Columnist – John Sammon
Obama has severely disappointed me but the thought of the other side regaining the throne and running wild exorcising our dwindling rights and presiding over the collapse of America into a hopelessly debtor, middle-classless, unemployed police-state end-of-the-Roman-Empire type monstrosity makes me want to puke.

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You’ve got to hand it to the wretches and fanatics in the Middle East. They managed to freak America out so much that we’re throwing our rights in the trash can. The Bill of Rights. Earlier this week President Obama authorized the drone bombing of an American Al-Qaeda member in Yemen.

Let’s agree this guy is bad and deserved to be killed. It’s still yet another extension of presidential power that never ends. Names are added to lists and people targeted. How soon before someone who is innocent is taken out?

Taken out by mistake because his name appeared on an enemies list.

Do you feel safer?

Secret camps where prisoners are tortured, wiretap spying under the Patriot Act, drawing up lists of subversives. Just like the McCarthy era of the 1950s. We’re throwing away who we supposedly are in the interest of making us safe.

Obama is a one-term president. He can’t stimulus-fix the economy, which is set to tailspin into another recession. The boom days are over and the American people, many of whom were never comfortable with a first black president in the first place, are angry. Americans will forgive an immoral war, they will ignore one million Iraqis killed over false weapons of mass destruction.

They will ignore a diminution of their rights because they don’t even know what their rights are.

And even if they did know, they don’t care.

They’ll ignore and forget everything, except being out of work. They’ll blame Obama for it, who will have to run in 2012 on a negative-oriented, “things will be worse if you elect the Republicans” election. Americans won’t listen to that.

When things are bad, whoever’s in gets thrown out.

And the Middle East. Well that’s war forever. First, we had the weapons of mass destruction scam, then Operation Iraqi Freedom (it isn’t true freedom if a government is imposed by force the people themselves didn’t select). Then we had the Surge. The newest scam from the secret government is the “Drawdown.”

Here’s how it works. Like promising weapons of mass destruction that aren’t there to sell you on the idea of war, the government uses the word “Drawdown” to convince you our occupation is ending in the Middle East. Some troops are actually shipped home, giving you the idea the war is coming to an end.

It isn’t.

Troops are shipped home, new ones come over, troops are rearranged, put on border areas, peripheries, whatever. It’s a smoke-and-mirror game to keep you docile. It doesn’t take much because you were docile to begin with. You don’t care. You’re safer, at least you think.

What’s that clicking? Somebody wiretapping my phone because of my political leanings. Somebody studying my internet searches (all those porno adult websites) to discredit me because of my political beliefs.

It doesn’t matter. I’m safer this way.

Five years from now you’ve forgotten all about it, and we’re still occupying parts of the Middle East.

The American people don’t care. Our economy is going down the drain and we’re spending billions each week nation-building and police-actioning countries in the Middle East while our roads and schools rot, and the American people, like a bunch of sheep, go along.

Say “Baaaah!”

In an earlier column I asked readers of Politicalarticles.net if they thought the America of Richard Nixon, of the Silent Majority, the country of lies and cover-ups and covert actions was the real America, and not that of the hippies or anti-war protestors.

The hippies, often selfish, loud, slobbish and spoiled, at least had enough decency to try and obstruct a system that had gone wrong and was in trouble.

I said then it was clear Nixon’s America was America, and still is.

Obama has severely disappointed me but the thought of the other side regaining the throne and running wild exorcising our dwindling rights and presiding over the collapse of America into a hopelessly debtor, middle-classless, unemployed police-state end-of-the-Roman-Empire type monstrosity makes me want to puke.

There’s only one thing Obama can do, that leaders from time immemorial have done who are in trouble and need to take people’s minds off their domestic problems.

We need another foreign adventure.

   Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.
Sam Vaknin is the author of “Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited” and Editor-in-Chief at Global Politician

Its credit rating downgraded (in August 2011 by Standard and Poor’s), its politicians deadlocked in a bipartisan danse macabre, it middle-class impoverished, its hordes of long-term unemployed a fixture. It has been called a rogue state, a colonialist-imperialist throwback, the puppet of Zionism. But, is the United States of America a failed state?

The US State Department’s designation of “rogue state” periodically falls in and out of favor. It is used to refer to countries hostile to the United States, with authoritarian, brutal, and venal regimes, and a predilection to ignore international law and conventions, encourage global or local terrorism and the manufacture and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Most rogue states are not failed ones.

