Senator McCain on protests: ‘We cannot afford a Tiananmen Square in Cairo’

THE HILL

by Bridget Johnson

1/30/11

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Sunday cautioned against the Egyptian protests turning into a deadly crackdown like the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in China.

“We cannot afford a Tiananmen Square in Cairo,” McCain said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“I think one of the lessons here is that we need to be on the right side of history in these countries,” he said of the unfolding political crisis in not only a U.S. ally but a cultural center of the world.[…]

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/141101-mccain-on-protests-we-cannot-afford-a-tiananmen-square-in-cairo

However we did attempt to afford  a Tiananmen Square type disaster in America.  And we do have the below as part of our history. This post  can be found at Wikipedia:

Kent State shootings

The Kent State shootings – also known as the May 4 massacre or Kent State massacre – [2][3][4] occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.[5]  Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the American invasion of Cambodia, which President Richard Nixon announced in a television address on April 30. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.[6][7] There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of four million[8] students, and the event further affected the public opinion – at an already socially contentious time – over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War.[…]

And more on Kent State and a request for a congressional inquiry can be found here. Congressman Dennis Kucinich was said to be launching a congressional inquiry into an altercation and apparent pistol fire that occurred about 70 seconds before Ohio National Guardsmen shot students and protestors on May 4, 1970.

But, using neocons as a “role model” takes some getting used to. Being on the right side of history would likely be a new adventure for the neocons. History does not know why the neocons started the Iraq war.

Elite Areas Attacked in Class War

The New York Times

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and MONA EL-NAGGAR

January 30, 2011

CAIRO — As the government of Egypt shakes from a broad-based uprising, long-simmering resentments have burst into open class warfare.

Over the past several days, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians — from indigent fruit peddlers and doormen to students and engineers, even wealthy landlords — poured into the streets together to denounce President Hosni Mubarak and battle his omnipresent security police. Then, on Friday night, the police pulled out of Egypt’s major cities abruptly, and tensions between rich and poor exploded.

Looters from Cairo’s vast shantytowns attacked gleaming suburban shopping malls, wild rumors swirled of gunfights at the bridges and gates to the most expensive neighborhoods and some of their residents turned wistful about Mr. Mubarak and his authoritarian rule.[…]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/world/africa/31classwar.html?_r=1&hp

From joejolly’s Post: “Why Tunisia and Why Now?”

Politics may be transparent to the dissatisfaction. And so may religion. The dissatisfaction may be more basic than type of government or kind of religion. The dissatisfaction may stem from the distribution of the country’s wealth.

It may well be a case of the “haves” versus the “have nots”. That is a very basic problem not confined to any region of the world nor any particular country. And wise leaders of countries are cognizant of a possible “wealth distribution problem” and tries to avoid it.[...]

http://joejolly.wordpress.com/2011/01/29/why-tunisia-and-why-now/

Is “Business Friendly” Another Name for Fascism?

Is capitalism, under the neocons control, the gateway to fascism?

What is fascism?

Wikipedia answers:

Fascism (pronounced /ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology.^[1][2][3][4] Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy.^[5][6] Fascism was originally founded by Italian national syndicalists in World War I who combined extreme right-wing political views along with collectivism.^[7][8][9] Scholars generally consider fascism to be on the far right.^{[10][11][12][13][14][15]}

Fascists believe that a nation is an organic community that requires strong leadership, singular collective identity, and the will and ability to commit violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong.^[16] They claim that culture is created by the collective national society and its state, that cultural ideas are what give individuals identity, and thus they reject individualism.^[16] Viewing the nation as an integrated collective community, they see pluralism as a dysfunctional aspect of society, and justify a totalitarian state as a means to represent the nation in its entirety.^{[17][18][…]}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

From the above description, we see:

Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy.^[5][6]

And from the real world we see the co-mingling of a business-government perspective:

A man was in prison, accused of blowing up an airliner with 270 people on board – most of them Americans. 270 people were killed. The man was released – before completing his prison sentence. And America and a business leader in America “freaked out” when the leader of that man’s country came to America as a guest of the United Nations.

The United Nations, mottos and mission statements not withstanding,  played a spectator role in the fiasco.

But then came the news that Big Oil may have played a role in the bombers release. And the American din died down.

