First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.– Pastor Martin Niemöller
TheDeconstructionZone
I believe in God, only I call it Nature
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from: www.funnyandjokes.com
Barack Obama was seated next to a little girl on an airplane trip back to Washington. He turned to her and said, "Let's talk. I've heard that flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger." The little girl, who had just opened her book, closed it slowly and said to The Obama, "What would you like to talk about?" "Oh, I don't know," said the Obama. "How about What Changes I Should Make To America?" and he smiles. "OK," she says. "That could be an interesting topic. But let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff - grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?" Obama, visibly surprised by the little girl's intelligence, thinks about it for a second and finally says, "Hmmm, I have no idea." To which the little girl replies, "Do you really feel qualified to change America when you don't know shit?"
land of complacency home of the slaves
from: www.wsws.org
by:Jerry White
Some six million Americans—one in 50 people in the US—are living on no income other than $100 or $200 a month in food stamps, according to an analysis of state data by the New York Times. The number of people who reported that they are unemployed and receive no cash aid—neither welfare, nor unemployment insurance, pension benefits, child support or disability pay—the newspaper reported, has jumped by 50 percent over the last two years, as the recession has taken hold. According to the January 3 article, the number of people reporting no income tripled in Nevada over the past two years, doubled in Florida and New York, and increased nearly 90 percent in Minnesota and Utah. In Wayne County, Michigan—which includes Detroit, where half the population is unemployed or underemployed—one out of every 25 residents reports an income of only food stamps. In Yakima County, Washington, the figure is one out of every 17. The figures reveal the vast scale of human suffering in the US as the new decade begins and puts the lie to talk of an economic “recovery.” The 6 million people in households reporting no income—which includes 1.2 million children—is equivalent to the entire population of Indiana or Massachusetts, or the combined populations of Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Boston. Such a social catastrophe underscores the indifference of the Obama administration, which has done virtually nothing to provide relief to those who have lost their jobs, homes and livelihoods—even as it spares no expense to shore up the fortunes of the financial elite and fund its ongoing wars. The number of people without an income has been on the rise since 1996, when Democratic President Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress ended welfare as a universal entitlement, a status the federal relief program had enjoyed since its inception in the 1930s. Pledging to “end the cycle of dependency,” the Democrats and Republicans imposed lifetime limits on benefits, drastically reduced the level of cash assistance, and imposed restrictive “workfare” and other requirements on further aid.Despite the increased need for relief, Obama has opposed any additional funding for what remains of the welfare program, called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Since their peak in the 1990s, welfare rolls are down nearly 75 percent, the Times reported. “Many of those who would have received cash assistance in past recessions are not getting it now,” Judy Putnam, a spokesperson for the Michigan League for Human Services, told the World Socialist Web Site. “Only a third of the state’s children living in poverty are getting cash assistance compared with two-thirds before ‘welfare reform’ in 1996. People in Michigan are heavily dependent on food stamps.” With jobless benefits covering only half of the unemployed, food stamps—which provide an average of $1 per meal per person, or around $100 per person each month for individuals or families earning up to 130 percent of the official poverty level—have become the safety net of last resort. A record 36 million people—one in eight people and one in four children—now rely on the food stamp program. The joint federal-state Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is expanding by 20,000 people per day, but is still estimated to serve only two-thirds of those who qualify. An earlier Times study showed there are more than 200 US counties where food stamp usage shot up by at least two-thirds, including Riverside County, California, most of greater Phoenix and Las Vegas, a ring of Atlanta suburbs, and a 150-mile stretch of southwest Florida from Bradenton to the Everglades. The study found there are over 800 counties where food stamps feed one third of all children.Late last year, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis released a study showing that 50 percent of all children and 90 percent of African American children will receive food stamps at some point before their 20th birthday. “Rather than being a time of security and safety,” said Mark Rank, Ph.D., one of the authors of the report, “the childhood years for many American children are a time of economic turmoil, risk, and hardship.” The January 3 Times report focused on Florida, where the number of people with no income beyond food stamps has doubled in two years and more than tripled along the southwest coast, where a housing boom turned into a bust of foreclosed and abandoned homes. According to state data, those without income were split evenly between families with children and individuals. Those affected were also racially mixed—about 42 percent white, 32 percent