Notice who keeps talking about "negotiating" in Afghanistan, and how "a political settlement is the only solution." It's the U.S. Even U.S. generals are quoted to this effect. The U.S. keeps talking about negotiating with the Taliban. Funny, you don't see the Taliban showing the slightest interest in negotiating. (Although there was a con man who pretended to represent the Taliban, to whom the U.S. stupidly gave a big payment to- why the hell they would do that, beats me. The con man quickly absconded with his suitcase of loot. Kind of careless of the American apparatchiks. Oh well, it's not their money. It's OURS. Our taxes. Same as the billions frittered away on "development," much of it stolen by Karzai and his kleptocrat cronies.)
The weakness of the U.S. is showing. The U.S. keeps talking aloud about negotiating with the Taliban, hoping the Taliban will show some interest. It's like some pathetic teenager pining for a phone call from an unrequited love object they're mooning over.
I was appalled during the Soviet attempt to drag that feudal backwater kicking and screaming into the 20th century, by the U.S.-sponsored jihadist war. The U.S. saw it as payback for Vietnam. Like the Soviets made the U.S. savagely assault that poor nation. The mindless anti-socialism of the U.S. caused it to vastly increase the power of backward Islamic totalitarian fundamentalism, along with their terrorist Paki pals (who are now screwing them) and the Saudis, the bankrollers of backwardness and jihadist terrorism. Even today, creeps like yahoo Congressman Charlie Wilson is lionized for his cheerleading role in empowering the Islamofascist fanatics.
That's it, U.S. rulers, don't ever learn anything from history.
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Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
"Saving" Greece
The top level ruling elite of the planet (as they fancy themselves) are applying their standard modus operandi to Greece. Put a nation heavily in debt with crooked deals with the target nation's political rulers, out of sight of the people of that country. Threaten the country with dire consequences when repayment becomes a problem. Then force the country to sell its public assets to capital vultures at depressed prices, and squeeze the lifeblood out of the populace (euphemised as "austerity") to funnel billions more to the finance capitalists. It's happened to numerous Third World countries.
Now the "white" people of Europe are discovering they are no different from Third Worlders (of usually darker complexions). This now is the fate of Greece, and Ireland, and Portugal, and maybe Spain. Moody's, one of the finance capital clan's hitman outfits, cynically called a "ratings agency," has suddenly "downgraded" the debt of Italy's banks, causing their stocks to plummet. Suddenly we're reading articles in the media about Italy's cruddy finances. (Which is nothing that hasn't been true for years.) Target: Italy.
Moody's, remember, is a criminal co-conspirator in the Collateralized Debt Obligation scam, whereby junk mortgages were packaged as AAA "debt securities" instead of as junk. Moody's is an aider and abetter of frauds, whose principals belong in jail. Instead they are now helping to attack countries and bring them to economic ruin.
To be sure, I am not defending irresponsible fiscal policies by venal, corrupt, entrenched political classes, as in Greece and Italy. The problem is obviously a dearth of democratic governance- governance in the interets of the people of a country, not a parasitic ruling elite, and a MEGA parasitic financial elite, with its enforcement arms the IMF, World Bank, CIA, and ultimately U.S. military.
What's being "saved" is not Greece. Greece is being destroyed. It's economy is being pushed deeper and deeper into depression, as it's corrupt politicians, headed by "Socialist" George Papandreou, carry out the diktat of high finance. What's being saved is the investments of the financiers, who refuse to give up a penny (contrary to all the talk of "shared sacrificed" shoveled down our throats by politicians and corporate media propagandists everywhere). Greece isn't being "bailed out." The financiers are being bailed out, as is their vulnerable house of cards system, which apparently can collapse if a tiny economy like Greece has to so much as stretch out repayment of its bonds.
In the case of Ireland, the country is run by slavish sycophants to big business, who refuse to raise taxes on big corporations, while at the same time transferring the busted, bad, PRIVATE investments of Irish banks onto the backs of the population, forcing yet another mass exodus of Irish people from their homeland. (For how many more centuries are the Irish going to be forced to flee their own country?)
