Freak Show

A close friend - who doesn’t live in America and, hence, doesn’t know America in the way I do - claims that the reason America involves itself endlessly in war is because it is a relatively young nation, eager to flex its young muscles. She theorizes thus, quite without malice, as if commenting on the antics of kittens tumbling about on the living room floor. Accepting her premise, I must say that I’ve watched America aging precipitously ever since Vietnam. In fact, the trend seems to have accelerated over the years to where our overall policy now appears to be all but in its death throes.

Domestically too, we seem to have adopted a model that is a throwback to the past. Communism and, in a sense, theocracy have been resurrected from a well deserved grave only to die again. America, as she had been only recently, was the future; the very model of modern success, to which the whole world flocked in droves even as this same world now retreats in utter disgust from this house of the dying, built on a jumble of acronyms.

War, by definition, is chaos. It makes no sense to impose rules on it. It makes even less sense to go in without any notion of victory. It is no accident that 60% of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan so far have died under Obama. It was Obama who changed the rules of engagement and struck the words ‘war’ and ‘victory’ from military manuals. It is Obama who doesn’t understand the difference between war and a police action.

The latter does not bode well for us here on the home front as well. Were we ourselves ever to contemplate rising up against the oppressive boot of our own government – after all constitutional measures have failed – who is now to say what Obama, or any leader of his ilk, would use his army for?

In past African wars, the European gentry used to gather on the surrounding hills with their sun shades and picnic baskets to watch. The distance made the dying anticeptic. Are we actually thinking of reviving this freak show?

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Toy Room

The U.S.-led NATO forces are not going to prevail. Not because they can’t. but because we don’t want them to. There’s s something else afoot. Pakistan is a failed state. Obviously it’s not a failed state to China. Ditto, North Korea.

There are any number of failed states being gathered up in South America, Africa, and in the Middle East. Assange can work both sides of the fence depending on which side you talk to. There’s even someone out there who finds terrorism useful, otherwise it would stop.

We’re being played. India, Israel and a whole slew of other nations don’t know it yet. They still believes the deck isn’t stacked. And this might surprise you: The culprits are not necessarily the culprits we are made to hate. This is simply a diversion. The culprits are inside our own American house.

America is the strongest, most opulent house on the block. Could there be any doubt that America is not in charge of its own affairs?

We’re told that America is in decline. The biggest house on the block never falls on hard times. But, at the same time, it remains free to make additions or alterations if the owners should so decide. The biggest house on the block determines its own changes. The change is toward totalitarianism. Things can be done either by doing or not doing. You don’t roll your mother-in-law off the cliff and into a lake, and then jump into the water and rescue her (though, on second thought, this ploy too has been tried before).

Suffice it to say that change is at hand. Our people already have an inkling of it. They are finding themselves increasingly marginalized. They feel they are being herded through a maze. They are made to argue amongst themselves as to what it all means. They’re not getting the straight story. The (stealth) narrative belongs to Obama, Pelosi, Soros, and Reid. WikiLeaks is only a part of the deception - so is Pakistan, North Korea, China, et al. The toy room is America.

Happy new year!!!

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Wikileaks: Promoting Shame

Of course the Chinese knew what N. Korea was up to. N. Korea is a Chinese proxy. N. Korea could not exist without China. The idea that N. Korea would do anything behind China’s back is ludicrous.

Iran too has its proxies that are hyperactive in the Middle East. JB has spent many hours detailing how it works. Our State Department, for public consumption, points fingers at N. Korea, Syria, Hezbollah, etc. to keep from pointing fingers at Beijing and Tehran. What exactly is gained by this strategy remains unclear.

The Wikileaks matter is quite fascinating in this regard. Washington too has its proxies many of whom have dried up (or are in the process of drying up) particularly since our current president has been in office. He is now claiming that the Wikileak document dumps represent a security risk. This is pure lip service on his part. His actions speak otherwise. Obama has done nothing to reign in Wikileaks. The military is screaming that it has put our soldiers at risk. True enough, but Obama has done more to put them at risk than Wikileaks ever could. No need on this website to go into details. Everyone is pretty much up to speed on how our own rules of engagement - threat of court martial right here at home - have undermined our military effort.

Now, that the leaks are beginning to put the lie to the public face of our diplomatic goals, Washington is starting to make noise (in protest). “It’s embarrassing,” goes the refrain from the State Department. Embarrassing? Quite.

