This Is The Only Objective Thing You Will Read Today About The Mueller Testimony , Probably

Robert S. Mueller III, a career prosecutor and secret police boss, belatedly and unwillingly appeared before two committees in the Democratic Party-controlled House of Representatives on July 24; the Judiciary Committee in the morning and the "Intelligence" Committee in the afternoon. He stubbornly refused to answer maybe 40% of the questions put to him. (I'll have to analyze a transcript for a more exact figure.)

It should be noted that Mueller showed clear signs of senility. He frequently asked for questions to be repeated, spoke in a shaky voice, and had obvious memory trouble. (I was surprised since he's 74, not so old.)

The two committees are chaired by Democratic Party partisan fanatics, both dishonest apparatchiks of that machine: Jerrold Nadler of New York City chairs Judiciary, and Adam Schiff of California chairs Intelligence. Schiff is one of the most dishonest poltiical mountebanks in the U.S., a topic worthy of an essay in its own right. Nadler insists the Russian "attack on the election" is the same thing as the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.

What is clear, again, is what is going on in this long-running political drama, is a fierce power struggle between factions inside the U.S. power structure. On one side is the Democratic Party, its corporate media allies, and portions of the Deep State (secret police agencies), and on the other side is the Republican Party, its corporate media allies, and also some in the secret police organs. This sharp conflict began even more the November 2016 election, when elements of the FBI and other secretive state organs began conspiring against Donald Trump and organized various operations against him.

Mueller's behavior is best understood as that of a political weathervane. His actions and attitude are the result of the political pressures from these two opposing sides. Thus he failed to do his job and state in his long-awaited report whether Trump was criminally liable for obstruction of justice. His excuse was that under Department of Justice rules, a president cannot be indicted. (Who gave the DOJ, under the control of the president, the right to by edict declare this, is never explained. Nothing in the Constitution or actual U.S. LAW says a president cannot be criminally indicted.) As an excuse for not simply SAYING if Trump broke the law, it is disingenuous. Yet on the other hand, he seeded the report with all the breadcrumbs the Democrats need to say Trump DID commit obstruction of justice.

Another example. He resisted testifying to Congress, but acceded under a subpoena. Then he refused to answer numerous questions put to him, even ones simply asking him to affirm what is in his report. He also refused to read aloud from the report, depriving the Democrats of video clips that could run on Democratic Party-aligned tv channels like CNN and MSNBC, and in propaganda advertising. Yet he gave some damning (to Trump) answers.

He also gave and withheld from the Republican Representatives some of what they wanted.

A perfect political weathervane.

Both sides have some truth on their side, and also blatant dishonesty. Terribly, both sides agree on a Big Lie, namely that Russia "massively interfered in Our Election," "attacked the election and is going to do it again," "threatens Our Democracy." (The Russian "interference" was minimal to point of risibility, as explained in footnote [1] below.)

Their motives for agreement on this Big Lie differ. For the Democrats, it is a way to try and discredit Trump as a puppet of a foreign power, in classic McCarthy era fashion, instead of going after him for his actual destructive policies- deregulation, slashing taxes on the rich, endlessly-increasing  military spending, which they either are for or only tepidly bothered by. They also avoid the thorough self-examination of their own corruption and venality, which any honest analysis of what went wrong with Clinton's campaign would lead to, And they can bury the content of those damning emails by constantly shrieking about Russian wickedness for allegedly purloining the emails, the actual contents and significance of which are oddly irrelevant.

The Republicans for their part must be relieved and smugly delighted that no attention is paid to their election-stealing shenanigans, the massive voter disenfranchisement and ballot invalidation of many Democratic voters, the sneaky vote-shifting by software implants in the machines (all made by companies controlled by fanatically-partisan Republicans) and so on. It's a gift the Democrats, who are fundamentally gutless, insist on handing to the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers).

The reason I can be objective is that I am not in either camp. Whereas just about all media figures, including "alternative" ones, are partisans of one power faction or the other. And the majority of the U.S. population, sadly, is so brainwashed that they also identify strongly with one of the two oppressive imperialist corporate oligarchic parties of the political cartel. This makes fundamental reform in the U.S. impossible. Until the populace breaks out of its mental cage, there is no hope for the U.S, to improve. It will instead slowly decay, as all empires do over time.

