Egyptian Military Junta Using Old Stalinist Trick

The military rulers of Egypt are "disbanding" the secret police. ("Security Service" in the euphemistic parlance of U.S. propagandists and their foreign fellow travelers.) But of course they say they're going to create a new "security service" to fulfill its so-called legitimate functions. And who do you think will be staffing this "new" organization? Why, the same torturers and murderers and professional oppressors who staffed the old secret police. In other words, old wine in new bottles.

Stalin employed the same trick. Lenin's secret police, the Cheka, went through various name changes under Stalin, like NKVD, NVD, etc. until finally becoming the KGB. (Which is now the FSB.)

Benghazi Besieged By Qaddafi's Barbarians

There are reports today on the BBC (UK) and NPR (U.S.) that Qaddafi's tanks have entered Benghazi's suburbs, and the city is being shelled by his artillery and gunboats. Meanwhile his despicable lying frontmen insist they're observing a "ceasefire." Obviously their grotesque lies are aimed at his domestic base and sympathizers in other countries like Mali. (NY Times had an article on his popularity there, thanks to his handing out Libya's oil wealth in that country and others- instead of making life better for the Libyan people, in which case he wouldn't be facing a rebelling by the mass of the Libyan people in the first place. But the Libyans are just stepping stones for the grandiose dreams of this megalomaniac to be "King of Kings" - one of his own self-aggrandizing monikers for himself- of all Africa and even a global player. Yet as out of touch with reality on fundamental levels as he is, he is very crafty on a tactical and even strategic level. A horrible combination of insanity and criminal savvy. A sidenote- idiot fellow-traveling leftists are always taken in by the cynical rhetorical spoutings of such tyrants. Both left and right have authoritarians and pro-human rights types.)

Another point of the absurd insistence that they aren't attacking Benghazi and bombarding Misrata- which Qaddafi has cut off water to for 3 days now- is to pretend to be abiding by the UN resolution. That's purely delusional

A nastier move Qaddafi is planning is placing human shields around possible Allied bombing targets. Then he'll scream that it's those awful Western Imperialists who are killing civilians, not Qaddafi. (After all, why would he kill his own people? They love him. Those rebels are all Al-Qaeda terrorists, or kids drugged by Al-Qaeda, or traitors. Or rats and dogs, as one of his lovely sons says.}

President Hamlet (Obama) dithered for 2 weeks, while the French and British pressed to do something. According to today's NY Times, Hillary Clinton (Sec. of State) and Susan Rice (U.S. Ambassador to UN) pressed him to act. Interestingly, the hard men of the Pentagon and "National Security" orgs., in effect took Qaddafi's side and insisted that the U.S. had no "vital interests" in Libya, no "national security" dog in that fight. War Sec. Robert Gates, in testimony to Congress, grossly exaggerated the difficulty of imposing a no-fly zone on Libya and acted as if Qaddafi has a fearsome air force and air defense system. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper (who told the Senate March 10 that the Libyan rebels couldn't overthrow Qaddafi: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sc-dc-0311-clapper-20110310,0,1380828.story - he's a retired general who doesn't "direct" anything, his entire office being a pointless propaganda joint for the "war on terrorism," not the superpowerhouse controlling the rest of the vast repressive apparatus of the U.S. as it was advertised to be).

Today the French are the first to strike Qaddifi's murderous minions from the air. Just as they were the first (and so far, only) country to recognize the rebels as the legitimate government of Libya. Maybe the tough-guy Americans who mock the French as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" will take back that ridicule. (Oh by the way, tough guys, the U.S. has never been invaded by a superior enemy since 1812, whereas the French had to fight for their national survival at the hands of the Germans 3 times within about 50 years. The U.S. has a hemisphere all to itself, filled with much weaker nations it can bully and boss around at will. Except for Cuba, which is why the U.S. is so hysterical about that nation. And the French Navy won the Revolutionary war for America. Their fleet blocked the escape of Cornwallis, enabling Washington to finally win.)

It turns out the Canadians and even the Danes are doing more than the U.S. Both are contributing fighter jets to the mission over Libya. The U.S. says it will just shoot missiles from the Mediterranean at Libyan air defense installations. That's playing it nice and safe!

The Guardian (UK) reports that two whole U.S. planes were seen taking off from a base in Britain. That's getting tough with Qaddafi. (Or maybe they were flying to the grocery to pick up some mile?)

Late Saturday- 112 cruise missiles launched by U.S. and UK naval vessels at Qaddafi's military assets (at about $1 million a pop).  Good news indeed. And the French destroy an armored column including artillery and rockets that was threatening Benghazi.

Qaddafi On Verge of Crushing Libyan Rebellion

The Libyan people are about to suffer a horrendous fate at the hands of the vicious dictator Qaddafi and his sons and cutthroat hirelings. His forces are moving on Benghazi. Meanwhile they are cutting off the highway to Egypt, creating a death trap for all the people trapped on the section of the Mediterranean coast where the rebels still hold out.
Meanwhile President Hamlet of the U.S. dithers, playing with all the "options" on his "table," like a child.
In their pathetic naivete, the rebels seem stunned that "the international community" or "the world" or whoever didn't come galloping to their rescue. Thus the perniciousness of Western propaganda, that deludes people into thinking the U.S. bloc gives a damn about human beings, or the necessity for them to have rights and democracy.
Meanwhile, U.S. pals Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, loathsome, primitive oil kingdoms, have sent in 2000 troops to bolster their fellow "King" in Bahrain against his own people, attacking the protest camp in Pearl Square in the capital.
We can see the shallowness of the people's revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, which replaced some faces but not the oppressive systems, in the fact that neither of those nations is lifting a finger to aid the Libyan people. The Egyptian military certain could wipe out Qaddafi's thugs- or at least aid the rebels.

