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Λερναία Ὕδρα

By Michael J. Smith on Tuesday April 5, 2011 10:35 AM

From Mike Flugennock.

Comments (17)

sk:

Any suitable descendants of Roosevelt (Kermit, that is) left to provide "professional guidance"? Old ways of dealing with the wogs remain a 'continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow' elsewhere also.

op:

flugflack as usual fills the sky with black puffs

funny yes usefully true maybe
nasty to some possibly brave innocents i'm sure

sock puppets ?? i doubt many at what passes for the shooting regions are sock types

but i'm terribly naive about
who might show guts in a sand trap

chomskyzinn:

I love Mike's stuff, but I don't think this one is accurate. Whoever the rebels are, they don't seem to be mere CIA stooges -- and this also gives the Central "Intelligence" Agency way too much credit.

The Gang That (Literally) Can't Shoot Straight, yes. But Uncle/CIA sock puppets? Not really.

FB:

"The Gang That (Literally) Can't Shoot Straight"

the Knicks?

Sean:

I imagine the guys out there dogging Qaddafi's peanuts are sincere enough in what they're fighting for--whether that's "democracy" or just getting rid of black Africans. But their leaders? All ex-Qaddafi cronies including the minister of justice, who we now know were meeting with the French and surrendering Libya's military secrets even before the Tunisian revolt broke out, even if that was the impetus for the more populist protests in Libya. Calling them "sock puppets" is being generous to those Quisling motherfuckers.

At the risk of "offending the dignity of the Libyan people," or whatever other bilge is being used to camouflage the obvious, lets be honest and recognize that the rebels have been had. Their role is to serve as disposable props for the cameras in a drama that is being written by NATO, but filmed live.

op:

cia
here is just a synecdote a part for a whole an exemplar
a place holder
a metonymy
the notion so represented
is some clique or cliques of great wisedom and authority (ie raw power)
with global reach
real movers and shakers
the button pushers
the accelerator and brake jockeys
the mugs in well tailored rigs
behind the green lighted street festvitities

err that is when the street festivities
aren't red lighted
when "they "aren't behind the people
as in the gulf
then the bad stuff doesn't go down the final drain pipe it stays in the peoples collective throat

and "they" are usually always there somewhere
if not up above urging on the masses in motion at last
then "they" 're
out there up ahead
around the next corner maybe
waiting for the ass hole innocent people
to go too far

you know

readying the hooded john laws
with the tommy guns
to make order final
with a final order

" shoot to kill"

chomskyzinn:

FB: Shooting isn't the Knicks' problem. They need to play better D.

Sean: I suspected that the minute NATO and the cruise missle libs got involved, my (and othes') sympathies would shift to Col Q, as they have. I guess Professor Proyect would accuse me of being anti-anti-Q...but really, so what?

FB:

Yeah I know... just harassing you before the game tonight. Craptors gonna stunt on you fools!

For your infotainment, via Cartoon Movement:

http://www.cartoonmovement.com/cartoon/2279

My response to a comment by Jason Laning:

And I guess next you'll try to tell me that this "CIA" and "Obama" don't really care about protecting civilians or democracy so much as seizing an opportunity to put new leadership in place that "listens to what the U.S. fucking tells them to do" and "buys U.S. weapons" and "sells its oil to the U.S. for cheap" and that the "UN" and especially "NATO" are largely controlled by U.S. interests but are useful tools for improving its public image...

BINGO! We have a winner!

Take a good look at US military interventions around the world going back to at least Vietnam, and what the real motives were, and what the results were... and especially take a good close look at the USA/NATO action in Jugoslavia in 1999, and the US record in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade, and try and tell me that the US is intervening militarily in Libya out of the goodness of their hearts.

Oh, and let's not forget the UN -- those good old gutless wonders, the UN -- providing fig leaves for naked US aggression since at least 1991.

You might also take a look at what was happening in North Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia right about the time Obama decided -- on his own -- to intervene in Libya: the forty civilians killed in US drone strikes in Pakistan, the US "kill squad" and its "trophy shots" leaked out of Afghanistan, the US arms sales to the Saudis so they could help the Bahraini regime murder protesters in the streets, the imprisonment and torture of US soldier Bradley Manning, and try to tell us that the USA's motives in Libya are in the least bit positive.

