Neil deGrasse Tyson, the George Bush of Astronomy

Just as Bush by edict creates his own law, Tyson by personal fiat demotes Pluto from a planet to a...what exactly he doesn't say. Heavenly body, I guess. His grounds? It's too small, and it's orbit is too elliptical. Or as he says on the website of The Planetary Society (conveniently he's Chairman of the Board of said Society) “Pluto has 'peculiar' written all over it.” (His essay on Pluto is at http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/topten/tyson_pluto_is_not.html.) Another part of Tyson's rap against Pluto is that its moon, Charon, is too large in relation to Pluto.
But Pluto has three moons. The other two are Nix and Hydra. That's three times as many moons as Tyson's native planet, Earth, has. Spunky Pluto has enough pull to keep three moons in its ambit.
And why do all the planets have to orbit the Sun in lockstep conformity for Tyson to let them in the Planet Club? More to the point, who vested Tyson with the authority to eject longtime members in good standing of the club?

With their instinctive common sense, schoolchildren the world over have rejected Tyson's cruel banishment of Pluto from the family of Planets. Pluto is a planet whether Tyson likes it or not.

Hurray for Pluto! Long Live Planet Pluto!

The Media Destruction of Eliot Spitzer

The GOP-controlled secret police units and Federal prosecutors lit a fuse in the media by illegally feeding them allegations about New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer's use of prostitutes. (We only can surmise they are true allegations because Spitzer threw in the towel. We can further assume that with his combative personality, if the allegations were false he would have at least initially denied the allegations.)

It was assumed from the start of the media firestorm that his position was hopeless. Somehow such a revelation automatically forces a Governor from office. (The media has no interest in the crimes committed by their "sources" in feeding them the dirt on Spitzer. Of course, such crimes impact the public and society far more than Spitzer's private sexual peccadilloes do. But the public interest has never been the guiding principle of what is "newsworthy" in the eyes of the corporate media. The interests of the permanent ruling class are what matters.)

A good example of the juvenile lynch mob mentality of much of the U.S. media is illustrated by the cover of New York magazine dated March 24, 2008. The cover consists in its entirety of a stark photo of Spitzer against a white backdrop, his hands clasped stiffly in front of him, smiling, and in large block letters in a lurid red box the word "BRAIN" with an arrow stabbing straight into Spitzer's groin. Unlike most New York covers, there are no titles of other stories inside, creating a mono-focus on humiliating the ex-Governor. (New York is a bourgeois rag dedicated to relentlessly promoting the most vapid materialism. It spawned a bunch of copycat rags that encapsulate the "Yuppie" mentality, or what would more correctly be called neobourgeois. The pushing of shallow materialism started as a counteroffensive against the Counterculture of the 1960s and early '70s, which the rulers and their minions correctly recognized as a threat to their system by challenging the arid, anti-human values of the Establishment. Unfortunately the counteroffensive, which included state violence and secret police persecution and repression in addition to media and ideological assaults, was successful.)

The same issue of New York apparently felt a need to explain away another apparent double standard or contradiction: namely why was Spitzer pulled down but not Bill Clinton? Various bogus explanations are adduced, ignoring the actual reason- Clinton had the POWER to hang on. The Federal Government, being under his control, wasn't going after him. The GOP hit man Kenneth Starr, appointed "special prosecutor" to get Clinton after the previous special prosecutor, also a Republican, failed to come up with charges against the Clintons. The Paula Jones lawsuit which led to the exposure of Clinton's dalliance with White House intern Monica Lewinsky was an arranged GOP plot. Starr took his case to the House, which under GOP control duly impeached Clinton (the equivalent of an indictment). Lacking a two-thirds majority in the Senate to convict him, Clinton beat the rap, which was mostly based on perjury and witness tampering. Spitzer, on the other hand, is subject to attack by the Federal Government (which I can guarantee you wouldn't be happening if the current President were a Democrat as Spitzer is).

Contrast the treatment Spitzer got, and his enforced overthrow within just days, to what happened when GOP Senators Larry Craig and David Vitter were caught in similar scandals. They're still in office. Both committed illegal acts (Craig soliciting sex from an undercover male cop in a public restroom, Vitter patronizing prostitutes in D.C., same as Spitzer.) Vitter isn't being investigated and prosecuted, like Spitzer is. (Spitzer hasn't been indicted yet, but that seems certain.) WHY THE DOUBLE STANDARD?

In an even more stunningly blatant example of naked double standards and media hypocrisy, the same day the replacement NY Governor, David Paterson, was installed to media and political huzzahs, he admitted that both he and his wife were adulterers! That may not be exactly the same, since presumably they weren't paying for sex, but in terms of not remaining sexually loyal to their spouses, it was the same. Also adultery is illegal in many states (perhaps not in NY however). The NY Times for one covered the news in a tone of complete neutrality. Of course Paterson is a creature of the corrupt establishment, having been in the corrupt and morally depraved NY State Legislature for the past 18 years. So he's "safe" for the powers-that-be.

The media, of course, get to have their cake and eat it too. While feigning shock and moral outrage that a man would want to have sex with someone other than his wife (which would occasionally require paying), the New York tabloids, two reactionary rags, the NY Post and NY Daily News (owned, respectively, by two foreign plutocrats and arch reactionaries, the Australian fascist buccaneer Rupert Murdoch and the Canadian Jewish real estate baron and ardent Zionist Mortimer Zuckerman), drooled and slavered over the prostitute and ran large photos of her breasts (in a swimsuit) and other such T & A fare. (That's internal media code for Tits and Ass.) It also provided an excuse to do "explorations" of prostitution, as if the public has no idea what it is. Merely an excuse for voyeurism and titillation. (Perhaps their readership, thus aroused, is expected to masturbate and steer clear of prostitutes.) The Times did the same, only more "tastefully," that is, archly and stuffily instead of openly salacious and tawdry. Because the tabloids are aimed at working class lunkheads and the Times fancies itself the paper for the socioeconomic elite, their tones and styles differ, but not necessarily their essential content.

The Times gave as part of the "explanation" for the inevitability of Spitzer's fall the fact that he has an abrasive, prickly, arrogant personality. Unlike, I suppose, Rudolph Giuliani! Giuliani was extreme in all those descriptions, even browbeating and abusing reporters at his press conferences (and many other people besides). It never hurt him in the slightest. The media constantly built up Giuliani, (as they did Reagan, Nixon, and numerous other pathological beasts who run the apparatuses of state power in America). All that time they told us he was "America's Mayor," a National Hero after 9/11. (Besides providing fleeting emotional comfort to bereaved citizens and making sure to get his photo constantly taken, it's hard to see what he did that was so "heroic." His ineptitude was shown by the fact that he insisted on locating his Emergency Command [Fuhrer]Bunker in one of the destroyed towers, against the recommendations of security personnel. So millions of dollars were squandered on a command post that was destroyed in the very first emergency it would have been used in! )

So neither the "sex scandal" explanation, nor the "lousy personality" line holds up to logical analysis.