The Strange Double Standards of the Anti-Anti-Semites

Various anti-anti-Semites see a "resurgence" of anti-Semitism in the world. For evidence, they commonly cite recent trivial events: Julian Assange blurting out in a phone call that a Jewish media cabal is out to get him, then taking it back in the same phone call; a couple of drunken, nasty tirades by the fey fashion designer John Galliano; Charlie Sheen calling evil producer Charles Lorre "Chaim Levine" [1] and other such statements. (And there's always the odd swastika here and there, daubed on a tombstone by some jerk somewhere, which can be inflated into the second coming of Hitler. Which is why those punks sneaking around at night with spraypaint cans do it- because it gets a rise out of people.)

Oddly, we never hear a mention of the lethal anti-Semitism practiced by Pakistan. By "Pakistan," I mean the rulers of Pakistan. And make no mistake, the real rulers of Pakistan are the Military and its terrorist arm, the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence).

Remember the recent terrorist onslaught in Mumbai, India? That lasted 3 days and killed 160 people. Among the specific targets was the Hasidic Nariman House, where six Jews were killed. The ISI directed the attack from Pakistan. The ISI sponsors the group that provided the personnel for the attack, a gang of loathsome fanatics called Lashkar-e-Taiba, which means "Army of the Pure." (How's that for a self-righteous name? Pure scum, I'd say. Amazing how full of themselves the most loathsome people on earth always are. Guess that gives them the necessary arrogance and total lack of self-doubt or self-awareness to impose their horrors on others.) In July 2010, U.S. JCS Chair Adm. Mike Mullen called them a "global threat" during a trip to Islamabad to "confer" with "our" Paki "allies," as the U.S. rulers like to delude themselves- or maybe they're just trying to delude us. Maybe someday "secret" documents will clear up that question. This gang of cutthroats openly runs madrassas (terrorist brainwashing centers masquerading as religious "schools") and other facilities right out in the open.

How often do you hear the likes of Abe Foxman, chief noisemaker of the "Anti-Defamation League," squawking about LETHAL Pakistani anti-Semitism? It seems that ideological enforcement of the ban against criticising Israel is the raison d'etre for the ADL and the rest of the "Jewish lobby." Not that Galliano isn't a loathsome jerk. But he lost his job. He was punished. And all he did was spew nasty words, not murder people. (And he's also facing criminal charges in France, where such speech is prosecuted.) The ADL's webpage on the attack goes out of its way to avoid holding Pakistan or the ISI responsible. The only mention of Pakistan is to cite Pakistan's pathetic lies denying having anything to do with it. And this is after the webpage speculates wrongly as to the identity of the attackers, including maybe they were Indian Muslims (they weren't). [http://www.adl.org/main_Terrorism/mumbai_terror_jews.htm]

Of course, not everyone can kill Jews and avoid the public attack by the anti-anti-Semites. Palestinians have no such privileges. Palestinians in general need to be demonized, in fact, to justify driving them off their homeland, because Jews from Brooklyn claim it's their land, a gift from "God" thousands of years ago. The U.S. throws the full weight of its might behind this ridiculous, religiously fanatical proposition.

Anti-Semitism is a form of bigotry. Sometimes, like all bigotries, it reaches murderous extremes. But the selective outrage of the anti-anti-Semitics reveals their cynicism. You would think lethal anti-Semitic terrorist attacks sponsored by a sovereign state would be a huge scandal. Instead the drunken ravings of some fashionista is the outrage du jour.

The reason for the constant alarmism over "the rise in anti-Semitism," which goes hand-in-hand with "Israel has never been in more peril," is pretty transparent. The anti-anti-Semities unfortunately don't give a darn about bigotry. They care about defending and promoting Israeli imperialism, period. And portraying any opposition to that imperialism, and any peep of protest against Israeli oppression and various atrocities, as anti-Semitic, is a longstanding tactic to squelch objective discussion of Israel. And it works.

[1] "Chuck Lorre" was born Charles Levine. Like many Jews in the media, he seems shy about his Jewishness and so adopted an alias. "Chaim" is Hebrew for Charles. Making the whole situation more ambiguous, "Chaim Levine" was the name of a character Chuck Lorre himself played in a cameo in one of his own sitcoms. (No egotist he.) Sheen claimed he was referring to that. Roseanne Barr seconds Sheen's opinion of Lorre-Levine's loathsomeness. A recent puff piece cover story in The Hollywood Reporter on Lorre inadvertently gives a glimpse into how smug, obnoxious, and full of himself this typical Hollywood hustler type is. Which is not to say that Sheen doesn't have obvious psychological problems, which the media are cynically exacerbating by indulging his ravings. (If they really disapprove, they don't have to give him such major coverage. It's the same hypocrisy operating when they blare lurid coverage of sex "scandals." And it's a contrast with newsworthy things they TOTALLY BLACK OUT, like the Obama regime's persecution of anti-war activists and other dissidents in the U.S. So we know they can ignore things when they want to. But that's things they don't want people to know about.)