You might also ask yourself: if the USA is so concerned about protecting innocent lives and restoring democracy, then why isn't there a no-fly zone over Gaza? Obama sells arms to Israel and looks the other way while Israel uses them to murder Palestinians.

I think what's confusing anti-Gadhafists worldwide -- and much of the US Left -- is that the USA's pretext in the Libyan intervention isn't as obviously and transparently fake as it was in Afghanistan and Iraq... but if you take a really really close look -- and remember what's been going on in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Gaza and Bahrain (the US has a naval base there, don't forget) -- you'll see that the US/NATO action in Libya is as phony as a three-dollar bill.

And let's take a good look at the Libyan "rebels", shall we? Not all, but many of them are defectors from the Libyan army, including many defecting officers, and led by a collection of defecting high-ranking officers and ex-government ministers. Add to this the fact that the Libyan opposition hasn't once -- that I recall -- ever publicly called for the military to refuse orders and join the opposition in the streets... and you'll see they're not exactly Walking Like An Egyptian, if you know what I mean.

Regarding the Khalifa Hifter business... if the guy IS just a Redskins fan, then he has my deepest sympathies, as the 'Skins have been sucking wind for nigh on fifteen years, especially since Dan Snyder bought the team. Hifter was out of sight for over twenty years, then suddenly appears as the Libyan rebel commander? Dude, c'mon.

(FYI, folks: The revelations concerning US CIA "advisors" embedded in the Libyan rebel forces came out in the NY Times and LA Times on March 30; the reports on Hifter's CIA connections were reported on CNN on March 31, and in the "Political Fail Blog" on March 30. Got URLs if you want 'em.)

Oh, and btw, a friend of mine has informed me that the one sock puppet in the middle, there -- the one with the machine gun -- bears a suspicous resemblance to Kermit The Frog. This is purely accidental -- not that I'm at all worried about Jim Henson's estate suing my ass off.

D'ohhhh! That should be Southwest Asia, in the third paragraph up there. (Proofread, dude, proofread!)

chomskyzinn:

Mike and others: This isn't a rhetorical question, but given Uncle's druthers, will all the shit going around with "our" "friends" in the Middle East, wouldn't he have rather Libya remain "stable"? What's the percentage for Uncle in this civil war, especially since Col Q had already became something of a neolib stooge when he "dismantled" his (probably nonexistent) "WMD" program. I think Libya is one headache Uncle might've taken a pass on. (OK, maybe my question was a bit rhetorical.)

Samantha said the cause of "humanitarian intervention" was ruined for a lifetime by Iraq. Here was a chance to reburnish the "human-lib" credentials, just as surely as Iraq was a chance to rid the country of "Viet syndrome." Maybe this isn't more complicated than that: an opening for the lib-"humanitarians." But still...something tells me Uncle would've been just as happy if Col Q were ruling in peace, at the moment anyway.

chomskyzinn:

"You might also ask yourself: if the USA is so concerned about protecting innocent lives and restoring democracy, then why isn't there a no-fly zone over Gaza?"

Right on, brother. But THAT'S a rhetorical question if there ever was one.

Karl:

Mike and others: This isn't a rhetorical question, but given Uncle's druthers, will all the shit going around with "our" "friends" in the Middle East, wouldn't he have rather Libya remain "stable"

Instable government/authority is the first step, installation of puppet regime is 2d step, for MoBroSam's view of oil-holding nations needing "humanitarian intervention."

"Instability" is a point used in the rationale arguing for "humanitarian intervention."

Why would MoBroSam want a "stable" Libya, CZ? What would that do?

Peter Ward:
wouldn't he have rather Libya remain "stable"?

The history of latter-day imperialism suggests in fact instability is the aim--instability has worked out especially well for the Europeans in Africa (Belgium's DR Congo exploits, e.g.); and is being tried out in the Middle East and central Asia as well (specifically Iraq and Afghanistan).

Whereas stongmen--even seemingly reliable ones--may easily go Saddam; Empire can basically do as it wants while the citizens of the country in question are distracted fighting each other.

Instability is stability.

juan:

somewhere yrs ago read about
military - political connection[s] between early 1990s dagestan, ossetia, chechnya,
jordan, ksa and N Africa

Sifl?
Is that you buddy?
Come home, we need you in Ohio!

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