How To (Mis)Remember a Slaughter of Poor Workers

The BBC “World Service” took a look at factory conditions in Bangladesh to see “if things have changed” since the collapse of the Rana Plaza sweatshop a year ago, causing massive loss of life of the workers there. [1] First a three-minute piece light on facts. We're told at the end of that segment that the monthly minimum wage was raised from $40 to $68. UNMENTIONED: is it actually enforced.

Also not so much as a hint about the violent government repression of labor organizers. There aren't unions among the garment workers because labor organizers are viciously and systematically repressed by the government, including being subjected to torture and murder. For example, a prominent Bangladeshi labor organizer, Aminul Islam, was brutally tortured and murdered by the Bangladeshi “security forces” in 2012.

[Read the rest at my blog devoted to propaganda analysis, under BBC Blackout Propaganda.]

Five Teenagers Vs. 200 Australian Cops

Five teenagers, aged 18-19, were rounded up in raids by 200 Australian police in “terror” raids. The government claimed the teens were planning to go around stabbing people, “inspired by” ISIS. One has been charged so far. The alleged plot was to occur on a military memorial day. (Anzac Day, commemorating Australia's entry into World War I as a loyal client state of Britain, way back in 1914.

According to the BBC (April 18), TWO of the five, both 18, were accused of “plotting an attack.” “They were apparently inspired by Islamic State, and were planning to target police,” said the BBC

(my emphasis). “Police said evidence [unspecified] at the scene suggests they were ISIS-inspired” (also BBC later same day). (Again, my emphases.) (The U.S. domestic radio propaganda network, NPR, merely broadcast a BBC report and did no original reporting.)

Right-wing prime minister Tony Abbott disingenuously announced that “people shouldn't be afraid,” honeyed words belied by his regime's regular beating of the “terrorism” drum, including these very ostentatious raids by a massively-excessive force with maximum media hype. Like yelling “BOO!” and then adding “Don't be scared.”

He is literally right, however, despite his cynicism. If five teenagers with knives vs. 200 armed-to-the- teeth cops (probably encased in body armor and accompanied by helicopters and maybe armored vehicles) is emblematic of the correlation of forces (“terrorists” vs. Australia) I think Australia is in no mortal danger

A previous episode of Tony Abbott's Terror Theatre also featured hundreds of cops raiding homes, which netted a very scary sword. (No bombs, no guns, but maybe computer traces to nasty websites.)

 Obviously Australia monitors hotheads and periodically uses some as fall guys in terror theater productions.

 Tony Abbott, Terrorist Hunter, Stares Down Danger!

It's worse in the U.S., where the FBI employs con men and criminals as agents provocateur to entrap the mentally ill and dirt-poor down-and-outers into FBI “terrorist plots” which are then “broken up” with great fanfare (and multi-decade sentences for the hapless, duped losers). Even when a targeted victim refuses to play along, and even blows the whistle on the entrapment attempt, he's imprisoned anyway, as Khalifah al-Akili has been, sentenced to eight years literally for a photograph. (See “The FBI Informant Who Mounted A Sting Operation Against the FBI,” The Intercept, April 15, 2015.)

 

Five teenagers with knives- major terrorist threat, or the makings of a small street gang? Obviously ideology makes all the difference. What the teens allegedly THINK is used to turn this into part of an International Threat to Civilization.

A massive global secret police surveillance system is deployed to catch young malcontents. Research in recent years has demonstrated that teenagers' brains incline them to impulsivity, risk-taking, and poor judgment. It has also been shown that they are very susceptible to peer influence, and take risks with their peers that they would never undertake solo. The fact is that the constant, lurid attention to Islamofascism is going to draw the attention of some teenagers. Islamofascism, like cigarettes or illegal drugs or alcohol or sex or driving too fast, has the attraction of the forbidden.

