Oh, How They Play The Victim!

It is now popular, fashionable and politically calculated for a lot of men, mostly from the Bush-Cheney administration, to come out and claim that they had spied on their own citizens and residents, or had lied to them, without any "real knowledge, power, authority and co-operation". They are all victims now! Who wants to believe this...except maybe the New York Times that loves to help such men re-invent themselves?

Remember Eliot Spitzer, whose only crime, I agree, was gallivanting with prostitutes. But did this man not politically run on a campaign of cleaning up the very people he was diddling on the side? Now he has a second career as a CNN commentator - a respectable job with a great pay and perks. Some of us women, or people of color, with great qualifications do not get even a first chance...let alone such a well supported second chance, a second career and a great second check! It is truly amazing how far White men can go, how much support and sympathy they receive, even when they lie to their own people...and/or spy on their own citizens and legal residents!

I agree diddling prostitutes is much less an economic or a political crime, especially in a democracy, than spying on your own citizens and legal residents.

Where does this place Thomas Drake: a National Security Agency (NSA) worker who has now admitted to espionage, and has revealed information on NSA’s overspending and failure to properly store its large domestic spy data? He faces a 35 year prison sentence. He is now claiming to be a whistleblower! The questions that are not being asked by our congenial-complying-conniving media are, "Are such men coming out of the woodwork because they are being flushed out? Or, are they coming out to reinvent themselves and deflect responsibility for what they did in secret - without much accountability or public scrutiny? 

When lot of the media presents men like Thomas Drake as whistleblowers who, according to them, require great admiration and sympathy, one wonders if the popular media is dumb...or just devious?

These men, after using their talent, qualifications and expertise to commit heinous acts of spying, surveillance and civil rights violations on their own citizens and legal residents, in the so-called "greatest democracy in the world", are now trying to cunningly claim innocence. Are they, as some would inquire, trying to avoid scrutiny and responsibility for their past activities? Are they being given the opportunity, and the special privilege, to re-invent themselves: now as victims...or innocent guys who-were-just-doing-their-job?

As one blogger noted, "There is no way an upstanding American, even with a clean uncontroversial boring personal and professional record, is ever going to succeed in the American political system without having his or her personal and private information cunningly used or distorted by secret institutions, or hidden operatives, so their political careers, even their professional reputations, can be directly or coyly sabotaged...because they challenge the big dicks and the big kahunas of the big powers!"

There are women, young people and people-of-color in this country who are saying to these men, like Thomas Drake, who violated the Constitutional rights of their own countrymen and legal immigrants, "Thanks for coming out and telling the truth...But you still deserve to go to prison arse----!"

One must also ask, "Can one trust a scorpion that is by nature a scorpion...or trained to be one for a very long time? Can one trust a person, an institution or a community that has continuously re-invented itself for its survival and success - many times with an Orwellian brilliance and cunning? Can one trust a vampire - that is intrinsically socialized or trained to suck the life-force of people, cultures and communities to survive and thrive? Can one trust a Frankenstein out of control - that intimidates, controls and destroys while also re-inventing itself every once-in-a-while? Can one trust a monster...no matter how pretty, attractive, seductive and apologetic?"

Think of numerous young men, some of them your sons, brothers, friends and peers, whose silly immature porn collections being conveniently and cunningly used twenty or thirty years later to sabotage their political careers? Think of women whose youthful dalliances, or personal sex lives and conversations - even innocuous ones, being used or distorted to manipulate their reputations or political careers - especially when they take on the big powers?

Think of liberals and progressives, or just social activists who speak honestly and boldly to power, already vilified and demonized in the mainstream media, constantly being targets of selective, skewed, distorted, and manipulated information that is secretively collected and cunningly collated? Think of the numerous covert methods by which information, sometimes selective, skewed and distorted, is used to sabotage or set-up people whose politics do not match the interests of the elites, or those who are powerful and distressed...or powerful and scared?

One wonders!

And when some hidden men, with secret power and unaccounted for authority, like Thomas Drake, who have conducted heinuous crimes against their own Constitution and the collective conscience of their good citizens and legal residents, come out of the dark or the woodworks  to change their intent, their face, their status...one wonders!