An “immature state” is a polity whose elites are dysfunctional, venal, and narcissistic; whose economy is not viable, frequently dependent on handouts; and whose coherence is threatened by a lack of social consensus. Immature states typically lack political traditions, change agents, goal-oriented bureaucracies, and institutional memory. Consequently, the denizens of immature states are often xenophobic and insular.

A “failed economy” fails to attract foreign direct investment. It is characterized by kleptocratic governments and rampant corruption, increased geopolitical risk, and lack of modern infrastructure. It features all-pervasive failure of institutions; lack of commitment to true reforms; absence of a functioning private sector; problematic mentality (laziness, passive-aggressiveness, pathological and destructive envy; xenophobia, resistance to learning, etc.); a low-level of research-and-development and innovation; an antiquated and dysfunctional education system; and primitive banking system and capital markets. While not failed states in the political and full-fledged sense of the word, “failed economies” come in a close second.

A “failed state” is a country whose government has no control and cannot exercise a monopoly on the legitimate use of force over a substantial part of its territory or citizenry. It is continuously and successfully challenged by private military power: terrorists, warlords, or militias. Its promulgations and laws are futile and inapplicable.

With the exception of the first criterion (hostility towards Pax Americana), some scholars claim that the USA is, itself, a rogue state (q.v., for instance, William Blum’s “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” and “Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism And The Failure Of Good Intentions” by Clyde Prestowitz).

Admittedly, the USA’s unilateralist, thuggish and capricious foreign policy represents a constant threat to world peace and stability. But labeling the USA a “rogue state” may be overdoing it. It better fits the profile of a semi-failed state.

A semi-failed state is a country whose government maintains all the trappings and appearances of power, legitimacy, and control. Its army and police are integral and operative. Its institutions function. Its government and parliament promulgate laws and its courts enforce them. It is not challenged by any competing military structures within its recognized borders.

Yet, the semi-failed state – while going through the motions – is dead on its feet. It is a political and societal zombie. It functions due mainly to inertia and lack of better or clear alternatives. Its population is disgruntled, hostile, and suspicious. Other countries regard it with derision, fear, and abhorrence. It is rotting from the inside and doomed to implode.

In a semi-failed state, high crime rates and rampant venality, nepotism, and cronyism affect the government’s ability to enforce laws and implement programs. It reacts by adding layers of intransigent and opaque bureaucracy to an already unwieldy mammoth. The institutions of the semi-failed state are hopelessly politicized and, thus, biased, distrusted, and compromised. Its judiciary is in a state of decrepit decline as unqualified beneficiaries of patronage join the ranks.

The result is social fragmentation as traditional and local leaders, backed by angry and rebellious constituents, take matters into their own hands. Centrifugal politics supplant statehood and the nation is unable to justly and effectively balance the competing claims of the center versus the periphery.

The utter (but insidious) institutional failure that typifies the semi-failed state is usually exposed with the total disarray that follows an emergency (such as a natural disaster or a terrorist attack).

To deflect criticism and in a vain attempt to reunite its fracturing populace, the semi-failed state often embarks on military adventures (cloaked as “self-defense” or “geopolitical necessity”). Empire-building is an indicator of looming and imminent disintegration. Foreign aggression replaces reconstruction and rational policy-making at home. The USA prior to the Civil War, the USSR between 1956 and 1982, federal Yugoslavia after 1989, and Nazi Germany are the most obvious examples.

Is the USA a semi-failed state?

I. Empire-building and foreign aggression

Its neighbors always perceived the United States as an imminent security risk (ask Mexico, half of whose territory was captured by successive and aggressive American administrations). The two world wars transformed the USA into a global threat, able and only too willing to project power to protect its interests and disseminate its brand of missionary liberal-capitalism.

In the last 150 years, the USA has repeatedly militarily attacked, unprovoked, other peaceful or pacified nations, near and far. To further its (often economic) ends, the United States has not refrained from encouraging and using terrorism in various parts of the globe. It has developed and deployed weapons of mass destruction and is still the biggest arms manufacturer and trader in the world. It has repeatedly reneged on its international obligations and breached international laws and conventions.

II. Dysfunctional institutions

Hurricane Katrina (August-September 2005) exposed the frailty and lack of preparedness of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and, to some extent, the National Guard. It brought into sharp relief the cancerous politicization of the crony-infested federal government.