I'd bet that most young seeming adherents to Islamofascism would grow out of it in a few years, given the opportunity. Ironically, the Saudis are pursuing a more enlightened policy towards some “terrorists,” if only out of pragmatism. They have reeducation programs to modify their ideological and psychological orientation. Life in prison for teenagers who do stupid things is draconian and primitive.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the just-convicted surviving Boston Marathon bomber, is facing an all-out attempt by the Obama regime and Eric “I Oppose the Death Penalty” Holder's “Justice” Department to have him executed. He was 19- a teenager- at the time of the bombing 2 years ago in April 2013, and under the thrall of his domineering older brother Tamerlan, who was 26 at the time of the bombing and his death immediately afterwards. [1]

 

Interestingly, the parents of an eight-year-old boy killed in the bombing just published an op-ed in the Boston Globe calling for his life to be spared. Outside of Boston, U.S. media are mostly ignoring it. They too want Dzhokhar to die.

 

I think spending the rest of his life in a tiny concrete box, which will be his fate if he isn't executed, is hardly going soft. In fact, it's less than all but one of the Blackwater butchers of Nisour Square just got. (The Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad was a case the U.S. proved very reluctant to pursue, with the Department of “Justice” doing its best to throw the case, even failing to file some charges until after the statute of limitations ran out. Seventeen Iraqis were slaughtered, trapped in their cars in a traffic jam, although only 14 deaths are being acknowledged by establishment media. One defendant got life, and three got 30 years- the mandatory minimums. The Federal judge obviously regretted having to impose the sentences, making excuses for the killers as he did so.)

As for those five teenagers in Australia, no propaganda opportunity goes to waste. The New York City radio station of the CBS-Viacom media octopus seized this minor event on the other side of the world to sound the terrorist alarm bell for the 10,000^th time. “A plot inspired by ISIS!” they blared. Note the weasel word “inspired.” That's as connected to ISIS as “inspired by a true story” is in the media Moloch's fictional entertainments are connected to actual facts. Who will parse that word, “inspired”? All they'll hear is “ISIS.” Oh, ISIS recruited teenagers to murder people in Australia! Well, no. There was no actual connection to ISIS, unless hearing and reading about something is a “connection.” So I'm “connected” to the Third Reich, and to ancient Egypt, and to the moon.

CBS relied on Rupert Murdoch's propaganda empire, putting on a recording of one of his minions from Sky TV (a cable propaganda network in Britain) to tell us again that the “plot” (no details provided) was “inspired by ISIS” and [unnamed] officials “called it terrifying and evil.” (If there are any government officials terrified of five teenagers with knives, they need to resign immediately. Of course what the “officials,” and the propagandists, really mean is, We want YOU to be terrified! So you'll let us have even more power and take away even more of your rights.

But somehow, the murder of 30 people in an ISIS-CLAIMED, not “inspired,” bombing in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, which also happened yesterday, didn't grab CBS' attention much, if at all. Odd, that. And Afghanistan is actually a lot closer to New York than Australia is.

NPR, the U.S. government domestic radio propaganda network, identified the arrestees as “men,” omitting their ages, even though the BBC, which NPR relies on for most of its overseas coverage, including on this story, clearly said they were teens and gave their ages. They said five were arrested and two charged with a “terrorist plot,” unspecified.

No explanation why three other teens are being jailed on no charges.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. But don't be afraid- the secret police will protect you.

1] How, exactly, Tamerlan died is still murky. At the time, it was claimed his brother ran him over during a shootout with the police. In retelling the story, sometimes establishment media repeats the “run over by his brother” claim, sometimes it doesn't. There was even talk of an explosion. (Alleged photos of Tamerlan's corpse shows large and wide black gashes in his chest.)

Speaking of Tamerlan as domineering, after I wrote this I read an article in Murdoch's very reactionary Wall Street Journal and came across this: “During the first part of the trial, defense lawyers said the younger Mr. Tsarnaev followed the lead of 26-year-old Tamerlan, a domineering force in his family.”

See? Even the Wall Street Journal agrees with me that Tamerlan was domineering. (“Tsarnaev Lawyers Tap Local Imam To Testify,” April 18-19, 2015, page A3, paragraph 5.)

You can't check the citation online unless you pay. Mega Billionaire Rupert Murdoch is a greedy bastard.

