Loathsome Lanny Davis Has More Blood On His Hands

Lanny Davis, one of the scummy, soulless, immoral self-promoters who latched onto the Clintons and served a key role in the regime of Bill Clinton, is at it again. These days he whores his ass out as a propagandist for dictators.

Earlier this year he was shilling for the Honduran oligarchy, which overthrew the democratically-elected president for the crime of raising the minimum wage. (The official excuse was he "tried to change the Constitution so he could run again." A lie, but even if true not a crime. He tried to put a NONBINDING resolution before the Honduran people to let them vote on the idea.) Being the enemy of poor people everywhere, and friend of the rich in all lands, the U.S. sneakily supported the coup while publicly pretending not to. (Another one of WikiLeaks "crimes" was exposing this duplicity via leaked State Department documents.)

The Honduran criminals have murdered many Hondurans since seizing power, and repressed all rights of dissent. Lanny Davis uses all his skills as a sophist and twister of reality and just flat out liar to defend this criminal regime.

Another of his "clients" is the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, who he tries to trick the world into believing is a swell guy and worthy of respect and support. And anything to the contrary is just a lie, according to Despicable Davis.

Now he's at it again. This time he's aiding the dictator of Ivory Coast, a greedy piece of work named Laurent Gbagbo. (This thug's official title is "President," but that's totally misleading.) Gbagbo refuses to admit that he just lost an election. For once, the U.S., other African "leaders,
and others are insisting that the dictator leave office and abide by the will of the people.

So who pops up spewing lies and propaganda on Gbagbo's behalf? Lanny the Lying Leech. Here's how he trashes a UN report about Gbagbo's thugs' murder of 200 (so far) people: he says he wants to "talk to who wrote it" and "see the evidence," and anyway UN "reports" (sic) about the Gaza War (there was just one, the Goldstone Report, by an eminent JEWISH, self-professed ZIONIST, South African jurist) have been "discredited." (Well, the U.S. and Israel trashed it, but that hardly constitutes "discrediting," except maybe in the propaganda sense.) The body of at least one journalist has already been dumped roadside by Davis' client's hoodlums.

Davis claims he only wants to "present the facts and the law as to why there is substantial documentary evidence that President Laurent Gbagbo is the duly elected president as a result of the Nov. 28 elections." Funny, no one else agrees with this, except the tyrant Gbagbo, and his goons.. Not even the rulers of the surrounding African states agree.

Few spewing his vile propaganda, Davis is getting $100,000 a month. Some would say he "sold his soul." That is stupid cant, since Davis obviously has no soul. He's an anti-human, not a human.

It's a mark of the moral depravity of the culture of American Power that this creep is no pariah, but a respected voice in D.C. who can charge big bucks to defend thugs. He's not the first, and he won't be the last. Until the vicious U.S. system is either overthrown, evolves into something resembling a normal human system, or self-destructs or rots to the point of collapse, there will always be loathsome dirtbags like Lanny Davis.

Update: according to the NY Times of 12/30/10, Davis apparently couldn't take the heat- and no doubt feared that damage to his reputation would hurt his chances of future propaganda gigs- so he's suddenly dropping Gbagbo as a client.
12/31/10: another Times article confirms what I said yesterday. ("Key Lobbyist's Client List Puts Him on the Defensive," p. A10.) The article is pretty disgusting in its own right, giving us copious Davis bullshit, such as Davis "said his client list reflected his philosophy [sic] that everyone deserved a voice, particularly companies and causes [sic] that challenged conventional wisdom [i.e. reality] or the public's sense of the politically correct." There's a lot more sick bullshit in this vein, pure self-serving, disgustingly self-righteous and phony Davis propaganda about himself rewritten by the Times hacks. But they're just being "balanced," I guess. Except if you're going to transmit someone's bullshit, you should also report the information that clearly shows what a load of horsecrap it is. They do mention some of his loathsome "causes," and Davis absurdly calling himself a "liberal Democrat." That in reference to his propaganda work for the kleptomaniac tyrant of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
The transcript of Davis' appearance on Democracy Now, defending the Honduran coupists, is a great example of his bullying, lying, twisting-reality methodology.