The media alliances on the two sides break down thusly: the Democrats have most of the television networks to varying degrees (but especially NBC and its MSNBC unit, and CNN), and the "prestige" print media (including the Big Two, the New York Times and Washington Post). The Republicans have Murdoch's propaganda empire (including Fox "News,") and the vast network of "talk radio," the stations that blanket the entire nation with rightwing agitpropaganda 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The Deep State, in this case primarily the FBI, with some CIA and NSA involvement, has been mostly operating against Trump. In cahoots with the Clinton campaign, they brought us the absurd Steele Dossier, which they weaponized politically, operationally, and legally. It was used as an excuse to obtain a FISA warrant against Carter Page, a Trump stooge they picked as a vulnerable target of entry. But since the cadres of the secret police are hard core reactionaries with natural Republican sympathies and many ties to GOP operatives, the secret police anti-Trump ops have prompted a bit of an ongoing food fight, parts of which have broken into public view. Trump's second Attorney General William Barr is now apparently going after the elements that concocted the anti-Trump conspiracies such as the Page FISA warrant. 

There was more skullduggery afoot by the Deep State which I will get into in a future essay. Some of the Republican Committee members brought up some of it, which was by far the most interesting parts of the day's proceedings. From the Democrats, we got their usual talking points, and the Slogan Of The Day, which most of them worked into their 5 minutes of "question" time: "No One Is Above The Law," intoned with all the faux moral seriousness of a well-trained apple-polishing teacher's pet or a dutiful choirboy, or a Boy Scout looking to move up the ranks.

The Democrats are right in that Trump tried to obstruct the investigation, which even though he failed, is criminal under repressive U.S. law. The Republicans deny that. The Republicans are right that their has been a massive anti-Trump conspiracy by elements of the secret police apparatus and "Justice" Department working hand-in-glove with the Democratic Party and aided and abetted by large swaths of the media.  The Democrats of course pretend this is an absurd conspiracy theory, if they even acknowledge it at all.

Both camps, as I pointed out, are united in one of the Biggest Lies of all time, that Russia "massive interfered" in the 2016 election and even know if plotting to do it again in 2020. Russian involvement was extremely minimal, unless you could the email revelations, and that had no effect on the outcome. WikiLeaks published the emails in July 2016, Clinton was ahead by 14% in October, and it was the late October revelation by then-FBI boss James Comey that more Clinton emails from her private server scandal were discovered on a device owned by disgraced laughingstock and former Congressman Anthony Wiener (just more copies of already discovered emails, it turned out) which caused her plunge in the polls. Trump ultimately "won" with 2.9 FEWER votes than Clinton, thanks to that archaic relic, the Electoral College, something the Democrats never mention, instead blaming everything on RUSSIA! THEY ATTACKED US! THIS MUST NOT BE TOLERATED!

Oh shut the fuck up already.

The other thing both sides did was heap boilerplate praise on Mueller for his "lifetime of service" to the power structure. Some explicitly mentioned his "service" in the Vietnam war as a Marine officer, killing Vietnamese. After that he pursued a career in domestic repression as a prosecutor and for more than a decade, secret police chief of the FBI. (9/4/01- 9/4/13.) In that role he oversaw the post 9/11/01 increase in secret police state powers, the increased persecution of dissidents (Green Party members put on no-fly list, FBI raiding homes of socialist peace activists and stealing their personal mementos and photos, assassinating activists like the Puerto Rican independista Filiberto Ojeda Rios in his home, vacuuming up the data on political targets with "National Security Letters," 50,000 bank, medical, telephone, credit card, library, you name it, records a year secretly taken under the PATRIOT ACT, which require no court order or review and are kept secret from the victims, with criminal penalties for anyone who tells the victims or anyone else, and on and on.)

As FBI director, Mueller participated in the disinformation propaganda campaign "justifying" the invasion of Iraq, falsely testifying to Congress about Iraqi WMD and Al-Qaeda ties. 

The result of that was somewhere between 500,000 and one million Iraqi deaths. The exact number, as in the Vietnam War, will never be known.

In other words, this creature was feted and honored for his life of crime against humanity.

Such is the moral degeneracy, the inversion of normal human morality, by the members of the U.S. power structure.

Now we watch fiercely competing factions battle to impose their conflicting narratives on the public mind: Trump as criminal obstructor of justice (now that the Russian collaborator story is dead in the water) vs. Trump as victim of political witchhunt and Democratic Party hoax.

It's a show that allows the Trump regime to commit its real crimes, murdering more people from cancer under the cover of "deregulation," selling arms to the murderous Saudi regime, trying to overthrow the Venezuelan government (a project enthusiastically supported by the Democratic Party). 

And torturing migrant children and adults, and killing some of them.

Don't let them distract you with their intra-ruling class power struggle from their real crimes.

The secret policeman in winter.

1] Facebook traced $40,000 in campaign-related spending too Russia. This number is commonly inflated to $100,000 by including money spent AFTER the election (!). Google determined Russians spent $4,700 "on all Google platforms" (which includes youtube) during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Google's CEO testified directly to Jerrold Nadler himself, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, about this. You can watch it on video. Didn't make a dent in Nadler's position. Nadler insists Russia's "attack on Our Democracy" was the equivalent of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. You know someone is a fanatic (or cynic) spewing propaganda when facts that explode their myths have no apparent effect.