Let us move on to the "he had no allies" explanation. This certainly has merit. But it wrongly ascribes his lack of allies to his rotten personality. Again, many, many successful politicians are bullies, are abrasive, are prickly. (Many are criminals and even mass murderers, like virtually all U.S. Presidents. Their reputations don't suffer as a result.) I cited just one example above, that of Giuliani. So why didn't Spitzer have allies?

Because the people who would be his natural allies, the Democrats, are part of the corrupt political system in NY State. By threatening that system, Spitzer was a threat to them. They could only be relieved to see him knifed, à la Caesar, by the media. And the media certainly wouldn't ally with him, since they too benefit from the corrupt system and thus support it.

As for the special interest groups like Common Cause and anti-rape activists, they actually have no power anyway. But the ones privileged to get a quote in the media also said he had to go- the good-government types because they decided he could no longer be "effective" (i.e., in terms of power, he was effectively castrated), and the anti-rape anti-prostitution activists because of the obvious- that he was the type of man they regard as the enemy. Not to mention amazingly duplicitous. And they hate non-monogamous husbands. (Interestingly, women's rights groups stood behind Bill Clinton during his sex scandal. One explanation proffered for this at the time was their view of him as a bulwark in defense of abortion rights.)

The assault on Spitzer actually began months ago. When Spitzer frontally assaulted the ruling caudillos of the State Legislature, Joseph Bruno and Sheldon Silver, two horribly corrupt machine politicians who rule their respective chambers with iron fists, the media attacked Spitzer, mostly by criticizing his personality. (Which is irrelevant, of course.) When Spitzer sought to expose the venal Bruno's misuse of State Police helicopters for partisan political purposes and personal use, the media made the scandal THE EXPOSURE of Bruno! Instead of Bruno being investigated, Spitzer and his aides were subjected to witch-hunts by various bodies. These "investigations" continue even now. The NY Times led this assault, with the two city tabloids. Despicably, the Times likes to pose as pro-reform and pro-good government. Apparently it is not. (Bruno also corruptly arranges deals with various businesses that fund him and his party, including outside clients to whom he sells his favors. This has been endlessly "under investigation," despite that the facts are well-known, indeed common knowledge within the corrupt political and media establishment.)

What accounts for this support of a Soviet and Chinese-style legislature that "votes" in lockstep with party bosses? Firstly and most fundamentally, the rulers hate democracy, so the less democracy, the better for them. They don't want independent elected representatives who might actually represent the citizens who elect them (or who at least live in their districts if not actually bothering to vote). Secondly, the present arrangement allows for corrupt deals and favoritism directly for these three newspapers. The Post for example pretends for purposes of state taxation to be a nonprofit and is tax exempt. The Times just got the state to use its power of eminent domain to force out property owners on a site where it subsequently erected a new propaganda temple for itself to operate out of.

None of this should be construed as sympathy for Spitzer on my part. He himself is obviously a loathsome hypocrite, on several counts. As a prosecutor, he had a vindictive attitude towards the customers of prostitutes. And as Governor he pushed through more punitive legislation on this score. This is a sick deception on the level of all the gay-bashing reactionaries in the GOP and on "religious" right soapboxes who publicly hate gays and sponsor legislation to assault gays, while they themselves are in fact homosexuals! (There are numerous examples of them by now.) Or we could compare it to Jews who masqueraded as Nazis during World War II, although they at least had the excuse of survival, not mere opportunism and cynical self-promotion.

He is also a hypocrite (and a just plain liar), like so many politicians and other "respectable" elements of society, in that he pays homage to certain values which he claims to live by, and condemns those who don't, in this case, monogamy and the "sacredness" of marriage. He took a solemn vow when he wed his wife, which included a presumption of sexual exclusivity. Like so many pillars of the establishment, he wanted to have it both ways. He wanted to appear to believe in the values he claims to live by, but not really be restricted by them. So he "cheated." That is, he defrauded his wife, the mother of his children, the person he made a commitment to.

The members of the establishment, their minions, and all who want to be "respectable," the definition of which they endorse, don't necessarily want to live in the straitjacket they have
constructed for themselves. While hating "hippies," they want to have some of the same freedoms the hippies championed, while condemning those freedoms. But it doesn't work. There cannot be freedom in the context of repression. People who "cheat," betraying their wives or girlfriends, or who use illegal drugs and marijuana while condemning drug use and supporting repressive anti-drug laws, are not experiencing freedom. They are like burglars in the night, surreptitiously stealing pleasures they are ashamed to openly claim a right to. They cheat the rest of us by upholding our oppression while carving out a covert exception to the rules for themselves. And usually the rules are applied selectively so they get away with it even when caught. There are various legal loopholes and trapdoors and exceptions and carveouts and "diversion programs" by which the privileged and those who can afford expensive, politically-connected lawyers are allowed to slide for their indiscretions, even in the face of allegedly "mandatory" sentences.

Spitzer earlier in life could have chosen to live by less restrictive personal values. However he had ambitions to climb up the power structure, so he bought into that structure's repressive dictates, which includes demands of marriage and monogamy, upholding the criminalization of paid sex and using drugs for pleasure, and so on. (It's another irony that the police state instituted by establishmentarians like Spitzer entrapped him in its web. That is, banks filing "suspicious activity" reports is what led to his downfall. A half million of these reports are filed annually with Federal inquisitors. We can safely presume that the vast majority have nothing to do with real crime. Likewise, while the alleged purpose of currency reporting and "structuring" laws (that is, requiring the filing of reports of withdrawals of $10,000 and up in cash, or smaller amounts that add up to $10,000,) is to catch "terrorists," "drug dealers," and other despised scum, these laws are in fact used most of the time to punish "law abiding" citizens; ; that is, they are instruments of control and repression of the general population, i.e. us. Our money has to be controlled, our freedom of action is considered suspect, our privacy is considered a cover for evildoing, so we are stripped of it, and we are taught that we shouldn't mind if we "have nothing to hide." Thus is the desire for privacy and to be left alone by those in power, the "Government," itself considered quasi-criminal or evidence of criminal intent. The logic of repression, which demands ever-increasing controls and ever-shrinking freedom, was kicked into high gear after the 9/11/01 attacks, which the secret police deliberately allowed to take place for that very reason.)

Spitzer should have told his wife he was no longer willing to abide by their life contract. Of course he wouldn't do that because he needed a nuclear family to meet the definition of "respectable." (Apparently bachelors are unfit for public office, or for that matter high corporate positions, for which marriage is a strict requirement.) He not only double-crossed her ("cheated"), he potentially endangered her health by seeking condomless sex with prostitutes, a nearly sure way to spread diseases, including the lethal AIDS.

