WANTED: FOR GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER: GEORGE MICHAEL ZIMMERMAN

                                                        Angela B. Corey. DOB: 10/31/54

George M. Zimmerman

DOB: 10/5/83

GEORGE ZIMMERMAN IS WANTED FOR GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER IN THE EXECUTION-STYLE SLAYING OF TEENAGER TRAYVON MARTIN.

ZIMMERMAN IS A SELF-STYLED NEIGHBORHOOD GUARDIAN AND BURGLARY-AVENGER WHO STALKED, CONFRONTED, AND KILLED MARTIN, WHO WAS WALKING TO HIS FATHER'S RESIDENCE IN SANFORD, FLORIDA.

ZIMMERMAN IS CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS. EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION WHEN HE IS APPROACHING YOU.

ZIMMERMAN'S ACCOMPLICE IN EVADING JUSTICE IS ANGELA B. COREY, A FLORIDA PROSECUTOR WITH A HISTORY OF POLITICIZED PROSECUTIONS. COREY IMPRISONED AN ABUSED WOMAN NAMED MARISSA ALEXANDER FOR TWENTY YEARS FOR FIRING A WARNING SHOT AT HER MALE ATTACKER WHO WAS IN VIOLATION OF AN ORDER OF PROTECTION.

THE PUBLIC IS CAUTIONED TO AVOID THESE TWO DANGEROUS CRIMINALS IF AT ALL POSSIBLE. ANYONE WHO ENCOUNTERS THESE FUGITIVES FROM JUSTICE OR HAS INFORMATION ABOUT THEM IS URGED TO BECOME POLITICALLY ACTIVE.

ABC and Taliban Terrorist Adnan Rasheed: A Perfect Match

The mind-numbing ABC chatter show aimed at dullard housewives, The View, has hired crank comedian and past nudie model Jenny McCarthy as a co-host, from which perch she will promote her anti-vaccine views. (She is convinced her son's autism was caused by a vaccination.)

The Pakistani terrorist commander Adnan Rasheed, while "explaining" why they targeted for assassination a 15-year-old schoolgirl who they shot in the head (Malala Yousafza, who survived and is now 16), reiterated the Taliban's conviction that vaccination is a U.S. plot to sterilize people. (Which is why they keep murdering Pakistani vaccination workers, mostly young women. These guys are not very chivalrous!)

I was thinking, why not get Rasheed on The View also? His demented anti-vaccination "views" would complement McCarthy's perfectly. (Indeed, they would make hers look moderate by comparison. Plus, people would be too busy attacking ABC for putting a Taliban terrorist on to bother objecting to McCarthy. It's a double win for ABC!)

Taliban Clears Up Misunderstanding Over Why They Shot 15-Year-Old-Schoolgirl in the Head

The world has just been favored with an explanation for why the Pakistani Taliban shot Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai in the head October 2012 after waylaying her schoolbus, nearly killing her. This comes from a “commander” by the name of Adnan Rasheed.

It seems it wasn't because of her advocacy for girls' merely being allowed to go to school, as has been so maliciously reported. It was because she “smeared” the Taliban, Adnan enlightens us.

Oh OK then! That's different! Why didn't you say so in the first place! It's perfectly reasonable to murder schoolgirls who say things about you that you don't like. Go right ahead and shoot some more of them. What better way to prove you aren't violent, repressive, totalitarian thugs than to assassinate girls on their way home from school to make the point that no one should say that's exactly what you are!

In fact, they also singled out two of her classmates in the same attack. (Malala has since turned 16, no thanks to the Islamofascists who tried to murder her.)

Apparently this little clarification is a PR move in reaction to brave Malala's recent UN address. She has inspired people around the world. (Inspired in a positive way, unlike the nihilistic inspiration the Islamofascists apparently evoke in assorted schlubs, losers, and vicious jackasses with demented dreams of power.) By the way, goons like Rasheed make Pakistan too dangerous for Malala and her family to live there anymore.

This vicious turd Rasheed isn't merely some tribal militant. He's a former member of the Pakistani Air Force. Which once again shows that it's splitting hairs to distinguish between the Pak military and its terrorist spawn, which they created as their cat's paw. Although lately it's a bit of a Frankenstein's monster story, with the beast getting harder for its creators to control. The best thing we can hope for is that the terrorists and the Pakistani army kill as many of each other as possible. (And if there was ever a good reason to consider a preemptive nuclear strike, maybe one on the Pakis nuclear arsenal and delivery vehicles would be in order. Unlike the fantasy nukes of Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion, or of Iran, these nukes actually exist.)

By the way, Rasheed the Reasonable was convicted for trying to assassinate Pervez Musharraf in 2003, when that general was president of Pakiland.

So why isn't he in prison, you might well ask?

He was, actually, But he “escaped” last year. Along with three hundred of his fellow prisoners, who “escaped” at the same time.

How could that be? And how could they all get away?

Why don't you ask the Pakis? Just remember, you'll be asking the same sleazy liars who claim they had no idea Osama bin Laden was living right under their noses all those years in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, where he'd built a large, secretive compound. I mean, it's easy to miss something like that.

The Pakis are so duplicitous it seems they've outfoxed themselves and are simultaneously fighting and sponsoring their own terrorists. That can get confusing!

Come to think of it, maybe it's karmic justice that the liars of the U.S. Imperium have to deal with the sleazy liars of Pakistan. Just about every day now, the secret police apparatchiks of the Obama regime have to admit they told yet another lie to the U.S. Congress about their massive surveillance programs. (The NSA has so many different compartmented spy programs it's a wonder they can keep track of them all themselves.)

That's right, they even lie to their own national legislature. (And then when they're caught massively spying on everyone on earth, the regime apparatchiks, from Obama on down, all purr at us Not to Worry, Congress oversees all the spying that Congress doesn't even know about.)

Hey, everybody does it, right? Lies to their legislatures? That must mean it's okay. Just like corruption, say, or insider trading, is okay if “everybody” does it.

Whoops! Not quite. The Obama regime prosecutes corruption and insider trading. In fact, the U.S. Attorney for part of New York State, Preet Bharara, is currently on a years-long jihad against both those things, targeting state politicians and Wall Street traders.

I guess the “everybody does it” alibi only works for people with a lot of power, like Obama, who just invoked it to justify the NSA's spying on U.S. allies. Doesn't work for mere state politicians or financial speculators.

{Is this you? Sitting at your computer all day, every few minutes navigating to jasonzenith.blogspot.com  because you hunger for the latest insights from Jason Zenith? Desperately checking over and over, while a sense of forlorn futility slowly grows inside you like a lethal tumor?

Why put yourself through that when you don't have to? Well now, you don't! All you have to do is follow by email at, uh, “Follow By Email.” (Makes sense.) You'll find it at the top right corner of the page. Just go there- it's to the right of the title of the top post- and follow the easy-to-understand instructions. There's even a "subscribe" option!!

But let's just say, for argument's sake, that this isn't you. Maybe you don't spend all your days constantly checking on Jason Zenith's website, for some reason. (We won't ask why; it's not for us to delve into your idiosyncracies.) So what? You can still sign up for alerts, or subscribe, and for exactly the same price as those sufferers we mentioned before- namely free. So why not? It's not like it's costing you anything. It's free. I mean, how cheap do you have to be to not sign up? It's free, I told you. Freee. You don't have to pay, O-KAAY? So what's your excuse now? You like giving people a hard time or something? Go on, just do it and then you won't have to put up with me bugging you about it!}

The New York Times Breaks the Law Again Today

And every day, in fact.

Every day the NYT is an unauthorized recipient of “classified information.” The NYT people have no “security clearances,” therefore they are by definition unauthorized recipients. They also aid and abet government officials who commit criminal violations of the various “classified information” laws that enforce state secrecy, as well as the Espionage Act. [These are the same laws that prevent the handful of Congresspeople who have pseudo-”oversight” duties for the “intelligence community” (secret police combine) from saying anything about what's going on, even to the rest of Congress. Which doesn't stop liars from Obama on down and their media stooges from constantly repeating the lie that “Congress oversees” all the massive spying the secret police and military do. Hardly.]

