Category Archives: Hope n’ Change

Shenanigans Afoot at Wikipedia Concerning Obama’s New Campaign Slogan: Forward

Blog Discussions, Culture, Democrats, Election '12, History, Hope n' Change, Media, Politics, Republicans, Socialism, Technology

How much can we or should we rely on Wikipedia, particularly concerning controversial issues? I have linked the site in the past from Liberty Papers’ posts and probably will in the future but I do think anything you or I find at Wikipedia should be verified by at least one other source before assuming it true. It was almost a year ago that Sarah Palin supporters tried to scrub the page concerning Paul Revere and his ride to cover up and support her mistaken history of the event.

Now it seems that Obama supporters are doing something similar as it relates to his one word 2012 campaign slogan: Forward.

Just yesterday, Neal Boortz referenced the Wikipedia article for the word “forward” as it related to politics but by the time he was off the air, the page had been significantly altered. Boortz explains:

So yesterday I gave you a laundry list of different political philosophers, publications and propaganda that all used the phrase “forward” to embody and promote their socialist or communist causes. Considering the historical use of the word “forward,” it is no surprise that our Marxist in Chief would select this phrase as his new campaign slogan. But one of the many examples I referenced was a Wikipedia entry under “Forward” that Cristina found entitled “Forward (generic name of socialist publications).” Yesterday morning if you went to this link you found a long history of socialist and communist publications published in many languages, principally German, Russian and French, using that name as their title.

[…]

By yesterday afternoon Obama sycophants and myrmidons were busy. They were demanding that Wikipedia remove that reference to the word “forward” being a generic name of socialist publications. Toward the middle of the afternoon if you clicked on that link it would say “This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia’s deletion policy.” By the end of the day, if you searched the word “Forward” in Wikipedia, the link to that entry had been removed from the website.

Boortz’s blog Nealz Nuze cached the original Wikipedia search and is included in his post.

The as of the publication of this post, the Wikipedia page Forward (Obama-Biden campaign slogan) says: “On April 30th, 2012 the Obama–Biden campaign announced the slogan “Forward”.” If you go back to the main page and look under “Politics,” there are 4 links in addition to the Obama campaign link of political groups, all Marxist in nature, all of which use “forward” as a slogan.

This could be a coincidence, but that is beside the point. My question is what is it about this page that certain Wiki editors who want to delete the page find objectionable? Was the original article not factual or do they not like that other Wiki editors pointed this out?*
» Read more

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Open Thread: If I Wanted America to Fail…

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FreeMarketAmerica.org has released a great video (above) called “If I Wanted America to Fail.” It’s a pretty decent list of policies one would want to implement to cause America to fail but it’s far from complete.

Here are a few suggestions of my own:

If I wanted America to fail, I would want congress to abdicate its war powers and give those powers to the president so he could commit acts of war against any country he desires for any or no reason at all.

If I wanted America to fail, I would want these undeclared wars to be open-ended with no discernable war aim. This would lead to blowback and create more enemies for America.

If I wanted America to fail, I would have troops deployed around the world to make sure the world is “safe for democracy” but would topple regimes, even those elected by the people of these countries, if the president found the new leaders not to his liking. This would create even more enemies who would try to cause America to fail.

If I wanted America to fail, I would do away with due process – even for American citizens who the president considers “enemy combatants.” I would want the president to have the ability to detain these people indefinitely, ship them to a foreign country, and even give the president the authority to kill these people anywhere in the world they are found.

If I wanted America to fail, I would have the ATF sell arms to Mexican drug cartels so they could kill innocent people on both sides of the border. I would name this operation after a lame action movie franchise and pretend to know nothing about it when details were made public (It’s not like the media would have any interest in investigating this deadly policy because this is a Democrat administration).

Now it’s your turn. What are the policies being implemented now that you would want implemented if your goal was to make America fail?

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Jon Stewart as a Voice of Sanity on Iran

Culture, Democrats, Election '12, Foreign Affairs, History, Hope n' Change, Humor, Media, Military, Multimedia, Non-Intervention, Politics, Republicans, Security, Theory and Ideas, War on Terror

The war drums for war with Iran on behalf of Israel are getting louder by the day. I wouldn’t have ever imagined that after experiencing the failure to find WMD in Iraq following the invasion along with the tremendous sacrifices of blood and treasure we would be having an almost identical conversation concerning Iran years later. I thought that as a country we learned the hard lessons about the folly of preemptive war.

Apparently, I was wrong.

The prospects of a nuclear Iran has been an issue I’ve been intending on writing about. What does it mean for the security of the world if Iran gets the bomb? Is war with Iran even avoidable given all the heated rhetoric on all sides?

Now enter a voice of reason: comedian Jon Stewart. One thing that Stewart points out in the first clip is that this is an election year, not only for the U.S. but also Israel and Iran! Could it be that the rhetoric is so over the top because politicians in all three countries want to talk tough to curry favor with voters?