Politicians like him are usually allowed to practice a double-standard, until they get in the way or outlive their usefulness. If they're right-wingers exposed by some media outlet seeking immediate attention to juice their circulation or viewers, we see that they are usually allowed to stay in office. There is something arbitrary or capricious about Spitzer's treatment, but in no way is it akin to a Greek Tragedy. Nor do I buy the pop psychology analysis that it bespeaks some self-destructive impulse in him. More likely, having grown up rich and privileged, he merely assumed, with a combination of arrogance and thoughtless complacency born of habit, that he could do what he wanted if he was discreet. He was "stupid" in that he failed to calculate that, far from his position of seeming power making him less vulnerable, it made him more so, because he would be under heightened political scrutiny from his enemies in the GOP and on Wall Street, the financial plutocrats who sit at the very apex of power in this society, and who he antagonized when he put a brief fright into them with his threats and prosecutions as State Attorney General.

The establishment of the U.S. is pathologically schizophrenic about sexuality. While titillating the populace every day with scantily clad young women posing as sexual vixens and filling both the "news" and entertainment arms of its media with racy sexual content, it carries out increasingly puritanical policies. Sex education is mostly abolished in American schools today, replaced by anti-sex scolding called "abstinence education." Abortion is nearly illegal, now being unavailable in 87% of U.S. counties, subject to increasing restrictions and legal assault, and regarded as disreputable and a fit target for harassment and terrorism by primitive religious fanatics. "Family planning aid" abroad is barred to any entities that would even mention abortion. Chastity is the only method of birth control considered morally acceptable. The U.S. today practices a medieval sexual politics while its culture is drenched with overt sexual imagery. This is a form of mental derangement.

The counterculture implicitly made an honest critique of society's strictures. It said that relationships are naturally fluid and temporary, that sexual desire if polymorphous and fleeting and of its own accord cannot be limited to just a single person. In direct opposition to 2000 years of Western Christian culture based on guilt and suffering and repression, it said that pleasure is good, not evil. It advocated honesty in relations. Of course that was in theory. In fact the counterculture fell apart in part due to its own failures to live up to its ideals and the various contradictions they contained.

Rather than honestly advocate for greater human freedom, honesty and realism, the "solid citizen" duplicitous hypocrites want to have it both way, skulking around under cover of darkness to try and grab some furtive pleasures to fill the void in their bleak souls. Apparently the alleged satisfactions of "conservative social values" leaves them living in a spiritual desert, deeply unsatisfied with their lives and unconsciously groping for some gratification of an inner hunger they do not understand.

As for Spitzer and his ilk, a person who would deceive the person closest to them in life, their life partner, their soul mate, is obviously an untrustworthy person. In that sense, there is a "character" issue here that is relevant to a politician's public duties.

But you're a big boy or girl now. You didn't still trust politicians, did you? As a subspecies of (alleged) humanity, they are literally a different type of being from the rest of us.

But that must be the subject of another essay.

Get Ready For President McCain

Looks like John McCain is going to be the next President of the United States.

Most probably he will cinch the GOP nomination.

That means this November, he will be running against either a woman or a black man. (Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.)

This still being America, it seems unlikely that a woman or a black man can beat a white male. Especially a "war hero."

McCain of course is deeply reactionary, contrary to his media-created image. (The corporate media always hides the truth about their reactionary front men.  They did it with Nixon, Ford, Reagan, the Bushes, and innumerable others.)

McCain is against the right of human beings to control their own bodies- if they happen to be women. That is, women must be forced to bear children against their will if they get pregnant.

He's also a very aggressive, dyed-in-the-wool U.S. Imperialist. Recently he said the U.S. may have to keep forces in Iraq for a hundred years. He didn't think there was anything particularly wrong with this, either.

McCain's incessantly self-touted (and the corporate media echoes him) qualifications seems to boil down to this: he flew a plane, he bombed 
the Vietnamese, he got shot down, and he was a prisoner for a few years. Somehow that makes him an expert 
in foreign policy and military strategy. Go figure.

Of course all the candidates acceptable to the establishment are Imperialists like McCain. Some are less aggressive about it. The ones who actually talked an anti-Imperialist line (implicitly, not explicitly), Ron Paul, Mike Gravel, and Dennis Kucinich, are media nonpersons. Since most Americans are sheep who follow the media, this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of marginalizing the "marginal" candidates. It's still only a minority who can break the mental chains and think for themselves.

No candidate who wishes to be deemed "viable" by the propaganda system can offer an alternative to imperialism as the continuing modus vivendi of America, or to challenge the tyranny of corporate oligarchy.
Those who do, whether from inside the two-party dictatorship that fronts for the corporate oligarchs, 
or outside it, as most recently Ralph Nader tried to do, have their candidacies suffocated by a
 media blackout, which is standard operating procedure.

Imran Khan is a Jackass

   A Pakistani cricket player named Imran Khan got the kid glove treatment in an interview on Democracy Now by Amy Goodman. Khan fancies himself the next President of Pakistan.
 [www.democracynow.org for Jan 30, 2008]

   I didn't disagree with everything Imran Khan said today. Dictatorship bad, democracy good, he opined- who could disagree with that?

    
   But according to Khan, the U.S. "drove the Taliban into Al-Qaeda's arms" What a dolt!  He also said the Taliban "inherited" Al-Qaeda. The Taliban are of the same ideological ilk as A-Q. That's why they sheltered them (it's not like A-Q were grandfathered in in Afghanistan and couldn't be expelled, as they were from Sudan, e.g.) and refused the U.S.' demand after 9/11/01 to hand over bin Laden and the other terrorists behind the attacks of that day.

   Oh, and how undemocratic for the U.S. to support the Northern Alliance, he added! What, the Taliban are democrats?

   And what this fool had to say about the Pashtun terrorist-shelterers in Pakistan was equally obtuse. Apparently he would just keep allowing terrorists to run their global operations from inside Pakistan if he became President! To assert the rule of law in those provinces is "attacking the Pashtun people." If that's how the Pashtuns view it, then they NEED to be attacked. Khan was all bent out of shape about the Paki army going into part of Pakistan in violation of some dusty agreement the Pashtuns forced on the Government years ago. An agreement that any self-respecting government would abrogate as soon as it had the strength to do so. (In fact, the Pashtun terrorist-lovers just broke the most recent agreement, whereby the Pakis army would stay out if the Pashtuns stop harboring Al-Qaeda.)

   I guess some people (leftists, e.g.) think it's ok for Islamic nuts to blow up trains and bridges and whatever in Europe, America, and everywhere else they don't like something. The truth is, Musharraf has run a scam and protection racket on the U.S. Instead of invading Iraq, the U.S. needed to attack Pakistan. THAT'S the country that was and is harboring the terrorists that Bush et al claim to be fighting. Since the Pakistan Government doesn't really control the territory anyway, their claims of sovereignty are purely pro forma. Musharral used most of the
"counterterrorism" money on weapons to use against India.