Here's an example from the Sunday paper (July 14^th), although you can find examples every single day.

The first paragraph sources the story to “American officials,” who “said” on “Saturday” that Israel bombed some antiship cruise missiles in Syria last month that Russia had just shipped.

The second paragraph says “The officials, who declined to be identified because they were discussing intelligence reports, said the attack occurred...” blah blah. Of course, the “intelligence reports” would be “classified,” and the “officials” were committing a crime by telling the NYT about them, which explains why they “declined to be identified,” that is, why the NYT agreed to keep their identities secret. In fact, by the U.S. Government's lights, they committed numerous crimes, including violating their signed agreements not to divulge “classified” information. [1]

Every day, the NYT aids and abets these government criminals by conspiring with them to receive these unauthorized releases of classified information to reporters and editors without security clearances, and to hide the identities of these lawbreakers who are guilty of “unauthorized disclosure of classified/national defense information” and of violating the Espionage Act (as it is currently “interpreted” by the Obama regime, with the complicity of the Federal courts and their politically repressive judges).

But get this. Some of the government lawbreakers who want former “National Security” Agency contractor and hero whistleblower Edward Snowden's head on a pike are committing the exact same crimes they accuse him of. [See “NSA Whistle-Blower Edward Snowden: Hero Or Villain?”]

And obviously it's not just the NYT. It's the Washington Post, it's the various TV channels, it is the multifarious organs of the corporate media propaganda system that is doing this.

The very same corporate propaganda organs that violate U.S. law daily (by the Obama regime theory that wiretapped the AP and Fox News as being involved in criminal conspiracies, and the media theory that says WikiLeaks and others are criminals) and that aid and abet lawbreaking (a separate crime) by government criminals periodically float the idea or even openly call for criminal prosecutions of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and even Guardian columnist and reporter Glenn Greenwald, who Snowden has given his information to.

All this goes well beyond an issue of selective prosecution. Well beyond a contradiction. Well beyond mere hypocrisy.

This is the rankest cynicism by the power bosses, in the government, and in elements of the corporate media, such as the revolting David Gregory of NBC, who challenged Glenn Greenwald to explain why he shouldn't be clapped into prison.

Actually David Gregory should be in prison. He is an accomplice in major crimes against humanity.

1] “Israel Airstrike Targeted Advanced Missiles That Russia Sold to Syria, U.S. [SIC] Says,” Michael R, Gordon, New York Times, Sunday, July 14^th, 2013, page 10. I like the way lawbreaking government officials ARE The Nation, the “U.S.” Now that's authority! We are the state! Sounds like a monarchy, doesn't it?

Islamofascists On The March!

Three ominous items from the morning's Aljazeera broadcast:

In Syria, the messianic and power-mad maniacs proclaiming themselves “The Islamic State of Iraq In The Levant” are systematically seizing territory and control from the loose and disorganized indigenous Syrian rebels, who call themselves the “Free Syrian Army.” (A title that puts a good face on something that is not an army, is not even a single organized entity, but rather refers to a loose coalition of numerous ad hoc bands of mostly civilians with some military veterans and deserters from Assad's army who have been forced by violent repression to take up arms against an intolerable regime. They are united by the cause of overthrowing Assad and nothing more.) In no less than five “incidents” in the last week, the Islamisoids are aggressively trying to seize control of areas of Syria wrested from the Assad regime by the Syrian rebels, in effect attacking the uprising itself and stealing the hard-won fruits of the rebels' paid-for-in-blood victories. (The same thing they did in northern Mali, when they elbowed aside the Tuareg rebels and grabbed half of Mali away from them.) [1]

Thus do the Islamisoids play into the hands of the Assad regime in two ways: they weaken the rebellion and put it under impossible military pressure, and they provide evidence for the Assad propaganda line that the uprising is a bunch of foreign jihadi terrorists coming into the country. It also reinforces the Assad warning that the only alternative to him is another Islamist state like Afghanistan under the Taliban. (Après moi, le déluge, has been one of Assad's propaganda themes, designed to resonate with Western ears.) His pals in Iran aren't an example of an Islamist state, in this propaganda schema. Of course the two regimes are different flavors of Islamic theocracy, Iran being ruled by Shiites, the Taliban being Sunni. Elements of those two religious strains are busy blowing up each others' adherents in Iraq at the moment.

In Iraq, the latest bombings of mosques and cafes kill the observant and those trying to enjoy life. No claims of responsibility, but suspicion falls on sectarian fanatics and Al-Qaeda, (which in Iraq dubs itself “Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia”), resurgent and boastful of late there. (These “holy warriors” aren't so respectful of Islam to refrain from regularly bombing mosques and blowing up processions and busloads of religious pilgrims. Apparently it's not religion but blasphemy if it's not the EXACT DOGMA of the killers.) During the current month so Ramadan, terrorism by Sunni and Shiite “militants” against targets of the other community, including mosques, funerals, and cafes, has increased. A suicide bomber- hallmark of Al-Qaeda- blew himself up in a coffee shop in Kirkuk, killing 39 people for the crime of existing. Since the start of April, over 2,600 people have been slaughtered in terrorist attacks of all kinds in Iraq, almost the same as the 2,900 death toll of “9/11.”

In Nigeria, the boss of Boko Haram, his very own Islamofascist terrorist gang, issued yet another of his countless denunciations of what he calls “western education.” (Boko Haram means “western education is forbidden.” Does that make their demented obsession clear enough for you? “Western education” apparently includes, reading, writing, arithmetic, all those awful foreign UnIslamic poisons.)

He hailed a recent murderous attack on a school dormitory by his goons, who set it on fire, killing 28 students and a teacher. (That'll teach them to stay away from “western education!”)

The Islamofascists are maniacs with a method to their madness. They are power opportunists who roam areas of the globe from Africa, through the middle east, all the way to the Philippines and Indonesia, seeking areas of advanced governmental rot and decay (or of political upheaval such as Iraq) where they can move in and seize control, as they recently did in Mali until France sent in an expeditionary force to stop them from seizing all of Mali. (They'd grabbed the north of Mali previously, including Timbuktu, where they engaged in their usual projects of mutilation, murder- especially of women who they imagine are having sex, and whipping those whose clothes they disapprove of, yet they aren't too puritanical to refrain from rape- and the razing of culture by destroying World Heritage Site shrines, burning ancient manuscripts, banning music and smashing musical instruments, and generally imposing their brutal, crude, and stifling mentality by force. The word “primitive” would do them too much credit. Even primitive peoples have music, art, and culture. Not like these demonic ghouls, who seek to eradicate all art and culture and indeed joy from the lives of others, apparently not content in erasing it from their own. All they have is a bastardized and corrupt version of Islam, designed to justify their incredible lust for power- power to destroy what is uplifting and good, power to make other people miserable with their insane impositions. Really, even to call them fascist insults fascists, who had their own totalitarian fascist art and culture. Not even Hitler sought to eradicate all music- just “Jewish” compositions and “degenerate negro” music, jazz.)

What a world we live in, blighted with deranged psychopaths who manage to infect others with their violent mental disease.

Meanwhile, the U.S. tries to pick off assorted “militants” who they believe have it in for the U.S. specifically, with drone attacks. The U.S. has no strategy for opposing Islamofascism. It only has tactics, applied to selected countries.

Just because you apply your tactics around the globe doesn't mean you have a strategy. And a strategy is desperately needed.

The U.S. has gone from Bush the Blusterer, who went along with Pakistan's charade of being an “ally” in the “war on terrorism,” to Obama the Ditherer, tactically decisive at times (killing Osama bin Laden, a risky mission, killing Anwar al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, apparently out of fear of him becoming a nuisance in the future by raising a stink about the killing of his father, both U.S. citizens), but strangely aloof and diffident about crises in Mali, where he could have provided drones with missiles (not just surveillance drones) to take out the Islamofascists retreating from the French forces across wide-open desert, and in Libya, where he insisted on sitting in the backseat of the effort to support the Libyan people's Arab Spring uprising against the twisted megalomaniac dictator Qaddafi.

