After taking out my anger at having a rotten cold on Dick Cheney for two days for his outrageous statement published by Politico, what better way to start a new year than to pass the mantle to the master – Rachel Maddow:
It’s hard to accept that life events can cause a radical, indelible change in the personality – what we call Traumatic Neurosis or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We value our minds and think that we can get over anything with time. People who have P.T.S.D. know otherwise, but keep their knowledge secret to avoid the well meaning advice of the unafflicted – "you’ve got to put it behind you" they say. But how do you put the most important thing that has ever happened to you "behind you," or get "over it?" Traumatized people actually try to do that to their detriment – keep their trauma out of their consciousness, which allows it to fester and effect their lives in hidden ways.
Trauma is more than simply a bad thing happening. It’s an unexpected circumstance that, for a time, overwhelms the mind – renders it inoperative. We’ve seen it – a blank face, someone who is confused, can’t put their thoughts together. After a time, they come back, but they’re left with a private knowledge the rest of us don’t have. They know that the mind is not infallible and can just disappear. In a way, they know psychological death, and they’re never quite the same. What are the consequences? They spend their lives trying to "prevent the past" – trying to be vigilant so that it won’t happen again. They develop a set of symptoms including unusual fears, altered states, repetative experience, and a grim view of themselves and the world – often disconnected from awareness of the events that caused them. Treatment is slow, and involves in part connecting the symptoms to the trauma, getting them out of the closet, anticipating situations that set them off. They have to encounter their traumatic experience directly.
A lot of us have P.T.S.D. about 9/11. We saw it on Bush’s face in the video when he was told in the kindergarten. We felt it as we watched the towers fall on our television sets with blank stares. It’s in the pictures from New York where people were gazing into space. And it’s in a lot of the insanity in our government over the Bush years. We’re hearing it now about the Nigerian bomber – trying to "prevent the past" – as if we could absolutely assure that it would never happen again. We talk about 9/11 all the time, but we rarely look at the pictures, remember those moments. The video is almost forbidden on television. We’ve spent trillions, and sent thousands to the grave trying to unhappen 9/11, looking for a safety that is elusive. And we’ve allowed ourselves to go over to the "dark side."
White House hits back at Cheney, blames Bush for security failures
Raw Story
By Daniel Tencer
December 30th, 2009‘Obama doesn’t need to beat his chest’ to prove US is at war, White House says
The White House has issued a stinging rebuke to Dick Cheney after the former vice president accused President Barack Obama of trying to "pretend" that the US isn’t fighting a war against terrorists. And in a sign that it plans to engage in the political battle over the attempted Christmas Day terrorist attack on flight 253, the White House made it clear it sees the Bush administration as being responsible for the relative lack of success in what it now refers to as the "war against al-Qaeda."
"The former vice president makes the clearly untrue claim that the President — who is this nation’s Commander-in-Chief — needs to realize we are at war. I don’t think anyone realizes this very hard reality more than President Obama," wrote White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer. In a written statement to the Politico news site Tuesday, Cheney said: “We are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. … Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war?"
Pfeiffer responded by pointing to "numerous" instances in which the president has stated that he considers the US to be at war, and added: "The difference is this: President Obama doesn’t need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last Administration – we are not at war with a tactic (“terrorism”), we at war with something that is tangible: al-Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered."
Pfeiffer also outlined an interpretation of the war formerly known as the "war on terror" that places the blame for the continuing existence of al-Qaeda on the Bush administration.