black, and 22 percent Latino—with whites making up the fastest growing segment during the recession. This plunge into destitution has affected wide layers of the population. The Times article cites a middle-aged mother of two, Isabel Bermudez, who moved from a Bronx housing project to sell real estate in Florida. Once enjoying a six-figure income, a house with a pool and investment property, she lost her job and home and ran out of unemployment benefits. Ms. Bermudez’s sole income is now $320 a month in food stamps. “I went from making $180,000 to relying on food stamps,” she told the newspaper, adding that without the program she wouldn’t be able to feed her children.The increasing reliance on meager food stamp allowances exposes the absence of anything that can properly be called a social safety net in the US. The situation will only get worse, as both the Democrats and Republicans prepare to slash what remains of publicly funded programs in order to pay for the multitrillion-dollar Wall Street bailout and expansion of US military action around the world. The theme of Obama’s State of the Union address—expected early next month—will be long-term deficit reduction and a further demand that the American people reduce their consumption. The White House is backing a bipartisan commission to recommend major cuts in basic social programs along with regressive taxes on consumption, and Obama’s budget director, Peter Orszag, has said the administration will take measures to reduce the deficit in its next budget due out in February. Such actions will throw millions more into poverty. The social crisis facing working people—depression levels of unemployment, home foreclosures, the growth of hunger, poverty and homelessness—is the most graphic expression of the failure of capitalism, an economic system that benefits the wealthy few at the expense of the vast majority. In the midst of this worsening situation for the working population, it was reported last week that the top three banks—Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley—which received tens of billions in public funds under the Troubled Asset Relief Program—will hand out $49.5 billion in end-of-year cash bonuses and stock awards. All told, US banks will dispense an estimated $200 billion in total compensation. The Obama administration is continuing and accelerating the transfer of wealth from working people to those who are responsible for precipitating the worst economic breakdown since the Great Depression.Nearly a year after his inauguration, President Obama has demonstrated he is nothing but a tool of the financial oligarchy. The very future of the working class depends on the development of a mass socialist movement against this administration, both big business parties, and the profit system which they defend.
from: www.uruknet.info
by Ann Talbot
Washington is intent on utilising the failed attempt to explode a bomb on Detroit-bound Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day as a pretext for further intervention in this poverty-stricken country. On the basis of reported links between Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Al Qaeda elements in Yemen, President Barack Obama has pledged that "all elements of US power" will be brought to bear against the country, amidst reports that military targets are already being selected.
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown responded most eagerly to this US belligerence. He immediately ordered UK airports to introduce full body scanners, despite the fact that Europe has declared these devices to be in breach of human rights.
Brown also announced an international meeting in London at the end of this month to discuss Yemen and said that Britain will participate in a joint US-UK anti-terror programme in the country. The meeting is to run in conjunction with a planned conference on Afghanistan, aimed at deepening the military involvement of the European countries in the increasingly bloody US-led occupation.
The prime minister’s readiness to back Washington’s threats against Yemen comes despite serious questions over the attempted airline bombing. Not least of these is how it was that Abdulmutallab managed to board the flight, given that he was on a security watch list and his father had reported him as a potential terrorist threat to Nigerian and American authorities.
Brown’s response confirms that no real change in policy was involved in the transfer of power from Tony Blair to himself. The UK continues to function as something akin to a European proxy of Langley, Virginia, and the White House.
More is involved than mere electioneering on the part of Brown in advance of a national election, or simply bowing to the demands of the UK’s more powerful ally. What has been exposed by Brown’s flurry of announcements is the extent to which Britain and the US are already involved in Yemen.
The prime minister initially claimed he had decided to participate in a joint anti-terror programme with Washington after a personal phone conversation with Obama. Interviewed by the BBC’s Andrew Marr on Sunday, Brown conceded that the operation was already underway. "The truth is we've been doing this for some time," he admitted.
When asked about the joint programme, an unnamed Washington official told the Associated Press that there was no new initiative. American and British forces were already assisting Yemeni security forces in "anti-terror" operations. US Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, was reported in the UK-based Telegraph as saying, "We have a growing presence there—and we have to—of special operations, Green Berets, intelligence."
The implication of Brown’s admission is that there are also British special forces on the ground in Yemen alongside those of the US.