Finally there's the Democratic Party emails released by WikiLeaks, falsely attributed to Russia. That myth was debunked by retired NSA veterans William Binney and Kurt Wiebe. But let's say Russia did it. The exposure of those emails was a PUBLIC SERVICE! It made the electorate BETTER INFORMED! It revealed pertinent, significant information about candidate Hillary Clinton and the dishonesty of the campaign being run on her behalf by the Democratic National Committee. Far from being an "attack on democracy," it was a BOON to democracy.

But notice, the Democrats and their media parrots never say "attack on democracy." They always say "attack on our democracy." Like Cosa Nostra, Our Thing, "Our Democracy" is code for their system of bourgeois class rule with its fraudulent electoral trappings. (And how rotten their elections are. They put the Green Party presidential candidate, Jill Stein, in handcuffs for 8 hours to prevent her from trying to participate in one of their Democrat-Republican "debates.")

The "threat" to the two-party political cartel is a wised up populace. They well understand that. That is also why they demonize RT and other alternative media that exposes their lies and propaganda. Of course, RT et al have their own biases. But for progressive/left American dissidents, there is no space allowed in "official" media of the corporate oligarchy.

Violent Rapist Sits on U.S. Supreme Court- But Jeffrey Epstein Is The Devil!

[Helpful Hint for the Reading Comprehension Impaired: This is NOT a defense of Jeffrey Epstein.]

Brett Kavanaugh. Remember him? He violently assaulted and attempted to rape a 15-year-old girl, Christine Ford. Now an adult, she gave a very credible, detailed account of what Kavanaugh and a crony did to her. Didn't stop the U.S. Senate from making Kavanaugh, already a Federal Appeals Court judge, a Justice for life on the U.S. supreme Court, the highest court in the land and one that increasingly wields extreme power.

That's all down the memory hole. The BIG OUTRAGE is some rich guy, Jeffrey Epstein, between 15 and 17 years ago, paid a stream of teenage girls to massage him and watch him masturbate or give him hand jobs and let him fondle them in their underwear. (One now accuses him of raping her on one occasion.) He did have to serve jail time for that and register for the rest of his life as a sex offender.

But now it is Establishment Consensus that he got away with it and that nothing less than life in prison is "justice." To prove he's unrepentant, much is being made of "thousands" of photos of naked females seized from his mansion by FBI raiders. (No charge, just inference, that they are photos of teenagers.)

So the Federal government is reneging on the plea arrangement it entered into years ago and bringing "new" charges for crimes alleged to have occurred between 2002-2005. (What's that, you say? What about statute of limitations? I really don't know. Most Federal crimes have a 7 year time limit for bringing charges. But I haven't heard or read ONE WORD in "the" media, or "alternative" media for that matter, about statute of limitations in this case.)

A Federal judge just denied Epstein bail on grounds that he is a flight risk (as if being under house arrest with an electronic monitoring bracelet. and media and cops camped outside, and guards inside, somehow would allow him to escape) and a danger to society. (No assertion that he's had illegal sexual contact with minors since 2005, and of course with the massive publicity and scrutiny he's under, impossible he could now.)

But a known rapist on the supreme Court? Not a problem!

America's demented contradictions can make anyone lose their mind.

When you strip rights away from one person, you strip them from all. There are no longer rights, just privileges. And privileges are very weak and leave everyone vulnerable. Power systems always strip rights from unpopular people first, those regarded as loathsome. It's the first step down the slippery slope.

Who's the bigger menace to society? Who has the power that affects over 300 million people? It ain't Jeffrey Epstein!

Newest U.S. Hypocritical Double Standard: "We Shoot Down Your Drones, You Can't Shoot Down Ours"

A few weeks ago, Iran shot down a U.S. spy drone that Iran claims was over its territorial waters, and the U.S. claims wasn't. Either way, U.S. military spying on Iran is a dagger aimed straight at that country's ability to defend itself. The purpose of U.S. spying, by drones and every other means imaginable, is to thoroughly map Iran's military assets and capabilities, including the various transmission frequencies of Iran's military communications and radars, which allows the U.S. to plan jamming and spoofing those systems as part of bombing and missile attacks on them and on other targets. So Iran, by shooting down that U.S. drone, was committing an act of self-defense, NOT "aggression," as Western propagandists uniformly styled it.

Trump was then maneuvered by the extreme imperialists he's unwisely surrounded himself with (top culprits being Michael Pompeo and John Bolton) into ordering a military strike on Iran, but cancelled it before munitions were released. For this, he was attacked by various U.S. politicians (especially those of the Democratic Party) and career imperialist "experts" and polemicists. (One of Murdoch's Minions, Tucker Carlson , who has his very own television show on Fox "News," was oneof those credited with talking Trump out of the attack on the grounds that a war with Iran would damage Trump's re-election chances. So it wasn't that Trump suddenly turned into a hippie peacenik.)