[F]or seven years after 9/11, while our national security was overwhelmingly focused on Iraq — a country that had no al-Qaeda presence before our invasion — Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda’s leadership was able to set up camp in the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where they continued to plot attacks against the United States. … It was President Obama who finally implemented a strategy of winding down the war in Iraq, and actually focusing our resources on the war against al-Qaeda – more than doubling our troops in Afghanistan, and building partnerships to target al-Qaeda’s safe-havens in Yemen and Somalia.Pfeiffer added that "it is telling that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the Administration than condemning the attackers."In the debate over the attempted flight 253 attack, some Democratic politicians have spotted weaknesses in Republican arguments against Obama. The National Journal reports that the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Chris Van Hollen, and US House Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) are attacking the Bush administration for failing to address the al-Qaeda threat. "In general, we are facing the consequences of the Bush administration’s failures to deal with al-Qaeda," Van Hollen told the National Journal. "The Republicans have no business in pointing fingers at the Obama administration on terrorism and national security." In recent days the Obama administration has made it clear it doesn’t intend to shift its foreign policy goals in light of the December 25 attempted attack on Northwest Airlines flight 253, allegedly carried out by Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Greg Sargent at the Plum Line reports that the White House has rejected calls by senators Joe Lieberman, John McCain and others to stop the planned shut-down of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in the wake of the foiled attack.
"The detention facility at Guantanamo has been used by al-Qaeda as a rallying cry and recruiting tool — including its affiliate al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. As our military leaders have recognized, closing the detention facility at Guantanamo is a national security imperative," said "a senior administration official" in an email obtained by Sargent.
Obama commented that the leadership in Iran is at war with its own people. He might well have said it about the Republican Party – at war with our own government. Their criticisms are trivial – Obama didn’t decry the violence soon enough, loud enough – didn’t use the right phrases. It’s as if Cheney thought that he was Vice President for life – and what he thought was the only right way to think.
READABILITY: The single best tech idea of 2009, though, the real life-changer, has got to be Readability. It’s a free button for your Web browser’s toolbar [get it at lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability]. When you click it, Readability eliminates everything from the Web page you’re reading except the text and photos. No ads, blinking, links, banners, promos or anything else. Times Square just goes away. You wind up with a simple, magazine-like layout, presented in a beautiful font and size (your choice) against a white or off-white background with none of this red-text-against-black business. You occasionally run into a Web page that Readability doesn’t handle right — no big deal, just refresh the page to see the original. But most of the time, Readability makes the world online a calmer, cleaner, more beautiful place.
 |
Move Your Money: A New Year’s Resolution
Huffington Post
by Arianna Huffington and Rob Johnson
12/29/2009Too-big-to-fail banks are profiting from bailout dollars and government guarantees, and growing bigger. Tell us which community bank you use, and why.
Last week, over a pre-Christmas dinner, the two of us, along with political strategist Alexis McGill, filmmaker/author Eugene Jarecki, and Nick Penniman of the HuffPost Investigative Fund, began talking about the huge, growing chasm between the fortunes of Wall Street banks and Main Street banks, and started discussing what concrete steps individuals could take to help create a better financial system. Before long, the conversation turned practical, and with some help from friends in the world of bank analysis, a video and website were produced devoted to a simple idea: Move Your Money…
Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei loves caviar and vulgar jokes, defector claims
Telegraph.co.uk
By Damien McElroy and Ahmad Vahdat
31 Dec 2009
A defector from the private guard of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, has given the first comprehensive account of the private life of the secretive figure who has led the country for 20 years. A catalogue of the private opulence and eccentric tastes of 70-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei and his family has been compiled by Iran’s opposition Green Movement from the accounts of the defector, who is said to be in hiding in France. Among his claims are that Ayatollah Khamenei has a voracious appetite for trout and caviar; is an avid hoarder of collectables from bejewelled pipes to fine horses; and that he suffers regular bouts of depression which are treated in part by audiences with a mid-ranking mullah who tells vulgar jokes. Claims from three intelligence officials, who have also fled Iran, have additionally documented the Khamenei family’s wide-reaching business connections, including interests in European manufacturers, African mobile phone companies and international commodities markets.
But the glimpse at the imperial lifestyle of an otherwise austere theologan is groundbreaking. Ayatollah Khamenei is said to be a keen collector with a prized assembly of antique walking sticks said to number 170. The Supreme Leader was once a fanatical equestrian enthusiast and his extensive stables reportedly include more than 100 of the country’s leading horses. His cloaks are said to be woven from hair of specially bred camels. Ayatollah Khamenei is claimed to have accumulated a sprawling private court that stretches across six palaces, including Naviran, the former resident of the Shah in Tehran. Two of the palaces – Naviran and Valikabad – are equipped with deep, reinforced concrete nuclear bunkers said to be capable of withstanding nuclear attack. A fully functioning hospital is overseen by a former health minister.