FEMA is only the latest in a long chain of failed institutions. The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) coped poorly with virulent corruption and malfeasance in Wall Street. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) capitulated in the face of commercial and political pressures and neglected to remove from the market malfunctioning medical devices and drugs with lethal side effects.

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has sacrificed America’s nature reserves to business interests. A heavily politicized Supreme Court legitimized manifestly tainted election results and made a president out of the loser of the popular vote. The disenfranchisement of minorities, the poor, and ex-convicts is now in full swing.

The legislature – the two houses of Congress – are deadlocked and paralyzed owing to partisanship and corruption. The executive either ignores laws passed by the the legislative branch of government (President Bush issued well over 750 “presidential statements”, effectively obviating many of them) or actively encroaches on Congressional turf (for instance, by sending the FBI to search the offices of elected Representatives).

As the 2011 brinkmanship debate about the debt ceiling proved conclusively, the organs of the government of the United States now function only when exposed to acute embarrassment and a revolted public opinion. Private firms and charities sprout to fulfill the gaps.

III. The National Consensus

Americans long mistook the institutional stability of their political system, guaranteed by the Constitution, for a national consensus. They actually believe that the former guarantees the latter – that institutional firmness and durability ARE the national consensus. The reverse, as we know, is true: it takes a national consensus to yield stable institutions. No social structure – no matter how venerable and veteran – can resist the winds of change in public sentiment.

Hurricane Katrina again demonstrated the unbridgeable divides in American society between rich and poor and black and white. But this time, the rift runs deeper.

The Bush administration is the first since the Civil War to dare to change the fundamental rules of the political game (for instance by seeking to abolish the filibuster in the Senate and by a profligacy of recess appointments of judges and officials). Its instincts and reflexes are elitist, undemocratic, and violent. It is delusional and its brand of fanatic religiosity is not well-received even among the majority of Americans who are believers. Additionally, it is openly and unabashedly corrupt and ridden with nepotism and cronyism.

Yet, Bush, unlike Nixon, is not an aberration. He is unlikely to be impeached. He was overwhelmingly re-elected even as his quagmire war in Iraq unraveled and the self-enrichment and paranoia of his close circle became public.

This is the new and true face of at least half of America, to the horror and dismay of the other half, its liberals. If the history of the United States is any judge, these two camps are unlikely to sit back and navel-gaze. Semi-failed states typically disintegrate. A bloodied (perhaps even nuclear) second civil war is in the cards.

Should the United States devolve into its constituent states, the world will breathe a sigh of relief. A European Union (EU)-like economic zone between the parts of the former USA is bound to be far more pacific and to contribute to world stability – something its malignant former incarnation had so signally failed to do.

As frenzied Republican sociopaths bask in the victory of “Nudist” Senator Elect of Massachusetts, Scott Brown, some are in an “acute state of longing” for criminal murderer of Iraqi children, George W. Bush’s bloody past. Claims such as: “George W. Bush liberated 60,000,000 Muslims from tyranny,” “Miss Him? 1 Year Later, Bush Still Stands Proud,” “ONE YEAR GONE: President George W. Bush Answered the Calling of Our Time,” ….littered Republican websites. [ MORE ]

   This is What Bush Will Be Remembered For: [ AND THIS ]
   An Iraqi Child With Leg Blown Off — All Because of Bush!

   [ For More Pictures of Iraqi Children Murdered By Bush -- Scroll All The Way Down ]

Bush did not liberate 60,000,000 Muslims, he hanged 1,000,000 in cold blood — based on a LIE! That’s his legacy, etched in stone. These are the same Republican LIARS at work, the same racist crooks who want us to believe that 9/11 did not happen or that Bush inherited it from Bill Clinton.

Rehabilitating Bush: One year later, right-wing media still mourn the loss of Bush — One year after the inauguration of President Obama, right-wing media — in particular Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government, Big Hollywood, and Big Journalism — marked the anniversary with a series of articles fondly reminiscing about the Bush administration, in which they often attempted to rewrite the history of Bush’s policies and also attacked Obama. [ READ MORE ]

Rove shelters Bush from any responsibility for 2009 increase in deficit — In his Wall Street Journal column, Karl Rove ignored the Bush administration’s responsibility for the 2009 budget to attack the Obama administration over deficits. Rove also ignored several economic analyses that estimated relative employment increases under the stimulus in order to claim that the stimulus failed. [ READ MORE ]