The global consensus, fueled in large part by Washington itself, has been that anything Washington does is in many ways self-serving, duplicitous, and essentially evil. That is why U.S. aid to the starving or sick in Africa is routinely re-packaged as to erase any sign of its origin. Embarrassed too is anyone who may be exposed as having collaborated with Americans on any level.

Obama does nothing. We can assume Wikileaks serves his purposes. The next leaks are said to pertain to our banks. More nails to hammer the coffin lid on capitalism shut.

Finally, the common denominator in all this frantic leaking is America. There are no leaks with regard to Beijing, Moscow or Tehran. Oh, there are leaks alright, but they're not splashed all over the NYT which is only interested in America’s sins and in promoting its shame.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Winner Takes Nothing

Like it or not, whatever strides the U.S. has made since WWII has had a tremendous impact on the rest of the world. In every way, America has defined the standard of modernity. Every success, every setback, receives huge coverage in the foreign press. Often our political travails influence the policies set by governments around the globe.

It is normal for us - even regarded as inconsequential - when our political parties bad-mouth each other. Republican administrations are regularly attacked by Democrats who have been known to say anything they think they can get away with. We pretty much expect as much: Bush accused of favoring the rich; Bush labeled as war-monger; Bush blamed for Katrina; Bush blamed for the World Trade Center bombing. We take it all in stride, even if The New York Times, standard bearer for the Democrat Party, presents it as truth and then retracts it on page 47 a month later. Then there is ‘global warming’, a clever send-up to label America as excessively wasteful, even to the detriment of the planet. There’s the perennial issue of the poor, the homeless, the hungry (never mentioned during Democrat administrations) and, now, the overtly greedy that are said to deny the rest of the planet its daily bread.

Every bit of such claptrap originates from within our own borders. We can identify it as an effort to score points against the opposing party. Much of it is eventually discredited as pure rhetoric. But once its out there in print or on the net, others pick it up and build their case against America.

A prevalent notion abroad, for instance, is that America is a racist country. In fact, any opposition to Obama’s policies, for whatever reason, is liberally portrayed as racist sentiment against a black president. The fact that we elected a black president in the first place is conveniently forgotten.

You hear it everywhere - in India, in South America, in Africa - that America is a racist nation. They get it from reading the likes of Paul Krugman and Frank Rich, whose opinion columns are read widely throughout the world. It is only those who have actually traveled and lived here who know that race is not an issue for ordinary Americans; that England and Russia are far worse when it comes to that.

We’ve been accused often enough to understand it’s just a political ploy. We no longer take it seriously and tend to ignore it completely. It’s simply our own political operatives attempting to score points, points that are then picked up overseas to serve more sinister purposes.

It might have been good if we had nipped our tendency for engaging in some of our more extreme rhetoric in the bud sooner. Democrats, now turned Fabian socialists, in particular have succeeded in turning the domestic propaganda wars into a worldwide crusade. What started as domestic political rhetoric has grown hotter and is now threatening to topple the very foundations of our way of life. They have recruited allies among the ranks of our enemies; and, now, we are finding our nation in peril.

To a large extent, what we are experiencing today has been self-inflicted. The poison wells up from within our own institutions which have been infiltrated (by ourselves) and corrupted. Our present troubles are a consequence of our two-party system being at war rather than cooperating. It’s a repeat of Sherman’s (march to the sea) scorched earth policy. Winner takes nothing.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Unpopular

Unpopular? Hardly. Bush was unpopular; so was Nixon. Obama is way beyond ‘unpopular’. Obama is a menace.

Obama need not rally his troops for the midterms. They’ll understand why he’s saying what he’s saying. They understand that he needs to convince whoever’s in the middle that he’s not Left. They understand that without the middle, their cause is lost.

In the time he’s been in office, Obama has clearly demonstrated where he stands. He’ll say that his work is not yet finished; that once it is, people will see the difference. We see the difference already. We see that the way to the bottom is infinite. We could get to be like some nation in Africa, always at war, no food, organized slaughter and rape, escalating to periodic genocide. So much for the noble savage - and yet, the salt of the earth everywhere is innocent. Leadership makes all the difference.

Yes, there’s still a ways to go till we reach that bottom from which other bottoms may look like tops, but we’re dropping awfully fast. Maybe in two years time we can claim sister cities in Somalia.