The same article gives a one-sentence version of Tamerlan's demise: “His [Dzhokhar's] older brother died shortly after the bombings in a showdown with police.” A showdown? Not a “shootout”? Hmmm.

Given the very strong evidence of the FBI being mixed up in the bombings in advance, such as trying to recruit Tamerlan as an “informer” and then denying the Russian secret police, the FSB, had tipped them off to the Tsarnaevs, after initially claiming the FSB gave them information that was “too vague,” the attempt to execute the unarmed Dzhokhar as he lay motionless inside a small boat parked in a homeowner's driveway, the FBI murder of an acquaintance of Tamerlan's, Ibragim Todashev after two days of interrogation and the subsequent illegal high-speed deportation of three people connected to Todashev, I'm thinking perhaps the plan was to execute both Tsarnaevs on sight. Todashev was shot seven times in his kitchen while surrounded by FBI and police, including in the top of the head.

Todashev was interrogated by the FBI at least five times, and was finally executed on May 22, 2013, the month following the Marathon bombing, in his own kitchen, surrounded by FBI agents and Massachusetts State police, who were far from their jurisdiction in Florida where Todashev lived. Todashev was recovering from knee surgery and needed crutches to get around at the time. The FBI has engaged in a permanent stonewall ever since. Meanwhile the FBI and Massachusetts police has pinned a triple murder in Massachusetts that occurred two years before the bombing on Tamerlan Tsarnaev and on Todashev. For two years there were no arrests or charges in those murders, so I rather doubt the “case closed” propaganda the police and FBI executioners have put out and that the establishment media dutifully repeats as fact. (The dead are so easy to convict. The FBI did the same thing to

The U.S. never notified Todashev's family in Russia of his death, and the FBI “ordered” the local Florida authorities to not release the autopsy report. The FBI only allowed Todashev's corpse to be sent to his family in Russia after a family friend managed to take photos of the body with the bullet wounds, and the family held a news conference in Moscow displaying the pictures. At that point keeping their victim's corpse was pointless for the FBI.

For a primer on the fate of Todashev, the numerous series of mutually exclusive lies spewed by the FBI, the FBI's suppression of information and the illegal deportations, see “The ever-changing stories in Todashev murder.”

For other details and his father's futile attempt to get at the truth of his son's murder by the FBI, see “Todashev Family's Futile Search For Answers in FBI Murder of Son.”

Some of the many weapons Superman Ibragim Todashev used to attack a roomful of FBI agents and Massachusetts State Police in his kitchen, according to "law enforcement sources." (Hey, the New York Times believed them!)

Oh, the Outrage! Russia is Selling Air Defense Missiles to Iran!

Yes, it's true. The Russians are jumping the gun. Before any nuclear agreement has been signed with Iran, they've announced that they're selling almost a billion dollars worth of anti-aircraft missiles to the Devil Iran. They are blatantly ignoring the anti-Iran sanctions and acting as if Iran has a right to self-defense. This in open defiance of the U.S.-organized stranglehold on Iran.

So those treacherous Russians are at it again. They're failing to conform to U.S. diktat. Don't they get it? The U.S. rules the world. How many times do they have to be told that?

The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, made a few somewhat pointed comments in announcing the sale. [1]

He noted that the weapons were purely defensive, and thus a threat to no one.

Mr. Lavrov apparently doesn't understand the definition of the world “threat.” A “threat,” as defined by the U.S., and Israel too, which is germane here, means a country that needs to be attacked. For example, Iraq was a “threat” to the U.S. in 2003, necessitating its invasion and conquest. A “threat” is also the existence of a government or political entity that defies the wishes of the U.S. or Israel or opposes them in any way. Thus it is “threatening” if Iran might be able to shoot down U.S. or Israeli warplanes that are bombing it. Aggression is self-defense, and self-defense is aggression. This is how reality is inverted by propaganda. (You see why Russia too is a “threat” because it refuses to roll over and play dead as NATO pushes right up to Russia's borders, a doublecross of the deal Gorbachev made to allow the reunification of Germany. And it won't let the U.S. take over Ukraine, another “threat.”)