Are these men, on the dark side, now trying to re-invent themselves - as victims?

All so strange...and all so frightening!

Is The Information From Pakistan Ten Years Too Late?

If one side of the media, considered mainstream, is continuously providing and processing details of the compound where Osama-Bin-Laden was shot and killed on May, 2011, there is an alternative American media that is constantly warning people of “distractions” and “propaganda driven preoccupations" with these issues since 2001. Both, sometimes, seem to have their own agenda, bias and short sightedness.

While jubilant people, many who acted like drunk Frat boys, danced on the streets of America with the news of Osama-Bin-Laden's secret assassination - carried out by America's special elite forces within its military - we have to wonder how this American War on Terror is going to reshape itself from now on.

How is the rest of the world (outside America), still reeling from feudal patriarchy, monarchy, classicism, provincialism, unhealthy tribalism (not healthy tribalism – which exists), colonialism, elitism, consumerism, imperialism and many other “isms over isms”, going to resolve many of its problems, build greater independence and security for its people, take charge of its land and resources, get out of poverty and dependency, avoid foreign invasion and control, and commit to real justice and equality for its people with this interminable War on Terror - from one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world?

And, what would America say to those who see this War on Terror as nothing more than “a land grab or resource control", and sometimes a form of “ethnic cleansing around the world"?

Some also see America as just another tribalistic society that uses advanced technology in the 20th and 21st century to pillage and plunder other countries and their resources - much like the brutal invaders of the past and the Islamic militants, that the American Congress and Conservatives constantly deplore and label as primitive and uncivilized.  

While the American media, with its own possible racist or ethnocentric agenda, constantly blames the first Black American President, without any focus on the various institutions of power and domination that have wielded control and direct influence over domestic and international policies (going back decades), there are those who worry that liberals and progressives, who must push their leaders to keep their focus and values, are slowly being converted and co-opted.

Also, watching the so-called liberal media shift its own position, or reveal its true face (of conservatism) in subtle ways, is worrisome. Alternative media in the US is not always "alternative". It is many times conservatism, capitalism or the status quo presented as "libertarianism, liberalism or a mere critique".

Pakistan, now a distrusted country in the Middle East, South Asia and the international community, has not been smart, savvy or forthright in its so called “alliance with America's fight against terrorism”.

The Pakistani military and its elites began a collaboration with conservative governments of the US, starting with the Nixon-Kissinger administration, that brought in great financial aid for its regional-cooperation. Much of this aid, that ran into billions during the War on Terror, never went for economic or social development but it helped expand Pakistan's military establishment and power.

Pakistan, with a turbulent violent political history, wasted its time, talent and resources (both internal and American) by allowing, encouraging or overlooking extremists who attacked poor countries like Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, etc., and Western countries like England, Spain, Germany, the US....

Some activists and people, even within Pakistan, would say that the Pakistani military used its poor, young, disenfranchised, isolated and the religiously naive to recruit and train terrorists, who not only shoot, bomb, murder and destroy but kill themselves doing so. They were , by some, convenient foot-soldiers for Pakistan's military agenda.

People have forgotten that Pakistan was the only country that formally recognized the Taliban government of Afghanistan - while Afghan victims and their diaspora screamed for help. Even Iran, on the other side of the Afghan border, did not recognize the Taliban government. The Pakistani military with its bloated power, well funded by the US, also weakened its own civilian government.

The Pakistani military not only conducted several coups against its civilian governments frequently, but it was in direct power for nearly half of Pakistan's history.

Many civilian leaders in Pakistan were placed under house arrest, imprisoned, forced into political exile (like Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto), executed (like Zulfikar Bhutto – father of Benazir) or died under suspicious circumstances. Benazir Bhutto, while running for office, was killed in a bomb blast in 2007 by terrorists...that America and its Pakistani military ally were supposedly successfully fighting.

There were additional things that the Pakistani military did that stoked global fears, and did not help Pakistan's image. America called its nuclear bomb America's powerful weapon – God-like. France called its nuclear arsenal its advanced defense. England probably calls its nuclear arsenal the real royal weapon (this said with tongue-in-cheek). China called it the Chinese bomb. India merely referred to it as the bomb – or “bum” (as with an Indian accent). Iran calls its nuclear program the Iranian nuclear technology. Pakistan, on the other hand, called its nuclear bomb an Islamic bomb.