Now the U.S. Navy has brought down an Iranian surveillance drone, with Trump himself spewing the standard self-righteous U.S. blather about self-defense, freedom of navigation, and what are intended as scary threats to Iran to Not Mess With The U.S.

The Navy warship U.S.S. Boxer was escorting commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. It downed an Iranian surveillance drone by electronic means. The drone was 1000 yards away, according to the BBC.  That's 3,000 feet, almost 3/5ths of a mile, or about a kilometer. [Propagandists reading their script on WCBS radio "news" stations called it "very close" without stating the actual distance.] The Boxer also threatened an Iranian patrol ship that was 500 years away (1,500 feet or about 500 meters). Apparently the U.S. doesn't like others observing its military assets too closely. It knows well from its own practice how the information can be used to plan attacks.

So what we are left with is this: U.S. is free to spy in ways that endanger nations it has already repeatedly attacked and threatened. The U.S. has been hankering to overthrow the Iranian government since 1979. Any interference with this U.S. "intelligence gathering" for purposes of future aggression is "aggression" and "illegal." The U.S. also insisted its drone that Iran downed was over international waters and thus legal.

But being in international airspace didn't give the Iranian drone any right to exist, so the U.S. took it down, in "self-defense."

No nation on earth compulsively creates more double-standards, which it imposes on the rest of the world, than the U.S.

The Overlooked Misogyny Embedded in Trump's Xenophobic and Racist Attack On 4 Female Congresswomen

 The U.S. has a president who doesn't bother masking his quite virulent, deeply felt, lifelong racism.

Trump "won" election by campaigning  on two main themes: "lock up" Hillary Clinton, and Hispanic immigrants are a mass of criminal invaders. He has just launched his reelection campaign with a savage, racist attack on four female, non-"white," Democratic members of Congress, demanding in vitriolic language that they "go back where they came from." (Three "came from" the U.S., and one, Ilhan Omar, came to the U.S. at the age of 12 from Somalia, and is a naturalized U.S. citizen.)

Trump began his vicious, racist assault on the four Congresswomen on Sunday, July 14th. [1] We should note, although no public commentator or politician has to my knowledge done so, that Trump could have included male non-"white" Congresspeople considered progressive, such as Ro Khanna, in his vulgar attack, but did not. Another Democratic male antagonist Trump has ignored: Congressman Al Green, who introduced articles of impeachment against Trump in the House of Representatives. (It was voted on by the House and lost.) Trump singled out four women only.

This should be understood in the context of Trump's lifelong misogyny and sexism, such as his vulgar verbal assaults on Rosie O'Donnell ("fat pig") and Megyn Kelly ("bleeding out of her, whatever") and others. So his attack on the four Congresswomen wasn't just racist. 

Trump's "base" of white racists (aka "nationalists"), bigots, and xenophobes were "energized" (excited) by his assault, as polling showed. Nine out of ten Republicans approve of his demagogic, racist attack. 

Republican politicians, for their part, are either silent or supportive of Trump in this.

When will "respectable" bourgeois commentators and the corporate media finally admit what has been apparent since Nixon's "Southern strategy;" that the Republican Party is the party of white racism?

It could only get more obvious if the Republicans and Trump stop lying about it and denying they're racist. Their denials are tissue-thin, transparent lies. Just another example of their utter dishonesty.

But like Hitler, another notorious liar, they are sincere to the depths of their souls about some things. Namely their racism and xenophobia. And can we say proto-fascism? Trump has expressed his deep solidarity with the murderous Filipino autocrat Rodrigo Duterte and the fascist death squad loving president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro.

Trump's xenophobia, and his racist supporters enthusiasm for him, is mind-exploding in its hypocrisy. Trump, the man who is crazed with hostility for immigrants, has more than a few immigrants in his family- his current wife, one of his former wives (Ivana), his father-in-law. mother-in-law, his grandparents, and his own mother.

Can anyone be a bigger piece of hypocritical, cynical, demagogic piece of shit than Donald J. "Jackass" Trump?

1] The four victims of Trump's demagogic vitriol are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). Talib's parents are Palestinian, Ocasio-Cortez' are Puerto Rican, and thus U.S. citizens to begin with, Pressley is African-American, and Omar came from Somalia at age 12. Three are native-born American citizens, Omar is a naturalized citizen.

Trump is not faking the hate just to get reelected. His hatred is genuine.

An Unkillable Zombie Myth: "17 U.S. Intelligence Agencies Found That Russia Hacked the DNC Server!"

There are many Count Dracula-type myths in the U.S., Big Lies that no matter how definitely refuted, keep rising from the dead.