U.S. Military Unleashes Cyberwar Against WikiLeaks

The U.S. hasn't been content to get their Swede stooges to trump up bogus sex charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. (The various versions we're getting is that he didn't stop humping when two women changed his mind, or he didn't use a condom.) Nor having Interpol pu this dangerous global menace atop its Most Wanted list. (Which is doesn't do with genocidal dictators who have indictments, or CIA officers wanted in Italy and convicted in absentia, for example.) And threats of prosecution and long imprisonment, and calls for his assassination, aren't all the U.S. is doing either. WikiLeaks the website is being hounded from pillar to post. Their domain name provider unceremoniously dumped them, claiming that the tornado of cyber attacks on WikiLeaks endangered their architecture. Amazon threw them off their server after menacing grows from right wing dog Sen. Joe Lieberman, whose aide called Amazon to "inquire" about it. Amazon put out a lame excuse that W. violated Amazon's terms of use because they didn't own the copyright to the Government documents W. posts. (As a matter of law, U.S. Government documents CANNOT BE COPYRIGHTED.) PayPal dropped WikiLeaks due to unspecified "illegal activity." That's funny, they haven't been indicted, at least not yet.

The U.S. military has launched what are called Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks on WikiLeaks. This means taking over numerous computers with implanted malware that causes those computers to try and log on to the target website. The idea is to crash the victim website by overwhelming it with a large number contacts that are more than the host server can handle.

December 4, 2010

Death Threats Against Julian Assange

It didn't take long for my post of late November about the grave danger facing Julian Assange, to be confirmed very blatantly. Various politicians and "commentators" have called for imprisonment and worse for Assange. The 1917 "Espionage Act" has been dusted off. This is one of the vicious bludgeons the U.S. uses to crush dissidents. During WW I it was used to imprison socialists, pacifists, and activists of all stripes. So much as questioning the U.S. jumping into WWI was a felony. (One of the Big Lies in America, periodically exposed as a sham, is the myth of free speech, and the Constitutional "guarantee" of same. Guarantee my ass, you lying dogs.)

Various bourgeois figures have even made public threats against Assange's life, calling for his death.

Sarah Palin, who has a lavishly paid perch on Rupert Murdoch's neofascist agitprop channel Fox "News," wants Assange "hunted down." Like a moose or elk, Sarah? We know what U.S. cutthroats do when they "hunt down" people. They either disappear them into secret torture dungeons or kill them.

One of Murdoch's Minions, the deranged liar and bully Bill O'Reilly, calls WikiLeaks "despicable" and the "leaker" "a traitor" and "traitors should be executed or jailed for life."

Tom Flanagan on Canadian TV, (CBC the main channel), said Assange should be assassinated. He even suggested a method for Obana to use- a drone missile strike. Flanagan is a member of rightwing Canadian PM Harper's inner circle and campaign manager for the "Conservatives" in the last two Canadian elections. Unlike here, where the people are either rabid barbarians or politically comatose sheep, in Canada this open call for state murder created an uproar, and Flanagan had to make light of his death call and "apologize," sort of, kind of.

Michael Huckabee didn't threaten Assange specifically, but called for the execution of leakers. "Anything less than execution" for leakers to WikiLeaks "is too kind a punishment."

I wonder if he feels the same about all those anonymous government officials who plant propaganda in the media on a daily basis.

Huckabee is an arch-reactionary, GOP presidential candidate wanna-be in 2008, a pseudo-Holy Man who presents himself as a pious "Christian" to appeal to the backwoods holy rolling speaking-in-tongues primitives that infest Arkansas and so many other U.S. backwaters. He aches to get elected President in 2012. Currently he too is ensconsed in the neofascist stable of evil media czar Murdoch, for handsome pay of course.