We would like to know, Misters Lavrov and Putin, what will you say to the families of any U.S. or Israeli pilots who are shot down while bravely bombing Iran? Your evil defensive missiles are certainly a threat to those noble pilots doing their duty! How will you answer to them for your crime?

Lavrov also referenced the U.S.-backed Saudi aggression against Yemen, conducted while the Saudis keep screeching about Iranian aggression in Yemen (nonsense that is echoed by the U.S. power establishment) as indicating a need at this time for Iran to be concerned with defending itself. (Not to mention the ever-present, decades-long threat of U.S. or Israeli aerial assault. Which would be on top of the planted explosives, the assassinations, the computer sabotage, and who knows what else those two parties have actually done and keep doing to Iran- and the continuation of this covert violence is by no means ruled out by the outline agreement for a nuclear deal with Iran released by the White House at the start of April.) But everyone knows that what's happening in Yemen is all Iran's fault (everyone who accepts Saudi and Western propaganda without question, that is).

And Lavrov even had the cheek to assert that Russia needed the money from the missile sale because of U.S.-EU sanctions imposed on Russia over Ukraine! (The price tag in U.S. dollars is around $800 million.)

Well, Sergey, let us explain something to you! Sanctions were imposed on Russia for a very good reason. Russia outrageously moved to defend its own interests in a state on its very border, Ukraine, which, although 5,000 miles away from the U.S., rightly belongs in the U.S. bloc. If you Russians weren't so intent on restarting the Cold War and conquering all of Europe, maybe you'd understand this self-evident fact. It's very naughty of you to try and evade your punishment for your misbehavior! [2]

As if this weren't bad enough, now Russia has been cozying up to China, in an attempt to counter the fair and just U.S.-EU sanctions on Russia. Russia knows damn well it's supposed to join the U.S. in containing China, not allying with it! When is Russia going to start behaving properly so it can join the Civilized Community of Nations? (CCN, an imaginary, purely rhetorical club of countries that do the bidding of the U.S.)

Defending its core strategic interests in Ukraine, trying to counter sanctions it deserves to have inflicted on it, selling purely defensive weapons to a nation the U.S. and Israel want to keep under threat of aerial attack- how much more of this does Putin expect the West to put up with?

Some people are just nasty thugs, I guess. What can you expect from a former secret policeman? So unlike civilized leaders, like George H.W. Bush, 41st president of the U.S. and former Director of the CIA! (Well, he DID help murder Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in that earlier job, but they deserved to die. As the terrorist bombmaker Michael Vernon Townley explained, they were enemy soldiers in a war. And all those Cuban exile terrorists Bush the Elder protected? They're Freedom Fighters.TM Anyway, his son Jeb wanted to be Governor of Florida.)

1] Lavrov said: "I want to stress that S-300 is an air defense missile system, which is of a purely defensive nature. It is not designed for attacks and will not put at risk the security of any regional state, including Israel. But for Iran, taking into account a very tense situation in the region surrounding it, modern anti-aircraft systems are of great importance. Proof of this is the rapid and very worrying recent developments around Yemen and the development of a military situation around this country."

2] Actually 4,881 miles as the crow flies from Washington, DC to Kiev, Ukraine. Or 7,855 kilometers, if you prefer.

Iran’s Big Boss Demands All Sanctions Be Lifted At Beginning of Nuclear Deal

Iran’s ultimate ruler, “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah  Ali Kamenei, has publicly announced that foreign sanctions against Iran must be lifted when Iran signs the nuclear deal complying with the foreign demands to cripple its nuclear program. This is completely at odds with the 4-page outline agreement the White House released at the beginning of April. That outline specifies that Iran FIRST has to comply with all the terms imposed on it and then some sanctions will be eased. So the theocratic autocrat of Iran has just dumped a bucket of cold water on the deal. Perhaps this is a negotiating ploy, and the sides will come to some compromise by June. The Iranian officials who negotiated the outline agreement already contradicted the Obama regime’s written outline before this. (An actual deal is supposed to be agreed by June 30.)