   It's time to end this charade and nuke Pashtunistan if necessary. Too bad the U.S. sided with these medieval reactionary scum in Afghanistan instead of letting the Soviets deal with them. The U.S. created this situation in alliance with the Pakis and Saudis. It's time to bite the bullet and go to the mat with them. The Bush gang are a bunch of phonies. Iraq was irrelevant to the "war on terror," until Bush created a front for them by destabilizing Iraq and opening it up to them.  

[See New York Times, "U.S. Officials See Waste in Billions Sent to Pakistan,"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/world/asia/24military.html?scp=7&sq=pakistan+military&st=nyt
"Militants Escape Control of Pakistan, Officials Say,"  
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/world/asia/15isi.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=pakistan+aid&st=nyt&oref=slogin
"Doubts Engulf an American Aid Plan for Pakistan,"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/world/asia/25pakistan.html?pagewanted=2&sq=pakistan%20aid&st=nyt&scp=2

NY Times continues coverup of GOP election frauds

The august New York Times ran a major article in their Sunday magazine section on January 6, 2008, by one Clive Thompson, which purports to expose "problems" with so-called "electronic voting machines."

Clive Thompson explains the problem with electronic voting machines as one of poor computer code which is prone to error and hacking. If that is so, why in EVERY CASE do the machines HURT DEMOCRATS AND HELP REPUBLICANS?? The machines are used to STEAL ELECTIONS from Democrats. That would not be the case if the problem were random errors or glitches. That one simple fact refutes entirely Thompson's angle and thesis. (Which was obviously preordained by the paper's editors, who gave Thompson his marching orders.)

The REAL story is the conspiracy by the GOP and their business allies to steal elections by programming the software to steal votes. Many voters have seen their votes switched before their eyes. The switching only goes one way, ever.

Thompson may be feigning naivete, or he may really be that stupid that he doesn't see that obvious fact.

Of course the NY Times, which hired Thompson to do this VERY BELATED article (the Times has been blacking out the scandal for years until recently- guess they've decided that Bush was a disaster for U.S. Imperialism and a mismanager of corporate capitalist oligarchy too, so they want a Dem Pres this time), has a powerful interest in hiding the fact that U.S. elections are crooked and illegitimate. They NEVER reported the massive voter fraud by the GOP in Florida in 2000 or in Ohio in 2004, only part of which involved the fixed voting machines.

The problem isn't one of inadequate technology. The problem is one of fraud. If it were the other way around, Republicans would be getting cheated out of elections. They never are.
The NY Times actively undermined the candidacies of both Gore and Kerry, who they subjected to ridicule. This revealed their political agenda. Not that the Dems are Good Guys. They're merely less evil than the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers).

See also the interview with former Republican operative Allen Raymond, "How to Rig an Election: Convicted Former GOP Operative Details 2002 New Hampshire Phone Jamming Scheme," at
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/8/how_to_rig_an
_election_convicted

Raymond, who served time in federal prison for jamming phone lines of the New Hampshire Democratic Party in 2002 to block a Democratic get-out-the-vote campaign, has come out with a tell-all book called How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative. In addition to the phone-jamming scheme, Raymond details other Republican tactics such as the use of scripted, phony automated phone messages to try to play on white voters’ racial prejudices in a 2000 New Jersey congressional race.

Crackpot Coulter Attacks A.D.L.

Rabid reactionary Ann Coulter, known for flaming fascist attacks on 9/11 widows and other worthy victims of her demented ire, has just smeared the Anti-Defamation League in her inimitable style (i.e. everything she says is the opposite of reality). This deranged fascist harridan inhabits some alternative universe. The fact that she has a following is symptomatic of the significant number of political psychos in the U.S. The fact that the U.S. corporate media built her up and acts as if she's respectable and legitimate and does valid commentary is indicative of how that media will bend over backwards to make this country as reactionary as possible.

The A.D.L, a right-wing organization dedicated to pressuring the U.S. on behalf of Israel, spends its time sliming critics of Israeli policy as anti-Semitic. (It also does a tally of punks who paint swastikas to get a rise out of adults and hysterically portrays this as the coming of the next Holocaust.)

Coulter claims, in her typical crackpot fashion, that the ADL only attacks rightists, and is scared of leftists, and that " They represent not Jews or women or civil libertarians, but the left wing of the Democratic Party."

[How Long Before the A.D.L. Kicks Out All its Jews?

by Ann Coulter

Posted: 10/31/2007 on the website of the vicious rag "Human Events," which actually hates humans and humanity. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=23174 if you need to vomit.]

What I'm wondering is, will the ADL, a fierce ideological warrior and scourge of leftists and critics of Israeli policy, respond to this violent assault? I'm betting it will either be silent or give a wan reply.

The Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide: Moral Double Standard

When Iranian President Ahmadinejad said the Holocaust should be open to "debate" and convened a panel of scholars to discuss it, he was roundly denounced as an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier. (Personally I think anyone who thinks the Holocaust isn't a totally well-established fact is at best an ignorant jackass and very likely an anti-semite.)
When the Turkish President Ertogan just did exactly the same thing re: the Armenian genocide of 1915, calling for historians to get together to study it, this provoked no outrage in the western media.

At the time it occurred, the Armenian genocide was the subject of official government reports by the U.S. and other nations which left no doubt that it was nothing but an organized massacre. It wasn't part of a "civil war" or Armenian "uprising" or Armenian fifth column supporting a non-existent Russian invasion- all lies the Turkish Government currently promulgates. To pretend there's a "controversy" is to obfuscate historical fact. It is an assault on truth and memory, masquerading under a facade of reasonableness and open inquiry. No one says the Holocaust needs to be subject to a "debate" to decide if it really occurred. Except those who wish to rewrite history. It SHOULD BE the same with the Armenian Genocide. [Anyone who thinks there's uncertainly about what "really" happened should check out the historical record. Various nations issued reports at the time, including the U.S. State Dept., describing in graphic detail the organized extermination of the Armenians by the Turkish State. See International Affirmation of the Armenian Genocide

The BBC is probably the most shameful in this regard, repeating all the Turkish lies verbatim without contradiction, presenting totally one-sided reports that omit any Armenian or just honest voices, pushing two lines- the Turks are mad, and the Turks are a vital ally so saying anything about the Armenian genocide is dumb and a bad idea.

The Armenian Genocide paved the way for the Holocaust. It emboldened Hitler. As he told his associates:   "Who remembers now the destruction of the Armenians?" (See full context at Hitler and the Armenian Genocide) Every suppression of memory of historical crimes helps pave the way for future criminals to commit such acts.

Why I Take Photos

Why I Take Photos

When I see something that I feel like photographing, it is either because I just have a sense that it would make a good photograph, an aesthetic reaction to a scene, or I feel like I am seeing something significant and I wish to preserve and capture that aspect of reality. In both cases, what guides me is instinct, something nonverbal and nonintellectual.