At least there are signs of popular resistance to this mass assault on people's lives, on economic, class warfare of the superrich against most everyone else. Unfortunately it is unorganized, lacking a clear ideological understanding of the problem, and facing the armed violence of the state, in every country. So far, in order to maintain the illusion of being different from the Third World, the so-called "security forces" in Europe and the U.S. have contented themselves with using tear gas and clubs, and boots and fists, to mete out punishment to protesters, not yet resorting to mass murder as in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria- and the various hellholes of Latin America not very long ago. But don't worry- if the protests become revolts, become rebellions, and start to look revolutionary, America and Europe have a long history of mass murder. The rulers still know how to do it.
Now the "white" people of Europe are discovering they are no different from Third Worlders (of usually darker complexions). This now is the fate of Greece, and Ireland, and Portugal, and maybe Spain. Moody's, one of the finance capital clan's hitman outfits, cynically called a "ratings agency," has suddenly "downgraded" the debt of Italy's banks, causing their stocks to plummet. Suddenly we're reading articles in the media about Italy's cruddy finances. (Which is nothing that hasn't been true for years.) Target: Italy.
Moody's, remember, is a criminal co-conspirator in the Collateralized Debt Obligation scam, whereby junk mortgages were packaged as AAA "debt securities" instead of as junk. Moody's is an aider and abetter of frauds, whose principals belong in jail. Instead they are now helping to attack countries and bring them to economic ruin.
To be sure, I am not defending irresponsible fiscal policies by venal, corrupt, entrenched political classes, as in Greece and Italy. The problem is obviously a dearth of democratic governance- governance in the interets of the people of a country, not a parasitic ruling elite, and a MEGA parasitic financial elite, with its enforcement arms the IMF, World Bank, CIA, and ultimately U.S. military.
What's being "saved" is not Greece. Greece is being destroyed. It's economy is being pushed deeper and deeper into depression, as it's corrupt politicians, headed by "Socialist" George Papandreou, carry out the diktat of high finance. What's being saved is the investments of the financiers, who refuse to give up a penny (contrary to all the talk of "shared sacrificed" shoveled down our throats by politicians and corporate media propagandists everywhere). Greece isn't being "bailed out." The financiers are being bailed out, as is their vulnerable house of cards system, which apparently can collapse if a tiny economy like Greece has to so much as stretch out repayment of its bonds.
In the case of Ireland, the country is run by slavish sycophants to big business, who refuse to raise taxes on big corporations, while at the same time transferring the busted, bad, PRIVATE investments of Irish banks onto the backs of the population, forcing yet another mass exodus of Irish people from their homeland. (For how many more centuries are the Irish going to be forced to flee their own country?)
At least there are signs of popular resistance to this mass assault on people's lives, on economic, class warfare of the superrich against most everyone else. Unfortunately it is unorganized, lacking a clear ideological understanding of the problem, and facing the armed violence of the state, in every country. So far, in order to maintain the illusion of being different from the Third World, the so-called "security forces" in Europe and the U.S. have contented themselves with using tear gas and clubs, and boots and fists, to mete out punishment to protesters, not yet resorting to mass murder as in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria- and the various hellholes of Latin America not very long ago. But don't worry- if the protests become revolts, become rebellions, and start to look revolutionary, America and Europe have a long history of mass murder. The rulers still know how to do it.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Obama Sets Definite Date For Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan
U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama has just reconfirmed that U.S. forces will retreat from Afghanistan (euphemised as "turn over responsibility for security to Afghan forces") in 2014. ("Remarks by the President on the Way Forward in Afghanistan," June 22, http://www.whitehouse.gov/) He has helpfully provided the Taliban with a timetable- 10,000 troops to leave by yearend 2011, 33,000 by summer 2012. All the Taliban terrorists have to do is hold tight.