Obama's Heart "Aches" for Japanese, Not Libyans

Apparently it makes a big difference whether someone is suffering because of a natural calamity, or at the hands of murderous criminals. Obama's heart "aches" for the Japanese, who just got hit with a tsunami arising from an earthquake. (The meltdown of a nuclear power plant as a result hopefully will put another nail in awful nuclear power.) But the sight of people struggling to be free of a suffocating tyranny is nothing to feel bad about, to Obama. (To be fair, he probably feels zilch for the Japanese too, and is just making a political statement. Everything out of this political creature's mouth is calculated. He's really just as phony and calculating as Nixon, or the Clintons, the only difference being Nixon and Hillary were/are lousy actors, whereas Clinton and Obama are better ones.)

World Fiddles While Libya Burns

The murderous tyrant Qaddafi is on a roll in Libya. Using tanks, artillery, and jet aircraft about common Libyans with only small arms and pickup trucks, he's gone on the offensive. A massive bloodbath is in the offing when he takes Benghazi.


Meanwhile, those great self-proclaimed lovers of democracy, freedom, and human rights, "the West," (i.e. the U.S. and its European lackeys, with the former English-speaking British colonies of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand thrown in) issue proclamations calling on Qaddafi to "stop, stop, you brute!" and to "resign, forthwith!" With the predictable result- the thug is emboldened by this lame display of weakness. If Qaddafi had half the military might of the U.S. and its allies, he would have conquered the world by now- or destroyed it.

Ironically, these selfish, phony nations claim one reason they're afraid to intervene, even slightly with a lame-o no-fly zone, is that someone might call them "Imperialists." You'd think they'd be used to that by now. Of course, fear of being called that name has never inhibited them from ACTUAL imperialist actions, like invading Iraq in 2003, to cite a recent example. All over the world, just in the past half century or so, the U.S. has overthrown governments it didn't like, started wars, and invaded countries with little or no inhibitions. The list of nations that have been victims of U.S. brutality is long. Haiti, Iran, El Salvador, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Congo, Nicaragua, Chile, the Dominican Republic, the Brazilian military coup of 1965, the slaughter of 800,000 "communists" in Indonesia, aiding and abetting mass murder in East Timor, the Greek military fascist coup, and many more. So fear of being seen as "imperialist" for JUST ONE TIME helping people fighting to overthrow a tyrant, has to be some kind of sick joke as an excuse.

And suddenly "international law" is a big impediment. Funny, that never stopped any imperialist power before. Again, invading Iraq was completely "illegal." For that matter, Israel's colonization of the remainder of Palestine, conquered in 1967, is completely illegal, as is well-known everywhere in the world outside the U.S., which supports it to the hilt.

The U.S. taxpayer has been bled for trillions of dollars for the military since 1945. Too bad it can't ever be used as a force for good.

For that matter, Egypt, the recipient of $35 billion and counting in U.S. military aid, could easily help their fellow arabs. The Egyptian people just overthrew their own dictator. They should understand.

And of course the oligarchs of China and Russia don't want foreign "interference." So "the west" cleverly tied its own hands by insisting that the UN Security Council, on which China and Russia hold veto power, must approve any military aid- even arms to the people of Libya to fight!

One vicious act of Qaddafi's might nip him slightly. He tried to assassinate the King of Saudi Arabia a few years ago. So the Saudis aren't particularly fond of him. As well as being the dominant power in the Gulf Cooperation Council (a club of Arabian Peninsula nations), they swing weight in the Arab League. (Qaddafi had the gall to just send a delegation to the League's latest meeting- they said they wouldn't let them in.)

The Bogus Alibi For Banning Al-Jazeera English in America

The U.S. Corporate oligarchy which controls what is broadcast on television in America has virtually banned Al-Jazeera English in this country. It is only available on two small cable providers (one in Vermont, the most normal state in the U.S.) plus the capital city of the empire, Washington, D.C., where the Imperialist elites have used it to get their information on the uprisings in their middle eastern client states. (How ironic, the network they revile, which their military has repeatedly bombed, is where they go to get a realistic view of the "facts on the ground." To escape their own propaganda system, they turn to one of their hated enemies. Al-Jazeera's crime, of course, is being too honest.)

The lie, which you can read in places like The New York Times, is that there is no demand for Al-J in America, that it's merely a business decision, all about ratings, nothing more. The bogusness of this bullshit is easily revealed. For one, millions of people in America have tuned in to Al-J English via the Internet during the past couple of months. For another, as anyone with cable well knows, there are hundreds of channels on cable, many of them empty, and many of them filled with unbelievable sludge that no one watches, plus a lot of duplication. Ergo, this is another Lie designed to disguise the ideological and political motivation of the oligarchs.