One Pakistani journalist noted, “As if there is not enough concern about nuclear weapons and build-up around the world, this ridiculous naming caused the world to wonder and worry about Pakistan's intent, amidst growing religious extremism. Pakistan's reputation has never been the same!”

Governments, leaders and people around the world, who had never bothered much about Islamic extremism and fundamentalism, that they saw as primarily localized (in the Middle East and part of South Asia – mostly affecting Brown people), began to suddenly worry about attacks by a bunch of violent religious zealots running amok with the “Islamic bomb”.

Pakistan also added fuel-to-fire by becoming more secretive and militant over its government, censoring journalists and putting lawyers under house arrest. The question as to how much of Pakistan's internal military activities and intelligence gathering, funded by the United States, the American defense and intelligence knew and had control over remains unknown.

Michael Moore is right when he said (in an interview on CNN, 5/5/2011) (paraphrased), “We definitely need more information on this relationship (the one between the Pakistani military and the American defense), and how much the American military and intelligence already knew about the whereabouts of terrorists like Osama-Bin-Laden before Bin-Laden's assassination”.

Osama-bin-Laden is a Yemeni-Saudi misfit and a radical with many decades of close association with communities on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border. This has been an open knowledge to the Afghan leadership for many years.

The Karzai government encouraged America to use its alliance with Pakistan to effectively thwart Pakistan from providing, or overlooking, its safe sanctuary for terrorists - some from Afghanistan. They also encouraged the US to use its power over Pakistan to help stop its numerous fundamentalist training camps that recruit and train violent Jihadists, who also many times attack moderate Muslims.

One wonders why, in stead of the focused targeted capture or killing of criminals, like the ones who committed the Sept. 11 mass murder, using well trained elite forces that President Obama authorized (though he may have had no control over the controversial code word that the elite operatives adopted), America, under Bush and Cheney, went all over the Middle East and the world: killing thousands of innocent lives, causing huge number of disabilities, displacing millions of indigenous or native people from their homes and neighborhoods, and costing billions of dollars of destruction and damage?

This goose-chase without any real goose eggs, but with plenty of murder, massacre and mayhem, has certainly contributed to a growing sentiment that Americans, particularly its Conservative governments and leaders, are obsessed with combat, war and killing. The American military has also begun to be associated with America's majority livelihood, huge wealth, big contracts and social identity.

Why were these elite defense units, like Navy Seal 6 or Delta, known for their amazing efficiency and focus not used earlier by the Bush-Cheney administration, concerned with terror, to go after criminals who committed the Sept. 11, 2001 violence? Why did Iraq get invaded, and is still occupied? Why did military operations in Afghanistan continue even when many Al-Queda and Taliban terrorists have been in Pakistan since 2001, and some elsewhere?

It also seems odd that Osama-Bin-Laden was in hiding not in a cave, but in a very nice well fortified house less than a quarter mile from Pakistan's military academy near a big city, without the suspicion, knowledge, approval or protection of the Pakistan military. What is it that the Pakistani military is not revealing, and what is it that the American intelligence and defense, with a long association with the Pakistani military, not sharing?

It is all strange...and getting stranger by the minute!

The running joke in Midwest America is, “Would the real estate, in places like Iowa, improve if Bin-Laden had been buried here – in stead of at sea?” While the delusion that housing prices are going up, well promoted by some in the real estate mafia, continues in many parts of the US, the news coming from State governments, that are getting more Conservative, and the Federal Government are, some would say, a bit “belated”!

Many Americans, Pakistanis, Afghanis and others have always suspected that terrorists like Bin-Laden had found sanctuary in Pakistan for some time now  - probably with the full knowledge of some, or all, top military officials there. Now these suspicions, they feel, is all being confirmed!

Is all this information coming out of Pakistan ten years too late? What else do we not know about the Pakistani military and the American defense - that has had a close relationship?

And, most importantly, where does this War on Terror go from here?