Days before the failed airline bombing, it was revealed that Obama had personally given the order for US air strikes on the Abyan village of al Maajala in Yemen. The December 17 strikes, which killed some 120 people, were apparently coordinated with the US-backed dictatorship of Yemen President Ali Abdallah Saleh.
Brown, like Blair, does not intend to be left out of "tomorrow’s war." While it may seem astonishing that Britain, more heavily mired in debt than any other developed country and already over-extended militarily, should get embroiled in yet another war, for the ruling elite there is no choice but to follow the US lead. In fact, Britain’s desperate economic and financial condition is driving it into new military adventures.
Britain can plausibly bring some highly relevant experience in Yemen to the table. Under the Labour government of Harold Wilson in the 1960s, it fought one of its last colonial wars in part of the territory that became Yemen. And a savage war it was.
BBC correspondent Brian Barron, who covered what was known as the "Aden Emergency," recalled, "One steamy morning in the Crater district [the Arab district of the port of Aden] I arrived to find Colonel Colin Mitchell—known to the media as Mad Mitch because of his gung-ho style—directing a group of squaddies who were stacking, like a butcher’s delivery, the corpses of six Arabs on the pavement. They’d been shot as they tried to ambush a patrol. 'It was like shooting grouse,’ said the Colonel, 'A brace here and a brace there. It was over in seconds.’"
This casual attitude to colonial brutality characterised the British occupation. What Brown and Obama now describe as a "failed state" is in large part the creation of that colonial experience.
Britain’s involvement is also dictated by Yemen’s geo-strategic importance. Aden, a valuable deep water port, sits directly on the main world shipping lane that links the Far East to Europe and America. It controls access to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. That is why it was so crucial to the British and why, when Britain was eventually forced to withdraw in 1967, the US took over efforts to maintain control of Yemen through its proxy in the region, Saudi Arabia.
Between 1962 and 1970, Saudi Arabia backed royalist forces against the Republic of Yemen, which had the support of Egypt and the Soviet Union in the North Yemen civil war. After British withdrawal, South Yemen aligned itself with the Soviet Union. A united Yemen did not come into existence until 1990.
When Yemen refused to support the First Gulf War in early 1991, Saudi Arabia responded by expelling one million Yemeni workers, adding to the country’s poverty and instability. The legacy of colonialism and Cold War conflicts ensures that, despite having one of the finest harbours in the world, Yemen remains the poorest Arab state. Most of the country’s population of 25 million live on less than $2 a day.
The real target of the US and UK military is not Al Qaeda, but the Yemeni civilian population. The use of air power against civilians is a modern version of the British tactic of bombing the villages of rebel tribes. This state terror has been taken to a new level of destructiveness, but the purpose is strikingly similar. The intention of the US is to extend its colonial control over this strategic region. Britain, the former colonial power, is intent on securing its share of the spoils.
The opening of a new front in the so-called "war on terror" will have incalculable consequences. Brown stated specifically that Britain would assist Yemen in developing its coastguard. Last October, the Yemeni coastguard seized an Iranian vessel which was alleged to be carrying weapons to Houthi rebels in northern Yemen. With the world’s shipping passing through the Gulf of Aden, such a naval policy has explosive global implications. The prospect of Yemen impounding merchant vessels with British and US-backing threatens to spark any number of international conflicts.
by Ann Talbot
Washington is intent on utilising the failed attempt to explode a bomb on Detroit-bound Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day as a pretext for further intervention in this poverty-stricken country. On the basis of reported links between Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Al Qaeda elements in Yemen, President Barack Obama has pledged that "all elements of US power" will be brought to bear against the country, amidst reports that military targets are already being selected.
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown responded most eagerly to this US belligerence. He immediately ordered UK airports to introduce full body scanners, despite the fact that Europe has declared these devices to be in breach of human rights.
Brown also announced an international meeting in London at the end of this month to discuss Yemen and said that Britain will participate in a joint US-UK anti-terror programme in the country. The meeting is to run in conjunction with a planned conference on Afghanistan, aimed at deepening the military involvement of the European countries in the increasingly bloody US-led occupation.
The prime minister’s readiness to back Washington’s threats against Yemen comes despite serious questions over the attempted airline bombing. Not least of these is how it was that Abdulmutallab managed to board the flight, given that he was on a security watch list and his father had reported him as a potential terrorist threat to Nigerian and American authorities.