Sicko Glenn Beck falsely attributes entire 2009 debt to Obama — Glenn Beck attributed the entire deficit for the fiscal year 2009 to President Obama, stating that the federal debt was “$10.6 trillion in 2008,” and that since Obama “comes in,” “we’ve gone in the one year, we’ve gone to… $12.3 trillion on the debt.” In fact, only a small portion of the fiscal year 2009 deficit is due to Obama’s policies; in January, before he took office or signed any legislation, CBO projected that, based on policies set under President Bush and economic conditions at the time, the deficit for fiscal year 2009 would reach $1.2 trillion. [ READ MORE

.....and more sickness and lies in VIDEO:

Campaigning on Fox? Huckabee declares tea party movement "most positive thing that I've seen in my lifetime in politics"

FAT Rush Limbaugh calls Obama an idiot for having high expectations on Middle East peace process

...then congratulates himself for stopping Healthcare, for being the "one voice" that spoke out against Obama's agenda

Hannity: Brown's victory "marks the beginning of the great repudiation of the Obama agenda"

Stossel says it's "just false" that "government subsidies" can "create jobs"

NOTE: Politifact.com previously found Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele's claim that "in the history of mankind and womankind, government - federal, state, local, or otherwise - has never created one job" was "Pants on Fire" false.

Sick Beck promises upcoming "documentary" on communist atrocities will show what "progressives don't want you to know"

"Porn-Master" Bill O'Reilly: If researchers "need a bigger sample" of blonde women, "come to Fox News"

   [ ENLARGE ]

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Inside Bush and Cheney’s Final Days: Both planned the war on terrorism but broke over whether to pardon one of its key architects — “Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby“

Time: Hours before they were to leave office after eight troubled years, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney had one final and painful piece of business to conclude. For over a month Cheney had been pleading, cajoling, even pestering Bush to pardon the Vice President’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. Libby had been convicted nearly two years earlier of obstructing an investigation into the leak of a covert CIA officer’s identity by senior White House officials. The Libby pardon, aides reported, had become something of a crusade for Cheney, who seemed prepared to push his nine-year-old relationship with Bush to the breaking point — and perhaps past it — over the fate of his former aide. “We don’t want to leave anyone on the battlefield,” Cheney argued. [ READ MORE ]

Cheney’s Last Stand

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By Sam Vaknin — Author of “Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited“

   Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.
Late last year, Israel embarked on a coordinated campaign of leaks to the press regarding its determination to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities if Obama’s then-new administration fails to sway the Iranians diplomatically. Israel is unwilling to accept a nuclear Iran: “It is not an option,” say its senior intelligence and military leadership.

On January 20, 2009, I appeared as a guest in the most popular political affairs program in Macedonia (“Glasot na Narodot,” or The Voice of the People). I warned that Israel is willing to wait 6 to 8 months for Obama’s “diplomacy” with regards to Iran’s nuclear capability to show some progress. If Iran remains recalcitrant, Israel plans to bomb two facilities in Iran as it did in Iraq in 1981, I said. Refueling won’t be a problem, I assured the program’s host, Slobodan Tomic: both Egypt and Saudi-Arabia offered to help.

Israel has decided to go ahead. Taking into account political, geopolitical, military preparedness, and climatic conditions, there are two windows: between July 21 and 24 and between August 6 and 8. Advance teams comprised of Mossad agents and military personnel are already on the ground in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iraq (including in the Kurdish lands, adjacent to Turkey).

A mock has been erected not far from Eilat (near the Red Sea, opposite Aqaba). A defunct airbase in Biq’at Ha’Yareach (Moon Vale) has been resurrected to accommodate Air Wing 10. In a country as small and intimate as Israel, it is amazing that this has been kept a secret: hundreds of recruits and reservists – from mechanics and pilots to cooks and administrators – have been re-stationed there in the last few months.

A mysterious facility also sprouted up not far from Dimona’s nuclear reactor, next to a university town called Sde Boker. It is not known what is its role, though speculation is that it is intended to shield the sensitive facility from an Iranian counter-attack. Several batteries of aged Patriot missiles have been recently replaced with brand new anti-missile rockets developed by Israel.

Citizens are reporting dry runs in the skies of the Negev, Israel’s traditional air force training grounds and a desert with some resemblance to Iranian conditions. Piecing these scant testimonies together, it seems that the Israelis are concentrating their effort on midair refueling and surgical strikes on multiple targets.