In the same vein, Rupert Murdoch's reactionary motives are ALWAYS denied in the media, including the "liberal" media like the aforementioned NY Times. He is said to be motivated solely by business factors. Pure bullshit, as anyone who has observed him at all can see. Just two examples: keeping the NY Post for decades, which loses millions of dollars a year, but provides a platform for vile reactionary agitprop in New York City, and his Fox "News," which contains no objective news at all, but functions as a 24 hour platform for incessant reactionary ideological drumbeating. Murdoch personally appointed lifelong GOP political operative Roger Ailes, who masterminded Nixon's media strategy in 1968, among other crimes, to run it. Ailes is a hardcore, dogmatic fanatic.

Hostage-Taking Qaddafi Vows Massacre If He's Raided

Gadhafi vowed that "we will fight until the last man and woman."  He made a veiled threat to murder thousands more Libyans if the West intervened.

"We will not accept an intervention like that of the Italians that lasted decades," Gadhafi said, referring to Italy's colonial rule early in the 20th Century. "This will lead to a bloody war and thousands of Libyans will die if America and NATO enter Libya." While on its face this seems to mean people fighting for him will die, it's reasonable to interpret it as a death threat towards his Libyan former subjects, as he and his vile son (the one the U.S. media told us was a "reformer" with a "modern, Western" outlook) have already made a number of bloodcurdling threats about blood running in the streets and etc.

Note also phony anti-Colonial posturing. That stuff is generally catnip for leftists. But this time their pro-people bias trumps it. But among Third Worlders it probably still has some resonance.

His fellow phony tyrant thug "revolutionary leader" Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, a murderous burden on the long-suffering people of that nation, has been sending his soulmate Qaddafi reinforcements.

U.S. Rulers' Savage New Assault on Workers' Rights

The last citadel of organized labor in America, the public (government) workers' unions, are under assault. Givebacks, reneging on contracts, welshing on pensions, all this isn't enough to satisfy the plutocrats and their political hatchetmen who do their dirty work. Now the very RIGHT to organize and bargain collectively is under attack. In America, only the RICH are allowed to be organized collectively as a class to defend and promote their economic interests. It's class warfare on the overwhelming majority of the population. Controlling literally trillions of dollars of wealth still hasn't satiated their greed. (The Forbes 400 alone are "worth" several trillion dollars.) To avoid ever being taxed at reasonable levels, they are now ruthlessly attacking any government expenditures outside their military and domestic repression. This necessitates smashing any organized source of potential resistance by the population.

In Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana- for starters- reactionary GOP governors are attempting to strip public employees' of their rights by passing laws banning their unions from representing them in negotiations with their employers, the state governments of these states. Scott Walker, Wisconsin Governor and stooge of the Koch brother billionaire thieves, has led the assault. He ran a stealth campaign as a "moderate" Republican to get elected, then revealed himself as a throwback to the 1920s. He plotted to plant agent provocateurs among union protesters in the state capital, to do god knows what violent mischief to justify violent repression and to discredit the unionized workers. The corporate media, including the self-styled "newspaper of record," has totally blacked out this criminal plot, even though Walker was captured on tape mentioning it to Ian Murphy, who got him on the phone by impersonating David Koch. (Revealing that this loathsome little puppet of the plutocrats, who was elected in part with large amounts of Koch money, has apparently never even spoke to his master before, since he was unfamiliar with his voice. He's too insignificant for the Kochs to talk to directly; his status might be that of a midlevel manager in the Kochs' corporate empire.)

The corporate propaganda system has been working assiduously to divide "middle class" people by whipping up resentment against the "lavish" and overly generous compensation deals of public workers. (No such campaign against corporate oligarchs who pull in millions or tens of millions a year routinely.) This "misery loves company" psychological warfare campaign has proven effective for the oligarchs. (And the more downmarket the rag, the more crude and blatant the anti-union propaganda. Check out the NY Daily News, a tabloid rag owned by Canadian real estate baron Mortimer B. Zuckerman, which affects a working class voice, for examples of tawdry union-bashing. In late February they used a dispute over a restaurant bill as a pretext for an attack on public unions day after day.)

Judging from the many resentful comments against workers posted by people who it's safe to assume aren't RICH, the corporate media and right-wing politician strategy of pitting workers against each other is working. It plays on the principle of "misery loves company." Since corporations, which now are sitting on two TRILLION dollars in CASH, and trillions more in other assets CREATED BY THE WORKERS, have systematically whittled away the benefits of their workers, the last bastion of unionism, the public sector, is being portrayed as having undeserved benefits. Like workers in general DON'T DESERVE PENSIONS, or health care (like every other civilized country provides as a public service). Some people are easy to dupe.

Would be nice if the corporate media EVEN MENTIONED ONCE that in the weeks preceding the savage assault on workers' rights by WI Governor Scott Wwalker and his GOP henchmen, he handed a big tax cut to corporations, creating the budget "hole" that is the excuse for destroying the collective bargaining rights of Wisconsin's public employees (except the Cops' and Firemen's unions, who supported his election. But tellingly, cops and firemen turned out in solidarity with the other state workers at their Capitol occupation anyway.)

The Tea Party types are like Brownshirts, a reactionary mob organized as a strong arm force for big business interests. (The infamous Koch brothers, who cheat the Govenment out of oil royalties on oil taken from public lands, fund this "movement.")

The More Things Change....

...the more they stay the same.