Under the outline released by Obama’s White House, all sanctions will not be lifted even AFTER Iran complies with the diktat of the six nations ganging up on it. (The so-called P5+1; the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, which are the U.S., UK, France, Russia, and China, plus Germany.) For one thing, the White House outline specifically states that sanctions that were imposed to punish Iran over “support for terrorism,” “human rights,” and ballistic missiles, are unaffected. (That’s rich, given that the U.S. is the greatest cause of terrorism in the world since 1945, by far; it is responsible for massive “human rights violations”- torture and murder- all over the world in numerous countries by installing and supporting fascist regimes; and of course has two large ballistic missile arms, one for the Air Force, one for the Navy, carrying nuclear warheads, on land and in submarines. Each missile has up to 12 nuclear warheads, independently targetable.)

For another thing, regarding just the sanctions the U.S. Congress imposed on Iran ostensibly over its nuclear program, ONLY the U.S. Congress can actually LIFT those sanctions, as opposed to the president temporarily suspending them. And given that the U.S. Congress is slavishly loyal to the State of Israel, this will never happen unless there’s a pro-Israeli regime in Tehran. [1] After the White House unveiled the outline, Netanyahu immediately demanded that any deal must include Tehran’s recognition of Israel, ceasing support for “terrorism,” and basically withdrawing from the region Iran inhabits. (Israel of course is free to continue to attack neighboring countries and maintain a nuclear arsenal of hundreds of weapons, not to mention continue its daily gross violations of human rights. But mentioning any of that is either “anti-Semitic” or the mark of a “self-hating” Jew. So we won’t mention it. I hate being called names, don’t you?)

And there will never be a pro-Israeli regime in Tehran (not as long as the Israelis keep oppressing the Palestinians, at any rate) unless the U.S. manages to overthrow the Iranian government, and maybe reestablish the Peacock Throne and put the Shah’s son on it. (I’m being facetious- I hope. With some of the fanatical reactionaries in the U.S. power structure, one cannot assume any degree of rationality. These are people who blew up three buildings in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001, and ever since everyone is pretending two airplanes did it. If you can get away with that, you probably think you can get away with anything. [2])

The next president will be even more “pro-Israeli” than Obama is. Obama has gagged a little at some of the shit Israel has forced him to eat. (Like announcing “settlement” expansion at the exact moment a high U.S. official like VP Joseph Biden is visiting Israel, or arranging for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to address his puppet U.S. parliament behind Obama’s back.) It’ll either be Hillary Clinton, or some Republican. Either way, the next U.S. president will be ardently Zionist, out of fear or conviction or a combination of the two. So that president will immediately be under intense pressure to unsuspend any sanctions Obama suspended. Then Iran will have the worst of both worlds. It will have largely dismantled its nuclear program and handed over its stockpile of enriched uranium, plus destroyed the core of the Arak power reactor, and STILL be getting economically crushed, since the U.S. controls the world financial and banking system, and oil is sold in U.S. dollars, and the U.S. has the power to punish nations and foreign companies that violate ITS sanctions on Iran (or on Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, etc.).

But at that point, ex-president Barack Obama can claim that was his clever plan all along!

Of course, the real goal is what is euphemistically called “regime change,” that is, overthrowing the government of Iran. Now I don’t particularly care if the horrid religious autocrats who impose themselves on the Iranian people are overthrown. I hope someday they are. But Iranians will have to do it. 

Remember the last time “the West” overthrew the Iranian government was when it was a democracy, back in 1953, when the president, Mossadegh, was smeared as a communist and deposed in a CIA-MI-6 organized coup, complete with mob violence and black agit-propaganda. (The usual CIA playbook, used over and over.) The horrible Shah was installed as dictator, compiling the worst human rights record in the world according to Amnesty International, killing 250,000 Iranians during his rule, and finally being overthrow in 1979. Then, AFTER the U.S. granted him refuge, the U.S. embassy in Tehran was seized in response, and discovered to be a nest of espionage, subversion, and “covert ops” (crimes); in other words, a typical U.S. embassy. The U.S. then stole billions of dollars from Iranian bank accounts, which it proceeded to hand out to foreign (especially U.S.) corporations that had sweetheart contracts with the Shah’s regime. Even unfulfilled contracts were paid off involuntarily. To this day the World Looter U.S. holds Iranian assets.