Note the odd inconsistently, It's necessary to kill a non-Jihadist 16-year-old, and also a retired veteran of the Afghan war living in Yemen for another example, the latter case an attack that slaughtered many bystanders and turned an entire village against the U.S., but the Islamisoids wreaking havoc across northern and sub-Saharan Africa are only important enough to motivate Obama to lift a pinkie. I think Obama's political thought processes might tie him up in knots at times. (A native of that Yemeni village who lived in America testified before Congress about the counterproductive effect of that murderous attack, which turned the villagers, who had been indifferent to the Jihadists' attempts to sway their opinions about America, into enemies of the U.S. Jeremy Skahill has also highlighted the bombing in his work, including a recent documentary. Tactics without strategy leads to such self-defeating acts.)

Obama thinks that what he's doing, the tactics, plus changing the rhetoric, is strategy. He says he's “targeting specific groups,” and he presents that as strategy. That's merely a description of what he thinks he's doing. And he wants to retire the “war on terrorism” slogan. That's a rhetorical move. Rhetorical tweaks, which the hyper-manipulative Obama is very fond of, aren't strategy either.

Like the U.S. in general- this is true for its government and its corporations- there seems to be an inability to thing longer term as opposed to being obsessed with the immediate. Unfortunately the ones with the long range plans are the most venal, like the “National Security” Agency, with its well-laid plans (being executed) for massive, permanent, global, ubiquitous surveillance. (They just finished their new $2 billion storage center in Utah where they will stash all the data they plan on stealing in the future.) Or the FBI, which continues to extend its tentacles through U.S. society, deploying ever-more-inescapable means of tracking and surveillance. Their goal is to be able to follow anyone around in public everywhere they go, via the endless number of outdoor (and indoor) surveillance camera and facial recognition software. This will make effective dissent and political organizing virtually impossible.

For humans on this planet, we are too often caught between a rock and a hard place. Venal, oppressive governments (the U.S., Russia, China, and numerous others) and fanatics driven by demented principles who constitute the most potent opposition to those nations. The people of Timbuktu epitomize the dilemma. On the one hand, a useless, corrupt, pseudo-government, and on the other, barbarian invaders imposing an insane new social order that is suffocating to human existence.

It certainly adds credence to one of the arguments of the ardent Second Amendmentites of the U.S. An armed populace is the only (not sure, but possible) defense against tyranny. The hapless folk of Timbuktu did not have weapons with which to defend themselves against the barbarian invasion of Islamisoids, who outclassed both the naïve Tuareg rebels (their erstwhile allies) and the feckless Malian “army,” a gang that is only good for attacking the civilian government of the country. Anti-gun lefties take note.

1] After repeatedly attacking and killing Free Syrian Army fighters, the Islamisoids topped it off by murdering a top commander of the FSA at a “checkpoint” they conveniently established where they intercepted him. An FSA guy meanwhile jabbered on Aljazeera that they would be “watching” the Islamisoids who just murdered one of their leading commanders, and would “take action” is necessary. Lame, guys. Real lame. You need to take out the Islamisoids' boss immediately, if at all possible. (And by “take out” I don't mean go on a date with, or order food to go at a restaurant. I mean the American slang term for kill. I explain this term for the benefit of my numerous non-American readers who may not be familiar with it. And translating that term on the page no doubt only confused you.)

As I Predicted, The Murderer Zimmerman Beats The Rap

I would have preferred to be wrong, but as usual when I predict something, I was right. I'm an unusually perspicacious person, although I don't think any unusual insightfulness was required to predict this outcome- just a passing familiarity with U.S. history, U.S. courts, the racial caste system of America, and “white” people, especially Southern whites. The jury consisted of 5 white women and one “minority.” (Not otherwise identified in the media reports I've seen, so I'm going to guess Hispanic, which would have tended to make her identify with the half-Hispanic George Zimmerman. If she had been black, we could have expected the media to highlight the fact as if say See? This is very fair! Now how can you question an acquittal? There was A Black on the jury! Same as with the New York jury that acquitted the cops who shot unarmed black African immigrant Amadou Diallo nineteen times while he was standing in the entrance to his own building, minding his own business. Yeah, they fired 41 shots at him- I guess they're no marksmen.)

Even with the manslaughter possibility thrown in to provide a possible compromise verdict, there was no conviction. This despite the fact that the screaming was obviously Martin, being held at gunpoint by a ruthless thug, who then coldly executed him. Martin should have ran, so at least Zimmerman would have shot him in the back. They after the inevitable acquittal, it would have been obvious to more people what a travesty this trial is, what a sham the legal system of the U.S. is. (Especially Florida's, although this could have happened in almost any state in the U.S. Maybe not in Vermont.)

As I noted in my previous essay, [BELOW] the prosecution did a poor job (for example, identifying the screaming voice on the recording as Trayvon Martin should have been easy- instead more evidence was presented by the defense claiming it was Zimmerman screaming frantically for ten or so seconds until the execution shot rang out than was put on by the prosecution, which inexplicably failed to use voice print technology). A parade of liars took the stand for Zimmerman, his family and friends (Zimmerman, a chronic liar, apparently takes after his family) and even the detective who initially refused to charge Zimmerman went to bat for him.

The only reason there was a trial at all is because of a month of protests and pressure in Florida and all around the U.S., finally forcing the state to bring charges and do a half-assed prosecution for show.

The defense deftly turned reality on its head, blaming what Zimmerman's attorney called “the violence” on Martin's refusal to go home. (! He was ON his way home, you infuriating jackass!) Somehow Martin has no right to stand his ground- even though he was the one being pursued, as he told his friend on the phone during Zimmerman's stalking of him. This clearly reveals what the Florida “Stand Your Ground” law really is- it's a Freedom To Kill Blacks law. In fact, when a black female victim
of domestic violence named Marissa Alexander invoked it when she was tried for attempted murder for firing warning shots (!) at her male attacker, a domestic abuser, in Florida last year, her defense failed and she was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Not for killing anyone, just for firing shots at someone. But that's a twofer: it isn't just about racist oppression, it's about sexist oppression, enforcing women's subordinate and subservient position in society enforced by male violence backed by the power of the state. (Do an Internet search on her name and you'll get major media reports on the case.)

So now what? Hopefully Zimmerman will be sued for civil damages by the Martins, same as O.J. Simpson was (and found liable for millions in damages to the families of the two people he gutted like sheep.) Simpson went on to commit an armed robbery, so there is some justice for him as he now sits in prison for that. Apparently his sense of personal invincibility emerged intact with his acquittal for two murders. Talk about overconfident.

There is a possibility of Federal civil rights charges against Zimmerman, but there isn't much basis for that. Besides, Obama is always bending over backwards to prove to whites that he doesn't favor blacks. So in practice Obama has been anti-black. His Attorney General, the awful Eric Holder Jr., has done next to nothing to stop the blizzard of voter disenfranchisement laws passed by state legislatures controlled by Republican, even though these run afoul of Federal voting rights laws.

There is no militant armed black organization to put a bullet in Zimmerman's head. Such organizations are not tolerated. On the other hand, until fairly recently, white racist terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan were not only tolerated, they were state sanctioned, and used by the FBI to help suppress the black civil rights movement. (Just one small example: An FBI informer Klansman, Gary Rowe, was in the car of Klansman who chased down and executed Viola Liuzzo, a white northern woman who was unusually ethical in that she felt an obligation to go south to help oppressed blacks gain their basic human rights. Rowe may have been the actual executioner.) Yet just recently the FBI and State of New Jersey announced a doubling of a multimillion dollar reward for the capture of Assata Shakur, who was apparently part of the short-lived and minuscule Black Liberation Army. Shakur has been in exile in Cuba for about thirty years. Yet the FBI supervisor announcing the new push to Get Shakur fulminated in an enraged voice about her “terrorist ideology.” Apparently that was what this ideological fanatic finds most intolerable about her.