Here is a headline and subhead from the New York Times of Sept. 12, 2000, top of the front page (p. A 1):

DOCUMENTS INDICATE FORD KNEW OF ENGINE DEFECT BUT WAS SILENT

Company Denied An Ignition Problem For Years

Gee, how very like the current situation with Toyota!

Then of course there was the murderous Ford Pinto. Mother Jones magazine (not the New York Times or their ilk) exposed the fact that Ford coldly calculated the cost of

Con Man Kerry Tries To Pull Pathetic Scam On Pakis

Self-satisfied Senator John Kerry, Democratic Chair of the Senate so-called "Foreign Relations Committee" (U.S. Global Domination Committee would be more honest) went to Pakistan last week to try and talk the Pakis into releasing professional U.S. cutthroat Raymond A. Davis. Davis, a former Special Forces soldier- (i.e. a highly-trained killer and ideological fanatic, as this elite unit is limited to hard rightwingers, plus the U.S. military systematically indoctrinates its troops, especially the elite ones), shot and killed two Pakis in the middle of the city of Lahore. He claimed they were trying to rob him. He fired through his windshield, shooting one several times in the back as he was fleeing and killing him. Davis told the police he's a "consultant" to the embassy. Turns out he works covertly for the CIA, apparently scouting targets if not doing the actual assassinations. Now the U.S. is insisting he's a "diplomat," contrary to what Davis himself told the authorities in Pakistan.

Additionally, two of his crew racing to him at the scene of the shooting drove their SUV the wrong way down a one-way street and killed a motorcyclist. These two have been spirited out of the country by the U.S. Davis was working out of  a safehouse, not the embassy.

Kerry's pathetic con angle was to promise the Pakis that Davis would be "investigated" and maybe prosecuted in the U.S. Fat chance. After the U.S. let the Blackwater Butchers of Nisur Square, Iraq, off scot-free after their massacre in which 17 helpless civilians were slaughtered in their cars, stuck in a traffic jam, what kind of shameless gall and cynicism does it take to make such a proposal? With insults to their intelligence like this, no wonder the Pakis are pissed. And what sovereign nation likes foreign assassins running around in their country with a license to kill?

As for the U,.S. pious insistence that the Pakis must free Davis under the bogus premise that he's a "diplomat" with immunity, we have here another glaring example of the U.S.' hypocritical double standard when it comes to international law. The U.S. seized a number of Iranian diplomats in Iraq, which it accused of subversive activities, and subjected them to the tender mercies of its interrrogators. Still haven't heard that they were ever freed. And when a drunken Georgian diplomat killed a pedestrian in the U.S., the U.S. twisted Georgia's arm to waive his ACTUAL immunity (not spurious immunity as in the Davis case), then tried him and imprisoned him. And that death, while loathsome and criminal under U.S. state law, was an accident.

Clarence Thomas, Tax Evader?

This corrupt empire just keeps sinking lower and lower into personal decadence. Bad enough that Bush the Elder, Joe Biden, and John Danforth put a known sex offender on the Supreme Court. And that he is bored to death by his duties. (He hasn't asked a question during oral arguments for five years, it was just reported.)

Now it seems he may be a tax evader. The Federalist Society, an extreme right-wing conspiracy devoted to packing the U.S. judiciary with arch-reactionaries, paid all his expenses to attend a four day conspiracy conclave of the sinister billionaire Koch brothers 3 years ago. That should be reported as a gift under Federal law and tax paid. Instead, Thomas lied and said he dropped by briefly and gave a talk. [click on title for link to articles]

Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, former Wall Street Journal reporters, wrote a book about Thomas' confirmation and the character assassination of Anita Hill. They document in damning detail the many corroborating facts and other victims' of Thomas' vulgar harassment. In particular, they show how Biden suppressed the evidence, discouraged witnesses, and lied to his fellow Senators to push Thomas onto the Supreme Court. (The Democratic Party has a long, despicable history of packing the courts with reactionaries, then using the prospect of the GOP appointing reactionary judges to scare people into voting Democratic. As if the Dems didn't aid and abet the GOP court-packing, not merely by refusing to put holds on or filibustering awful nominees, and the GOP does routinely with most Dem. nominees, but by actually voting for the worst reactionaries. Remember, Scalia was put on the High Court by a Democratically-controlled Senate by a vote of 98-0. Including the vote of then-Senator Al Gore. In a bit of poetic justice, Scalia in 2000 helped steal the election for President from Gore, dashing his lifelong dream of becoming President. Boo-hoo, Albert.

Toyota Drivers Uniquely Klutzy, U.S. Gov't Finds

On February 8th we got the news about what caused all those runaway Toyotas and Lexuses- turned out it was klutzes stepping on the gas pedal, which they thought was the brake.

Ray LaHood, an Illinois machine hack pol elevated to head of the Department of Transportation by Chicago machine politician Barack ("Pied Piper") Obama, announced the results of a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study, written with the help of a NASA engineer no less! (The same NASA whose space shuttles keep blowing up in the sky, so you know these are some crackerjack engineers.)

LaHood, his NASA engineer, and the corporate media didn't bother explaining why klutzes apparently ONLY DRIVE TOYOTAS, since OTHER MAKES OF CARS didn't have the problem of uncontrolled accelerations which couldn't be stopped.