In the wake of the Democrats' blowing the 2016 presidential election, a new myth was created by that party and its allies, in this case the overwhelming bulk of the American propaganda system (aka "the media"). Namely, that "all 17 intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia hacked into the computer server of the Democratic National Committee and stole emails which they gave to WikiLeaks."

Joseph "Joe" Biden, the self-styled Everyman Politician (but he couldn't do it without the connivance of the corporate media propaganda system), just repeated this "17 intelligence agencies all say" falsehood. [1] Even though it was definitively REFUTED TWO YEARS AGO by no other than the Obama regime's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. That position, on the government organizational chart, has jurisdiction over all Federal "intelligence" agencies (including the FBI, which is officially a "law enforcement" agency).

 Not even Clapper, the man who arranged for the false report "finding" that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee computer, could kill the media-Democratic Party myth that "all 17 Federal intelligence agencies found that Russia hacked the DNC server."

In July of 2017, Clapper testified before the U.S. Senate about the report that he personally had commissioned and overseen, which claimed, without presenting evidence (since none exists) that Russia hacked into the DNC computer and downloaded documents from it. [2] Here's the key sentence from his opening statement:

"As you know, the IC was a coordinated product from three agencies: CIA, NSA, and the FBI, not all 17 components of the intelligence community. Those three." [Clapper's emphases.]

Then we cut to then-Senator Al Franken of Minnesota completely ignoring Clapper's statement. Note that Clapper had said "as you know," indicating the Senators already were informed prior to this hearing that it wasn't "all 17 intelligence agencies" that "concluded" Russia Did It. [In fact it wasn't even three agencies, but rather 3 "analysts" hand-picked by Clapper to write the report he wanted.] But Franken tries to "correct" Clapper!

Al Franken: "The intelligence communities [sic] have concluded all seventeen of them, that, Russia interfered with this, an election. And we all know how- that's right." ["We all know," in other words, this is now official dogma that all must believe or pretend to believe.]

Clapper has to awkwardly remind Franken that he just told him it was three agencies: "Uh Senator, as I pointed out in my statement, uh, Senator Franken, there were only three, agencies, that directly involved in this assessment plus my office."

But Franken stubbornly tries to preserve the Myth of Seventeen: "But all seventeen signed on to that."


Clapper then finds a tactful way to say No, that's not true, to save Franken's idiot face:  "Well, we didn't go through that process. This was a special situation because of the time limits, and, my, what I need to be who could really contribute to this and the sensitivity of the information, we decided it was a conscious judgment to restrict it to those three." [In other words: "I had to make sure to fix the result."]

Here is the video. There is also a link to it on youtube

https://youtu.be/bPkj2kKO1As

There are some ironclad facts that need to be mentioned, but virtually never are in bourgeois media. First, if there had been an intrusion and download to an external computer, the NSA would have the evidence, since it sweeps up and stores most of the world's Internet traffic. The fact that the NSA's contribution to the Clapper report was equivocal in going along with the party line, and no evidence was presented, is damning proof that the story of Russian hacking is a lie. On top of that, the DNC refused to allow the FBI to examine its server! Various politicians have clamored that this imaginary hack was "an act of war" (John McCain) equivalent to the bombing of Pearl Harbor (Jerrold Nadler), and other extreme rhetoric. So how can the DNC refuse to allow the FBI to even examine its computer? (Contrast this indifference to the Democrats' lack of cooperation with the FBI in what is claimed to be an act of war aimed at destroying "our democracy," with the ginned-up outrage that Donald Trump Jr. didn't report it to the FBI when flaky clown music promoter Rob Goldstone lured him into a meeting with a Russian lawyer on the false pretext of getting derogatory information on his Dad's opponent Hillary Clinton. Or just recently when Trump Sr. said on television that he's look at information on an opponent offered by a foreign power- he used "Norway" as an example- and maybe not report it to the FBI. A firestorm of attacks prompted him to then backtrack and say he WOULD go to the FBI, and Democrats called for yet another repressive law to hand even more power to the already dominant secret police state by requiring candidates to report such contacts to the FBI. The same Democrats who claimed the Russians hacked their computer but REFUSED to let the FBI examine it! Double standard, anyone?)


1]  Biden apparently plans to lie his way into the White House. 

The bourgeois media started excitedly promoting him as the "leading" candidate even before he was officially a candidate, and haven't stopped since. No surprise there, since the propaganda system of the corporate oligarchy that holds power in the U.S. always wants the most reactionary candidate they can successfully foist on the citizenry to win. That is why, for instance, Iowa and New Hampshire, two small, lily white, very reactionary states, are deemed the first "hurdles" to the presidency that a candidate must pass muster in. This immediately disadvantages anyone who is at all progressive, as the propaganda system then pastes the label "hopeless loser with no chance" on them.. 