The U.S.' British, French, and German lackeys immediately chimed in by announcing their own troop withdrawals- now that the Godfather was pulling out, it was ok for them to do the same.
Of course, Obama isn't doing this to help the Taliban. I'm sure he'd like to "win" in Afghanistan. But with Pakistan backing the terrorists again, just as they did when the Soviets tried to drag that awful place kicking and screaming at least into the 19th century, the medieval female-enslaving terrorists can't be defeated unless one is willing to kill millions. (Maybe they should have Sudanese thug "President" Bashir do it for them- he doesn't mind killing millions of people.) There is much jabber about the "requirements" and "progress" of Afghan "security forces," in terms of training, weaponry, organization. But the most important thing is never mentioned, the will to fight. If only more Afghans had the will to fight the cavemen fanatics, the problem would be relatively easy to solve.
Most Afghans apparently enjoy enslaving women, including their own daughters, keeping them as ignorant as possible and just using them as chattel to produce offspring and do endless drudgery. They like living a feudal existence.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has placed its bet on an ungrateful egomaniac (Hamid Karzai) and his Kleptocracy, absurdly called a "government," even though it does no governing, provides no services, and is 90% funded by foreigners. This clique just looted Kabul Bank of a few hundred million bucks- Karzai's brother was one of the main looters, although a special "investigating commission" appointed by Karzai just exonerated his bro- and the thieves had the gall to suggest as a solution that the U.S. taxpayer reimburse the robbed depositors for their losses. Of course the Karzai clique of kleptomaniacs has been stealing the foreign aid and "reconstruction money" for a decade now. It's no wonder that Karzai's public insults of the U.S. get more and more nasty- he must figure by now that his foreign backers will eat any amount of shit.
Just as in Vietnam, backing a useless, venal, client regime guarantees U.S. failure. And all the fools who joined (or were drafted in the case of Vietnam) the U.S. military to "fight for their country" and nobly "defend our freedoms" have died or been maimed for nothing. As soon as the U.S. leaves, the primitive oppressors will take over again, backed by the Pakistani military as before.
Obama's speech, like all his speeches these days, landed with all the impact of a raindrop, forgotten after a day. Filled with empty platitudes and absurd falsehoods, it is hardly worth analyzing or refuting. Obama is a political animal through and through, so all his words reveal are the obsessive political calculations of a lifelong manipulator whose ONLY GOAL at this point is his own reelection. Good luck with that, Mr. Change You Can Believe In (if you're a chump).
The U.S.' British, French, and German lackeys immediately chimed in by announcing their own troop withdrawals- now that the Godfather was pulling out, it was ok for them to do the same.
Of course, Obama isn't doing this to help the Taliban. I'm sure he'd like to "win" in Afghanistan. But with Pakistan backing the terrorists again, just as they did when the Soviets tried to drag that awful place kicking and screaming at least into the 19th century, the medieval female-enslaving terrorists can't be defeated unless one is willing to kill millions. (Maybe they should have Sudanese thug "President" Bashir do it for them- he doesn't mind killing millions of people.) There is much jabber about the "requirements" and "progress" of Afghan "security forces," in terms of training, weaponry, organization. But the most important thing is never mentioned, the will to fight. If only more Afghans had the will to fight the cavemen fanatics, the problem would be relatively easy to solve.
Most Afghans apparently enjoy enslaving women, including their own daughters, keeping them as ignorant as possible and just using them as chattel to produce offspring and do endless drudgery. They like living a feudal existence.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has placed its bet on an ungrateful egomaniac (Hamid Karzai) and his Kleptocracy, absurdly called a "government," even though it does no governing, provides no services, and is 90% funded by foreigners. This clique just looted Kabul Bank of a few hundred million bucks- Karzai's brother was one of the main looters, although a special "investigating commission" appointed by Karzai just exonerated his bro- and the thieves had the gall to suggest as a solution that the U.S. taxpayer reimburse the robbed depositors for their losses. Of course the Karzai clique of kleptomaniacs has been stealing the foreign aid and "reconstruction money" for a decade now. It's no wonder that Karzai's public insults of the U.S. get more and more nasty- he must figure by now that his foreign backers will eat any amount of shit.