In the second clip, Stewart plays even more rhetoric from the 2012 campaign. The leading G.O.P. candidates would have us believe that President Obama has said and done nothing whatsoever to help Israel stop Iran from getting the bomb. As Stewart demonstrates here, Obama’s rhetoric doesn’t differ that much from the G.O.P. field (sans Ron Paul, of course). President Obama’s rhetoric is much more hawkish than I am comfortable with to be sure.

While Stewart’s comic relief on this issue is very much needed, hopefully he gets his very serious message across.

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Are You or Someone You Know a Victim of the Drone Mentality?

Culture, Democrats, Election '12, Foreign Affairs, Government Incompetence, History, Hope n' Change, Human Rights, Look About, Military, Non-Intervention, Republicans, Security, War on Terror

Are you or someone you know a victim of what Glenn Greenwald calls “the drone mentality”?

[Emphasis original]

I was predictably deluged with responses justifying Obama’s drone attacks on the ground that they are necessary to kill The Terrorists. Reading the responses, I could clearly discern the mentality driving them: I have never heard of 99% of the people my government kills with drones, nor have I ever seen any evidence about them, but I am sure they are Terrorists. That is the drone mentality in both senses of the word; it’s that combination of pure ignorance and blind faith in government authorities that you will inevitably hear from anyone defending President Obama’s militarism.

If you are or have been a victim of this mentality don’t feel bad. I was once a victim of this mentality myself. I once believed that the government was completely incompetent domestically but somehow very efficient in its execution of the so-called war on terror.

The article continues [Emphasis original]

As it turns out, it isn’t only the President’s drone-cheering supporters who have no idea who is being killed by the program they support; neither does the CIA itself. […] Obama’s broad standards for when drone strikes are permitted, and noted that the “bulk” of the drone attacks — the bulk of them – “target groups of men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren’t always known.” As Spencer Ackerman put it: “The CIA is now killing people without knowing who they are, on suspicion of association with terrorist groups”; moreover, the administration refuses to describe what it even means by being “associated” with a Terrorist group (indeed, it steadfastly refuses to tell citizens anything about the legal principles governing its covert drone wars).

Kill ‘em all, let [insert deity here] sort ’em out…is this the policy for combating terrorism now? Is anyone else reading this disturbed by this?

[T]he internal dissent [inside the U.S. government] is grounded in the concern that these drone attacks undermine U.S. objectives by increasing anti-American sentiment in the region (there’s that primitive, inscrutable Muslim culture rearing its head again: they strangely seem to get very angry when foreign governments send sky robots over their countries and blow up their neighbors, teenagers and children)[…] Remember, though: we have to kill The Muslim Terrorists because they have no regard for human life.

Nah, that can’t be it. They hate us because of our freedom. Just ask John Bolton, Rick Santorum, and the rest of the Neocons who are chomping at the bit to start a war with Iran.

How is it that this drone mentality persists and what is the cure?

This is why it’s so imperative to do everything possible to shine a light on the victims of President Obama’s aggression in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere: ignoring the victims, rendering them invisible, is a crucial prerequisite to sustaining propaganda and maintaining support for this militarism (that’s the same reason John Brennan lied — yet again — by assuring Americans that there are no innocent victims of drone attacks). Many people want to hear nothing about these victims — like Tariq — because they don’t want to accept that the leader for whom they cheer and the drone attacks they support are regularly ending the lives of large numbers of innocent people, including children. They believe the fairy tale that the U.S. is only killing Terrorists and “militants” because they want to believe it…

For far too long, I believed this fairy tale myself. I couldn’t handle the truth but I eventually saw the error of my thinking. Government is just as blunt an instrument on foreign battlefields as it is in virtually every domestic aspect of our lives but even more destructive and deadly.

How about you, can you handle the truth?

The truth (according to sources cited in the article) that between 2,359 and 2,959 people (nearly 200 of whom were children) have been killed in 306 documented drone strikes, 85% of which were launched during the administration of the Nobel Peace Prize winner President Barack Obama?

If you are willing to confront the drone mentality head on, I would strongly encourage you to read the rest of Greenwald’s article.

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

10 Years of Failed Nation Building Policy

Democrats, Economics, Election '12, Foreign Affairs, History, Hope n' Change, Military, Multimedia, Non-Intervention, Politics, Republicans, Security, Theory and Ideas, War on Terror

Last Friday marked the 10 year anniversary of the U.S. attack and subsequent nation building in Afghanistan. Most Americans, myself included, felt the attack on the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan was a perfectly legitimate response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I doubt that most Americans would have supported a nation building mission creep that would continue a decade later, however.

This policy has cost a great deal in blood and treasure; how well has it worked? The foreign policy experts in the first video below from the Cato Institute report on where things stand right now in Afghanistan. Their conclusion: 10 years is enough.

The second video below from the Ron Paul campaign deals with nation building more generally and asks a very provocative question: How would Americans respond if the Chinese or some other foreign power started occupying our country with troops with their own nation building program?

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/
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