2]  Not only has no actual evidence ever been presented that this alleged cyber-intrusion ever occurred, since the fake Clapper report was issued it has been proven by technical analysis that the data could not have been downloaded over the Internet because of the speed of the data transfer, but rather was copied onto a flash drive. This analysis was carried out by two career NSA technical experts (retired), William Binney and Kurt Wiebe.

Iran Cannot "Violate" The Nuclear Deal That the U.S. Nullified in 2018- Another Big Lie By Western Propaganda Media

What would you think of someone who openly cancelled a deal they made with you, but insisted that YOU had to ABIDE by it, and threatened violence to force you to do so?

You'd call that a gangster.

Imperialists, of course, are gangsters.

Western media and political elites are all in a tizzy suddenly about Iranian "violations" of the agreement that the U.S. abrogated over a year ago, and which is thus null and void. This is an example of how demented Western "elites" are. Trump tore up the nuclear accord with Iran in March of 2018, and not only reimposed the sanctions that were lifted by the U.S. in return for Iran shutting down and mothballing its various nuclear enrichment programs, even permanently crippling a brand new reactor to prevent it from producing plutonium, but has intensified sanctions even more than the Obama regime had imposed, including a declared goal of blocking ALL Iranian oil exports. The U.S. has forced even China and India to stop buying Iranian oil. It just had its British stooges seize an oil tanker carrying Iranian oil to a Syrian refinery, near British-controlled Gibraltar on the Mediterranean tip of Spain. (To be sure, the Assad regime is monstrous.) The U.S. has effectively prevented all major companies all over the world from doing business with Iran, under threat of U.S. economic punishments levied on the companies. Iranians are dying today because vital medicines are effectively blockaded by the U.S.' actions.

But IRAN is expected to continue to ABIDE BY THE AGREEMENT! It's simply insane. Iran should have stopped abiding by it as soon as the U.S. abrogated it and reimposed sanctions. Iran got raped, completely ripped off, by the U.S. They handed over a stockpile of enriched uranium, crippled a reactor, mothballed their centrifuges, and much else. This is one of the greatest double-crosses in recent history. (The Kurds know a lot about being double-crossed by the U.S., having been so victimized repeatedly.) [1]

But Trump said it was "the worst deal ever." Because? it expires in 15 years. And it didn't ban Iran from having ballistic missiles. And it didn't end Iran's alliance with Hezbollah, a major part of Lebanon's political establishment. And it didn't ban Iran from trying to help Hamas in the Gaza open air concentration camp. And it didn't force Iran to abandon the Houthi rebels in Yemen. And it didn't conpel Iran to stop fighting on the side of the Assad regime in Syria.

But Trump said it was "the worst deal ever." Because? it expires in 15 years. And it didn't ban Iran from having ballistic missiles. And it didn't end Iran's alliance with Hezbollah, a major part of Lebanon's political establishment. And it didn't ban Iran from trying to help Hamas in the Gaza open air concentration camp. And it didn't force Iran to abandon the Houthi rebels in Yemen. And it didn't compel Iran to stop fighting on the side of the Assad regime in Syria.

And another fatal flaw in the 2015 Obama deal, from the perspective of John Bolton and Michael Pompeo: it didn't overthrow the Iranian regime.

However, the U.S. was just one party to the agreement. It was Iran on one side, pitted against the U.S., China, Russia, France, Britain, and Germany, all against Iran's nuclear program. Iran has patiently waited for over a year for those other parties to the deal to DO something to counter the U.S. imposition of the worst sanctions yet. Instead they have abided by the U.S. sanctions policy, while in the case of the Europeans, making noises about creating mechanisms for their companies to do business in Iran. But those countries won't even purchase Iran's oil. And the lame moves the Europeans have made otherwise have been a joke.

 So now Iran is being roundly attacked in the Western media, and threatened by European politicians (and most gallingly, by TRUMP!) for not continuing to abide by the deal in which they have been totally double-crossed. Even though Iran totally lived up to the deal from 2015 until last month, over a year after Trump killed the agreement and in the face of relentless economic warfare. (And no doubt all kinds of covert sabotage by "special ops" and via computer attacks.)

Trump has called for a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (which is responsible for monitoring Iran's compliance with the agreement) to gin up further political and diplomatic attacks on Iran to force it to keep its side of a bargain that Trump loudly reneged on.

It's enough to make your head spin, unless you ignore reality. Which is exactly what those in power in Western nations expect you to do.

The deal that had been worked out took years, and immense pressure on Iran, and was the best that was obtainable. Trump's strategy is to force Iran to crawl on its belly, using U.S. power to wreck the Iranian economy (done) and compel the rest of the world to bow to U.S. diktat and conform to U.S. policy (done). Will it work? Who knows?