Just as in Vietnam, backing a useless, venal, client regime guarantees U.S. failure. And all the fools who joined (or were drafted in the case of Vietnam) the U.S. military to "fight for their country" and nobly "defend our freedoms" have died or been maimed for nothing. As soon as the U.S. leaves, the primitive oppressors will take over again, backed by the Pakistani military as before.
Obama's speech, like all his speeches these days, landed with all the impact of a raindrop, forgotten after a day. Filled with empty platitudes and absurd falsehoods, it is hardly worth analyzing or refuting. Obama is a political animal through and through, so all his words reveal are the obsessive political calculations of a lifelong manipulator whose ONLY GOAL at this point is his own reelection. Good luck with that, Mr. Change You Can Believe In (if you're a chump).
Thursday, June 23, 2011
New York To Subsidize Bigots
GOP State Senators in NY are currently negotiating with Governor Andrew Cuomo over a bill to legalize marriage by same-gendered people. The proposed bill currently exempts churches from having to perform abominable gay marriages. But that's not good enough for GOP reactionaries. They say the "religious protections" are inadequate. They want to make sure that marriage counselors, adoption agencies, etc. have their "freedom of consciences" protected.
Unmentioned in the corporate media coverage of this matter is the fact that the State SUBSIDIZES these "social service agencies. In other words, every taxpayer gives them money, AGAINST THEIR WILL, regardless of the consciences or principles of the taxpayers.
So NY State will be forcing its citizens to subsidize bigotry and bigots.
But the only time you hear it said that its unacceptable for a dime of taxpayer money to go somewhere based on moral objections is when abortion is involved.
Unmentioned in the corporate media coverage of this matter is the fact that the State SUBSIDIZES these "social service agencies. In other words, every taxpayer gives them money, AGAINST THEIR WILL, regardless of the consciences or principles of the taxpayers.
So NY State will be forcing its citizens to subsidize bigotry and bigots.
But the only time you hear it said that its unacceptable for a dime of taxpayer money to go somewhere based on moral objections is when abortion is involved.
Cuomo Extorts Money From NY State Workers
A union representing a third of New York State's public workers surrendered to coercion by Governor Andrew Cuomo (son of Mario "Maximum Unction" Cuomo, a former NY State Governor) and agreed under duress to make its members poorer. Specifically, no raises for 3 years- meaning inflation will cause them to get poorer- larger payments for health insurance- which should be nationalized anyway- and pension cuts to those already retired- i.e. reneging on contracts with those workers. 2% pay raises are promised in years 4 and 5- which if they're lucky, will mean the workers will just not get any poorer in those years, assuming inflation is no higher than 2%. Of course, promises by rulers to the people are meant to be broken. And also 9 unpaid "furlough" days a year. (Speaking of inflation, the New York City Rent Guidelines Board, which sets rent increases for a million apartment in NYC that the rulers haven't managed to remove from rent stabilization controls yet, is proposing the next yearly increase in rents to be 3% - 5.75% for a one year lease renewal, and 6-9% for a two year renewal. Oh, and for new tenants, there's the standard "vacancy allowance" of 17.75-20% on top of that.)
The threat Cuomo used to coerce the concessions was to fire 10,000 workers if he didn't get what he demanded. So Cuomo "collectively bargained" the union's surrender. Whereas GOP Governors, like Scott Walker in Wisconsin (a billionaire Koch brothers' stooge) and Mitchell Daniels in Indiana had their Red Chinese-type GOP legislatures pass laws abolishing collective bargaining by the public unions so they can impose their cuts by fiat.
All this is class warfare of course. As U.S. GDP and accumulated wealth is greater than ever, as there are more billionaires and multimillionaires than ever, and as the wealth of the Forbes 400 for example is greater than ever (over a trillion dollars combined!) it is an absurd pretense for the media and politicians to tell people that "times are tough" and "there's no money." In fact, there is plenty of money. The greedy plutocrats who rule behind their politician frontmen simply can never satiate their greed.