Some web posts that addressed the Lockerbie bomber are:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10708328

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10992698

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11045140

America’s neocons have displayed a strong relationship to business. Either “business friendly” or “fascism” could describe turning over the world’s second largest oil reserves to America’s BIG OIL. And America’s government, to this day has been “mum” on the cause for the war that gave BIG OIL the second largest oil reserves known. In fascism, a leader does not have to tell the people why he does what he does. Lets look again at the above description:

[…] they see pluralism as a dysfunctional aspect of society, and justify a totalitarian state as a means to represent the nation in its entirety

The word totalitarian could help explain why no cause for the Iraq war has been given to the mothers and fathers whose sons and daughters died in that war. Over 6,000 American soldiers died and no one, outside of the “war starters”  knows why. A supreme leader doesn’t have to tell anyone why he does what he does. And because of that America’s “current events” news pool is devoid of a cause for the Iraq war. The Iraqi war is unique in the annals of war history.

When the neocons do finally pull back the sign saying “business friendly” one may then see another sign. Maybe the “business friendly” sign was just a covering for a sign that says “America Welcome to Your New World of Fascism”.

Will the World’s Political Turbulence Trigger a “Black Box” Event?

The answer, at this time, appears to be no. But the political situation in some parts of the world is still fluid.

Unusual physical and emotional turbulence is a part of the world’s environment. When the emotional turbulence of Princess Diana’s death reached the world, there seemed to be a correlation between “black box” activity and that sad event.

When India experienced its tsunami, there seemed to be a correlation between that disaster and “black box” activity. If the “black box” speaks, perhaps – todays combatants ought to listen.

The “black box” has a professional name and professionals observing its activity. It is called the Global Consciousness Project:

The Global Consciousness Project, also called the EGG Project, is an international, multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others. We collect data continuously from a global network of physical random number generators located in 65 host sites around the world. The archive contains more than 10 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials every second.[…]

http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

There is a real time display of the GCP EGG Basket Observer on the Global Consciousness Project’s website. On the home page, the “realtime” display link will get you to the display. The display shows The GCP EGG Basket Observer in action. Of course an untrained visitor would not likely be able to interpret anything, but if the random behavior was, while you were watching, replaced by  clearly observable “patterns” then something may have happened or perhaps – is going to happen..

Why Tunisia And Why Now?

Tunisia has seen a revolt – not by soldiers with guns but by citizens of the country who are expressing dissatisfaction with government.

Politics may be transparent to the dissatisfaction. And so may religion. The dissatisfaction may be more basic than type of government or kind of religion. The dissatisfaction may stem from the distribution of the country’s wealth.

It may well be a case of the “haves” versus the “have nots”. That is a very basic problem not confined to any region of the world nor any particular country. And wise leaders of countries are cognizant of a possible “wealth distribution problem” and tries to avoid it.

What happened in Tunisia can happen anywhere – even in America.

America’s democracy has played a positive and significant role in the distribution of America’s wealth. At least that was the case up until 1980 – when the neocons took over America’s government. The neocons made radical changes to America’s government.

Below is an indicator showing what happened to the distribution of wealth in the “business friendly” domain of the neocons:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5303590.stm#graph

Take a good look at the above graph.  During the pre-neocon years you will notice that workers wages and productivity were pretty much in parallel and going up. If you look at the years covered by the graph, you will realize that both Democrats and pre-1980 Republicans allowed workers salaries to track their productivity. And in a democratic society that seems fair and just.

Now take a look at what happened to that wage growth AFTER the neocons got political traction. Wages stayed flat as productivity went “skyward”. And if you think that “business friendly” business did not like that then you may be a candidate to purchase that bridge – in New York – cheap.

Into whose pocket did the money that should have gone into labor’s pocket – go? Keep in mind that monkeys(man’s nearest relative?) have no use for money.

The money went into business’s pocket. You may think that sounds democratic  but it ain’t. That puts emphasis on the domain that fascism puts emphasis on and left workers to wrestle with an upcoming burst of the housing bubble.

First the neocons drained the pockets of America’s workers and next there was an attack on America’s treasury via war spending and TAX CUTS. And by December of 2007, America and much of the Western world was in recession. The neocon politicians who wrecked America’s treasury won’t be the ones who pays for what could rationally be called, “stupidity”. Even their TAX CUTS – designed to die in December of 2010 may escape responsibility for what the neocons caused.

De-regulation of a privately owned, critical government requirement, could rationally be called “stupid”.