In addition, the U.S. has created fake "Iranian attacks" on oil tankers as part of a military brinksmanship campaign, using the threat of war to intimidate the Iranian rulers. [2] So far it hasn't worked. That was followed by Iran shooting down a U.S. spy drone (which maps the location of Iranian defense installations and sniffs out vulnerabilites in their defenses and collects the frequencies of their radars and communications, enabling the U.S. to jam, attack, spoof, and render ineffective these systems). U.S. surveillance ops provide preparation for future U.S. aggression. The Iranians properly defended itself from this menacing, hostile foreign power by shooting down the drone. The bickering over which side of the Iranian maritime border it was on at the time is frankly irrelevant. (The U.S. is SO punctilious about international law when it wants to be. Not so much in its own behavior, like sabotage, torture, subversion, election-meddling, coups, assassinations, invasions, and other such "tools of statecraft.")

There was much screeching by U.S. politicians and "commentators" over the fact that Trump didn't pound Iran with bombs afterwards. One of the few things Trump did that was RIGHT.



Look, the Iranian government is pretty bad. It's a repressive theocracy. But only about half as repressive as the Saudi Arabian theocracy, with which the U.S. is so chummy. So "freedom" and "democracy" and "human rights" have NOTHING to do with the U.S. hostility towards Iran. And by making the Iranian economy scream, and killing Iranians by blockading medicine, the U.S. demonstrates how much it really cares about the well being of the Iranian people. It's the same cynical song the U.S. sings whenever it destroys a country- Iraq, Guatemala, Vietnam, you name it.

He's kinda arrogant, don't you think?

1] It just so happens that the U.S. has one of the worst records in the world of honoring its treaty obligations. It solemnly signed hundreds of treaties with Native American Nations and broke every single one. It has committed international aggression repeatedly, a crime under international law. It has subverted governments. Under Bush the Younger it infamously created a system of institutionalized torture, even though it is a signatory to the Torture Convention. And so on.

2] See "Dishonest U.S. Media Lying U.S. Into Another War of Aggression" for detailed factual analysis of the U.S.-created "Iranian tanker attacks." As the crew of the Japanese tanker said, they were attacked by flying objects, not limpet mines placed on the hull. Plus we are supposed to believe that Iran wanted to sabotage its own diplomacy with Japan! The story is too long and detailed to recount here. There are videos included with this report.

The Last, Best Word About July 4th, U.S. Independence Day

We've just been subjected to our annual booster shot of chauvinistic jingoism about the Birth of America, Land of Liberty, Home of Democracy, Guardian of Human Rights.

Herein, a small, necessary corrective.

Over a century and a half ago, someone gave a speech that precisely nailed the truth about the U.S.A. The impassioned, uncompromising words of this speech lifted up the rock of mendacious and stultifying rhetoric to reveal the ugly face of the U.S. beast that lives behind the shiny facade of Big Lies.

Today, those words are still right on the money about the U.S. Having withstood the test of time, and never been surpassed in incisiveness, they bear repeating.

They are the words of Frederick Douglass, a man born in slavery, spoken in 1852 to the Rochester [NY] Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society on July 5th of that year. The Society had asked Douglass to speak in celebration of the Fourth of July. No doubt they got more than they bargained for.

The original speech is quite long. It was untitled, and since has been given the title “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” or small variations thereon. It deals mostly with American slavery, the laws and practices of it, the supporting role of American churches, and the hypocrisy of American blather about liberty democracy freedom blah-blah-blah. Yet much of it is relevant to today's U.S. crimes, its spread of oppressive death squad dictatorships around the world, its role as the Arsenal of Fascism since World War II, its economic hyperexploitation of poorer countries, and most of all, the demented, self-righteous, totally un-self-aware prattle that constitute its declared "values."

Here are excerpts: [1]

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes [i.e. marks from whippings] and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes that would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour forth a stream, a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and the crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

We need more fierce people like him today.

Current American Emperor Donald J. Trump The First

1]  I found a lengthy version that is labeled "full document" at TeachingAmericanHistory.org. That site also has related documents.

Anchorage, Alaska Breaks Temperature Record at 90 Degrees Fahrenheit- Another Omen For the Future

That's 32.2 degrees Celsius to you in the rest of the world. Understand that Alaska is America's Siberia- far north and freezing cold, partly above the Arctic Circle.

But that's not hot enough to change the minds of the global warming deniers, or their cousins in denial and dishonesty, those who deny that the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels is the cause.

Maybe if it hits 100 degrees they'll budge?

NAH! Ideology always trumps mere reality. As Ronald Reagan once said: "Facts are stupid things."

So he just made up his own. As does his GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) successor Donald J. "Jackass" Trump.

And ideology driven by economic interest has the weight of a mountain!


