inside job.

Cynthia McKinney, who dared to support both the quest for verifiable elections and the quest for verifiable truth about 9/11, was thereby deemed overly critical of Israel, and her primary opponent suddenly received huge financial and logistical support from Jewish and Israeli groups. McKinney, who had introduced the first articles of impeachment against the Bush administration, was then portrayed as an anti-Semite in the national media, and duly weeded out, long before the general election began.

Without these acts of sabotage, and without similar self-destructive tactics, the Democrats would have had an even larger majority.

In other words, Rahm Emanuel knows what he's doing.

And so does Barack Obama.

By appointing as his Chief of Staff a foul-mouthed, quick-tempered Zionist who stands against both electoral integrity and 9/11 truth, Obama has marked the Oval Office off-limits to anyone who might be able to nudge our government toward accountability or our foreign policy in a positive direction. And as we must surely have realized by now, post-9/11 foreign policy as presently constituted has broken the bank in such a way that domestic policy is now so undernourished, it's virtually meaningless.

In other words, if we've got the GWOT, we've got nothing else. And that doesn't even begin to measure the horrific impacts of the GWOT on the rest of the world -- which is, after all, where the GWOT's primary victims once lived.

Obama's appointment of Emanuel guarantees that the GWOT will remain -- not only in play but also in power -- unchallenged except by a few madmen of the internet, for at least the next four (read: eight) years.

For their part, the Republicans are back to their most basic trick: while Emanuel is positioning himself to protect what they have done in the past eight years, they portray him as their opponent, and attack him pre-emptively. Thus, according to the same piece from FOX News,

Last week, the Republican National Committee put out a press release calling Obama's choice of Emanuel, "Obama's Broken Promise" because the Illinois politician has a reputation for being "hyper-partisan."

And Republican House leader John Boehner called Emanuel "an ironic choice for a president-elect who has promised to change Washington, make politics more civil, and govern from the center."

The notion of "governing from the center" is a mis-nomer, of course, and a deliberate one, if ever a deliberate lie was told in American politics.

When Republican politicians and pundits say Obama should govern from "the center", they mean "as close to the radical-right post-9/11 agenda as possible".

And when Obama's Chief of Staff moves in that direction, what is that but Change You Can Wait For?

Emanuel responded to the GOP's criticisms, saying, "President-elect Obama is very clear... that we have to govern in a bipartisan fashion."

"The challenges are big enough that there's going to be an ability for people of both parties, as well as independents, to contribute ideas to help meet the challenges on health care, energy, tax reform, education," he said.

Notice the issues that Rahm Emanuel lists as challenges. Do you see anything about foreign policy? Do you see any hint of the War on Terror, or the War on Drugs, or the gathering War on Pakistan, or the proxy war on Somalia, or the constant threats of War on Iran? Of course not. These are all approved by the radical right that calls itself "the center".

And Obama has made it crystal clear -- to all 17 of us who were listening -- that his main disagreement with the Bush administration is over Iraq, where we're losing and where we're wasting forces that could be more valuable in Afghanistan.

He's a Prince, all right! A Prince of Peace! Peace You Can Wait For!

How long must you wait? How much more can you take?

Wait as long as you can; wait as long as you will. Peace won't come during this snake's administration, nor -- if he gets his way -- during your lifetime. But Barack Obama and his backers would be very happy if you decided to sit and wait.

Should you decide to dance and sing, weep with joy or fall over in ecstasy, that would be ok too, of course.

In chess, a common tactic involves pinning a piece (fixing it to single square) and then capturing it (which is so much easier when it can't run away). In politics, things are almost as complicated. But instead of knights and bishops we have pied pipers, who create "dissident" personality cults which attract fiercely loyal supporters, who are then immobilized and captured in due course.

The difference, of course, is that in chess the pieces are all wooden and insensate, whereas in politics only some of them are. And therefore, some people may eventually start to believe that Barack Obama has compromised, or even betrayed, his principles.

But that's not true; they only believe it because they haven't been paying attention for long enough. Barack Obama has made it very clear, many times, that he has no principles.

