Blame America

America needs some fucking tough love right now. Listen to me, guys, somebody should've told you this a long time ago, or maybe they have been and you're just ... not ... listening. Take out the iPod earbuds and turn off the TV a minute. No, you can't just leave it on mute and watch it behind my back. I want to talk to you about something serious here. I think you have a problem. I think you've been acting like a goddamn lot of children.

You know how after you graduate college, you pretend for a little while that you're a real adult cuz you're out on your own, but really you have no goddamn idea what's going on, and you don't care because you want to do things your way, but "your way" is really just an excuse for being irresponsible and putting the blame on everybody else, and meanwhile your bills stack up and you end up paying a lot of your very hard-earned money on debt collectors and overdraft fees - but that's ok, cuz you're doing it your way, you're making your mistakes, you convince yourself that these mistakes are what it means to be free and there's a learning curve. It doesn't matter if debts and overdrafts are unfair, all you need to do is perfect your approach, and it'll all come together.

Come to find out it doesn't work like that.

It is exactly your blundering insistence on individuality that seals your goddamn doom. You know what's being done is unfair. (It's the same way with wars and the economy and rush hour traffic.) As long as you keep doing things your way, you'll be ok, it will be somebody else's problem, the trouble isn't you, it's all those goddamn other people who support the war or take the freeway home. Or it's the government's fault for letting banks get away with stuff. Eventually the government will catch on, right? - you'll keep voting and eventually you'll get a politician who'll be like, "Whelp, bout time to hold the banks accountable," and you won't have to pay overdraft fees again.

And that's exactly what happened - except increasingly now the so-called "middle class" is relying on paycheck advance - once a quaint feature of the topolganger lower class neighborhoods, now available in the common grounds of WalMart and internet banking. Which, as of this writing, isn't that popular a subject on the internet, despite outrageously high APR (120% at US Bank). Some US states made paycheck advance illegal; however, the point is that by sitting by and letting some nebulous "someone else" deal with it, we let "someone else" dictate the terms and conditions of our lives.

We act as though as long as we mind our own business, nothing is going to bother us. Having to think about politics or the economy isn't as important as doing our job and feeding our families. We just want to be left alone. That's all the American Dream has come down to: "Shut up and let me sleep."

9/11 was a rude awakening many people are still trying to out-maneuver. Terrorism - can't be bothered to examine the cause of it, must have some easy answer like "they hate us" (a sullen child's analysis if I've ever heard one). Here are a panel of experts (who made them experts? Who knows), I will copy down what they say, I will use it as a shortcut to absolve myself of responsibility. I cannot be held responsible for my country's foreign policy; it's just not up to me! I'm trying to work and have a family here, I'm upholding my part of the bargain by pursuing the American Dream, look what they have on sale for me today. ("Heart-shaped potholders? It's like they knooowwww me!!")

In reality, the system we allow to run rampant kills people abroad and enslaves them to corporate interests. We all know our government and our corporations are doing things that are downright abominable, things that would make our skin run cold if we could actually stand in the presence of the events. If we could watch an Afghani wedding party get blown up by a drone, it would fucking break us. Instead we hide from our complicity and make fucking excuses. "It's too hard, it's too much, I'm just one person, what am I supposed to do, I know it's wrong but what choice do I have, no one else is doing anything so I won't make any difference."

You fucking slimeballs. You've ingested all this stuff about how America is the best country in the world, and you parrot that, but you won't stand up against injustice? What kind of legacy do you think has been passed down to you? Cowardice? Helplessness? Apathy? Are these the values you stand for? Do you think you're doing your children, or your siblings, or your parents, your friends and coworkers any favors by standing on society's sidelines and shrugging like a sociopath? No wonder we can't look one another in the eyes. No wonder we snap at the fast food workers who get our orders wrong, or the retail worker whose been on her feet eight hours with a holiday line that never seems to move for her or you. You choose not to have empathy, because that might mean your little nugget of a head for once.

And you have no idea, not one goddamn clue, what's out there, do you?

Minneapolis, Minnesota FBI raids

Yesterday morning several Minneapolis peace activists got an unpleasant wake-up call: the Federal Bureau of Investigation busted down their doors and began rummaging through their stuff. The warrants gave them authority to seize computers, documents, cell phones, etc. on the grounds that they may have "funded foreign terrorist groups." One of these groups is allegedly FARC, which is a peasant guerrilla group in Colombia. Now, I don't know much about FARC (yet) and I know there is some disagreement about tactics and stuff on the left. But I do know that the Colombian government shoots peasants and dresses up the bodies like guerrilla fighters and that they have one of the most oppressive and violent regimes in Latin America, and I know that Obama praises these tactics openly, just how many other American administrations cozy up to tyrants and dictators, especially south of our borders.

This also gives us some very revealing insights as to how the Democrats intend to use the PATRIOT Act - to clamp down not on terrorist plots, but on ordinary grass-roots organizations trying to enact positive change. The Anti-War Committee isn't an al-Quada plot to blow shit up, it is a group of US citizens who want to end the bloody conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. But under Bush the rhetoric was to paint any opposition to imperialist strategy as terrorism, and Obama has no intention of calling for the Act's repeal. No Democrat does. It serves their police state means towards their global dominance ends.

This is the real face of federal law: state-sanctioned terrorism. Forcing activists to live in fear. Making Americans afraid to stand for change. Turning our hope into dread. Close your doors, duct-tape your windows, and stay in front of the friendly glow of your corporate-mindwashing television.