As long as blacks are just shooting other blacks, as long as black rage is turned inward in community self-destruction, the establishment can sit smugly by and watch. But they are prepared to crush with an iron fist any manifestation of black militancy, armed or unarmed, against the power system.

….................................................................................................................................................

So was I right about the Zimmerman case because of correct understanding of reality, or because of some personality defect on my part? I'm generally regarded as a “pessimist” and a “cynic.” That may be, although I think I am more realistic than most people. Their unreasonable optimism, based on blind hope and willful naivete, makes my realism appear to them as pessimism.

As for “cynicism,” anyone who calls out Official Bullshit is branded a cynic. Teachers were calling me that in school.

Brace Yourselves for Unjust Verdict in Trial of the Murderer George Zimmerman

I think the killer Zimmerman has a very good chance of beating the rap for stalking and executing (black- which should be irrelevant but which means everything in America) teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida.

For one thing, his defense made a credible evidentiary presentation for reasonable doubt. For example, a parade of friends and relatives of the killer falsely testified that it was Zimmerman screaming his lungs out for help. (Why wouldn't Zimmerman have just run away? Or held Martin at gunpoint? Who is logically going to be the one screaming?)

On the other side, the prosecution was weak. The identity of the screaming voice is a perfect example. Probably voiceprints could have easily established the identity of the person. It is obvious that the prosecution was only undertaken reluctantly- no surprise, as the only reason there was any prosecution at all was due to the political pressure of mass protest.

Florida's "stand your ground" law is basically a license to kill (blacks). The fact that it was the victim, who after trying to get away from Zimmerman, turned and stood his ground, is just another vicious irony of the case.

What's Wrong with Aljazeera?

To find out, go to propagandaanalysis.blogspot.com, for July 12th. You can click on the link to the right in the sidebar.

NSA Whistle-Blower Edward Snowden: Hero Or Villain?

Is there an objective answer to this question, or is it inescapably subjective?

In a sense, everything is subjective, that is, dependent on one's perspective. Yet there are degrees of objectivity and subjectivity. Subjectively, the sun is moving around the earth. Just look in the sky! Don't you see what it does every day?

And who could think the world is round? Isn't it obviously flat?

Yet we are able to gain a truer view of things by analysis and study. In other words, we move closer to “absolute” objectivity.

Paradoxically, objectivity is relative. We cannot obtain absolute objectivity because we cannot view existence from outside of existence, and we cannot perceive or think anything from outside our own minds. In other words, we cannot get outside of our minds to perceive external reality.

But it does NOT follow from that that all ideas, opinions, and thoughts are equal. The idea that the earth is flat is not just as valid as the idea that it is round. The knowledge of the reality that the Holocaust was an actually-occurring historical event is not on a par in terms of value or legitimacy with the insistence that the Holocaust is a myth. The fact that absolute objectivity doesn't exist, and that absolute certainty is elusive, does not mean there is no truth or falsehood. To believe that is to enter literal madness.

So we live in a paradoxical state of existence. But we don't need absolute certainty to live. Being pretty sure of many things, and being sure based on intellectually honest examination of reality, always subject to revision, is good enough for living.

So is it impossibly subjective to put a label on Edward Snowden?

Not at all. Not if words have logical meaning. It is true that one's attitude towards Snowden will determine how one views him, and thus the words one uses to describe him. But that attitude, as you will see, is itself rooted in which value system one is beholden to- a human one or a power one that elevates the State over the person. [1]

Thus the fundamental conflict here is between those two value systems- the human value system, vs. the power value system.

But first we must answer the question: what is a hero?

I define a hero as someone who willingly puts themselves at significant risk for the sake of specific other people or for the greater good. I think that is the most succinct expression of the fundamental meaning of the word. Probably the Snowden-haters would agree with that definition of “hero.”

It cannot be debated that Snowden put himself, consciously, at risk. Thus the only thing that is arguable at all here is whether what Snowden did was for “the greater good.”

For anyone who is pro-human, there really is no argument that it was. Human beings are obviously entitled to live their lives free of the malevolent monitoring of a murderous empire, or indeed of any state. Human beings are entitled to live their lives, which to live decency requires personal privacy. The NSA and USA are ushering in the nightmare world George Orwell envisioned in 1984. In that world, an all-powerful state monitors every action of its subjects down to the minutest detail, making resistance to its oppression impossible and imposing compulsory enthusiastic support for its wars.

So there can be no argument in human terms with the fact that Snowden performed a public good. (The idea that massive NSA spying is “protecting” its victims is errant nonsense on its face and I won't dally here refuting it. Others are refuting it very well.) The argument is with the oppressors of the U.S. power establishment. To them, their power is the highest good and the most important thing in existence. Therefore, they have the right to massively violate the privacy of literally billions of people, to steal and store in perpetuity all their private communications, to draw social maps of all their human connections, and to use the information to target for harm those whose presumptive political beliefs and activities the power system does not like. (Such as myself.) To them, anything that undermines their power is evil. Thus Snowden, by exposing their crimes, and threatening to generate opposition to those crimes, is evil.

Let us dispose right now of the transparently ludicrous and false alibi that this massive, permanent, total surveillance system is all designed for the sole goal of “fighting terrorism.” That is the least significant and smallest part of the massive spying. The far more important and pervasive purposes are controlling the domestic population of the U.S. and preemptively targeting for neutralization potential organizers and dissident leaders; targeting foreign governments and elites in order to dominate them; targeting foreign populations, as in Brazil, to aid the fascist and reactionary forces in those countries- remember, historically the CIA has provided thousands of names of people to be exterminated to fascist militaries all over the world, especially in Latin America, Indonesia under Suharto, Iraq under Saddam Hussein (when the U.S. liked him). With a massive NSA database at its disposal, now the CIA can murder more people than ever. [2]

The mavens of the U.S. power establishment say Snowden should plop himself into their clutches and “face the consequences of his actions.” In fact he's a coward for not doing so, is their position.

In other words, to use a war metaphor, a soldier should throw himself on a live grenade (absent nearby colleagues who would be at risk).

A soldier in combat doesn't seek to become a casualty. Likewise he is not a coward for resisting capture by the enemy.

I'm speaking in the hero context here. Snowden himself doesn't see the U.S. Government as his enemy, perhaps. He should, however, because it is his enemy. And the fact that they are trying to imprison him (for life if not most of his life) or kill him possibly, should make that obvious to him.

So, objectively, within a pro-human value system, Snowden is a hero. (Eschewing the Orwellian-type distortion of vocabulary that the power structure engages in habitually, where words mean their opposite.) In the power system value system, he is a “traitor” worthy of death (or, since people are looking, life in prison). (Maybe down the road they can kill him.)

The next question becomes; which is the superior value system?

The creatures who have sold their souls to the power system of course think that system is superior to a human value system. Superior because it can impose itself on humans. In other words, Might Makes Right. Power, being triumphant, is its own justification. As long as it can successfully oppress humans and impose itself on the world, that proves its superiority, in their minds. Plus, they receive the rewards of status, money, and privilege that comes with prostituting oneself to power. And no, that system isn't human, it is anti-human, because it systematically attacks and destroys human rights. Many others have articulated how this has become blatant in the years since 9/11/01. The U.S. power establishment has even effectively revoked the 500 year old right of habeas corpus. (See Chris Hedges and Glenn Greenwald among others on the human rights holocaust ushered in by the 9/11 attack, the U.S. equivalent of the Reichstag fire as an excuse for repression.) [3]

As a practical matter, all humans can do is struggle against the power system. Or accept our “inferiority” and the “inferiority” of our values. (At least inferior in a brute, survival of the fittest, natural selection sense. Of course, the power system is rapidly heading towards ecological disaster, which will certainly trump any false notions of its “superiority,”) The people in whom the human impulse is too strong to enable them to live comfortably as prostitutes to power inevitably sacrifice money, comfort, status, safety, and security, “irrationally,” as Edward Snowden quite consciously has done. (Indeed he has even spoken about giving up the cushy job, how one can just go along with things and take the money, as most of his former colleagues do.)