In case you hadn't noticed, the oil industry in particular is huge and lies at the core of the current global economic structure, as it is the main fuel for transportation, including airplanes and ships, which makes it a critical military commodity. Saudi Arabia's power is derived from petroleum, and the U.S. strongly protects Saudi Arabia, (even after the murder of a contributor to the Washington Post, the in-house organ of the power elites of the capital of the U.S. empire, Washington D.C.).

Oil corporations are hugely wealthy and politically powerful in the U.S. And in addition, plastics are derived from petrochemicals.

Reactionary polemicists for hire by the oil and coal industries are plentiful. And the U.S. media is reactionary and pro-corporate oligarchy. This power structure is already indifferent to such facts as the 50% reduction in Arctic sea ice since 1979. [1] Why would they care about a hot day in Anchorage?

So guess what? A hot day in Alaska changes nothing.

Once a happy family, now not long for this world:  polar bears. Having no habitat means extinction.

So long, fellow mammal.

1] CBS News, of all places, radio broadcast, July 6th, 2019, 11 am Eastern Standard Time.

Trump Violates Constitution to Fund Vanity Parade For Himself

Trump has been hankering for a grand military parade for himself ever since French neoliberal president Emmanuel Macron celebrated Trump's arrival in Paris with such a display of military might. (Trump and Macron are such great friends that Trump even ostentatiously plucked "dandruff" off Macron's suit, announcing what he was doing in front of the gathered media, when Macron visited in Washington.)

So Trump has stolen $2.5 million from the National Parks Department budget, appropriated by Congress for funding park improvements, to pay for tanks and jets to celebrate The Ego of Trump. Coincidentally, the military muscle will be shown off on July 4th, officially U.S. "Independence Day." (The Parks Department has a maintenance backlog of $11 billion. So what's a few million more. Make America Great Again!)

The Constitution delegates to Congress the appropriation of funds. For the president to take funds appropriated for one purpose and use them for another is a direct violation of the U.S. Constitution and the president's oath of office.

Trump in his carnival barker mode tweets that it will be "The Parade of a Lifetime!"

This is the first time heavy armored vehicles are going to be on Washington streets. The mayor objected because the tanks will damage the pavement. The mall is expected to take a beating. Don't be surprised if the local government will have to pay for the repairs itself.

In another first, the mall is being closed off to the public and is being reserved for GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) big shots, who will receive tickets for entry to the "V.I.P." zone. Nothing like an ersatz aristocracy to celebrate "democracy."

Presumably the climate-crisis-denying Republicans will thrill to the sight of U.S. bombers and fighters flying overhead, safe in the knowledge that they only drop their "payloads" on defenseless and poor Third World countries, killing mostly poor people, in "defense" of the "freedom" of rich swells.

This is not the first time Trump has stolen funds appropriated for other purposes and illegally used them to satisfy his own whims, like a medieval King (or a Saudi ruler) might do. Trump took money for badly needed repairs on military bases to pay for wall construction on the Mexican border.

Nor is Trump the first president to swipe money in this way. He may be the first to do so openly, however. What differentiates Trump from his modern predecessors is that he says and does openly what used to be denied. This is a symptom of the political degeneration of the U.S. empire.

Another symptom of political decadence is that presidents routinely violate the Constitution in various ways, but are never impeached for it. But that goes back to at least the second president, John Adams, who imprisoned publishers of newspapers that criticized him. (So much for those "guarantees" of "rights.") So maybe we should just consider it evidence of the moral and political corruption at the core of the U.S. power establishment.

They used to do their coups covertly, and deny them. Now they do them openly and with fanfare, as the Trump regime is doing to Venezuela, to the vigorous applause of the top Democratic Party politicians such as Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer, "leaders" of the Democrats in the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, respectively.

This degeneracy is not recent either. The Reagan regime (1981-1989) created the so-called "National Endowment for Democracy," which has been tasked ever since with doing openly things the CIA used to do covertly: subverting foreign governments, creating front groups abroad, manipulating elections in other countries. In other words, the U.S. now acts as if it has the RIGHT to do things it used to hide because they are outrageous and illegal under international law, violate the sovereignty of other nations, and attack and destroy the right of other peoples to self-determination. In other words, as so often with the U.S. the "National Endowment for Democracy" has a perfectly Orwellian name that reverses the meaning of words. It is the National Endowment for ANTI-Democracy.

And of course the U.S. wouldn't be satisfied if it wasn't an outrageous hypocrite at the same time. Witness the years-long propaganda campaign falsely claiming that "Russia attacked our democracy!" and "hacked our election!" The sanctimonious outrage of the politicians and "pundits" is a sight to behold.

The U.S. is certainly Number One in utter cynicism and breathtaking hypocrisy. Give credit where credit is due.

Thanks for the Tanks!

Ego, I Salute You!

I love a parade! Especially when it's for ME!