Actually the study gave 3 reasons for the runaway cars. Pedals stuck on floor mats, pedals sticking, and drivers desperately stomping on the accelerators to try and stop their cars.

Hack pol LaHood announced, "The jury is back. The verdict is in. There is no electronic-based cause for unintended high speed acceleration in Toyotas. Period." So now shut up.

SO- Toyota recalled millions of their cars to do what, straighten out floor mats? And DOT fined them millions of dollars because their floor mats got in the way?

In fact, at one point last year, LaHood warned Toyota owners it was too dangerous to even drive their cars, and they should take them back to the dealers immediately.

One key fact, that the New York Times buried in their favorite hiding place- the 3rd to last paragraph of the story, which was itself hidden in the business section to keep most of the general public from reading it- is this: an earlier gov't "preliminary examination" "found only one instance in which an accelerator pedal became trapped under a floor mat and none in which a pedal became stuck or sprung back too slowly." "A likely cause of the unintended accelerations - pushing on the accelerator instead of the brake."
Which means ALL BUT ONE case were caused by KLUTZ DRIVERS, according to the U.S. Government and its "experts." They gave Toyota's software a clean bill of health.
The article made of point of noting LaHood's irritation when a reporter interpreted the report to say that drivers stepped on the accelerator. "Pedal misapplication" he peevishly corrected, a political euphemism to try and camouflage the fact that the Government is calling the victims dimwits.

UPDATE: A couple of weeks later, Toyota is recalling 2 million more cars- for floormat adjustments. They didn't say it's because of 2 million klutzy drivers.

Afghan War Looking More and More Like Vietnam

Revealing and depressing article in The New Yorker February 14, 2011 by Dexter Filkins about the looting of the largest bank in Afghanistan, and the larger issue of the hopeless corruption, venality, and cynicism of Karzai and his crew. (By the way, the Afghan thieves suggest that the U.S. treasury guarantee the looted deposits of the poor saps who had their money in the bank.)

I couldn't help noticing the parallels between the Afghan and Vietnam wars in Filkins' article: Corrupt faux government of kleptomaniacs who couldn't care less about the country they ostensibly rule...U.S. taxpayer dollars poured down a rathole...U.S.-supplied weapons going to the enemy via corruption (and money too in the case of Afghanistan)...a major role played by heroin trafficking, in Afghanistan funding both sides, probably, in Vietnam sold to U.S. soldiers and imported into the U.S....an enemy highly motivated by a cause, the U.S.-backed side completely cynical and opportunistic.With the Afghans looking ahead to the U.S. leaving, the clique around Karzai has already prepared their own private Swiss-style retirement in Dubai. Oh yes, one more parallel: U.S. officials knowing all this, covering it up, and feeding more American lives into meatgrinder of war when they know darn well the U.S. cannot win. (And who cares about the lives of Third World people anyway?)

article linked to my title. article at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_filkins

U.S. Navy, Jealous of Air Force, Spends $636 MILLION on 2 Drones

The U.S. Navy is purchasing two- count 'em, two- test drones from Northrop Grumman for only $636 million. That's a mere $318 million per unmanned drone.

According to Peter Singer, a cheerleader for war and technofetishist, subcategory militarist, the drone, with the cool 1950s-style sci-fi-ish designation X-47B, is "potential game-changing technology for the naval air wing." The "game" being the killing of defenseless targets from a safe distance.

The Wall Street Journal cites a report from the "Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments," part of the Imperialist superstructure located in the Empire's capital, D.C., as hailing long-range pilotless drones flown from aircraft carriers as having the potential to transform carriers from merely "a power-projection system with outstanding global mobility but relatively limited tactical reach and persistence into a key component of a global surveillance strike network." Well, that certainly makes it worth the price. After all, it's very important for the entire planet to be under the constant watch of the U.S. military, which can then kill anybody who gets out of line- the line laid down by the U.S. No more "nonsense!" in the word of CIA international terrorist Duane "Dewey" Claridge about people rebelling against U.S.-backed oppressive regimes.

But really, isn't it just that same old interservice jealousy rearing its head again? The Air Force has drones, the Air Force is getting all the glory of killing terrorists (or civilians who stupidly happened to be too close to where U.S. missiles landed) in Pakistan and Yemen and who knows where else. The Navy never gets any writeups in the New York Times or Washington Post or breathless tv wow look at that explosion "coverage." Hell, even the CIA is getting more drone action than the Navy! It's humiliating!

(Source: WSJ, 2/8/11, p. A7.)

Why Doesn't the ICC Indict Duvalier?

Gee, it sure does make the International Criminal Court at The Hague look like a political instrument of the Western powers when it never indicts vicious killer kleptocrat dictators like Jean-Claude Duvalier, for example. Sure, Slobodan Milosevic, Bastard Bashir of Sudan, and assorted African monsters deserve to be tried. (And executed, which the ICC isn't empowered to do. Those wimpy Europeans can't bring themselves to kill a mass murderer.) They forgot Idi Amin too- 'cause their buddies the Saudis are shielding him.
Oh, I just remembered: France, the country that has ruined Haiti for two centuries, sheltered Duvalier for the last 25 years.

How Reactionary Lies Become Historical "Fact"

The short answer is: through sheer repetition.