One sickening- and unremarked upon- hypocrisy in Huckabee's Tough Guy stance is that as Governor of Arkansas, Huckabee had a bad habit of freeing dangerous, violent felons (but not deserving prisoners, like victims of the drug war) early, against official advice. One of the objects of his kindness went on to murder four police officers in Washington State. This hasn't harmed Huckabee's media standing in the slightest. Unlike what happened to Michael Dukakis, who was held responsible for a rape and assault by Willie Horton, when Horton fled during a work release program. Horton of course never should have been out, but that wasn't Dukakis' personal doing, but rather a dysfunctional work-release program. Even to this day we get reminders of Dukakis-Horton.

You see, reactionaries can do no wrong in the U.S. Another example: G. Gordon Liddy on his radio show- a travesty that that fascist thug has his own radio show!- exhorted people to shoot ATF agent. Didn't cost him a thing in consequences or media esteem. Or when Ann Coulter slimed 9/11 widows, or called for the NY Times to be bombed, that was fine. Even the NY Times has never stopped promoting her. On the other hand, Professor Ward Churchill was swiftly purged from the University of Colorado for writing in an essay that among the dead on 9/11 were "little Eichmanns." Ideological watchdogs quickly pounced, making the comment a national issue of outrage. (I remember all the posts on military.com after 9/11 ghoulishly calling for the nuking of Afghanistan. I think undoubtedly there are many little Eichmanns in America, many in the media, and no doubt some met a deserved end on 9/11. But so did many people who didn't deserve to die. That's the trouble with the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, like when, oh, say, the U.S. bombs Afghan wedding parties, or drops atomic bombs on cities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not that two wrongs make a right, just that some LOUD MOUTHED HYPOCRITS ARE MIGHTY ANNOYING IN THEIR MORALISTIC POSTURING.

And oh, Flanagan has a perch as a university professor. You can bet he won't be purged from it.

And funny how the main U.S. "ally" in the war on terrorism is the biggest sponsor of the people the U.S. currently brands "terrorist," namely Pakistan, the country that planned and sponsored the attack on Mumbai, on the Indian parliament, and innumerable other terrorist acts. In fact, the U.S. is grumpy about the fact that the Pakistanis currently provide safe havens for the Afghan Taliban forces. David Rohde, a NY Times correspondent taken hostage by them and kidnapped to Pakistan, has given an account of how his kidnappers were protected by the Paki army. Even after his escape, they did nothing, and this with a Paki military base less than a mile from his kidnappers' lair.

December 4, 2010

Pope Grants Permission For Male Prostitutes to Use Condoms: Prostitutes Rejoice

Answering the long-time prayers of male prostitutes around the world, the Pope, the Holy Father, the Infallible One, True Representative of God on Earth, has decided in his infinite wisdom that it's a "step on the way to morality" if male prostitutes use condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS, so maybe it's not so bad.

"This is wonderful news!" rejoiced "David," a male prostitute who did not want his full name used. "We've been waiting a long time for the Pope to grant us permission to use condoms. This doesn't come too soon as far as I'm concerned. I know too many people who succumbed to AIDS because the Pope banned them from using rubbers."

Many people saw the slight movement in the granite-like dogma of the Catholic Church as a seismic shift from its previous position that condoms were NEVER EVER justified under any circumstances. It would also seem to contradict on its face the Church's position of just a few years ago that condoms don't prevent AIDS, only abstinence or monogamy does.

But seriously, only jackasses let the pedophile-ridden Catholic Church dictate their sexual behavior to them! This is a Church that has expended great effort to PROTECT pedophile priests and stonewall their victims. (Not to mention its history of horrible tortures and mass murders over the centuries during the Inquisition and other times, and their complicity in numerous fascist regimes in the 20th century.) And considering that the Church's poohbahs are officially asexual, presumably they know NOTHING about sex...

I tremble for Julian Assange

The U.S. has murdered people for a lot less than what Julian Assange, the public face and proprietor of WikiLeaks has already done. After posting U.S. military documents showing massive U.S. complicity in torture of prisoners in Iraq, now WikiLeaks is posting a quarter of a million State Dept. documents that reveal U.S. diplomats tasked with swiping credit card numbers, fingerprints, DNA, even iris (eye) scans (!) and other info from foreign diplomats. (The domestic media has focused on the trivial content, the catty gossip about foreign rulers in the state dept cables.)