Crushing people's spirits with persecution, repression, torture, imprisonment, solitary confinement, etc., is designed precisely to make people surrender and accept the superiority of the power system. This is as true in Iran, or Russia, or China, or Syria, as in the U.S.

One then has to confront the question of what is wrong with our species?

While valid, that is a slippery question which can too easily get vicious criminals off the hook (by blaming the entire species). Because if everyone is guilty, than no one is guilty. But I didn't murder six millions Jewish people in concentration camps. I never owned slaves. I didn't order the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I didn't fly planes into the World Trade Center towers. I'm not assassinating people. I'm not torturing people. Therefore I do not accept guilt for these crimes, especially since I inveigh against them at personal cost. (I have long been unpopular with American secret policemen, who over the years have expressed their displeasure in the various nasty underhanded ways available to them.) We must reject the facile “man's inhumanity to man” pop-psych explanation for war and atrocity that dissipates guilt from the culprits, makes understanding impossible by obfuscating political causality, and is ultimately fatalistic as it says this is human nature, it has always been this way and always will be. Which is a crock, since in fact the world is always changing, societies and civilizations and cultures are not the same as they were a century ago, five hundred years ago, or two millenniums ago.

So while the Mick Jagger sang “I shouted out, who killed the Kennedys, when after all, it was you and me,” I reply, BULLSHIT, you money-grubbing prancer. (“Sympathy for the Devil,” the Rolling Stones.) Just his little contribution to the never-ending establishment coverup of those particular CIA assassinations, I guess. Another accessory after the fact.. That lyric is just a low-brow version of the Everyone is Guilty line that shields evildoers.

1] That of course assumes sincerity on the part of the haters who are reviling Snowden. I'm sure many of them are sincere. Hitler too was sincere. Sincerity isn't necessarily a virtue. It is also probable that among the chorus of establishment. propagandists and politicians heaping opprobrium upon Snowden are some real cynics who are carrying out a mission as part of their duties as members of the power structure and who would just as readily praise him if the establishment line of the day was to do that. In other words, their attitude may be a facile adaptation to what particular strategy or tactic of the day the power structure has fixed on for the moment.

2] The U.S. helped install a fascist military dictatorship in Brazil in 1965. Currently the president of Brazil is a former revolutionary who was tortured by that U.S.-backed dictatorship. Sounds like a strong motive for the U.S. to target Brazil and lay the groundwork for another fascist coup and wave of repression. By spying on the entire Brazilian population, the NSA generates a database for the CIA to target more people for torture and murder than ever before.

3] In point of fact, the U.S. didn't fundamentally change after 9/11. All that happened was that it got worse than it had been in the previous couple of decades. But looking at U.S. history, there is no time when repression of progressive dissent and movements such as black civil rights, labor organizing, and resistance to Imperialist wars was not the norm.

The U.S. has always been an enemy of human rights, as the historical record amply proves. It is an empire founded on the twin pillars of genocide and slavery, which expanded through military conquest starting with its failed attempt to seize territory from present day Canada in 1812! Unfortunately its propaganda is so effective that fools actually believe it was founded on democratic principles and is the freest country on earth and a liberator of mankind. Actual facts bound off their brainwashed brains like pellets hitting armor plates.

Political Scorecard in Egypt: Tyranny 5,160 Years, Democracy 1 Year.*

Well that was quick. The first year of democracy in Egypt's 5,000-plus year history has been brought to an end by a military coup that its backers, including the Obama regime, insists wasn't a coup. DULY ELECTED president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood is now being held incommunicado as a prisoner of the army. [“For his own protection” is the line of the military regime and its lackeys, such as the Egyptian ambassador to Britain, who was given kid glove treatment by the BBC today, defending the closing down of Muslim Brotherhood media outlets to stop “hate speech,” defending a large massacre by the military of Morsi supporters by pretending it was self-defense by the military, with no pushback by the BBC interviewer at all.]

The sore losers of the presidential election were elated by the military coup.

The talking point of anti-Morsi propagandists (they're all over the U.S. media, various well-to-do Egyptians living in the U.S., citizens of whatever country) is that it was an “impeachment.” Oh.

No, it was a military coup. And impeachment (removal by an elected legislature) doesn't involve imprisonment by the military.

Mohamed El Baradei, a man I formerly admired for refusing to be a U.S. flunky when he headed the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN body tasked with inspecting Iran's nuclear program where he insisted on playing it straight, has shamed himself by parroting the “not a coup, an impeachment” line, and letting his name be floated as a military puppet replacement for Morsi. El Baradei could have stepped up the plate and ran in the elections a year ago, but copped out at the time.

Obama has studiously avoided saying the word “coup.” He thinks that if he doesn't say the word, it wasn't a coup. One big part of His Slipperiness' reason for his latest disingenuous dishonesty is that legally the U.S. isn't supposed to funnel military aid to militaries that overthrow their governments. Not to worry: the U.S. breaks its own laws all the time. Only the rest of us have to obey their laws- or go to prison for ten, twenty, thirty, forty, one hundred fifty years. (Bernard Madoff's sentence- yes, the U.S. and its various states meted out sentences of several lifetimes to people- even several “life sentences” to be served consecutively. There have been sentences of centuries imposed in America.)

The reliably pro-fascist Wall Street Journal is hailing the coup and calling for a “Pinochet” style regime, as in Chile. That deranged rag constantly sets new lows for immoral loathsomeness, so no surprise that they would start grinding one of their favorite ideological axes. They trot out the usual bogus bullshit about how great Milton Friedmanite economics are, and makes the absurd claim that Pinochet ushered in democracy. [Yeah, I know, they're nuts.] Needless to say, no mention of thousands of murders, torture, international death squads fanning out all over the globe as far away as Rome and Washington, D.C. under the dictator Pinochet. (You'd think a terrorist bombing in the U.S.' own capital city would merit a mention, if not outrage, in a U.S. propaganda rag- well, think again. I'm referring to the murder of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt by Michael Vernon Townley and some CIA Cuban fascist exile terrorists, on a contract from Pinochet's secret police, DINA.) [1]

But lest I be misunderstood, I'm not defending Morsi. It's democracy I care about. Morsi revealed himself to be power-hungry (no surprise, given the Muslim Brotherhood's years in the political wilderness) and was unable to deliver the economic goods to the Egyptians. (That's mostly because of the dire economic situation he inherited from the dictator Hosni Mubarak.) But he was elected. Basically the sore losers of the election didn't like his policies. (Nor do I, being an atheist and someone who believes women are human beings, same as men, thus fundamentally their “equals” in terms of innate worth and the rights they should have. But I don't see the Egyptian military as having a record as sterling defenders of human rights!)

Even before his overthrow, Morsi was unable to prevent the sacking and burning of some of his own party's offices around the country.

The military is the real state in Egypt. That has been true since Nasser overthrew the last King in the 1950s. Until Mubarak was ousted, a series of military dictators has ruled Egypt. With Sadat, Egypt entered the U.S. camp of stooge nations. In return, the U.S. provides about $2 billion a year in military aid. Meanwhile the Egyptian masses spend their lives in grinding poverty.

In Latest Defense of “The People's Will,” Egyptian Army Guns Down 500

The army attacked a crowd of Muslim Brotherhood supporters just after morning prayers. The crowd had gathered outside the military facility where Morsi is believed to be held. About 50 people were killed, including children and infants, and hundreds wounded.

The Egyptian army claims they were merely defending themselves from attack. Oppressors the world over always say that, including in the U.S. The people they brutalize are always painted as violent attackers. (Sometimes an agent provocateur or police infiltrator or random anarchist or hothead will throw a bottle and that is translated into a hail of Molotov cocktails.)