For example, with the current "crisis" in Egypt- in fact a crisis for the U.S. rulers, not for humanity, for whom it's an exhilarating breaking of a tyrant's shackles on a people- reactionaries are trotting out the old lie that Jimmy Carter lost Iran. (Funny how the Democrats let the GOP smear them as quasi-traitors all the time, constantly "losing" U.S. property- China, Cuba (for which JFK paid with his life), Vietnam, Nicaragua, and now Egypt. The despicable Wall Street Journal in particular is pushing this lie.

Let's review the facts. In 1953, the CIA (under orders of that great foe of the military-industrial complex, Eisenhower) and MI6 overthrew the elected President of Iran, Mossadegh, and destroyed Iranian democracy, installing a weak tyrant, the Shah, on his throne. This was done because the "West" didn't like Mossadegh's plans for taking a bigger cut of Iran's own oil to use for the Iranian people. (Leaders trying to use their countries' own resources to benefit their own people is a crime that frequently leads to their overthrow by the U.S.) The CIA set up one of the most monstrous secret police organizations in history, the SAVAK, to make sure that anyone with even a thought of social reform would be tortured and murdered. Amnesty International rated Iran under the Shah as the world's worst violator of human rights.

The Shah managed to murder a quarter million Iranians during his reign, including 10,000 gunned down in the last week before he had to flee in 1979. At that point his army lost its stomach for killing the Iranian people. Unfortunately, since the CIA and SAVAK did such an excellent job of murdering any and all progressives and preventing any civic organizations at all from developing, only Islam was left as an organizing principle for society. Thus the senior religious figure, the reactionary Khomeini, and the religious cadres filled the power vacuum.

How exactly Jimmy Carter overthrew the Shah is a mystery. The Shah certainly didn't shrink from using maximum force to crush the Iranian people. There were idiotic calls at the time for the U.S. to invade Iran and pick up the murdering of the Iranians from where the Shah's army had left off. Maybe if they had killed millions, like they did in Vietnam, they would have "won" and could have reinstalled the Shah. (Oh wait, that didn't work in Vietnam anyway.)

How does this Big Lie become a fact? By constant repetition and the absence of anyone in the bourgeois media calling it out.

Here's another Big Lie that NEVER is exposed, even though simple arithmetic shows it to be false: JFK "stole" the 1960 election from Nixon by "stealing" Illinois.

To see, how ridiculously false this is, all anyone has to do (doesn't anyone ever do this?) is look up the numbers for the electoral count of 1960. Numerous websites, including government ones, have the necessary data.

The electoral count in 1960 was: JFK: 303, Nixon: 219. Illinois that year had 27 electoral votes. Now here comes the tricky part. Assume Nixon "really" won Illinois. What would the outcome have been? To determine whether history was changed by Kennedy family nefariousness, we have to use complex, advanced mathematics: subtraction and addition.

First, we subtract 27 from the election-stealing JFK's 303, leaving him with 276 electoral votes. Then we add 27 to the rightful winner Nixon, who was cheated out of what he earned by a bunch of Ivy League snobs, giving him 246. Voila: JFK: 276, Nixon: 246.

Now, in the actually-existing world that normal people habit, using the mathematical system that actual mathematicians use, 276 is bigger than 246. Thus JFK STILL WINS.

But in the imaginary "reality" that reactionary fanatics inhabit, 246 is bigger than 276, apparently. Or maybe the rule is that whoever gets fewer votes win. Whatever.

There's two points here: 1) U.S. reactionaries are as deranged as Nazis, and tell as whoppingly fantastic lies as the Nazis ever did, and 2) the entire establishment media and commentariat aids and abets them by NEVER EXPOSING OR CONTRADICTING EVEN OBVIOUS LIES LIKE THIS. Even the "alternative" paper, the NYC Village Voice, ran a rant a few years back by reactionary dog playright Tom Stoppard asserting the canard that Kennedy "stole" the election- and the "alternative" rag refused to print a correction pointing out the factual fallacy on which the canard is based. The phonies who control the rag wanted to dupe their readers with right-wing disinformation.

In such an extremely reactionary political environment, it's no wonder that the U.S. is socially, economically, and politically one of the most backward countries on earth. (Yes it is, but proving it will take another, lengthier, essay.)

U.S. Sweats As Its Lovely Arab Dictators Wobble

The U.S. is sweating over the "stability" of its favorite Arab dictatorships. First the Tunisian tyrant Ben-Ali fell. Now Egyptians have found their courage and are defying the state thugs of the monstrous Mubarak, armed by the U.S. The question becomes, what will the U.S. tell the Egyptian army? As that army is recipient of arms purchased with a good chunk of the $2 billion yearly U.S. bonanza, the U.S. is in a position to tell it either "Make sure Mubarak doesn't fall, or you're off the weaponry gravy train," or "Let Mubarak fall or you're off the gravy train. (By the way it's our tax money, being used to oppress and torture Egyptians- but hey, people who oppose abortion have a RIGHT not to have THEIR MONEY spent by the Federal Government on abortion- hence poor women who don't live in states willing to foot the bill, ahve to pay, and foreign population control orgs. that want U.S. funds can't even MENTION abortion, and on and on, because abortion is a MORAL issue, don't you know, unlike, say, torture, or state terrorism, or dictatorship, or police state repression. I'm SO glad the United States is sooooo moral!)