As with earlier leaks, the U.S. Government is raising a bogus hue and cry about "endangering lives," which is sheer bullshit. Politicians are bellowing for Assange's arrest and persecution. Congressman Peter King, a jackass generally, demands that WikiLeaks be branded a "terrorist" organization. NBC put him on TV to rant that Assange is killing people, "has blood on his hands" and thus should be treated as a terrorist. [I.e. murdered or kidnapped to a CIA secret torture chamber and then to Guantanamo Bay, the naval base on land the U.S. stole from Cuba when it "liberated" it from Spain.]

AG Eric Holder Jr. (a Clinton regime retread) is vowing criminal charges. Ominous sounds issued from the noise hole of White House chief flack Robert Gibbs ( a real coward when it comes to answering right-wing attacks on his master, Obama), to whit: "this administration thinks it's a big deal." He said "those that have been involved in the stealing of and the dissemination of this information are criminals."

Gibbs said he "wouldn't rule anything out" when it comes to legal action against Wikileaks, stating that in addition to an ongoing criminal investigation the administration is looking at "a whole host of" options. Like what, Gibbs? More frameups on fake charges in other countries? "Dirty tricks"? We know, like JFK, that Obama is enamored of "special ops." It was JFK that brought systematic torture to Latin America, sending thugs like Dan Mitrione to the Southern Hemisphere under the aegis of the "Office of Public Safety" within the "Agency for International Development" to train Latin fascists in torture techniques, [See Office of Public Safety at Wikipedia.]

The U.S. already got their Swedish stooges to bring rape charges against Assange. The U.S. has a history of murdering dissidents generally. Sometimes they murder people by sabotaging planes they're on. Sometimes they arrange traffic "accidents." Sometimes they give people cancer or mysterious fatal illnesses. (As happened to Yasir Arafat, and was planned for Fidel Castro via a thallium poisoning plot when he was visiting New York City.)

Assange also has to worry about being kidnapped from abroad by U.S. Marshals or the DEA. (The DEA lately has branched out into kidnapping arms dealers, most recently Victor Bout, who they busted in Thailand when he fell for DEA agents pretending to be from FARC, the Colombian guerrillas the U.S. labeled "terrorists." Basically a "terrorist" is anyone the U.S. doesn't like. Thus militant environmentalists are "ecoterrorists," peace activists are "supporters of terrorists," etc.)

U.S. courts don't care how someone is dragged into U.S. courts. (Back in the 1950s the FBI kidnapped Morton Sobel, a co-defendant of the Rosenbergs, from Mexico. He was lucky. They only locked him up for 20 years instead of electrocuting him as they did the Rosenbergs.)
Seems like only a matter of time before the gangster U.S. gets Julian, one way or another. Too bad. Only hope is a future world without the U.S.

Krazy Karzai Kracks Up, Bites Hands That Feed Him

"President" Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is like an ill-tempered Chihuahua. A lapdog who delusionally thinks he's a top dog, in response to President Obama pressuring him, once again, to "do more" about ending (sic!) corruption, and make "faster progress" on providing good government, just days later responded with a deranged rant claiming the foreign observers and UN election overseers were the ones committing electoral fraud, attacking the western media, the U.S., and threatening to join the Taliban if they didn't lay off him.

For infuriating effrontery, this must be some kind of world historical record. This SOB tried to steal the election, committed massive fraud, and eventually his opponent saw it was hopeless and dropped out. So Karzai's "reelection" was only by default. Now he whines that he would have won outright if not for the cheating of the foreign observers.

Then he calls Sec. of State Hillary Clinton and feeds her a two-faced sack of bullshit saying he didn't really mean it. What a con man.

After THAT, he's at it again, launching outrageous attacks on the foreign powers that are the only thing between him and a noose around his neck tied to a lamppost courtesy of the Taliban.