The accounts provide new information that links Ayatollah Khamenei to the brutal assault on protestors following the presidential elections in June. The man alleged to have carried out interrogations of prisoners at the notorious Khazirak detention centre, where at least three people were tortured to death, is a key part of the inner circle. Hossain Taeb is said to have run an extensive surveillance operation for the personal use of Ayatollah Khamenei for almost 15 years. Each evening the leader is said to listen to recordings of senior officials and colleague talking about him in a compilation that normally lasts 20 minutes. Mojtaba Khamenei, the leader’s second son, has meanwhile emerged as an influential figure with extensive business interests who has played a prominent role in organising the Basij militia that has meted out violence against protesters.
Ayatollah Khamenei has since 1989 been the Islamic Republic’s supreme guide under the Shia Muslim doctrine of VelÄyat-e faqih, which dictates that a designated cleric has the final say in state matters. His position has been challenged by the protest movement, which sprung up after leading presidential challengers Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi decried the landslide re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June’s election as rigged. The bodyguard was a member of a 200-strong permanent personal protection team who provide the Supreme Leader’s primary security. He is currently staying at a safe house in France organised by the Green Movement’s exiled leader, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a film director. The credibility of his account is enhanced by his denial of widespread rumours in Iran the Ayatollah has used opium.
Mr Makmalbaf claimed the Green Movement had gathered information about the Khamenei family’s investments abroad. "If the Western governments are serious enough in putting pressure on the regime by applying economic sanctions, then they should follow these leads and find these bank accounts and confiscate their deposits to be returned to the Iranian people at a later time," he said. Iran’s embassy in London refused to comment on the allegations. "I have no comment on those things," a spokesman said.
Rush Limbaugh rushed to Honolulu hospital with chest pains
Washington Post.com
By Anne E. Kornblut
December 31, 2009HONOLULU – Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh was brought by ambulance to a hospital here on Wednesday after experiencing chest pains, according to a local television station. Most of the island’s focus over the holidays has been on President Obama, who is vacationing with his family and a group of friends in a residential waterfront neighborhood.
But Limbaugh has been staying a short distance from the Obamas, at the Kahala Hotel & Resort, according to local news accounts. The conservative radio host was spotted on a golf course next to his hotel earlier in the week. KITV reported that Limbaugh was taken Wednesday afternoon from the resort in serious condition and transported him to the Queens Medical Center in Honolulu. Hospital and resort officials would not comment on that report.
It’s pathetic to break a New Year’s resolution before we even get to New Year’s Day, but here I go. I had promised myself that I would do a better job of ignoring Dick Cheney’s corrosive and nonsensical outbursts – that I would treat them, more or less, like the pearls of wisdom one hears from homeless people sitting in bus shelters. But he is a former vice president, which gives him a big stage for his histrionic Rottweiler-in-Winter act. It is never a good idea to let widely disseminated lies and distortions go unchallenged. And the shrill screed that Cheney unloosed Wednesday is so full of outright mendacity that, well, my resolution will have to wait. In a statement to Politico, Cheney seemed to be trying to provide talking points for opponents of the Obama administration who – incredibly – would exploit the Christmas Day terrorist attack for political gain. Cheney’s broadside opens with a big lie, which he then repeats throughout. It is as if he believes that saying something over and over again, in a loud enough voice, magically makes it so.
"As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war," Cheney begins. Flat-out untrue. The fact is that Obama has said many times that we are at war against terrorists. He said it as a candidate. He said it in his inaugural address: "Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred." He has said it since. As Cheney well knows, unless he has lost even the most tenuous grip on reality, Obama’s commitment to warfare as an instrument in the fight against terrorism has won the president nothing but grief from the liberal wing of his party, with more certainly to come. Hasn’t anyone told Cheney that Obama is sharply boosting troop levels in Afghanistan in an attempt to avoid losing a war that the Bush administration started but then practically abandoned?
