MEDIA ROOTS- Michelle Bachmann’s catapult to fame eerily resembles Sarah Palin’s rise to the top during the 2008 election circus. Both Bachmann and Palin are media made sensations whose extreme antics and shocking ignorance of basic civics have only garnered them more attention. One can’t help but wonder if the popularity of such inept candidates has been in part manufactured by the establishment to provide insurance for another Obama victory.

On a panel discussing Michelle Bachmann’s potential presidential run, Chris Matthews strangely admitted that Bachmann was “created here“– in reference to his MSNBC show Hardball. Was he insinuating that he was partly responsible for Bachmann’s recognition and success?

In 2008, Matthews excoriated Bachmann for her suggestion to catalog and investigate ‘dissenters’ in the House of Representatives, then proceeded to give her a platform to speak at length on his show. Bachmann’s empty rhetoric equating liberalism with anti-Americanism became a viral hit online.

Michelle Bachmann on Hardball with Chris Matthews

Later on Real Time with Bill Maher, Matthews repeats himself, adding gleefully that “Bachmann’s going to win the nomination.” Maybe Matthews is smiling because he is hoping for his Frankenstein-esque creation to fall on her own sword, creating an easy victory for Obama. Tricks or so called ‘dirty’ ones have always been a part of the election cycle. Matthews is an influential partisan talking head, who is experienced enough in the media world to know exactly what he’s doing.

In a recent Media Roots Interview, Cindy Sheehan said that Sarah Palin was picked as Mccain’s VP as “insurance” for an Obama victory. Whether or not that’s true, it’s undeniable that a large amount of Americans voted for Obama in 2008 solely because of how terrifying the prospect of a Mccain/Palin presidency was.

It’s a sad state of democracy when people are fear-mongered into voting against their own interests. As long as the media continues to prop up such extremist GOP candidates, people who identify themselves as liberal, green and libertarian will continue to knee jerkily vote for bought-and-paid for establishment candidates that will proceed the policies that have bankrupted and demoralized this nation.

MEDIA ROOTS- One of the most bizarre aspects of 9/11 is undoubtedly the mysterious “collapse” of World Trade Center Building Seven, a 47 story steel skyscraper that was never hit by an airplane, yet fell into its own footprint on 5:20 pm that fateful day.

The corporate media, the federal government and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (the arm of the government that eventually investigated the collapse) all maintain that Building Seven fell due to fires alone, despite a plethora of contradictory evidence pointing to controlled demolition.

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth is a non profit organization consisting of over 1500 building professionals who have put their careers on the line to call for a new investigation into the collapse of all three World Trade Center buildings. Solving the Mystery of WTC 7 is a new AE911Truth documentary that decimates the government’s official account of Building Seven’s destruction. The fifteen minute film features excellent interviews from building professionals and AE911Truth signatories. 

Abby Martin

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Solving the Mystery of WTC 7

http://AE911Truth.org

http://RememberBuilding7.org

MEDIA ROOTS- There has been a lot of talk during the election frenzy about how “extreme” and ultra right-wing Rick Perry is. Multiple news pundits are insisting that people of liberal persuasion must, no matter what, vote for Obama, simply because of how terrifying the other options may be: Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann (oddly though never Ron Paul).

What is it about Perry’s history that makes his supposed Republican “extremism” hard to believe? Like other opportunistic politicians before him (Joe Lieberman, Arlen Specter), Perry once ran and won elections as a Democrat. The fact that he used to adhere to Democratic principles early on in his political career makes it hard to believe that he is an extremist of any sort. Instead, it appears more likely that he’s a political tool who has been groomed for the last decade to become a PR pawn for Wall St. and the Presidential office of the US.

Followers of the Bilderberg group might remember that Rick Perry attended the Bilderberg meeting in 2007, which usually signifies picks for presidential hopefuls. The Bilderberg group is an uber elite neo-liberal think-tank that meets annually in different locations worldwide. In previous years, John Kerry and John Edwards both attended Bilderberg not long before Kerry won the primary and Edwards was chosen as his running mate. William Jefferson Clinton also appeared on the attendance roster when he was merely the Governor of Arkansas.

In 2008, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were alleged to have both attended the Bilderberg meeting in Virginia. Right before the meeting took place, there was an infamous incident that involved Obama’s press agent whisking the entire crew of mainline press away on an airplane flight across the country, without telling them that the president had taken a separate flight to meet Clinton “in private” at Diane Feinstein’s summer home. To separate the president from his press corp in such an elusive fashion is completely unprecedented.