Yemen and Jordan, two other U.S.-propped-up dictatorships, are seeing their people start to rise up now, inspired by the examples of the Tunisians and Egyptians- which they know about thanks to Al-Jazeera, a force for decency and humanity- quite unlike the U.S. media. (I.e. corporate propaganda system.)

Who Promotes Democracy and Human Rights, the U.S. or Al-Jazeera?

In the Middle East, Al-Jazeera is hated by almost all arab regimes. This is because it's on the side of the people.

A perfect example is during the current crisis of stability for a number of U.S. lackey dictatorships in the region- Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Jordan so far.

In Tunisia, after a month of the people taking to the streets and standing up to "state security" thuggery, the long-time dictator and U.S. chum, a brazen thief named Ben-Ali, had to take it on the lam to Saudi Arabia (which provided sanctuary for Ugandan butcher dictator Idi Amin when he had to hotfoot it out one step ahead of his victims).

Inspired by the example, which they knew about from Al-Jazeera's coverage, the people of Egypt are now braving U.S.-supplied tear gas, bullets (both rubber-coated and the naked metal kind), armored vehicles, batons and etc. to shake the awful dictatorship of U.S. favorite Hosni Mubarak. While the U.S. pays lip service to human rights and democracy, its money doesn't go where its mouth is, but rather to weapons of repression for the dictator to the tune of $2 billion a year, second largest recipient of anti-human U.S. largesse in the world, after the sainted state of Israel.

In Yemen, seeing the examples of the Tunisian and Egyptian people on Al-Jazeera, tens of thousands are demonstrating against another tyrant pal of the U.S., "President" Saleh, a good ally in "the war on terror." (As was Ben-Ali of Tunisia.)

Turd Joe Biden, a loathsome piece of work who gave us doltish masher Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, among other crimes, insisted on PBS that Mubarak isn't a "dictator." Because he's very "responsible." "Responsible" is U.S. Imperialismspeak for "does the U.S.' bidding." Like helps oppress the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the world's largest open-air concentration camp. And makes nice with Israel. That's the most imporltant U.S. goal in the middle east, that Israel should be accepted on the regional hegemon by the arab states. Hence Syria is the "bad" arab state, because it doesn't. And they could bludgeon Lebanon into line, if only they could exterminate Hezbollah, as Israel tried and failed to do in 2006. (Right now you can read handwringing articles bemoaning Hezbollah's rising influence, in the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and other such high-tone ruling class rags.) Jordan, also with a restive population, has a Made-In-USA "King," son of a previous Made-In-USA "King." Both married American uber-WASP type women, who they made their "Queens." (I put them in quotes because as a democrat, I do not recognize aristocracy as legitimate.)

So Al-Jazeera, by standing with the people, for their freedom, their human rights, and their democratic rights, is helping to shake the loathsome, backward dictatorships that keep their people in poverty and fear, armed and back by the U.S. So which one is pro-human, and which one is arab?

Now you know why the U.S. murders Al-Jazeera journalists and precision-bombs their offices in Kabul and Baghdad.

Rahm Emanuel Gets Ruling Class Privilege

Rahm Emanuel is running for Mayor of Chicago. He's virtually inheriting the seat from torture Mayor Richard M. Daley, the spawn of 1968 Democratic Convention Police Riot Mayor Richard J. Daley.

Emanuel is only running because Daley decided to retire.

Illinois law says a candidate for Mayor of Chicago must be a resident of the state for at least a year prior to the election. Emanuel was living in Washington D.C. during that time as chief of staff to President Barack "Pied Piper of Chump Lefties" Obama.

You probably thought "residing" means "living there." Well, that's true for Chicago civil servants, who are required to live in the city.

It doesn't mean that for Rahm, though. He gets the Establishment Made Man privilege.
The Illinois Supreme Court unanimously overturned a lower appeals court ruling that Emanuel didn't "reside" in the state while he was living in Washington. They had to reach all the way back to a musty, moldy, cobwebbed decision from 1867 to kinda sorta justify their "reasoning."That was all they could come up with.

So, does this mean Chicago's teachers, firemen, and police, etc. don't actually have to live in Chicago to be "residents"?

Don't bet on it.

It's nice to be a made member of the Establishment.
Emanuel is a thuggish product of the Chicago Democratic political machine. His stock in trade is screaming verbal abuse, especially of progressives who whine when the Democrats screw them. A super Zionist, his father is a hate-filled anti-Arab bigot.

As for the Daley's, the elder dead one unleashed his goon police on people against American slaughter of Vietnamese, in the streets of Chicago, and even had them attack convention delegates. Famously, Dan Rather was punched in the stomach on the convention floor by Daley's goons. The official government report on the violence called it a "police riot." (Rewriting history, bourgeois propagandists these days pretend the protesters were rioting, a political libel.) Even in the years before the convention, Daley's thugs clubbed peaceful anti-war marchers and chased them off the streets.

His loathsome son is an accomplice in the Chicago PD's torture program, which tortured at least 100 black men, obtaining false confessions in order to imprison them, even putting some on death row. As the City attorney, and then as Mayor, he shielded the police torture squad.