Finally, HAGA (Hagana Ezrakhit), the Civilian Defense Force, a part of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), has been instructed to begin preparations for a possible Iranian counter-strike with long-range conventional missiles. At this stage, Israel is not contemplating chemical or biological warfare (though the distribution of gas masks does seem to be part of the drill).

No one knows for sure where will Israel strike. Wiping off all the widely distributed and impregnable components of Iran’s capability to enrich uranium is close to impossible. The after-effects of even a limited air attack may be devastating and not necessarily short-term, as the Israelis are convinced. The price of oil is likely to spike and radicals and extremists throughout the benighted region are bound to leverage the attack to smear and taunt Israel and its allies but, then, what else is new. The Arab countries are likely to breathe a sigh of relief that the Iranian bully has been humbled.

The big question mark is how will the Obama administration react to such a fait accompli that flies in the face of the new President’s stated policies. Will Obama try to make an example out of Israel and harshly punish it – or will he merely verbally lash it and proceed with business as usual? Time will tell. Soon.

Israel, Obama, Iran, and Journalism “During Netanyahu’s visit, Israel shared intelligence with the CIA regarding the potential for a terrorist attack which will dwarf 9/11 if Iran is allowed to continue with its nuclear designs and share its outcomes with allies such as Hamas and the Hizbullah. Iranian proliferation is a direct threat to US National security.

Obama’s staff is ignoring the intel (HUMINT) because they believe that it is intended to manipulate the Administration into accepting Israel’s planned bombing of two facilities in Iran.

They are also ignoring intel regarding a Hamas cell in Cairo that is bent on mischief. The Israelis are shunned. The CIA is exasperated.”

How reliable is this information? Can journalists be trusted not to be manipulated; not to substitute opinion and wishful thinking for facts; not to be corrupted with the trappings of power or outright pecuniary incentives?

Consider my case:

On January 20, 2009, I appeared as a guest in the most popular political affairs program in Macedonia (“Glasot na Narodot,” or The Voice of the People). I warned that Israel is willing to wait 6 to 8 months for Obama’s “diplomacy” with regards to Iran’s nuclear capability to show some progress. If Iran remains recalcitrant, Israel plans to bomb two facilities in Iran as it did in Iraq in 1981, I said. Refueling won’t be a problem, I assured the program’s host: both Egypt and Saudi-Arabia offered to help.

This and other interviews provoked speculations in Balkan media and on the Internet:

Vaknin probably had assumed that the NSA (which has a presence in Skopje, having recently moved some of its facilities there from Athens) will be monitoring the program and will report to Washington, suggested one of them.

Vaknin’ sister is Sima Gil-Vaknin, the IDF’s (Israel Defense Force’s) Chief Censor (true) and Vaknin is a senior Israeli intelligence operative (which I deny emphatically).

Recently, the leading Balkan newsmagazine “Fokus” published a long article about the Eligibility Problem (Obama’s missing original birth certificate and other personal documents). In that article, Fokus speculated that Israel may have written off Obama and has embarked on a worldwide campaign to discredit him and counter his dangerous diplomatic and military moves. Vaknin, contended the magazine, spearheaded these activities in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans in conjunction with the Hasbara’s clandestine unit, which is under the direct control of the Prime Minister’s office. I have since denied these rumors, too.

I am a journalist of long standing (since the mid-eighties), have lived and worked in Israel and maintain a network of top-level, unimpeachable sources. I am made privy to a lot of information and disinformation (see my articles about Macedonia’s accession to NATO and the name issue). Like every journalist, I sometimes can’t tell the difference and get duped. But this is one of the risks of the First Amendment.

As I see it, my job is not to block or filter content. My task is publish with appropriate disclaimers regarding the sources of my information. I should serve as an eBay of data, ranking the past performance of “vendors” of intelligence and letting the fully-informed reader make up his or her mind whom to believe and whom to discredit.

Back to the opening scoop:

Is it true? Did it happen?

Who knows! All I can say is that someone wanted this information leaked. It could be a arrow shot across the Obama administration’s bow. It could be part of a much larger picture. It could be a signal aimed at Iran. It may be a brazen fabrication. History will tell.

But one thing it is for sure: a story. Someone(s) told me, a journalist, this story. They wanted it out. The importance of a story sometimes lies not with its content, but with its very release. It is the role of the discerning reader to read between the lines, connect the dots, and come up with his or her own narrative.

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