Later, I can analyze the photos I shot and understand intellectually and verbally why I took those photos, both aesthetically and in terms of the meaning I was seeking to capture.

I picked out 3 photos from a roll I shot in July 2007 which I particularly liked. Here are my thoughts about them. [Click on the photos to enlarge them.]

One I call “The Mystique of Jewelry,” is a shot of a two-sided billboard wrapped around a building at the corner of Madison Avenue and 63^rd St. in Manhattan. The billboard is cast in green and consists of giant headshots of women modeling jewelry. Both the scale and nature of the images are designed to make the women seem like Goddesses. On the same roll I have a shot of a billboard across the street with a giant expensive watch on it. Madison and Fifth Avenues are both awash with huge displays of luxury consumerism like this.

                                                       


Advertising projects into our minds a Valhalla of Luxury and Leisure, an imaginary realm that it is intended we long for and aspire to enter, via purchasing and consumption. Even though it doesn’t really exist, this imaginary realm holds itself out to us as an attainable existence. Advertising sings its siren song to lure us onto the treadmill of working in order to be able to spend money. We validate ourselves as “successful” (as opposed to “failures”) by our status, which is determined by purchasing and displaying brands.

The process of personal status through brand identification has reached the point of near burlesque with people wearing t-shirts with “designer” and “prestige” brand names on them, and with ersatz status conferred by counterfeit “brand” name goods.

In the marketplace society, you are what you consume. You are validated by purchasing.

Yet almost everyone is left feeling inadequate, since the model of success that is presented, and the world of the “in” crowd, the hip, those at the center of excitement, is obviously a world of wealth. We are left like orphaned urchins with our noses pressed up against the glass of a toystore, longing for toys beyond our reach.

Of course, the rich are themselves caught in an endless quest for status, since there is always someone richer. Only one person is “richest,” at the very apex of the pinnacle of wealth.

How different from the values of the erstwhile Counterculture, which explicitly rejected materialism and commodity status symbols. The Establishment has successfully defeated the Counterculture, standing its values on its head. (Yet a surly rejection of Establishment values persists, in the form of the punk and other inchoate semi-rebellions. Not rap, however, which glorifies materialism.)

Much of the above remarks apply to “Trump Tower Gucci,” a shot of a gargantuan display that looms over Fifth Avenue at 56^th St. We see a mass of young beautiful female bodies apparently lolling about, entangled with each other. The motif is Harem. One young man’s face is in a lower corner. The scene is drenched in a feeling of narcotized sensuality. Apparently buying a Gucci handbag will open the door to a realm of sensual delights, an indolent existence of pure pleasure detached from the world as we know it. Who are these people portrayed here? Do they have jobs? (I don’t mean the actual models, whose jobs are posing for photos like this.) How do they live? Where is this imaginary scene?
                                                  

In our minds, is the answer. Or rather, it started in the minds of advertising manipulators, who then transmitted it into our minds.

“Big Model.”

This is a giant billboard on Fifth Avenue in the 50s of a young woman in a fur coat, her body splayed out for our delectation. I captured an ordinary woman walking by the billboard. This shows us the scale of the sign. It also implies the contrast between the mass of real women in the world, and the imaginary “beautiful” woman on a pedestal in our minds, an artifact of make-up, lighting, and assiduous image manipulation in Photoshop. (Not that the model isn’t young and reasonably attractive in the actual flesh, and “white” and blond, the cultural preference. Not that there isn’t room for the occasional exotic dark-skinned specimen with high cheekbones.) The subliminal message is that wearing the fur transfers sexual desirability to the wearer.

[Kindly note: these photos and essays are copyright-protected. Feel free to link to this site but kindly do not misappropriate my creative output.]

"Hitler was elected..." FALSE!!!

Heard that lying asshole Col. Lawrence Wilkerson again ( a rebroadcast) today on Democracy Now claiming that "Hitler was elected," the new excuse they use when they want to IGNORE elections that didn't come out the way they wanted. (In this case the Haitian elections won by Aristede. Wilkerson's boss Colin Powell personally arranged the spiriting away of Aristede into captivity in the Central African Republic, a French satrapy.) Wilkerson was Powell's right hand man when Powell served U.S. Imperialism as Secretary of State. (Powell devotes his life to such service. In Vietnam as an army officer he was one of the culprits in the coverup of the My Lai massacre, which was successful for a year. Later he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Throughout his tawdry criminal career, he and the ruling establishment have used his skin to score points, both to "prove" that they're Equal Opportunity Imperialists, and to enlist nonwhite fools into their criminal enterprises.)

Hitler WAS NOT ELECTED. He was appointed Chanceller by President Hindenburg, a WWI field marshal and arch reactionary. Then the Nazis set the Reichstag (German legislative building) on fire and used it as an excuse to arrest and imprison all the Communist and Socialist legislators in concentration camps. With the resulting rump legislature under Nazi control, the parliament then voted to give Hitler dictatorial powers.
The Nazis never got more than about a third of the vote in any national election. In fact, in the last election before they seized power, their percentage of the vote fell.
These are basic historical facts. Any history of the Third Reich contains them. ( E.g. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by Will. L. Shirer).

This Big Lie, that "Hitler was elected," seemed to have started a few years back with a Newsweek column by George Will making the false claim. Ever since, it periodically pops out of the mouths of rightists as justification for overturning elections the U.S. doesn't like. It needs to be refuted whenever it is asserted. Since it is never challenged or corrected, it is becoming "fact" by default even though it is totally false.

Why I Hate People Who Only Care About Money

Why I Hate People Who Only Care About Money

I was riding to work on my bike, listening to radio news. There was a business report (on “Marketplace” on NPR) about the sale of domain names. “checkcredit” (or maybe it was “creditcheck”) was sold for $2 million by someone with the prescience to register the domain name. Hedge funds are buying and selling domain names, the value of which are said to be rising faster than property.

I imagined someone suggesting that I think up domain names to register and sell. It’s probably late in that game. You’d have to sit around and give it a lot of thought. I don’t have the time for that. I have more important (to me) things to think about.

People who only care about making money of course spend ALL their time doing just that- thinking up ways to make money. If you want to devote your whole LIFE to making money, you can do it. There are “opportunities” for that, esp. in “The Land of Opportunity.”

Since money is power, and money brings greater freedom of action, and the possibility of enjoying life more (nice vacations, living in a nice house and environment, having nice possessions), those who have it have a material basis for lording it over others.

The kind of people who only care about money look down on people (like me) who care about other things. They consider themselves superior. Because to them life is a game, and making money is how they keep score. By reducing life to a game, they radically devalue it. The game ends when they die. They enjoy this superficial existence, the unreality of a game-universe.

I hate them for radically devaluing life itself, and for reducing existence from something awesome and profound to a shallow money-grubbing competition.