Hundreds of Minneapolis activists turned out in solidarity last night against these raids. Because we don't fuck around. We know that an injustice to any group on the left is portent of injustice to us all. And without left opposition to the growing power of the right - led by FOX news, the Tea Party, and the Joint Task Force among other government agencies - then everyday Americans will live in ignorance and helpless fear.

We need a grass-roots political party that will repeal the PATRIOT Act and end the raids on peaceful activists.

Time Magazine Is Just Awful

Hey Time! Nice cover, assholes! You know, the one with the young Afghan woman without her nose? " What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan" you admonish us. Now do you want to tell the rest of the story? Or are you too busy coming up with your next brilliant example of yellow journalism?
Let me just make the most obvious objection to this glaring propaganda piece: the young woman in question, Aisha, was mutilated by her husband ( may he rot in hell) in 2009. So unless the entire NATO occupation force went to Disneyland on the day of her "trial", Aisha was cut to pieces while " we" were in the fucking country! Has this kind of atrocity stopped since we invaded Afghanistan? Seems to me the only thing NATO forces have done has added bombs and bullets to the equation.
Kharzai, the U.S.A.'s part- time puppet, presides over an Islamomafia Republic, complete with sharia interpreted law in the courts and dope deals under the table. His government is about as much concerned about democracy as the Gambino Family was. Afghan men are completely free to beat, rape, or murder the women in their homes whether they are in a zone controlled by the government or the insurgents.
Oh, yeah. The insurgents. That's the proper term. For the Taliban is but one group out of many. I wonder how many of these guys were running around the Afghan hills thirty years ago, to bring down a regime that actually treated women as equals before the law. But that regime was controlled by the evil commies of the U.S.S.R. so the U.S. government couldn't throw AKs and other weapons into the hands of these bastards fast enough. Wonder how many of these weapons are being fired at our own troops these days?
Man,the bullshit of U.S. foreign policy piles up so fast, you need wings to stay above it.
So what can we do to keep other Afghan women from suffering Aisha's fate? The sad and honest answer is... not much. The seriously deluded amongst the American government and public believe that if we just add a little more to the bomb tonnage dropped on Afghan and Pakistani villages, then we can put on our white good- guy hats and ride to the rescue of these beautiful damsels in distress. In reality the damsel is more likely to be the victim of a bomb or Hellfire missile launched from a NATO drone than attacked by the Taliban. Better bring a shovel, good guys. The lady is probably buried under a ton of rubble.
That is what we can do- stop deluding ourselves that the occupation is doing Afghanistan any kind of good. We can demand that the U.S. and NATO get out of there and let the Afghan people decide their own destiny. Afghanistan was once a stable and peaceful republic that promoted gender equality before the eyes of the law. They might be able to get that back. But first foreign interference has to come to an end.

"They make a desert and call it peace." -- Tacitus

If I have to hear the phrase that last month was "the bloodiest month in Afghanistan yet" ONE MORE GODDAMN TIME I am going to scream. Just scream.

It's like every month for years now. I'm starting to wonder if they even know they're saying it anymore, or if it just rolls off their tongues while their blank lifeless eyes gaze unblinking into the teleprompter abyss. Hello? Anyone out there? Hello?

Isn't someone going to say something?

NATO In Afghanistan: Its All Over Except For The Dying

" You know, when the puppet starts talking back to the puppeteer, the puppeteer's in bad shape." - Malcom X
Face it, American capitalists- your bid to wring any sort of profit from Afghanistan is over. Just a few days after you guys announced to the rest of us that Afghanistan is a mineral treasure house ( which was discovered by the United States Geological Survey in 2007- why the big hoopla now?) your handpicked puppet Hamid Karzai cut his strings and gave you the finger. The Japanese looters will get first crack at Afghanistan's wealth.
Karzai waxed eloquent on how Afghanistan will become the " Saudi Arabia of lithium" but given the fact that he is little more than an Central Asian mob boss I doubt that the average Afghan citizen will be cashing in on this bonanza. Nigeria and Brazil are examples of how corrupt elites " share" the wealth of their respective nation's natural resources- by dumping toxic waste on their people and brutally suppressing the smallest act of dissent.
In the meantime, Karzai has finally climbed down from his fence and decided that the Taliban are going to win this fight. After blustering about Pakistani interference in Afghan affairs through the ISI's support of the Taliban last year, he is now embracing them. He is openly talking of negotiating with the Taliban.
As Drez pointed out , there is a silver lining in Afghanistan's dark cloud of torment. The wealth of lithium and the other minerals discovered under her soil has the potential to transform a country broken by war to one that has an industrial base again. Even if that wealth is controlled by a tiny group of elites, it will slowly have a positive effect on the Afghan economy.
But to make even that tiny progressive step, the Afghan people need peace. A stable regime, even a corrupt Islamic republic ( which is basically what they have now courtesy of the American ruling class), is preferable to the bloody chaos occurring at the present.
Time for our American plutocrats to give up on this bloody imperial cluster fuck. Your chance to outdo the British Empire has come and gone. The people of Afghanistan want us out, the Pakistanis want us out, hell, most Americans want us out. Why the fuck are we spending so much blood and treasure over there still? To protect Japanese mining interests? To prop up Karzai's Islamic Opiate State? So the American Empire can save face?
None of these are good reasons to drop one more bomb, shoot one more bullet, or shed one more drop of blood. This useless war needs to end NOW.