Brown’s response confirms that no real change in policy was involved in the transfer of power from Tony Blair to himself. The UK continues to function as something akin to a European proxy of Langley, Virginia, and the White House.
More is involved than mere electioneering on the part of Brown in advance of a national election, or simply bowing to the demands of the UK’s more powerful ally. What has been exposed by Brown’s flurry of announcements is the extent to which Britain and the US are already involved in Yemen.
The prime minister initially claimed he had decided to participate in a joint anti-terror programme with Washington after a personal phone conversation with Obama. Interviewed by the BBC’s Andrew Marr on Sunday, Brown conceded that the operation was already underway. "The truth is we've been doing this for some time," he admitted.
When asked about the joint programme, an unnamed Washington official told the Associated Press that there was no new initiative. American and British forces were already assisting Yemeni security forces in "anti-terror" operations. US Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, was reported in the UK-based Telegraph as saying, "We have a growing presence there—and we have to—of special operations, Green Berets, intelligence."
The implication of Brown’s admission is that there are also British special forces on the ground in Yemen alongside those of the US.
Days before the failed airline bombing, it was revealed that Obama had personally given the order for US air strikes on the Abyan village of al Maajala in Yemen. The December 17 strikes, which killed some 120 people, were apparently coordinated with the US-backed dictatorship of Yemen President Ali Abdallah Saleh.
Brown, like Blair, does not intend to be left out of "tomorrow’s war." While it may seem astonishing that Britain, more heavily mired in debt than any other developed country and already over-extended militarily, should get embroiled in yet another war, for the ruling elite there is no choice but to follow the US lead. In fact, Britain’s desperate economic and financial condition is driving it into new military adventures.
Britain can plausibly bring some highly relevant experience in Yemen to the table. Under the Labour government of Harold Wilson in the 1960s, it fought one of its last colonial wars in part of the territory that became Yemen. And a savage war it was.
BBC correspondent Brian Barron, who covered what was known as the "Aden Emergency," recalled, "One steamy morning in the Crater district [the Arab district of the port of Aden] I arrived to find Colonel Colin Mitchell—known to the media as Mad Mitch because of his gung-ho style—directing a group of squaddies who were stacking, like a butcher’s delivery, the corpses of six Arabs on the pavement. They’d been shot as they tried to ambush a patrol. 'It was like shooting grouse,’ said the Colonel, 'A brace here and a brace there. It was over in seconds.’"
This casual attitude to colonial brutality characterised the British occupation. What Brown and Obama now describe as a "failed state" is in large part the creation of that colonial experience.
Britain’s involvement is also dictated by Yemen’s geo-strategic importance. Aden, a valuable deep water port, sits directly on the main world shipping lane that links the Far East to Europe and America. It controls access to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. That is why it was so crucial to the British and why, when Britain was eventually forced to withdraw in 1967, the US took over efforts to maintain control of Yemen through its proxy in the region, Saudi Arabia.
Between 1962 and 1970, Saudi Arabia backed royalist forces against the Republic of Yemen, which had the support of Egypt and the Soviet Union in the North Yemen civil war. After British withdrawal, South Yemen aligned itself with the Soviet Union. A united Yemen did not come into existence until 1990.
When Yemen refused to support the First Gulf War in early 1991, Saudi Arabia responded by expelling one million Yemeni workers, adding to the country’s poverty and instability. The legacy of colonialism and Cold War conflicts ensures that, despite having one of the finest harbours in the world, Yemen remains the poorest Arab state. Most of the country’s population of 25 million live on less than $2 a day.
The real target of the US and UK military is not Al Qaeda, but the Yemeni civilian population. The use of air power against civilians is a modern version of the British tactic of bombing the villages of rebel tribes. This state terror has been taken to a new level of destructiveness, but the purpose is strikingly similar. The intention of the US is to extend its colonial control over this strategic region. Britain, the former colonial power, is intent on securing its share of the spoils.
The opening of a new front in the so-called "war on terror" will have incalculable consequences. Brown stated specifically that Britain would assist Yemen in developing its coastguard. Last October, the Yemeni coastguard seized an Iranian vessel which was alleged to be carrying weapons to Houthi rebels in northern Yemen. With the world’s shipping passing through the Gulf of Aden, such a naval policy has explosive global implications. The prospect of Yemen impounding merchant vessels with British and US-backing threatens to spark any number of international conflicts.