Fortunately for Obama, his chief opponents, both in the donkey primary and in the general selection, had already made it even clearer that they were even more stupid, even more beholden, and/or even more ruthless.

But Obama, far from stupid, is probably the most dangerous of the bunch. And -- guess what? -- he's already convinced the world to let down its guard, while he's planning another huge increase in American military funding. For what, pray tell? Oh, I suppose you can guess ...

... or maybe you can't. Because you might be like the more than 97% of Americans whose attention spans clock in at less than 45 seconds ... and that's a real shame ... because ...

What were we talking about?

It doesn't matter.

Nothing matters very much, now that we've elected a transformative figure.

And isn't his wife beautiful? This is gonna be so much fun!

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Watching The Defectives

a dream is a wish your heart makes
when you're fast asleep

Four years ago, when I started blogging, John Kerry had just conceded George Bush's "re-election" after a campaign which Kerry never seriously tried to win. Millions of Americans had been illegally disenfranchised by one dirty trick or another. Who knows how many votes had been flipped. Partisan corruption and vicious hacking were rife and visible in Ohio, and Florida, and many other places. Connecting the dots revealed a nation-wide campaign of targeted electoral sabotage. It was Bush's accountability moment, in which he gained a mandate and earned vast political capital. And it was entirely bogus.

Most Democratic-leaning websites moved on, got over it, turned the corner swiftly, and urged their readers to do the same. Only one site was dominated on the day after the election by a debate over who should run for the Democrats in 2008 -- Ronald Reagan Jr. or Hillary Clinton. But they all seemed like shams to me, obvious psy-ops -- and I quit visiting sites such as Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, Democrats dot com, and Alternet, to name just a few. I started hanging, and volunteering, at one of the few blogs which seemed to take the theft or giveaway of the election seriously.

watching the defectives
it's so cute
watching the defectives
they shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot

For the past two or three weeks I've restrained my impulse to rip into the multitudes of fast-asleep Obama supporters. No matter how many times their man has betrayed their interests, they have never wavered in support of the dream their hearts made. Today they are still celebrating. Personally I have been asking myself questions like:

When Bush ran in 2000, he described himself as a uniter, not a divider, and he promised a humble foreign policy. Look what he's done since then.

As a Senator, Obama has supported Bush's agenda in many ways over the years, and has been steadfast in his refusal to have anything to do with holding Bush or even his minions accountable for their gross crimes against humanity and their obvious, gloating treason against the USA.

As a candidate, Obama has pledged allegiance to Israel, promised to escalate the war crime in Afghanistan, threatened to attack Pakistan, and issued thinly veiled threats of a nuclear attack against Iran if the Iranians keep trying to develop civilian nuclear power. If Obama exceeds his campaign rhetoric by an extent comparable to the precedent set by Bush ... or even if Obama manages to keep his promises ... well ... nobody wants to finish that statement, do they? And yet the world celebrates. [Read more about Obama and his actual policies here; thanks to Grimblebee (who reads Counterpunch so I won't have to).]

As a frequent guest-blogger at a strongly pro-election-integrity site, I saw my role as a provider of context. So while the other bloggers were writing about illegal caging lists and interchangeable memory cards, I was talking about Pakistan and propaganda and torture, China and death squads and the history of American intervention in foreign countries, political assassinations, 9/11, and so on...

In my view, the mechanics of the electoral system could be perfect: every eligible voter could be allowed to vote, and all the votes could be counted and tabulated accurately -- but it wouldn't matter a bit if the voting public didn't know whom to vote for, or against, or why.

As I see it, the only possible "salvation" for our "democracy" would involve at least three things: a reform of the electoral system; a re-construction of the educational system, including an insistence on reality-based news media; and a popular understanding of the nature and uses of state-sponsored, false-flag, and/or bogus terrorism.

And I tried to promote an awareness of these needs, especially the latter one, until eventually my work there was greeted with a fervor midway between disdain and contempt.

One of my fellow guest-bloggers at said electoral-integrity site was an attorney from the state of Washington named Paul Lehto. Paul occasionally writes something and sends his mailing list links to it. And I happen to be on Paul's mailing list. So sometimes I read what he writes.