When privately owned businesses, that make up a government’s economy,  go bad – citizens of that government pay. When a government shows favoritism to a smaller group at the expense of a larger group there is the distinct possibility that the larger group may one day “explode”.

America is headed in the fascism direction which shares not much with democracy. It is weird to hear of a business, an Ohio McDonald’s,  requesting its employees, via their paycheck envelopes, to vote Republican.

The neocons warned America against opposition to their political party by suggesting a civil war. America’s press, took the civil war warning and sanitized it by placing the “civil war” in the context of an intra-party political squabble between the 1980 neocon members and the new Tea Party neocon members.

An intra-party squabble is not a “civil war”. A civil war is what the South and the North did in 1863.

Judiciary chairman rejects Dems’ call for imminent gun-safety hearings

THE HILL

By Mike Lillis – 01/28/11

The GOP chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has rejected a Democratic request to schedule public hearings on gun safety in the wake of this month’s attempted assassination of an Arizona congresswoman.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said Friday that, while the Judiciary panel should appraise the federal system designed to block gun sales to the mentally ill and other prohibited buyers, holding public hearings now could undermine the prosecution of the alleged Arizona shooter, Jared Lee Loughner.

“The Judiciary Committee should, at the appropriate time, undertake a review of the [National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)] as a part of our oversight of Justice Department programs,” Smith said Friday in an e-mail. […]

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/140975-judiciary-chairman-rejects-dems-call-for-imminent-gun-safety-hearings-

The idea of GUN SAFETY ought to have an instant attraction for politicians in a country as violent as America. But as “gun wisdom” goes – “guns don’t kill – people do”. It is lucky America did not use gun wisdom when a Midwestern news source, years ago,  said it had the plans to build a nuclear weapon and it wanted to publish those plans.

After all, “nuclear weapons don’t kill – people do”. Back then America’s wisdom was different from what it is today. The publishing of the nuclear plans were not carried out.

Two very powerful organizations favor guns – the current version of America’s Supreme Court and the National Rifle Association. Lets take a look at a “.edu” website post on the Supreme Court:

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

US Supreme Court Strikes Down Chicago Gun Ban

The Supreme Court has ruled that the right to gun ownership applies nationwide. The High Court’s decision is a response to a challenge of gun ban in Chicago and one of its suburbs, and comes two years after the justices struck down a law in Washington, D.C. banning possession of handguns.

The five-to-four decision resulted from a case against the city of Chicago and its suburb of Oak Park. Both have laws that effectively ban handgun possession by almost all private citizens.[…]

http://www.library.northwestern.edu/news/2010/july/us-supreme-court-strikes-down-chicago-gun-ban

And Sara Palin talks to NRA members:

Sarah Palin Tells NRA Convention Obama Would Ban Guns if He Could

8 months ago

Mary C. CURTIS

National Correspondent

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Sarah Palin told NRA members meeting here that the only reason President Obama and his allies aren’t trying to limit gun ownership rights is the fear of a political backlash.

“Don’t doubt for a minute that, if they thought they could get away with it, they would ban guns and ban ammunition and gut the Second Amendment,” Palin told the annual NRA gathering Friday. She urged some 9,000 NRA members to “stop them in their tracks.”

The NRA’s “Celebration of American Values” event was part political rally, part Tea Party gathering, with a parade of mostly Republican warm-up acts before Palin, the day’s star, spoke. An NRA member, she electrified the crowd with a speech that defended Alaska, the Second Amendment and America, and attacked President Obama, the “lamestream media,” and gun control activists — “anti-Second Amendment rights activists,” she called them.

While some might dismiss her as an “NRA gun-nut chick,” she said, those folks don’t get it. “Criminals are, of course, to blame for the crimes,” she said. “It’s the bad guys, not the piece of metal.” All gun bans do is “take them away from law-abiding citizens.”[…]

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/05/14/sarah-palin-tells-nra-convention-obama-would-ban-guns-if-he-coul/

There must be a reason that the neocons are putting the ”TOWN HALL” murder of a 9 year old child and others on the “back-burner”. Could details of that Arizona massacre give a hint as to why the neocons are not in a hurry to have Congress look into what looks like a POLITICALLY MOTIVATED massacre?

And remember Sarah Palin crosshairs comments:

Palin caught in crosshairs map controversy after Tucson shootings

Putting these things all together, one can start to get a picture of why the neocons may be reluctant to talk about gun violence in violent America.