The joke is, the U.S. is still pretending, that after over 8 years of running the most corrupt, and one of the most ineffective, governments on earth, that Karzai is or will "do something about" corruption. He's the head crook. His brother is a major drug dealer. Don't you get it? Karzai is just a sleazy hustler. After this string runs out he'll retire to his Swiss bank accounts. (Assuming he can stay one step ahead of the Taliban.) If anyone deserves the Diem treatment, it's Karzai.

What is the World's Worst Company to work for?

Good question. There are so many horrible choices to choose from. Companies that pay their workers slave wages. Companies that exploit "illegal" immigrants. Companies that cheat their workers out of pay, or overtime. Companies that destroy or endanger their workers' health by exposing them to dangerous substances, or unsafe working conditions. Companies that are just plain evil, involved with fascist death squads to murder workers trying to organize their fellow workers, for example. Companies that sell repressive technology and machinery to oppressive regimes. (Like western corporations selling surveillance equipment and software to China, companies that sell arms and "riot control" equipment to dictatorships, Caterpillar selling armored bulldozers to Israel to raze the homes of Palestinians, and murder the occasional activist like Rachel Corrie.)

So I guess Rio Tinto isn't the world's worst company to work for. But I sure wouldn't want to work for them. They just threw 4 employees to the wolves, abandoning them to a Chinese prison on trumped up charges. Even before the "conviction" in a bogus, secret "trial," the head of Rio Tinto was distancing his company from these expendable executives and sucking up to the Chinese rulers. Utterly disgusting. The instant they were "convicted," they were fired. Some people really do care only about money.

RT is an Australian company. One of the victims is an Australian citizen (but ethnically Chinese, which I think might be relevant in terms of the Aussie Government's attitude) and the other 3 are Chinese citizens. The Australian Government has been pretty feckless, making mealy-mouthed pleas for more "transparency" in the "trial." (The men were held virtually incommunicado for months preceding the "trial." Their lawyers had almost no input into the "process." ) It's reminiscent of the Australians' going along with the Indonesians' pathetic lies about murdering a group of Australian journalists during the invasion of East Timor back in the 1970s. Apparently caving in to thugs is an Aussie habit.

Media Barons Topple 2nd N.Y. Governor in a Row

The media barons of New York (who are also national "players" with many other media properties), Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. of the New York Times, Rupert Murdoch of the New York Post, and Mortimer Zuckerman of the New York Daily News, have flexed their muscles yet again, toppling a second N.Y State Governor in less than a year.

Last year they ousted Eliot Spitzer, a genuine reform Governor. Months of attacks on Spitzer culminated in the FBI handing the media a prostitution "scandal" they could use to finally force Spitzer from office. The only possible motive must have been that despite their pseudo-moralistic fulminations against the corrupt state government, they actually oppose reform. Spitzer was attacked for having a lousy personality, and then when his underlings exposed a real scandal- Republican State Senate boss Joseph Bruno using State Police helicopters to ferry him to partisan political errands, the media twisted it into a scandal against Spitzer for leaking the info! Amazing. When that wasn't enough to oust Spitzer, the FBI helpfully came through.
Now the media oligarchs have toppled Spitzer's unelected successor, David Paterson, a political hack who dropped his "liberal" politics like a snake molting its skin to move sharply right as Governor. (For example, suddenly defending the rich from taxes and wanting to slash social services, opposing a special prosecutor to investigate police crimes, which he'd "supported" as a state senator, etc.)

The media barons are surely feeling their oats. The tabloid rags, the Post and Daily News, scream in large block letters on their front pages in the crudest terms for Paterson to "go." (See their covers from late February 2010 early March. http://www.nypost.com/, http://www.nydailynews.com/.) Not content with his dropping out of the election campaign scheduled for the fall, they want him to resign immediately. The papers are openly demanding that the current unelected Lt. Governor, Richard Ravitch, take over. Ravitch is a lifetime member of the unelected nomenklatura in New York State, one of the grey eminences who wield power behind the scenes. Since he doesn't have to answer to the people, he can savagely attack their interests with impunity, including social services, and institute even more regressive taxation. (Sales taxes in NYC, for example, are just a hair below 10% now.)