“We have to cleanse the square of all of you today.” Egyptian soldier attacking Muslim Brotherhood sit-in demonstrators as quoted by victim of attack, BBC radio, 7/8/13.

Five children and two babies were among those murdered. No doubt they were shooting at the military.

*The first unified kingdom of Egypt dates to around 3,150 BCE. The land itself has been inhabited since the 10^th millennium BCE.

1] This gives me an opportunity to point out one of tens of thousands of good reasons to be glad that Newsweek magazine closed down, at least in print, although that loathsome font of evil lives on on the Internet. A week after the Letelier assassination, Newsshit published an item on its “Periscope” page saying that the CIA determined it wasn't Pinochet who did it. (Of course it was.) How the CIA could know that in a week anyway wasn't explained. In fact, the CIA helped smuggle the terrorist bomb maker Townley into the U.S. (Newsweek was owned until a few years ago by the same clan that owns the reactionary rag the Washington Post, the Graham family.)

The Director of the CIA at this time was one George Herbert Walker Bush, later Vice President and President of the U.S., and father of later President George W. Bush. As President, Bush the Elder pardoned the Cuban fascist terrorist mastermind who blew up the Cubana airliner in1976, Orlando Bosch.

A good short article that makes clear the Bush family's ties to terrorism, and other unsavory pardons by Bush the Elder is "Bush's Hypocrisy: Cuban Terrorists," by Robert Parry, at consortiumnews.com

I should mention that G. H.W. Bush's father was closely tied financially to the Nazis.

What an evil clan.

Kevin Phillips' book on the Bushes is as good a place to start as any for those who want to lift up the corporate media's rock of glowing, fawning promotion of the Bushes and take a look at the slime crawling in the dark. [American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, 2004, out in paperback and ebook.]

Also see Robert Parry's book  Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.

Note To Prosecutors of Murderer George Zimmerman: Ever Hear of Voiceprints?

Idiotic doings in the trial of murderer George Zimmerman, who stalked and shot dead black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida as he was walking to his father's home. The prosecutor put Trayvon's mother on the stand to identify the recording of the screaming voice hysterically calling for help (moments before Zimmerman executed Martin) as her son. The defense counters with Zimmerman family members absurdly insisting the screamer is Zimmerman.

Anybody down there in the fevered swamps of the South ever hear of voiceprints? Voiceprints can identify people pretty well. And surely there are existing recordings of Martin (from voice messages, say) and there should be of Zimmerman (if the police had done a proper job and recorded his initial interrogation, which they probably didn't, or erased them). It's not very high tech. The NSA has been using voiceprints for decades to pick out people the U.S. stalks from the massive surreptitious seizures of phone calls it conducts globally. Voiceprints uniquely identify individuals, just as fingerprints do.

The detective who interrogated Zimmerman in effect testified on the killer's behalf, saying he believed Zimmerman's obvious lies. (Zimmerman has been caught lying repeatedly since his arrest, including in court about his finances.)

Venezuela and (maybe) Nicaragua offers asylum to NSA whistleblower hero Edward Snowden.

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That's the least they could do to pay the U.S. back for what its done to those two nations. The U.S. backed a coup against the late President Hugo Chavez (and probably murdered him).

The U.S. waged a vicious terror campaign against Nicaragua starting under Jimmy “Cracked Corn” Carter and through the regime of Ronald “Patron Saint of Fascists” Reagan in the 1980s. They even murdered an American citizen, Benjamin Linder, who was helping dig wells for the poor people of that country. After murdering him, the fascist wing of the U.S. establishment slimed him publicly, while the “liberal” wing maintained silence and reportage blackout.

The U.S. blew off a multi-billion dollar judgment by the World Court against it for its illegal attacks on Nicaragua. (So much for their constant spouting about “rule of law” and “rogue states.”)

President Maduro of Venezuela public expressed his willingness to grant asylum to Snowden. (Too bad the U.S. and its lackey nations will seize or shoot down any plane they suspect he's flying on to get there.) President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua said he'd have to study the issue, so he was ambiguous.

P.S. Sick BBC says “Now Obama faces a diplomatic headache in dealing with” Venezuela and Nicaragua. You mean two more countries are about to get beaten up by the U.S. Superbully, BBC. (7/6/13.) The BBC of course is the global propaganda arm of the British “Empire.” Or the scraps of that empire that remain. Britain now sits perched on the shoulder of the U.S., like the pet parrot of a pirate. And parroting the U.S. line is what it usually does.

U.S. Forces Down Plane of Bolivian President in Attempt to Kidnap NSA Whistleblower

Bolivian President Evo Morales was flying out of Moscow after attending a conference there when in midair the governments of Portugal and France abruptly canceled with no justification whatsoever their permissions to overfly their territory, forcing the plane down in Austria, where the plane was searched for a piece of contraband by the name of Edward Snowden. Snowden is the self-sacrificing hero who revealed to the world certain sinister National Security Agency massive surveillance programs targeting phone and Internet communications.

Pretty outrageous, waylaying a national leader like he's a stray cow being lassoed. Proud France and pathetic Portugal confirm again their status as U.S. stooge states. (But then, the U.S. has overthrown and even killed foreign heads of state, so this is small potatoes to these gangsters.)

So much for respect for national sovereignty. (Well, the numerous coups and invasions conducted over the last two centuries by the U.S.- starting with the invasion of British Canada in 1812- pretty much makes it naïve to believe in national sovereignty as anything but a convenient fiction. Of course, the U.S. isn't the only nation to ever invade another. Far from it.)

One clear message here is how much contempt and disrespect the U.S. has for any smaller country's leader who refuses to be a U.S. lackey. The U.S. gives a clear choice to every ruler of a significantly weaker country: do our bidding voluntarily, or involuntarily. The “choice” is yours.

This is the Bully Doctrine.

The Ecuadorean people rightly took this as an offense against their country. Aljazeera put on some Ecuadorean citizens to express their indignation. (Something no U.S. corporate establishment media will do, of course. It's not in their “interests” to show the American people that Ecuadoreans, like all the people the U.S. bullies, are people too.)

“So who cares about Aljazeera? We bomb Aljazeera!” [1]

There's a point worth making right there. The U.S. targets and kills journalists. Not just Aljazeera either. [2]

When Obama announced that he wasn't going to “scramble jets” to get Snowden, I thought, Oh, he's drawing the line at bombing the Moscow airport. Bravo, Barack, I hail your restraint!

But now I think I may have been too quick to give Cool Hand Hussein credit for moderation.

What if they think Snowden is on a plane they can't force down? They already blow up homes and cars all the time on suspicion of “terrorists” inside. Sometimes they guess wrong.

If locking up people like Snowden and Bradley Manning for life doesn't deter future whistleblowers, the Obama regime may well resort to assassinations. This is a regime that assassinated the teenage son of jihadist agitator Anwar al-Awlaki (both Americans) for no discernible reason. And expect a new death penalty law for revealing “classified” information “that harms national security.”

We really shouldn't put it past the U.S. to shoot a plane down over the ocean it suspects is carrying Snowden. Shooting a plane down in the middle of the Atlantic would give them “deniability.”

It's not as if the U.S. has never shot down civilian passenger planes before. It has. And not by accident either.

There is the infamous (or it should be infamous at any rate) shootdown of the Iranian jetliner over the Persian Gulf by the U.S.S. Vincennes in 1988. Saint Ronald Reagan gave the captain of the Vincennes a medal for that crime. Officers on nearby U.S. Navy ships were shocked and horrified witnessing the shootdown of what was an obvious civilian airliner. The U.S. government and corporate propaganda system put out a pack of sick lies to cover up what happened, claiming the jet was dive-bombing and Vincennes and so on. This is all debunked by a detailed article by a U.S. Navy officer in the Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Academy, of all places! To no avail; the propaganda is invincible, the truth is down the memory hole. [See “Vincennes: A Case Study," Proceedings Magazine, August 1993, U.S. Naval Institute. Also “Iran Air Flight 655,” Wikipedia.]

Thus do we have a perfect example of official reality as total fraud.