Bush says he’s done with politics, fundraising, campaigning

USA TODAY

By Douglas Stanglin, USA TODAY

Former president George W. Bush says he is through with politics, fundraising and campaigning — and has no interest in political punditry.

Bush talked about his post-presidential years in an interview this week in Dallas with C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb at a Southern Methodist University forum. His presidential library will be located at SMU.

The full interview is scheduled to air on Sunday.

An excerpt:

I don’t want to go out and campaign for candidates. I don’t want to be viewed as a perpetual money-raiser. I don’t want to be on these talk shows giving my opinion, second-guessing the current president. I think it’s bad for the country, frankly, to have a former president criticize his successor. It’s tough enough to be president as it is without a former president undermining the current president. Plus, I don’t want to do that. […]

He adds that he finds this stage of his post-presidency “very comfortable” and “somewhat liberating.”[…]

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/01/bush-says-hes-done-with-politics-fundraising-campaigning/1

Seizing a Moment, Al Jazeera Taps Arab Anger

 

The New York Times

By ROBERT F. WORTH and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

January 27, 2011

The protests rocking the Arab world this week have one thread uniting them: Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite channel whose aggressive coverage has helped propel insurgent emotions from one capital to the next.

Al Jazeera has been widely hailed for helping enable the revolt in Tunisia with its galvanizing early reports, even as Western-aligned political factions in Lebanon and the West Bank attacked and burned the channel’s offices and vans this week, accusing it of incitement against them.

In many ways, it is Al Jazeera’s moment — not only because of the role it has played, but also because the channel has helped to shape a narrative of popular rage against oppressive American-backed Arab governments (and against Israel) ever since its founding 15 years ago. That narrative has long been implicit in the channel’s heavy emphasis on Arab suffering and political crisis, its screaming-match talk shows, even its sensational news banners and swelling orchestral accompaniments. […]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/world/middleeast/28jazeera.html?hp

After citizens leave their environments of formal education, current events news sources takes over their training.

Al Jazeera’s current events news pools trained in the Middle East and neocon current events news pools trained in America. Both trainers seems to have had effects in line with the training.

The neocons wore their anti-Middle East bias on their “shirt-sleeves”. When the neocons’ Middle East sidekick was cluster bombing schools and playgrounds of Lebanon, President Bush’s response was, “I can’t tell Israel how to protect itself”. He was quite a president – quite a President – quite a President indeed. He gave the notion of  world leadership a new meaning.

President Nixon did not do that. President Eisenhower did not do that. No other American President made a public spectacle of the notion of world leadership. And now, due to America’s own “current events” news pool comes the saying that Ex-President George W. Bush’s popularity stands just behind President’s Obama’s popularity. Both, Al Jazeera’s and the neocon’s  “current events” news pools seems to have had the desired effect?

America’s “current events” news pool has a heavy neocon footprint in America’s politics. It is difficult to tell, at this time, whether politics or profit is its primary objective.

The neocons’ war based politics is supposed to scare everybody, even Americans(civil war), into complying with their wishes. America, a long time ago, used to say, “better dead than red”. Will the Middle East, reach its own version of that saying?

Oscar Nominee Josh Fox Speaks Out About Oil Lobby’s Efforts to Crush His Film

THE HUFFINGTON POST

Joshua Kors Investigative Reporter, The Nation

January 27, 2011

Josh Fox’s home sits in the woods of Milanville, Pennsylvania, near the rushing waters of the Delaware River. In May 2008, a strange letter appeared in his mailbox. A natural gas company was offering him $100,000 if he granted them permission to drill on his property.

Instead of signing, Fox decided to investigate. Armed with a video camera and a banjo, he set off on a journey up and down the Marcellus Shale, a massive reserve of natural gas that stretches 600 miles from Pennsylvania to Maryland, Virginia and into Tennessee. Known as the “Saudi Arabia of natural gas,” the shale contains billions of dollars in untapped fuel.

Fox wanted to know: What happened to other families who agreed to drilling on their property?

What he found was a heartbreaking collection of severely ill families whose aquifers had become so tainted by the gas, they could literally light their tap water on fire. He edited his footage into a modest documentary, Gasland, which was soon embraced by outraged viewers across the country. It won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the Lennon-Ono Peace Prize, and now has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary.