I think people know what’s at stake. The polls pretty much confirm it. When even major media says that the Dems are in trouble, it must look really bad for them. Congressional approval numbers hover around 11. I’d say, subtract 10. The people know what’s going down.

Obama can be expected to do a lot of talking in the next couple of weeks. Was Rahm pushed or did he flee? He’ll likely not be mayor of Chicago either. Guilt by association. All Democrats suffer from it - even that nut job, Grayson from Florida.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Habib Koite & Bamada

Habib Koité (born 27 January 1958 in Thiès, Senegal) is a Malian singer, songwriter and guitarist. His supporting cast, Bamada, is a super-group of West African talent, including Kélétigui Diabaté playing balafon. Koité is known primarily for his unique approach to playing the guitar by tuning it on a pentatonic scale and playing on open strings as one would on a kamale n'goni.

Post-Modern Maps

Both Russia and China have come to recognize America's present weakness and are making strategic moves to divide up the world between them. Their aim is to position themselves as to make it so that America will never again be able to act as an obstacle to their expansionist plans. Both countries recognize that now is their chance to set the table to their liking. America will not interfere as long as Obama remains in office. Chances are that after the next presidential election America’s leadership will not be quite as forgiving.

As such, China has been positioning itself in Asia and Africa, forming alliances and settling scores; buying up all the natural resources it can get its hands on with what it knows will soon be the worthless dollars it has stashed away in its vaults. In addition, China has its jaundiced eye set on Taiwan and India.

Russia continues to lust after the eastern block which it seeks to bring back under its influence. It also 'owns' Europe as the West continues to be so shamelessly dependent on Russian gas.

Trouble in the Middle East is tolerated - even stoked - for now as it serves to keep the U.S. distracted. After the two heirs apparent have successfully dispatched of the U.S. economically and politically, and put their own affairs in order (vis-a-vis each other), the Islamists can expect to suffer a virtual bloodbath. Radical Islam will no longer be appeased. It will be stamped out. There will be no pretense of observing human rights; no ponderous crafting of a two-state solution. Russia and China will tolerate no hint of trouble. They will wipe them out should they find it expedient to do so. They won't even send in their soldiers; they'll just bomb them back into stone.

Americans will be forced to work to pay off their debt until so diminished as to allow open entry to their new masters. And a new age will have begun, with old books re-written and maps re-drawn to reflect new realities.

I remember going to a fancy new restaurant in Chennai that featured Mediterranean food. The printed menu showed a map of the region. It was a post modern map in that it did not include Israel. I’m now wondering if similar maps (of the world) would also fail to include America.

People Starving in Africa

It seems the press is forever caught flat-footed. During most of the Bush administration, major media types practically wore out the once legitimate word, 'unexpected'. Every positive development (and there were many) re the economy was 'unexpected' - the subtext, of course, being always the same: How can things be going so well with an absolute moron in the White House?

Now with Obama safely ensconced and wielding ultimate power, the press still hasn't been cleared to jettison the word 'unexpected'. Every measurable weekly, monthly, quarterly tally since Obama took office is cratering, obvious proof of a systemic failure in government policy. It is consistently reported as 'unexpected' – subtext, again, being: How can economic data be so dismal with our boy genius in the White House?

It’s an interesting tactic by the White House to blame everything on people who would want the POTUS to look bad. This sets up all kinds of possibilities for Obama: War against talk radio; internet; bloggers; returning veterans of foreign (lost) wars, legal immigrants; tea party revelers; emigrants; people with money, people with jobs, people with families; meat eaters; accomplished people; people with talent; private sector people; anybody even a smidgeon to the right of Karl Marx; non-union people; people who exhale more than their allotted share of CO2; etc.

There is of course the lingering possibility – gaining in credibility every time Congress meets with the president’s blessing – that what we view as failure, he views as success. After the back of the Great Satan is broken, who will take credit; who’ll get the blame? It’ll be interesting to see how the greatest train wreck in human history will be evaluated after everything is said and done.

This puts me in mind of the very first lie I was subjected to as a child. “Clean your plate,” I was told. “There are people starving in Africa.”. It was a veiled threat by which I was made to feel somehow guilty. Today I know that the lack of food in Africa or anywhere was not because I might have eaten more (or less) than my share, but because food in the affected areas was used as a weapon by ruthless dictators who wanted to keep their populations in check.