July 12, 2007

Sy Hersh, Defender of Innocent Little Torturers

I had to stop listening to Seymour Hersh on Democracy Now! today (a radio show hosted by Amy Goodman and carried by Pacifica radio network and others) on the topic of the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal, after he started doing that SHIT of calling ADULT WAR CRIMINALS "kids." "These kids" he said twice (before I turned it off) referring to Army Reserve MPs. These are ADULTS, fully responsible for their actions. As reservists, they are AT LEAST in their twenties, and have already done full tours of military duty prior to joining the reserves. And saying that MPs are only trained to be traffic cops is bullshit. MPs receive full law enforcement training. Anyway, who has to be "trained" to know torture, abuse, rape, and murder are wrong? Didn't they have parents? Didn't they go to church? Aren't they humans with an innate sense of morality, of compassion and empathy for others?
Hersh has a bad habit of defending the torturers by portraying them as hapless, innocent children, calling them "kids." He's been doing it since the scandal became news over a year ago. They are adults. I actually saw him on TV once arguing that the torturers shouldn't be prosecuted for violating the Uniform Military Code of Justice. An officer actually had to take the position that they shouldn't be exempt or immune!
It's not as if you ever hear Hersh calling for prosecutions of Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and their Nazi-type generals. And insisting it's unfair to hold lower ranks accountable because they were just following orders is the essence of the Nazi defense. I wonder if Hersh were German if he'd be calling concentration camp guards "innocent kids."

The Porn Trap For U.S. Troops

A Lt. Col. William H. Steele was arrested by the U.S. military and charged with crimes including one that carries a potential death sentence. The New York Times reported the charges as follows:

"BAGHDAD, April 26 — The American military has charged a top commander at its main detention center here with nine violations of military law, including “aiding the enemy,” a rare and serious accusation that could carry a death sentence.

"According to a military statement released Thursday, the officer, Lt. Col. William H. Steele, provided aid to the enemy between Oct. 1, 2005, and Oct. 31, 2006, “by providing an unmonitored cellular phone to detainees” at Camp Cropper, an expansive prison near Baghdad International Airport that held Saddam Hussein before he was hanged.

"Colonel Steele, who oversaw one of several compounds at Camp Cropper as commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment, was also charged with several counts of illegally storing and marking classified information; failure to obey an order; possession of pornographic videos; dereliction of duty regarding government funds; and conduct unbecoming of an officer — for fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee since 2005, and for maintaining “an inappropriate relationship” with an interpreter in 2005 and 2006. There were no further details given to explain the circumstances of the accusations."

One thing that is somewhat amusing is the" possession of pornography" charge. Virtually ALL U.S. male military personnel possess "pornography" (or some sexual material that could be so labeled). It provides a convenient catchall for dropping the hammer on any soldier for any reason,
 a built in "Gotcha!" It's like the famous scene in "Casablanca" where the French Vichy Officer closes
Humphrey Bogart's club on orders from the Nazi officer, using the excuse that gambling is going on, at the same moment his underling gives him his "winnings" (bribe) from said gambling. The porn excuse was also used against the Muslim interpretor at Guantanamo Bay (among other charges) whom the military falsely and paranoiacally 
suspected of treachery.

Three Card Monte Media Distracts the Public

The media has spent the past six days blaring about the Virginia Tech massacre. Apparently 32 dead Americans is a Major Event. 200 or so murdered Iraqis every day is just routine, like snow in Siberia.
Here's a couple of important stories the U.S. media shoved into a corner to make room for the really important story (which should have been major for one day, no more):
The Supreme Court took an axe to women's right to not be forced to be breeding animals against their will, legalizing the ban on intact dilation and extraction, even saying it was ok that some women's health would be endangered.
Alberto Gonzales told some more lies to the Senate Judiciary Committee, about the purge of U.S. Attorneys. Several right-wing GOP Senators called for his resignation to his face in the hearing!
Not stuff the reactionary U.S. corporate propaganda system wants people to notice anyway.

Giuliani's Bathetic Blather about Virginia Tech Massacre

Rudolph Giuliani beat his chest about the Virginia Tech massacre yesterday. The upshot was he wanted the dead killer to know that when he attacks people, he attacks "all of us." Apparently that punishes the dead killer, and deters others.
Except that it was precisely the intent of Cho (and other such sociopaths) to attack "all of us." If anything, such pointless bluster provokes and reinforces the anti-social impulses of such killers. They want to feel they are striking a blow against everybody else.
But apparently Giuliani is so confident in the power of his personal moral revulsion that his attitude alone can defeat evildoers, a la some adolescent comic book superhero.
As far as offering any actual possible solution or action to do something about the problem, Giuliani offered nothing. The Old Giuliani would have offered gun control. The New Giuliani, running for the reactionary vote outside NYC, is silent.
Not that I'm a knee-jerk gun banner. It's true that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Esp. in a country with over 100 million guns already. Perhaps having more people armed is the answer. Instead of hundreds of people being like helpless sleep being slaughtered by one asshole, people could fight back. The downside would be more suicides, more murders, more road rage assholes shooting people. Whether the trade off would be worth it would be a worthy topic of intelligent debate. But there is no intelligent debate presented to the public at large in America.
By the way, I'm not buddies with Giuliani, so unlike the U.S. corporate media, which always promotes right-wing pols, I don't call him "Rudy." He's not a "regular guy." Of course, "Rudolph" is a weird name in a U.S. context. What are the associations? Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer; Rudolph Hess, the Nazi. (Although Giuliani personally is not like Hess, he's like Mussolini.)
I leave it to his "buddies" in the press to call him "Rudy."

Media Causes Copycat Killing

A mere five days after the Virginia Tech massacre of 32 people by a viciously anti-social misanthrope named Cho, a long time (12 years) worker at NASA in Houston murdered a co-worker yesterday, terrorized another one whom he duct-taped up, and killed himself. High probability that he was inspired (or instigated, I hate to use the word "inspired" in this case) by the saturation media "coverage" of Cho's crimes.
In their sick obsession with ratings and profit, they lavished attention on the murderous Cho, even airing his deranged media kit which he sent to NBC in the middle of his murders! Making him the center of attention is a sick thing to do. There is no news value in "shocking" us with photos and videos of him threatening the camera. This can ONLY encourage copycats who similarly seek negative glory.
Tellingly, Cho himself was inspired by the creepy teenage murderers of Columbine HS in Colorado, paying homage to them as "martyrs." (The irony that those racists hated Asians like Cho was obviously lost on the imbecile. They styled themselves as Nazis.)
So the media guarantees repetitions of these psychotic, self-aggrandizing crimes by haters of humanity by providing them the template for guaranteed attention. The mentally ill Cho was completely realistic in his anticipation that the media would lavish attention on his "message." People seeking sick attention through murder have every encouragement from the U.S. media to perpetuate these crimes.