The means of ousting Paterson consisted of the Times rooting around for skeletons in his closet. They found one in the closet of his trusted aide-de-camp, David Johnson, a 6 foot 7 inch bully with a bad habit of beating up his girlfriends. The campaign started with the media hyping rumors of unspecified dirt that the Times was about to spring that would force Paterson out. After a couple of weeks of shameless rumor-mongering and wild speculation by the rest of the media, the Times came out with an article closely tying Johnson to Paterson, painting him as his main political adviser and right hand man, with some hints of legal troubles. Days later, they let the other shoe drop with the news that a girlfriend Johnson beat up was then leaned on by the State Police- specifically the unit that functions as the Governor's Praetorian Guard, and does dirty work for ALL Governors, and that Paterson himself spoke with her on the phone the day before she was due in court to seek a permanent order of protection. When she failed to show up in court, the matter was dismissed.

Now the media pile-on is unrelenting for Paterson to resign, not just not run for election in November.

The moral of the story? The major corporate media constitute the top power in the U.S. Politicians are ultimately at their mercy, because the media control the perceptions of the populace. The populace are deluded that the image of the world presented by the media constitutes reality.

World's Most Expensive Show Trial Hits Snag

The world's - indeed history's - most expensive (by far) show trial hit a snag a few days ago. Obama and his "team" wanted to make a display of American righteousness with a show trial of "self-professed 9/11 mastermind" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed "and four codefendants." (This is the obligatory way they are identified in ALL U.S. media accounts. On some matters, the U.S. corporate media is as slavishly conformist and hews in lockstep fashion to propaganda tropes as the Chinese media.) After years in U.S. dungeons, where they were subjected to torture- the U.S. media openly admits, without any embarrassment, let alone shame, that Mohammed was waterboarded- that is, subjected to drowning - 187 times- we are now being treated to a demonstration of the fairness and justice of the U.S. legal system.

The public is supposed to be mentally numb, like the populace in George Orwell's 1984, to glaring contradictions, such as the "right" to a speedy trial, and the presumption of innocence, blatantly violated in this case. (Just one example of the latter: David Axelrod, Obama's main political consiglieri, said on TV that they WILL be convicted and WILL be executed for their "murders." Of course, the entire American public has been convinced of their guilt, so an unbiased jury cannot be impaneled in the U.S. And if ever a case cried out for a change of venue, it's this one. Instead, holding the trial "blocks from the World Trade Center Site," was hailed as a perfect site for vengeance- er, "Justice." Like an old West hanging by a posse.

Don't get me wrong, I think they may be guilty- although we really only have the word of their torturers for that. After years of torture not many "defendants" are going to go back on the agreed upon story.

What a nightmarish, violent police state America has become.

The cost of this political theater was pegged at an incredible $200 million a year, for five years, (what could take so long? The conclusion is foregone) for a total of $1 Billion. For "security,"- i.e. overtime for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly's thugs, snipers on roofs to make us all feel nice and secure, (snipers glaring down on me alwaysgives me a warm and cozy feeling), and expensive police toys.

The billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg hailed it, and snarled dismissively at the plaintive bleats of the local community board objecting to being locked down for 5 years. (In New York City, community boards are utterly powerless bodies that supposedly "represent" neighborhood residents. The real rulers cynically set them up to give citizens a forum to exhaust themselves in ineffectual venting.) But then a funny thing happened: Commissar Kelly briefed the people who matter- the big landlords and other "business leaders"- on the police state hell he was planning on creating. So then these CLASS A citizens complained to their fellow plutocrat Bloomberg, and lo and behold, suddenly Bloomberg said it wasn't so smart to hold the trial in the crowded, congested tip of lower Manhattan, base of various high finance organizations. (He previously spat at the community board chair who'd suggested moving the trial to Governor's Island, calling her suggestion "stupid." One reason the rich love this Profile in Courage is his willingness to tell the proles off.)

So now the Obama regime is squirming. While the media claims lower Manhattan is off as the trial site, officially the regime denies that. And the torture-loving right wing of the U.S. elite insists that a military "commission" (i.e. drumhead proceeding) is all these defendants "deserve."