In the following article, Alexander Cockburn from Counterpunch makes a compelling case for the political grooming of Rick Perry and details the amazing series of lucky incidents while rising up the political ladder.

Written by Robbie Martin

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COUNTERPUNCH reports:

Inside Texas he’s one of the most successful politicians in the entire history of the state. George Bush lost his first congressional race.  In a lifetime career of ten elections since 1984 Perry has never lost one. He has an acute sense of political timing. His defeated opponents readily attest to Perry’s relentless  self-discipline as a campaigner , skills at raising campaign cash. He already has a huge prospective war chest for his first national foray. They all emphasize the fatal consequences of underestimating him. He has a team of campaign advisors, notably, notably Dave Carney,  whose skills – ruthless in the crunch – have elicited admiration from  professionals across the board. Prior to  Perry the Texas governorship  were a notoriously weak post, with decisive power wielded by the legislature and State Comptroller and state commissioners, Railroad Commission etc. Perry has changed all that across his three stints as  governor, previously contentious posts now inhabited by his compliant appointees.

But above all, Rick Perry is one lucky son of a bitch. Not just once or twice, but at almost every decisive twist fork in the road Fate has given him a benign tap on the shoulder. “Give me lucky generals,” Napoleon once exclaimed. Looking at Perry’s CV he’d have made him Grand Marshall of France  on the spot.

Back at the pre-dawn of Perry’s political career Democrats were still the most powerful political party in Texas, and Perry began as a (an extremely conservative) Democrat. Son of tenant farmers (dryland cotton) in Paint Creek, sixty miles north of Abilene, Perry says he never met a Republican till he was 25.  He was elected first as a Democratic state legislator and in 1988 was the Texas campaign chairman for (the extremely conservative) Democrat Al Gore who ultimately lost in the primaries to Michael Dukakis. Seeing scant future for Democrats in Texas Perry’s  showed his aptitude for timing and shifted to the Republican Party, making straight for its conservative wing.

Read more about Rick Perry, One Lucky SOB here.

Photo by flickr user eschipul

MEDIA ROOTS- This year marked the tenth anniversary of America’s invasion of Afghanistan, officially making it the longest war in US history. Now that Osama Bin Laden is finally confirmed dead, the federal government’s logic of continuing the occupation remains unclear.

Initially, the Bush administration irrationally insisted that any sovereign nation harboring terrorists was itself complicit in “terror” and therefore open for pre-emptive US military action. This rationale is absurd– just because one criminal might be living inside of a particular country doesn’t make that entire country guilty of the criminal’s crimes.

In 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was quick to tell CNN that US forces had successfully pushed the Taliban and Al Qaeda out of the region, and reports reveal that Osama Bin Laden hadn’t even been in Afghanistan since 2001. Additionally, a White House spokesperson recently admitted that there hasn’t been a terrorist threat in the country for the last eight years.

So what has the US been doing in Afghanistan for the last decade?

War has always been about two things: resources and control. Alongside the supposed surprise discovery of Afghanistan’s $1 trillion wealth of untapped minerals, it’s more than coincidental that before the US invasion, the Taliban along with the UN had successfully eradicated the opium crop in the Golden Crescent. Now 90% of the world’s heroin comes from Afghanistan.

As reported by Global Research:

Heroin is a multibillion dollar business supported by powerful interests, which requires a steady and secure commodity flow. One of the “hidden” objectives of the war was precisely to restore the CIA sponsored drug trade to its historical levels and exert direct control over the drug routes.

Immediately following the October 2001 invasion, opium markets were restored. Opium prices spiraled. By early 2002, the opium price (in dollars/kg) was almost 10 times higher than in 2000.

In 2001, under the Taliban opiate production stood at 185 tons, increasing  to 3400 tons in 2002 under the US sponsored puppet regime of President Hamid Karzai.

While highlighting Karzai’s patriotic struggle against the Taliban, the media fails to mention that Karzai collaborated with the Taliban. He had also been on the payroll of a major US oil company, UNOCAL. In fact, since the mid-1990s, Hamid Karzai had acted as a consultant and lobbyist for UNOCAL in negotiations with the Taliban.

In today’s globalized world, one can’t discount the role that multinational corporations play in US foreign policy decisions. Not only have oil companies and private military contractors made a killing off the Afghanistan occupation: big pharmaceutical companies, who collectively lobby over $250 million to Congress annually, need opium latex to manufacture drugs for this pill happy nation.