WFAN (CBS-Owned) Still Running Ads for Imus Show

As of Saturday morning, April 14, WFAN (NYC am station owned by CBS which originates the Don Imus show) is still running ads for Imus' show. I heard it with my own ears. Allegedly CBS cancelled the show two days ago.An error? Staff subversion? Or what?

Capitalist Values May Do In Don Imus, Ironically

MSNBC waited for the Imus controversy to blow over- until major advertisers started bailing out of sponsoring Imus' show. AFTER that, MSNBC decided to cancel his show from cable tv.

As reactionary as they are, the corporatchiks who run U.S. tv are capitalists first and foremost. Advertisers cancelling is the kiss of death even for an Imus.

Imus and his "talk radio" ilk are useful to the oligarchs for promulgating reactionary attitudes. Having these louts broadcasting to the entire country is like having a Brownshirt orator on a soapbox on every street corner.

Now we are waiting to see if Leslie Moonves, the oily head of CBS (whose ultimate master is Sumner Redstone) will resist the pressure of Al Sharpton et al to fire Imus or try to tough it out with a 2-week suspension yet to start. No doubt advertisers will determine Imus' fate.

Of course, sometimes there are more important things than money to capitalists. Phil Donahue had the top-rated show on MSNBC. Yet the bosses there cancelled his show 3 weeks prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, entirely for political reasons. There are other examples of ideology trumping strictly business considerations in the U.S. media.

The loathsome Ann Coulter (9/11 widows are "harpies" who "are glad their husbands died" and other outrages) and the ranting rabid dog Michael Savage (a pseudonym- Savage is Jewish, which is shameful, because no Jew should be a fascist after the Third Reich) among other sociopaths still are pampered with major media soapboxes in America. Unlike any leftist, progressive, or critic of the U.S.- including world-famous dissidents such as Noam Chomsky.

THIS EVENING CBS ANNOUNCED THE CANCELLATION OF IMUS' SHOW, REPORTS THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Don Imus "shocker;" a thought experiment

[This is on the occasion of Imus and sidekick making mocking racist banter about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. WikiPedia has extensive info on this. Here is a summary from there- footnotes are in that article: On April 4, 2007, during a discussion about the NCAA Women's Basketball Championship, Imus characterized the Rutgers University women's basketball team players as "rough girls" commenting on their tattoos. His executive producer Bernard McGuirk responded by referring to them as "hardcore hos". The discussion continued with Imus describing the girls as "nappy-headed hos"^[13][14] and McGuirk remarking that the two teams looked like the "jigaboos versus the wannabes" mentioned in Spike Lee's film, School Daze; apparently referring to the two teams' differing appearances.^[15][16] At 6:00 p.m. that evening, Media Matters for America released recorded transcripts to the news media highlighting the brief exchange:]WikiPedia article on Don Imus

The major media has finally noticed that Don Imus is given to spewing racist invective. Various websites have documented this phenomenon for years now. Even now however, they won't call it "racist." Various circumlocutions are used. The closest they usually come to using the right term is calling it "racial."

There is no question that Don Imus spews racist abuse and has done so for years. Directing it at young women who are particularly likely to be wounded by this nationally broadcast abuse is particularly vile. His easy "apology" is of course insincere and meaningless.

Some have even defended him. We are to believe it was joking. Yes, it was joking- the joking of white racists.

We're also told that he's just a misanthrope who makes fun of everyone. Not quite. He mocks and ridicules everyone but straight white males. In short, he promotes an attitude of white male superiority to all other people by demeaning and degrading other people.

Here's the thought experiment. What is Don Imus has said something anti-Semitic, or used an epithet like "Kike," or "money-grubbing Jew"? Would there be a "controversy"? Don Imus would instantly be history.

This is not because CBS, his boss, is owned by a Jew, Sumner Redstone. Or that MSNBC, which broadcasts him, is part of NBC News which is part of NBC Universal which is headed by Jeff Zucker, a Jew. It's because Jews in general are disproportionally powerful in the media and in American society. (And no one should fault them for their success. If as a group they are clever and smart enough to achieve status, wealth and power, that is a compliment to their abilities.) Blacks, who outnumber Jews in America 5 to 1, on the other hand are one of the very weakest groups in America, contrary to reactionary propaganda about the reign of "political correctness" (code for basic decency and respect for other people).

That in America we have to fight battles over whether blacks, and even more, gays, should be subject to public calumny (which incites violence against them by the louts in the target audience of bigots and haters) shows how primitive, backward, and uncivilized U.S. society is.

Kagans Kagans Kagans

b. lehrer show 1.11.07

Kagans Kagans Kagans

Morning after Bush' tv speech announcing his latest “plan” for victory in Iraq. (Escalation, as expected, euphemistically called a “surge.”)

One of Brian Lehrer’s guests today on his show today on public radio station WNYC was the imperialist “military historian” Frederick Kagan, late of West Point, training ground for future army officers, now ensconced in a right-wing propaganda mill, the so-called American Enterprise Institute (“conservative think-tank” in the respectful locution used by Lehrer).

Kagan absurdly maintained that OF COURSE Bush wasn’t going to invade Iran or Syria. How does he know? Because Bush just threatened those nations on tv last night, and you don’t threaten before you invade! Why, then it’s not a surprise if you subsequently invade. Guess this clown wasn’t alive during 2002-2003, which the U.S. spent threatening Iraq with invasion PRIOR TO INVADING! Guess Lehrer wasn’t alive then either, since he didn’t mention it. And how good a “military historian” could Kagan be if he is unaware of the numerous examples of nations threatening other nations before their aggression? Like, say, Nazi Germany.

The point of public threats is to psych up your army and populace for war. That’s why threats precede aggression. Also there’s the need to create justifications and pretexts for war.
Then of course there are the inconvenient (and thus ignored by Lehrer and Co.) facts that the U.S. has conducted raids into Syria already, and recon forays into Iran to target that country's nuclear facilities. We don't yet know if the Special Force have also been committing sabotage and assassinations in Iran.

Lehrer is in love with imperialists. Two days ago he had on Kagan's more egregiously warmongering brother Robert. He had three on today, and one anti-war critic, Congressman Jose Serrano of the Bronx. Lehrer also had on what's more typically palmed off on the public as a “war critic,” someone who objects to the execution of the war, not to U.S. aggression. Today’s “war critic”of that ilk was a retired Colonel and National War College instructor, Sam Gardner.

The point is to try and brainwash the liberal WNYC audience. Seems like one or the other Kagan is on Lehrer’s show every couple of weeks lately for this purpose. Many of Lehrer's shows follow the pattern of trying to pull leftist-leaners in the audience to the right.
Of course, WNYC sees its mission as an anti-WBAI. It even runs ALL its fundraisers at exactly the same time WBAI runs its.