But nowadays, things are different. With the demise of the Soviet Union and the capitalist road taken by the one-party dictatorship of China, run by the absurdly misnamed “Communist” Party of China, “communist” has been replaced as a political curse word and license to commit mass murder and mayhem by the epithet “terrorist.” So now one’s enemies, be they environmentalists, peace activists, anti-Wall Street, protesters, or whoever, are “terrorists.” (No joke. That’s what the FBI and police in the U.S. call them, in private. Our state fascists like to be discreet, you understand.)

So do you see the great changes that have occurred? Different nomenclature now. In “the West” at any rate. Not in China, where the rulers still babble in a cheap burlesque pseudo-socialist lingo, a sort of pigeon Marxism, and where Mao’s successors and inheritors of the totalitarian system he built still pretend to be “communists.” As indeed Mao pretended to be. A system of totalitarian socialism with a cult ruler at its apex is the diametrical opposite of communism. Communism means no state, that is, no government, and no classes, meaning complete equality of economics and power. It is a pure democracy, where all power is in effect communal. It may be a utopian fantasy or an actual human possibility, but it most certainly was NOT what the Soviet Union was, what China was or is, what North Korea is, what the auto-genocidal Khmer Rouge brought to Cambodia, what the relatively benign Cuban dictatorship is. That’s just a matter of definition. And Karl Marx defined communism, not I.

Anyway, good luck to the political rulers in Tehran, Washington, D.C., Jerusalem, and elsewhere. Thank you for bringing peace and prosperity to your subjects.

1] The evidence of Israeli control of Congress is voluminous and overwhelming, and well documented by now. A particularly stark manifestation of Congress’ slavish submission to Israel is the rapturous frenzy with which “the representatives of the American people,” as they cynically style themselves, greeted the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu earlier this year, when he and Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner stuck their thumbs in Obama’s eye by having Netanyahu address Congress without even telling Obama.  It looked like a totalitarian ruler appearing before his puppet parliament. Unreal. And it took chutzpah to deliberately insult the head of the World’s Only Superpower, on which Israel depends for support. Alan Dershowitz would approve. See “Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's Full Speech To Congress (March 3, 2015).” His name is misspelled in that title. It’s Binyamin. Back when he was still an American some decades ago, he went by the moniker Ben Nitay.

2] No, this is not loony. Educate yourselves and review the proof assembled by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization with over 1,000 professional endorsers.

Why Has the U.S. Abandoned Its Citizens in Yemen?

Because they’re of Yemeni extraction. Pure and simple.

And ironic, given that the U.S. president is “black.” Apparently blacks can be bigots too.

Also there’s apparently a presumption on the part of the U.S. secret police and Imperialist managers that any American in Yemen must be up to no good. (That’s the same logic that got hundreds of men who happened to be in Afghanistan when the U.S. attacked, branded as “terrorists” when bounty hunters and the cynical Pakistani government sold them to the U.S. for torture and shipment to Guantanamo Bay. Out of about 800 unfortunates consigned to the tender mercies of the U.S. military and CIA at that military gulag, there are about 50 whom the U.S. still insists are “terrorists.” Some really were members of Al-Qaeda or the Taliban.) 

Numerous other nations have been evacuating not only their own citizens from Yemen, but those of other nations too. Not the U.S. 

China saved 600 of its own citizens plus the citizens of numerous other countries. Russia evacuated civilians. India is flying jetliners into Sana’a international airport and flying out overloaded planeloads of Indian and other civilians. That civilian airport was one of the first targets the Saudi savages bombed, according to the BBC. (A BBC correspondent also described bombed-out hangers in an April 9^th broadcast.)

Even Somalia has managed to send a ship to evacuate its nationals. Somalia is barely  a nation anymore.

But the Mighty U.S. of A., with the world’s most powerful military and major bases all around Yemen in places like Bahrain, is pretending to be helpless to lift a finger to help its own citizens leave the besieged country. 