Another fact worth mentioning is that Karzai, a notable player in Afghanistan’s opium trade, has been receiving regular payments from the CIA since the invasion. Even more infuriating, the US government has been paying Taliban insurgents to protect supply routes and to “switch sides” in a poor attempt to neutralize the insurgency and buy loyalty from the fighters. The fundamental logic of funding both sides of the war to “win” is possibly the most incomprehensible concept to grasp. Clearly, this war is meant to be sustained– not won.

Fast forward to ten years later, and the turmoil within the country still looms heavy. Last Thursday, the Taliban claimed responsibility for a deadly attack that killed 27 US soldiers and wounded dozens more. Earlier this month marked the deadliest day for US troops since the war started when a rocket propelled grenade shot down a helicopter and killed 30 US soldiers.

In June of this year, Obama delivered a speech about drawing down in Afghanistan, which corporate media outlets touted as a major step to ending the war (Media Roots cut through the speech rhetoric). Yet, a glaringly under reported factor of the praised “drawdown” is the fact that even if the reductions are carried out as planned, the US will still have far more troops in Afghanistan than at any point during Bush’s administration. Furthermore, the US and Afghanistan are about to sign a strategic pact that will allow thousands of special forces troops to remain in Afghanistan until 2024.

Considering how the US is spending at least $6.7 billion a month in Afghanistan and over 55% of Americans think that the US should immediately withdrawal, this issue should be a constant hot topic in the public dialogue– especially amidst the debate of economic sacrifice. Yet in 2010, the corporate news only allotted a measly 4% of its coverage to the war in Afghanistan.

The unsustainability of America’s endless wars and imperialistic foreign policy is the elephant in the room that not enough people in the public arena seem to want to discuss. Sadly, because Americans are conditioned to not bring up politics and religion with others, many are confined to their own rigid perspective fed by biased corporate media outlets. We must begin to challenge this societal dogma if we ever want to progress our society and evolve our collective human consciousness.

Written by Abby Martin

Photo by flickr user DVIDSHUB

MEDIA ROOTS- Fighting wars with robots is becoming an increasingly popular way for the US government to engage in combat. With the lack of US troop presence in the country, people might hardly consider America to be at war with Pakistan. However, US drone strikes in the region have dramatically escalated under the Obama administration, destroying thousands of families and further devastating the land that is still recovering from last year’s devastating floods.

Despite the government and corporate media’s propagandistic talking point about only alleged “militants” being the targets and victims of US drone strikes, the evidence compiled by independent researchers paints a more realistic picture: 90% of casualties from drone strikes are innocent civilians. Glenn Greenwald further analyzes the discrepancy between the government’s official line and the perception of Pakistanis.

Abby

***

SALON– Two weeks ago, President Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, excoriated the White House for its reliance on drones in multiple Muslim nations, pointing out, as Politico put it, that those attacks “are fueling anti-American sentiment and undercutting reform efforts in those countries.” Blair said: “we’re alienating the countries concerned, because we’re treating countries just as places where we go attack groups that threaten us.” Blair has an Op-Ed … in The New York Times making a similar argument with a focus on Pakistan, though he uses a conspicuously strange point to make his case:

Qaeda officials who are killed by drones will be replaced. The group’s structure will survive and it will still be able to inspire, finance and train individuals and teams to kill Americans. Drone strikes hinder Qaeda fighters while they move and hide, but they can endure the attacks and continue to function.

Moreover, as the drone campaign wears on, hatred of America is increasing in Pakistan. American officials may praise the precision of the drone attacks. But in Pakistan, news media accounts of heavy civilian casualties are widely believed. Our reliance on high-tech strikes that pose no risk to our soldiers is bitterly resented in a country that cannot duplicate such feats of warfare without cost to its own troops.

Though he obviously knows the answer, Blair does not say whether this widespread Pakistani perception about civilian casualties is based in fact; if anything, he insinuates that this “belief” is grounded in the much-discussed affection which Pakistanis allegedly harbor for fabricated anti-American conspiracy theories. While the Pakistani perception is significant unto itself regardless of whether it’s accurate — the belief about drones is what fuels anti-American hatred — it’s nonetheless bizarre to mount an anti-drone argument while relegating the impact of civilian deaths to mere “belief,” all while avoiding informing readers what the actual reality is. Discussions of the innocent victims of American military violence is one of the great taboos in establishment circles; that Blair goes so far out of his way to avoid discussing it highlights how potent that taboo is.

Read the full commentary about Pakistani Belief About Drones: Perceptive or Paranoid?

Written by Glen Greenwald

© 2011 Salon

Photo by Flickr user JimNTexas