There was TWA Flight 800, shot down by the U.S. Navy over Long Island Sound. (Why would they do that? You'll have to ask them. But there's no doubt they did. Either it was an idiotic accident which they didn't want to admit to, or it was an attempt to fabricate a “terrorist incident” which didn't quite come off, the way painting CIA fall guy patsy Lee Harvey Oswald as a “Castro agent” who “assassinated President Kennedy” was intended to prompt an invasion of Cuba, but only half succeeded- the getting rid of Kennedy half.) See the numerous articles archived at the Village Voice. [Click on highlighted text or search at villagevoice.com for “twa 800.”] Also the Democracy Now story, “Did U.S. Gov’t Lie about TWA Flight 800 Crash? Ex-Investigators Seek Probe as New Evidence Emerges,” at democracynow.org.

Numerous witnesses saw a missile fired from the sea streak up and hit the jet. The U.S. Navy was conducting “exercises” below, and instead of steaming to the crash site ran off the scene as fast as they could. The FBI suppressed their evidence. Amazingly, the CIA got into the act and created a ludicrous cartoon video purporting to “explain” the “accident.” Among other absurdities, they actually claimed that people saw falling flaming debris after the explosion and mistook it for a rising missile streak before the explosion. Who do you believe, the CIA or your lying eyes?

The FBI forced people to change their statements. This is reminiscent of how a CIA officer inside the Los Angeles Police Department browbeat witnesses to the Robert Kennedy assassination in 1968 who saw the CIA conspirator in the polka dot dress that was the trigger for the hypnotized programmed assassin Sirhan Sirhan to fire, part of the CIA's Delta Program. (You can actually hear the tape of the interrogation where this CIA cutthroat detailed to the LAPD bullyrags a poor woman to retract what she saw.) Secret policemen are good at browbeating people into falling in line with official lies.

One plot of the U.S. “security” establishment to get rid of Fidel Castro was to paint a fighter plane in Cuban Air Force insignia and shoot down an American passenger airliner over the ocean in order to blame it on Castro and prompt a U.S. invasion of Cuba. (This became known when internal planning documents were pried loose from the government.)

Finally there are many political assassinations by plane or helicopter that trace back to U.S. operatives or “interests:” the killings of Paul Wellstone, Mel Carnahan, Francis Gary Powers, Warren Commission member Hale Boggs (bumped off when he started voicing doubts about that cover story fairy tale), and Panamanian president General Omar Torrijos, an independent populist (which is intolerable to the U.S. in “its backyard,”) clearing the way for CIA asset Manuel Noriega to take over the country. Also, almost Ted Kennedy, in June of 1964, only seven months after his brother the president was eliminated by the CIA (with FBI, Dallas PD, and U.S. military help). He survived, but the pilot and one of Kennedy's aides did not. (Close but no cigar, CIA!)

This is a nation whose secret police and military assassinated its own President in 1963, (as mentioned above), and has committed many bizarre crimes over the years, so you can't put anything past it.

Oh by the way, Ecuador found a room bug (hidden microphone) in their ambassador's office in their London embassy two weeks ago, the embassy where the British have effectively imprisoned U.S. target Julian Assange. Hey, everybody does it, says Obama and Kerry! (Do the Ecuadoreans bug the ambassadorial offices of the U.S. and Britain? Do they bug and tap the offices and homes of their UN personnel? I doubt it.) At the time the Ecuadorean ambassador was negotiating with the British and kept the discovery quiet until now to not further complicate negotiations.

1] The U.S. deliberately bombed the Aljazeera offices in Kabul and Baghdad several times. And the only reason Bush the Younger didn't bomb their HQ in Doha, Qatar, is because his partner in international crime Tony Blair talked him out of it. The U.S. also kidnapped an Aljazeera employee and locked him up for six years at their Guantanamo Bay military torture center, where they squeezed him for information on Aljazeera and demanded that he be their spy inside Aljazeera in order to get out of Gitmo. He refused, and thus was cut off from his wife and children for six years.

We can only guess how many thousands of less visible “dirty tricks” the U.S. inflicts on Aljazeera. Obviously all their reporters are under constant surveillance.

Furthermore, Aljazeera is a top priority target for the National “Security” Agency.

2] There are a number of infamous examples of U.S. military violent attacks on journalists. There's the infamous helicopter murder of Iraqi journalists employed by Reuters, gruesomely recorded by the helicopter and exposed by Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks (the “collateral murder” video). The helicopter also murdered a father who stopped his van to aid the men shot down in the street, and wounded his children, which the helicopter crew chuckled grotesquely about. There's the deliberate attack on the Palestine hotel in Baghdad in the opening days of the Iraq invasion, killing a Spanish journalist. (A former NSA employee has proven it was premeditated and deliberate. See “DEMOCRACY NOW! EXCLUSIVE: Fmr. Military Intelligence Sgt. Reveals US Listed Palestine Hotel in Baghdad as Target Prior to Killing of Two Journalists in 2003.” ) The U.S. military hated all journalists who were not its “embedded” pets. There are other examples besides.

The Non-Spy Who's Out In The Cold

Edward Snowden, the brave but confused former NSA contractor who exposed some of that military spy agency's nefarious activities, has friends in the world; unfortunately they aren't particularly powerful ones. (WikiLeaks, maybe the government of Venezuela, some sympathetic media voices, and various citizens of the world grateful for his actions but who are basically impotent to help him.)[1]
 

Right now he's in effect a prisoner in the transit lounge of the Moscow Sheremetyevo international airport (presumably, unless he's in some Russian FSB interrogation room). The U.S. quickly invalidated his passport- although Julian Assange apparently got someone in the Ecuadorean embassy in London to issue Snowden an unauthorized safe conduct pass, one not signed by the consul as required. [2]

After U.S. vice president Joseph Biden called Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa and was friendly towards him (playing “good cop” in contrast to the nasty “bad cop” invective heaped on Correa and Ecuador by other U.S. politicians and the corporate media) Correa seemed to throw Snowden to the dogs. Correa set as a condition of granting asylum for Snowden that he somehow make it to Ecuador (a condition that wasn't imposed on Julian Assange.) You see, U.S. Imperialism, sometimes you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Correa upbraided the London consul for issuing the transit pass to Snowden, which was revoked, said helping Snowden leave Hong Kong for Moscow was a mistake, and said if Snowden broke U.S. laws, he'd have to take responsibility (code for submit to punishment).Correa said the case was "not in Ecuador's hands".

In another ominous comment, Correa seemed to wash his hands of Snowden:

"The situation of Mr Snowden is a complex situation and we don't know how he will solve it."

Notice: how he will solve it. I.e. You're on your own, pal.

Correa did cut off U.S. retaliatory trade threats at the knees by waiving preferential trade rights. So he gets to have it both ways, “standing up to the U.S.” while actually doing what the U.S. wants (deny Snowden asylum or even a way to move).

In fairness to Ecuador, they've taken on enough U.S. wrath by granting Assange asylum in their UK embassy. Some other of the 200-odd nations in the world should step up to the plate on this one.

Assange's egomania didn't help matters any by acting as if he was an Ecuadorean government spokesman and obtaining an unsigned transit visit for Snowden from the London Ecuadorean consul, apparently behind Quito's back. Nor was it sensible for WikiLeaks to brag that they'd arranged for Snowden to transit from Hong Kong to Moscow to Ecuador. When you're trying to help someone who's on the lam, discretion is advisable!