Ironically, this evening's PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer (presumably no relation to Brian) on tv had a much more realistic and honest discussion, with Zbigniew Brzezinski and Walter Russell Mead. Brzezinski has become an amazingly candid and realistic (for an imperialist) commentator on the Iraq war and the follyo f Bush's foreign policy. This was a guy who connived with China to invade Vietnam, who was part of the effort to keep the Shah of Iran in power, and then to rescue him and try to subvert the Iranian revolution.

Brzezinski said such things as “neocons are raring to go” into Iran. (Why can't Kagan and Lehrer see that obvious fact?) He described them as having “a kind of fanatical commitment which I think is detached from reality.” He also got the last word, which was to describe the war as a “colonial war” in a “post-colonial era. It cannot be won because it's out of sync with the times.” Amazing words coming from a member of the U.S. Establishment! It's a wonder he can still get on tv.

It seems that he and his erstwhile boss Jimmy Carter (B. was Carter's “National Security” Advisor) are the most (relatively) honest members of the Establishment today. Carter is currently being reviled by the Jewish mafia and its accomplices as practically an anti-Semite for writing a book that dared to criticize Israeli oppression of the Palestinians as well as criticizing the Palestinians. What a nerve the man has! Criticize Israel? The man must hate Jews! (The Jewish executive director of his organization and 14 board members subsequently resigned to protest Carter’s committing the unconscionable outrage of criticizing Israel.)

On the other hand, Walter Mead was a mealy-mouthed company man on the PBS show. He obediently adopted the Bush nomenclature of “surge” instead of escalation. While speaking of how the U.S. is “tightening the noose,” he claims not to know if Bush's threats against Iran and Syria in his speech are intended to coerce. “You're asking me to read minds there and I'm not good at reading minds” he told Jim Lehrer. What an ass. Apparently he's also no good at reading papers and websites or listening to broadcasts. Because it was already reported early that morning, before the PBS evening show or Brian Lehrer's show, that the U.S. Attacked the Iranian consulate in Erbil, in the Kurdish region of Iraq, kidnapping the diplomatic personnel there and stealing the property, documents, computers, etc., and ripping the Iranian flag off the flagpole for good measure. Legally that's an invasion of Iranian territory, and thus an act of war. Of course, it's also a violation of international law, but the U.S. violates international law daily. NPR (the network of which WNYC is an affiliate and which broadcasts its news) helpfully pointed out that Erbil is far, far away from the insurgencies that Bush accused Iran of supporting, supplying, and stoking.

If Brian Lehrer had bothered to listen to that morning's NPR feed, he could have asked Frederick Kagan about his ridiculous assertion that it's nonsense to think Bush would start a war with Iran. Of course, Lehrer was probably well aware of it. He seems quite well-informed generally. Guess it just wasn't that important. What's another war, more or less? Or another deception, or another arrogantly dishonest “expert” (Kagan) waging his little propaganda war against the public? Aided and abetted by “liberal” Brian Lehrer.

The Hypocrisy of the Social "Realists"

Straight jackasses like to attack hippies and other nonconformists by sneering contemptuously at them to "get in touch with reality." ("Get with the program" is a contemporary variant of this "realist" demand.)
And Establishment media hacks liked to ridicule the ever-so-slightly unconventional Jerry Brown as "Governor Moonbeam." One editorial cartoon portrayed him out in space, standing on a small moon, with his thumb out hitchhiking. He held a sign with his destination, reading "Reality." The hack pack routinely mocks and ridicules the handful of semi-progressive politicians, such as Dennis Kucinich, as wackos out of touch with "reality." (Even non-liberals like John Kerry are portrayed as flaky quasi-extremists.)
Yet these self-styled hard-headed realists who sneer at others for being out of touch with reality invariably believe in a pack of ridiculous fairy tales, in at least one mythological being, and in spirits. That is, they pledge fealty to the "Bible," believe in "God," and think that people have immortal "souls" that never die and exist forever in imaginary places called "Heaven" and "Hell." (There used to be another imaginary place in Catholic theology, "Purgatory," but they abolished that one. Just goes to show how arbitrary and invented it all is.)
"You don't know God doesn't exist!"
Yes I do.
"How do you know!"
The same way I know Santa Claus doesn't exist. People made it up.
In fact, people have invented no fewer than 5,000 "gods." Of course, the Christians would say that all the other 4,999 Gods are make-believe. They're all fake, except for theirs. (Likewise, adherents of other religions are likewise totally self-assured in believing in the reality of their own god or gods and dismissing other gods as fantasies, figments of the imagination.)
So Zeus is fake, Osiris is fake, Vishnu is fake- only your "God" is real. What are the chances of that? Where did your God come from, anyway? It evolved out of the invention of the earlier gods.
Interestingly, Christians must also deny the existence of Yahweh and Allah. Yet the Christian God is a later model of Yahweh, since Christianity is descended from Judaism. And since Islam came out of the Judeo-Christianity (Islam recognizes Jesus as a prophet, in fact), Allah in fact is an updated version of the Christian god, "God." (Allah simply means "god," after the Christian fashion of naming their god "God." Like naming your dog, "Dog," or your child, "Child." Like it's the one-and-only, I suppose.)
Since "God" is a knockoff of Yahweh, how can Christians claim their make-believe diety actually exists, but the one it was copied from doesn't?
All this illustrates how as soon as your starting talking factually about religion, its absurdity (indeed preposterousness) becomes obvious.
So then the religionoids respond with anger and rage- since they're clearly wrong, they have no other weapon but violence, verbal, intellectual, and physical, to "win" the argument. They've been doing that for thousands of years. The most horrendous tortures and mutilations have been committed by them to enforce their demented fairytale beliefs.
Among the people who swear fealty to primitive, ancient fairytales and who worship imaginary beings are the very same hard-headed "realists" who tell you to "face facts" and "get in touch with reality", who enjoy sneering "welcome to reality" at you when they try to smash you into conformity with their repressive, man-made system, their social mores, their cultural attitudes, their emotional biases, and most of all, their exploitative economic system. They dishonestly pretend that the mechanisms of repression they impose are not man-made but immutable facts of nature, just "the way the world is."
No, it's the way people with an agenda MAKE the world. It's completely political, not natural as they would have it. It's about controlling everyone.
So these big "realists" believe in archaic fairytales and magical supermen in the sky who save them from death. But here's another contradiction. These oppressive control freak turds are constantly babbling about "freedom" as they're trying to control and exploit everybody. To hear them tell it, they just LOVE "freedom," their oppressive system of control is totally free, the freest system on earth, the apex of freedom, and they go around the planet spreading freedom like a bunch of Johnny Appleseeds of Liberation, spreading the blessings of freedom and democracy far and wide. This from a gang that exported the Nazi invention of fascist death squads to scores of nations.
Could anything be a bigger crock? Not even the sham "socialism" of totalitarian tyrants like Stalin and Mao is any phonier.