The U.S. split from its embassy a few weeks ago. After that, U.S. “special forces” cut and ran from their Yemeni base, leaving behind half a billion dollars worth of military gear. (Wonder whose hands all that is going to fall into.)

But it’s not one-hundred-percent correct to say that the U.S. government has provided no help at all to Americans in Yemen. It offered to pass along their pleas for help to their families by posting messages on the State Department website.

Well, thank YOU, “Uncle Sam”! You really go the extra mile to “protect Americans.”

But the U.S. has some company in abandoning its citizens. “Great” Britain has done the same. This is the ultimate U.S.-stooge country that almost always marches loyally behind the U.S. in its footsteps. [1]

Apparently the Obama regime and the secret police state he backs to the hilt assume that if an American is ethnically Arab, or believes in Islam, they’re a “terrorist,” especially if they travel to Muslim lands.

And here’s a kicker. An American, who Obama caused to be imprisoned in Yemen since 2010 as a “terrorist suspect” in U.S. secret police jargon, fears he’s about to die in jail there. Sharif Mobley is a Muslim convert with a wife and three children in America. And guess what else?

He’s a black American.

Obama-irony squared!

The behavior of Obama’s State Department makes clear that the U.S. government wants Sharif to die in Yemen. If Mobley comes back alive, he will be talking about what the Obama regime did to him for the past five years. [2]

The same logic led Obama to order the murder of Anwar al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son two weeks after killing the father. The son was obviously going to be a source of bad publicity for years to come for the assassination of his Dad. The drone strike that blew away the teen (he was decapitated and his body blown to pieces) in a Yemeni cafe also killed his cousins as "collateral damage." Or maybe that was intended too.) 

So don’t be surprised if a Saudi airstrike destroys the prison Mobley is locked up in.

And look forward to smears trashing Mobley popping up in U.S. media from unnamed government “sources” after Mobley is dead. Because that’s how the U.S. rulers roll.

Hey, thanks for “protecting us,” Obama!

 Obama Wants This Man Dead

There’s a good lesson here for the chumps who feel it’s their duty to be “patriotic.” With a nation like the U.S., loyalty is a one-way street. You owe the rulers. You owe them your money. You owe them your blood. You might even owe them your life. But they owe you NOTHING. In fact, they are constantly scheming to take away Social Security from you, and public education now too. (Hedge fund bosses, insatiably greedy, are unsatisfied with their billions and want more. Their “charter school movement” is a Trojan Horse to steal the billions spend on primary education in America.)

Iran, the scapegoat for the Houthi uprising, is calling for a ceasefire in Yemen and a halt to the U.S.-backed Saudi aerial blitzkrieg. 

It’s a Big Lie that the Houthis are Iranian puppets. The Iranian support is rhetorical. The Houthis rebelled because of years of venal misrule by a faux government. Here’s an irony: the real behind-the-curtain player in Yemen is former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. Forced out of power after 30 years and replaced by his vice president, Hadi, he controls military bases and forces in Yemen and is backing the Houthi rebellion in an attempt to put himself back in the presidential palace. The Saudis and their American allies are trying to put Hadi back on the pedestal of power. But Yemen doesn’t really have a government anymore. Humpty-Dumpty cannot be put back together again by U.S.-supplied bombs dropped from U.S.-supplied planes on U.S.-identified targets flown by Saudi pilots.)

1] As I said, almost always. Britain just signed up to China’s new Asian Development Bank, much to U.S. chagrin. This was motivated by economics. British upper-level capitalists have all kinds of deals in China, and want more. Furthermore, London is a global financial center, and thus Britain wants to draw China in to its financial and property markets. And down the road, as the Chinese currency becomes an international currency, London will want a piece of that currency business, transactions both commercial and speculative.

Britain’s joining the new Bank set off a stampede of other U.S. allies signing up also, European countries and even South Korea, Australia, and Taiwan. (Taiwan!) Only Japan, that nation of extremely obedient people, obeyed U.S. orders and stayed away from China’s party.

2] See “AMERICAN MAN IMPRISONED IN YEMEN CALLS HOME; FEARS FOR LIFE,” the intercept, April 1, 2015.