Snowden has now thrown out asylum requests to 21 countries, spreading his bets around in hope of getting lucky. (There are hopeful signs from Venezuela. President Maduro has made supportive remarks about Snowden. [3]) He withdrew his request to Russia after Putin brusquely stated the terms for Russian asylum: “If he wishes to stay here, then we have one condition: He must stop his work aimed at harming our American partners—although it sounds very strange coming from me.” Indeed. But Snowden was free to leave, Putin disingenuously added. (Trying leaving without a passport, entry visa, etc., and oh yes, U.S. twisting arms all over the world.) [4]

One must wonder what is going on behind the scenes between Putin and the Obama regime. Before Putin's sudden public condition for Snowden to stay, one of the Democratic Party's Queen Bees, multi-millionaire Nancy Pelosi, went on one of those U.S. Sunday morning TV shows that exist to be platforms for the politicians the corporate propaganda establishment has decided to make prominent, and for indoctrination in the outlook of the ruling class on all issued, and smugly opined that "it's pretty good that he's [Snowden] stuck in Moscow airport. That's OK with me – he can stay there." So Russia is keeping Snowden on ice for the U.S. [5]

A bit odd that China, through Hong Kong, didn't secretly offer Snowden sanctuary in return for telling them everything he knows (and handing over his data). Perhaps they did and Snowden turned them down. Snowden says he is a patriot, and I have no reason to doubt him, despite the epithet of “traitor” being hurled at him by our lovely politicians such as Senator Dianne Feinstein et al. Snowden has also carefully vetted what he has chosen to reveal- something the attack dogs of the U.S. government and media establishment have chosen to ignore.

The U.S. is actually tending to drive him into the arms of nations it doesn't like, such as Russia and China and Ecuador. As usual, the hyperpower thinks it can and should get its way by sheer might.

A smarter- and incidentally more moral and humane tack- would be to cut a deal with Snowden for a plea to a lesser charge and maybe two years imprisonment in return for a full debriefing on everything he took and everything he revealed to all parties including governments, with a guarantee of immunity from further prosecution. He has performed a public service. But the inability of the repressive politicians and secret police and military bureaucrats who rule the U.S. to admit that even to themselves prevents this. Instead they hypocritically pretend to “welcome debate” while desperately throwing the tarpaulin of “national security” back on top of their massive mountain of dirt. They also are obviously deeply committed to running a total surveillance state domestically and over the entire planet, indefinitely, and only intensifying over time. [6]

They are lusting to sentence Snowden to life in prison, it seems, to make an example out of him and terrorize other would-be exposers of evil doing out of revealing anything to anyone. Many of the politicians and the bureaucrats of repression also genuinely despise Snowden for his “betrayal” of their secret secret police state. (Snowden says he fears execution, but that is unlikely as large parts of the American public would probably disapprove, even among those who consider what he did wrong, and it's unnecessary for the deterrent and chilling effect on others. He also fears assassination, which if the U.S. can't extradite or kidnap him, is a future possibility, although I think they'd rather have him alive to squeeze out of him what, if anything, he might have revealed to the Russians and Chinese.)

I guess the U.S. will just have to live with the anxiety of wondering what Snowden may have revealed to the Chinese and Russians until they can get him in their clutches and break him. Yet another sad example of a decent human being destroyed by the U.S. power system.

The U.S. media has done its best to demonize Snowden. Their devilish image has no correspondence with the real Snowden we see in the video interviews with the Guardian.

WikiLeaks has just posted a statement from Snowden. Part of what Snowden has to say is moving and important:

“In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.” [from Wikileaks.org.]

Alas, the majority of the American public will probably stay in their political coma, as the corporate media is so strenuously trying to ensure. Hopefully agitation in Europe will be greater.

1] Snowden worked for a company called Booz Allen Hamilton, which makes all its billions of dollars in revenues from the U.S. government, specifically the most oppressive arms of that government. It's vice chair is a former director of the National Security Agency, John Michael McConnell. Merely coincidentally, I'm sure, the NSA contracted with Booz Allen to work for it on its mass surveillance programs. Snowden was a computer systems administrator, a self-taught computer expert who in the technical dimension obviously has great aptitude. For McConnell's disreputable background, click McConnell.

2] FSB is the Russian secret police, the so-called Federal Security Service, successor to the KGB. For the details on the safe conduct pass wrinkle, see “Ecuador breaks US trade pact to thwart 'blackmail' over Snowden asylum,” Guardian, 27 June 2013.

In most countries, agencies with the words “security” or “intelligence” in their names are usually some kind of secret police outfit. They spy on people, oppress people, and assassinate people. That's true in the “free and democratic” Western bloc too, although saying so is taboo, yet is common knowledge. And there are ooodles of fictional books and movies showing just that as routine, and plenty of non-fiction in the public realm about actual crimes. But in the political realm, you're supposed to play dumb. How's that for social and cultural schizophrenia?

3] President Nicolás Maduro: [translated from Spanish] “He said great truth in order to dismantle a world that cannot be controlled, not by an American imperialist elite nor by anyone. And these revelations that he made are the most important. A young man of 29 years who is capable of opening himself up against mechanisms of the intelligence services, who spy and want to know everything, who go against friends and enemies, who set up technological operations, satellites, with the help of the Internet, telephones, to try and control the world—the revelations of this young man have great value. He must be protected by international human rights. He has the right to be protected, because the United States will continue to pursue him. The American president, the secretary of state, why are you persecuting him? What crime has he committed? Did he kill anyone? Did he plant a bomb and kill anyone? No. Much better, he has prevented wars, and he has stopped illegalities being committed against the entire world. For this, he deserves the protection of the world. He hasn’t asked for asylum, but when he asks for it, we will give him an answer. “

4] Here's a fuller- and revealing- version of Putin's remarks: “If he wants to go anywhere and someone will accept him, he is welcome. If he wishes to stay here, then we have one condition: He must stop his work aimed at harming our American partners—although it sounds very strange coming from me. He positions himself as a fighter for human rights, and he is not going to stop this activity, so he has to choose the country for himself and go to it. When it will happen, I unfortunately do not know. If I knew, I would tell you.” [Translated from the Russian.]

No dogs and human rights fighters allowed. And “unfortunately” Putin doesn't know how long he's going to be stuck with this pest. Spoken like the autocrat he is.

And it's no coincidence that the autocrat and the “democratic” U.S. political hacks see eye to eye.

5] Pelosi is currently House of Representatives Minority Leader, since the Democrats are in the minority there now. Previously she was Speaker (head) of the House when the Democrats controlled that chamber of the U.S. Congress. (For the benefit of my non-American readers, the U.S. Congress is a bicameral legislature or parliament, having two chambers, the House, with 435 members elected from districts all across the U.S., and the Senate, with 100 Senators. Each State elects two senators, regardless of population- a profoundly undemocratic arrangement. To become law, a bill must pass both chambers of Congress and be signed by the President.

6] Not that I think Snowden deserves a single day in prison, it's just that to save face the U.S. would need that. But maybe they already have traced what he copied, or can. Maybe the NSA will or has hacked into whatever servers his data was transferred to. I'm sure they're inside the Guardian's servers and Greenwald's computer, for example- the NSA has the help of their little brother the British GCHQ to do that.

As to the terrifying mania for repression and secrecy of the Obama regime, and apparently the bulk of the U.S. ruling establishment, it turns out that Obama ordered all the parts of the Federal government to institute a draconian program demanding that all employees spy on each other and report “indications” that someone might give out information, regardless of whether it's secret or not. Punishment is to be meted out not just for “leaking” (i.e. telling the public, who pays for the government, what the government is doing) but for failure to snitch on others and failure to “self-report.” See “Obama’s crackdown viewsleaks as aiding enemies of U.S.” June 20, 2013, by the McClatchy newspaper chain.

McClatchy has distinguished itself among U.S. establishment media in recent years for reporting things the rest of the corporate media prefers to keep secret. Guess they just aren't cozy enough with those high level always anonymous “officials” who like to plant self-serving half-truths and lies in the establishment press to know any better. Their slogan is “truth to power.” Contrast that with the New York Times slogan, “all the news that's fit to print.” Obviously there's a lot the Times considers UNfit to print. (But there is valuable info in it sometimes, if you can stand the mealy-mouthed writing style that bends over backwards to be kind of institutional power.)

Here's a good commentary on McClatchy's work and its lowly status in the firmament of the U.S. corporate media structure at The Nation; “McClatchy Uncovers Obama's 'Insider Threat Program,'” June 24, 2013.