And sometimes I respond to Paul's writings. And sometimes I have sent him links to writing of my own. I have never had any indication that he has ever clicked on any of my links, or that he gives a dried fig about anything I might think or say, yet I remain on his mailing list.

And today (or perhaps yesterday -- or maybe even tomorrow, depending on where you happen to live) Paul sent me a link to a new post at Democratic Undergound in which he quotes a piece from the French paper, Le Monde.

The French writer, Robert Solé, writes:

Sorry. No column today. The keyboard is not responding. History is a page being turned. Three words on the screen: "Yes we can." While it is impossible to joke with genocide or disaster, it is equally impossible to joke with an event that makes you weep for joy. The first worldwide good news since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 needs more than a pirouette or an amused wink. At this moment - but for how long? - we can say with far more conviction than on 11 September 2001: we are all Americans.

Forget that 9/11 has led America and the world to genocide and disaster. Forget everything that makes this worldwide good news slightly less than pure joy.

The French editorial sums up all the emotion of the day for Paul Lehto, apparently. Lehto writes:

I too might write things. I stop. This strong voice is heard most clearly in silence, though it's also in the roar of crowds and the hugs of Americans. [...]

You'll never know the full extent of the tears of joy in this house, or the celebration around the world, unless and until we let it all in...

But when we do, we know it's a worldwide explosion of joy, hope and tears.

The subsequent comments at DU amplify the points I would have liked to make, but in an unintentional, ironic way.

mmonk adds:

And there isn't anything false about hope.

tilsammans remarks:

I am teary-eyed with joy again ... knowing that BHO is so well thought of in the world -- and the U.S., by association, is no longer being viewed as an object of disdain and derision.

here_is_to_hope writes:

I have gone through three boxes of tissues since Tuesday too, here I am a grown man of 47 and....aw, not again...

understandinglife adds:

I've cried, uncontrollable sobbing, three times since my childhood.

Tuesday 4 Nov 2008, ~ 725pm PST, was one of those three times ... and it lasted for quite a long while.

denese wrote:

Feeling hopeful is fantastic. I nearly forgot how. I believe.

bleever had the best angle:

It's as though Obama's election is a bookend to 9/11.

Again, "We are all Americans", but this time the world joins in our joy.

It's an event momentous enough that we can turn the page on our post-9/11 trauma, including the horror of the Bush/Cheney regime.

All of this proves what I was saying four years ago better than anything I could have written since. It helps to explain why my services are no longer deemed valuable in certain places, and why they are no longer available there either. It hints at an explanation of why my readership, and the chatter on my comment threads, fell through a hole in the floor shortly after I started writing about Barack Obama -- and applying the same BS-detector to him that I use on all the other political figures I write about.

And it shows the same willful ignorance I was trying to alleviate, especially about 9/11.

More than anything else, the "terrorist attacks" of September 11, 2001, gave America carte blanche to wage endless war against defenseless people anywhere in the world, anytime at all, for reasons false or true -- exactly as they were intended to do!

Take it from a French writer who fell for both that dirty tick and the obvious lies of the Obama campaign; from DU posters who still weep with joy; from a seer of bookends who thinks Obama's election will provide a magical escape from the post-9/11 trauma ... the world is once again uniting behind a fork-tongued snake, but this time it's a rich white nigger who claims racism is not endemic in America, mostly because his brand of lying politics demands it, but also because his gilt-edged career path just happened to bypass it.

I won't link to any of the blogs where my former readers are dancing with joy. But I do congratulate them on their success. They now own a multitude of ongoing crimes against humanity, not one of which their champion wishes to end (although Obama says he wants to move the Iraq war crime to Afghanistan). They can now sing and dance and cry their tears of joy, on the highway to hell.

Will the election of Barack Obama prove to be another 9/11-like event? Will it unite the world behind the United States just long enough for the US to launch another endless series of attacks against another tiny defenseless country?

One wouldn't even want to suggest such a thing -- especially around the defectives!

The world weeps with joy as it unites behind a willing and eager war criminal.

It's so cute.

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Off

It looks as if I will be offline for a while longer. Sorry about that. I'll be back when I can.