Addicted to Nonsense

by Chris Hedges

"What really matters in our lives-the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the steady deterioration of the dollar, the mounting foreclosures, the climbing unemployment, the melting of the polar ice caps and the awful reality that once the billions in stimulus money run out next year we will be bereft and broke-doesn't fit into the cheerful happy talk that we mainline into our brains. We are enraptured by the revels of a dying civilization. Once reality shatters the airy edifice, we will scream and yell like petulant children to be rescued, saved and restored to comfort and complacency. There will be no shortage of demagogues, including buffoons like Sarah Palin, who will oblige. We will either wake up to face our stark new limitations, to retreat from imperial projects and discover a new simplicity, as well as a new humility, or we will stumble blindly toward catastrophe and neofeudalism."

Political Courage?

Neo-Cons Get Warm and Fuzzy Over "War President"

by Eli Clifton

"For hawks like Kristol, Kagan and Senor who have been calling for a surge in U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan since August, Obama's announcement on Tuesday night was a high-point in their campaign of op-ed's, column's and conference's to push the Obama White House in the direction of an escalation in Afghanistan."

It's interesting how when Obama defies his democratic base he is showing "political courage," but when advances the interests of the system he is simply being "pragmatic," and "moderate."

War and Displacement Today

From Democracy Now! Headlines:

Pentagon: Gates Authorized to Deploy More Troops

The Pentagon has acknowledged President Obama’s new troop deployment to Afghanistan could be higher than the 30,000 he announced this week. The Washington Post reports Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been authorized to deploy another 3,000 troops at his discretion. A senior Pentagon official said the number of additional US forces deployed under Obama’s escalation plan could ultimately top 35,000. Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gates said the first troops would begin to arrive in Afghanistan later this month.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates: “The first of these forces will begin to arrive in Afghanistan within two to three weeks. In all, since taking office, President Obama has committed nearly 52,000 additional troops to Afghanistan for a total US force of approximately 100,000.”

Israel Revoking Record Number of Jerusalem Residency Permits for Palestinians

In Israel and the Occupied Territories, new figures show the Israeli government revoked more residency permits for Palestinians in Jerusalem last year than in any year on record. The Israeli human rights group HaMoked says more than 4,500 Palestinians were stripped of their residency in 2008. The average number of revoked residency permits had previously been around 200 per year.

Blackwater Founder Confirms Role as CIA “Asset”

The founder of the private military firm Blackwater has confirmed he’s operated as a CIA “asset” in addition to his company’s publicly known work for the US government. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Erik Prince said he’s served a dual role as both a contractor and as an operative for secretive missions. The disclosure follows independent journalist Jeremy Scahill’s report last week that Blackwater is operating in Pakistan on behalf for the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command. Prince says he was selected for several missions in part to give the CIA “unattributable capability.” Prince also says he plans to step down from Blackwater and become a high school teacher.

Why the left failed to make a drama out of the crisis:

Slavoj Žižek’s latest work explores why the near-collapse of capitalism generated so little response from the left, and asks how we might rescue, or remake, radical politics.
by Guy Rundle

What positive content there is seems to rely heavily on the Negri/Hardt – and more Hardt than Negri – notions of the common, as neither public nor private. That’s useful in analysing the process of increasingly abstract enclosures – of given genetic material, language, etc – into intellectual property regimes, but it also simply and unreflectively replicates the US humanities post-doctoral world – a realm of open source, cultural flows and radical personal equality sustained by invisible old property: the massive endowments of the Ivy League.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/7761/

The Deep Muddy...

The "safe haven" myth

Stephen Walt

A Better Way to Kill?

Human Terrain Systems, Anthropologists and the War in Afghanistan

By DAVID PRICE

Study: In Afghan Debate, Few Antiwar Op-Eds in Nation’s Two Leading Newspapers

Democracy Now!

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has put out a study analyzing how the issue of war escalation has been discussed in the opinion papers of the two leading newspapers in the country, the New York Times and The Washington Post. They feature decidedly pro-war views in the months leading up to Obama’s decision on deploying more troops. In the New York Times, pro-war voices outnumbered anti-war ones by a ratio of five-one. While in the Washington Post, the ratio was ten to one.

Matthew Hoh Speaks Grim Truth To Power

by Roger Morris & George Kenney

Morris's Between the Graves: America, Afghanistan and the Politics of Intervention, will be published by Knopf in 2010.