With the spotlight, Fox has been transformed from a mild-mannered art director at a Brooklyn theater company to a respected filmmaker to an outspoken activist on par with Erin Brockovich, a professional thorn in the side of the natural gas industry. […]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-kors/director-josh-fox-receive_b_814590.html

Prior to the “business friendly” neocons there was talk and actions about conserving the environment. But the neocons put the focus on being business friendly. Apparently, where “business friendly” clashed with the environment – the environment stood to loose.

The post speaks of the drilling technique used. The post says:

Kors: Your film gets into the dirty details of this new drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, where they bore a long, narrow hole thousands of feet into the Earth, then blast into it with water, sand and chemicals, cracking the rock and freeing the natural gas. Every town you visit in the film, the fracking has begun, and the drinking water has already become poisoned. Now, the drilling companies are saying the chemicals they’re blasting into the Earth can’t possibly escape their pipes and, thus, can’t leach into the drinking water. So, how is the water getting contaminated?

Apparently, an environmental impact study is not business friendly?

A Blogger Can Be Forgiven For Misspelled Words?

Over in Indiana a pal-item.com website commented on President Obama’s State of the Union Address

The blog’s title is “Girdlock, not progress, most likely after speech”. Believing that the author meant “Gridlock” caused joejolly to read further into the article to see how the author detected the “gridlock” issue.

The author gave the President credit for what was apparent to everybody – the President can deliver a message clearly and devoid of profane threats. Perhaps if the delivery had been in Maine, more “spice” would have been needed.

The author spoke of a road map that shows where America must go from here. The author mentioned a ruinous national debt and creating jobs.

The author was critical of some neocon behavior but left the ball squarely in the court of 1/3 of America’s government – the executive branch.

It took Reaganomics four years to arrive at this “ruinous national debt”. That is a four year window in which this author could have sounded the alarm. Did that happen?

Did the author sound the alarm when President Bush gave America’s income away via “magical TAX CUTS”?

And that’s where one might question – where the author has been over the past twenty-some-odd years. A visit to the “crooksandliars.com” website shows this:

Study: Bush Tax Cuts Cost More Than Twice As Much As Dems’ Health-Care Bill

By Susie Madrak

Citizens for Tax Justice point out what I was saying just the other day: We only hear all this crying and moaning about the deficit when it’s something for regular working people, and not a powerful lobby. And of course, the Republican’ts are right out there in front of the Hypocrisy Parade:

And yet, many of the lawmakers who argue that the health care reform legislation is “too costly” are the same lawmakers who supported the Bush tax cuts.

Their own voting record demonstrates that health care reform is not a matter of costs, but a matter of priorities.

It’s difficult to see how the Bush tax cuts could provide us with two and a half times the benefits of health care reform. In 2010, when all the Bush tax cuts are finally phased in, a staggering 52.5 percent of the benefits will go to the richest 5 percent of taxpayers.

President Bush and his supporters argued that these high-income tax cuts would benefit everybody because they would unleash investment that would spark widespread economic prosperity. There seems to be no evidence of this, particularly given the collapse of the economy at the end of the Bush years.

The tax legislation enacted under President George W. Bush from 2001 through 2006 will cost $2.48

trillion over the 2001-2010 period.

This includes the revenue loss of $2.11 trillion that results directly from the Bush tax cuts as well as the $379 billion in additional interest payments on the national debt that we must make since the tax cuts were deficit-financed.[…]

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/study-bush-tax-cuts-cost-more-twice-m

And lets visit ZFacts Website to see this:

Reagan got elected by telling the country the debt was "out of control." Compared to national income, it was the lowest in 50 years. He probably didn’t know. But his supply-side economists did. They lied to America.

In 1981 Reagan’s supply siders wrote the tax cuts for the rich and his budgets. The Senate was Republican, and Reagan got the Southern Dems in the House to vote for him. All Republicans and a few Dems voted for the budget. The national debt had its worst year since 1945. The next year it got worse, and for 20 out of 20 years, the supply siders raised the debt relative to our ability to pay.[…]

http://zfacts.com/p/318.html

The neocons and those who seek a fascist America are playing a “blame” game in order to keep the neocons in power. If America’s press, in protection of America, had spoken out about neocon’s performance, the neocons would likely be only a memory by now.

A blogger can be forgiven for misspelled words but its harder to forgive content that seems to be at variance with history. Problem recognition is the first step in problem resolution.