Cheney knows this. But he goes on to use the big lie – that Obama is "trying to pretend we are not at war" – to bludgeon the administration on a host of specific issues. Here is the one that jumps out at me: The president, Cheney claims, "seems to think that if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war." Interesting that Cheney should bring that up, because it now seems clear that the man accused of trying to blow up Northwest Flight 253, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was given training – and probably the bomb itself, which involved plastic explosives sewn into his underwear – by al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. It happens that at least two men who were released from Guantanamo appear to have gone on to play major roles as al-Qaeda lieutenants in Yemen. Who let these dangerous people out of our custody? They were set free by the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
The former vice president expresses his anger that the Obama administration is bringing Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to trial in New York. Cheney is also angry that Obama does not use the phrase "war on terror" all the time, the way the Bush administration used to. But Obama just specifies that we’re at war against a network of terrorists, on the sensible theory that it’s impossible to wage war against a tactic. Toward the end of his two-paragraph statement, Cheney goes completely off the rails and starts fulminating about how Obama is seeking "social transformation – the restructuring of American society." Somehow, this is supposed to be related to the president’s alleged disavowal of war – which, of course, isn’t real anyway. It makes you wonder whether Cheney is just feeding the fantasies of the paranoid right or has actually joined the tea-party fringe.
I can find reasons to criticize the administration’s response to the Christmas Day attack. Obama and his team were slow off the mark. Their initial statements were weak. Obama shouldn’t have waited three days to speak publicly, and when he did he should have shown some emotion. But using a terrorist attack to seek political gain? I have a New Year’s resolution to suggest for Cheney: Ahead of your quest for personal vindication, put country first.
It started off with the Y2K issue. Originally, that was about the use of 2 digit year designations in computer programs that might produce some screwy results. But then it turned into some kind of craziness that had people stockpiling food and ammo for the coming cataclysm [type unspecified]. Then came the presidential campaigns and the contested election of George W. Bush in November. Speaking of cataclysms, that would turn out to be the mother of all cataclysms, but it took as a while to figure that out. Come 2001, everything pales in the face of the September 11th attack on New York. Americans sat agape looking at their television sets as people plunged to their deaths and then the towers fell down. It’s been a little over eight years, but it’s still rarely shown as a video, only mentioned. It was a national trauma that drove us all insane – probably a major cataclysm in most of our lifetimes. We went to war with Afghanistan, let bin Laden escape at Tora Bora, lived in fear of anthrax and further Terror attacks. The first three years of the new century were cataclysmic – not a good start.Then in September 2002, we started the move from cataclysm to fiction. Our government began a campaign to go to war with Iraq – Regime Change was the buzz word. At the time, few knew the background to that change. I sure didn’t, though I didn’t think it was a good idea. It was simply a fiction, the reasons for invading Iraq. So, in March 2003, off we went. As the fictional nature of our reasons for being there became apparent to many of us, we began to realize that our leadership was sick and filled with conscious liars. 2004 brought the Abu Ghraib pictures and the gradual awareness that our government had a torture program, a domestic spying program, and was completely corrupt, but we re-elected them anyway in 2004.
2005 and 2006 brought deteriorating results in both wars. The fighting about global warming was paralyzing. The government was in a bunker. The Vice President’s Chief of Staff was indicted for lying. By the time of the midterm elections, we were demoralized and elected a Democratic Congress [barely]. Scooter Libby was convicted and pardoned. The country’s morale was in the basement. Another scandal – the firing of US Attorneys resulted in a wholesale clean-out of the Justice Department. Then in September 2008, the Stock Market crashed along with everything else that had to do with money – cataclysmic! Our new president faced the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, two lousy wars, and the most obstructionistic opposition imaginable from the Republican Party, in spite of all the cataclysm. It turns out that we are buried in debt to, of all places, China.