As to the GOP lie (never refuted by the "Democrats") that MORE tax cuts for the rich will create jobs: currently the companies in the S & P 500 are hoarding 1.9 TRILLION dollars in cash. They don't use cash to hire workers UNLESS THEY NEED TO. With demand muted, and "productivity" (value squeezed out of workers) ever higher, they have no need to hire people. They don't employ people out of compassion. It's a business decision. But the Democrats, terrible con men who pretend to represent working stiffs, never attack the lies of the Gang Of Plunderers (GOP).
The threat Cuomo used to coerce the concessions was to fire 10,000 workers if he didn't get what he demanded. So Cuomo "collectively bargained" the union's surrender. Whereas GOP Governors, like Scott Walker in Wisconsin (a billionaire Koch brothers' stooge) and Mitchell Daniels in Indiana had their Red Chinese-type GOP legislatures pass laws abolishing collective bargaining by the public unions so they can impose their cuts by fiat.
All this is class warfare of course. As U.S. GDP and accumulated wealth is greater than ever, as there are more billionaires and multimillionaires than ever, and as the wealth of the Forbes 400 for example is greater than ever (over a trillion dollars combined!) it is an absurd pretense for the media and politicians to tell people that "times are tough" and "there's no money." In fact, there is plenty of money. The greedy plutocrats who rule behind their politician frontmen simply can never satiate their greed.
As to the GOP lie (never refuted by the "Democrats") that MORE tax cuts for the rich will create jobs: currently the companies in the S & P 500 are hoarding 1.9 TRILLION dollars in cash. They don't use cash to hire workers UNLESS THEY NEED TO. With demand muted, and "productivity" (value squeezed out of workers) ever higher, they have no need to hire people. They don't employ people out of compassion. It's a business decision. But the Democrats, terrible con men who pretend to represent working stiffs, never attack the lies of the Gang Of Plunderers (GOP).
Saturday, June 18, 2011
The Denouement of "Weinergate"
The daily, ferocious media assault on ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner, complete with juvenile sexual double entendres on the front pages of New York City tabloids and elsewhere, juiced by the rightwing semi-underground's daily drip-drip-drip of one photo at a time into "the discourse," combined with virtually all the other politicians turning on him, finally forced Weiner to resign after almost 3 weeks of ridicule, humiliation, abasement, and vituperation. Given the prominence of "the story," and the high dudgeon on display, you'd have thought he was a pedophile or something.
Left unanswered was exactly how the likes of Andrew Breitbart and the neofascist cadres sometimes referred to as "the conservative blogosphere" got the photos in the first place, including supposedly one of Weiner's naked genitals which Breitbart had on his cellphone.
We were treated to a porn movie "actress"/"exotic dancer" named [pseudonymly?] "Ginger Lee" expressing her disapproval of Weiner sexting her (what does she expect from men? Isn't that exactly what she invites from them, sexual ardor?) being treated as a serious, major news story, even in the august New York Times (June 16). Ms. Lee's media foray was made on June 15, the day before Weiner threw in the towel (so to speak- oops, there I go!). Why the opinion of some professional slut should be more than a footnote in the matter- she added no new information, insight, or knowledge to the affair- is left unexplained.
And in a repetition as farce of Andrew Breitbart's hijacking of Weiner's first press conference in which he tearfully 'fessed up to tweeting naughty pics and lying about it, a clown working for the vulgar lout Howard Stern, posing as a constituent, yelled "pervert" and other abuse at Weiner during his resignation announcement. This lowlife lackey, named, supposedly, "Benjy Bronk," explained helpfully to reporters that "I'm trying to get to the truth and, uh, get on camera." Unfortunately the New York Times buried this information in the last 2 paragraphs of a lengthy story that started on page one. Instead, the Times played along with the Stern stunt by referencing it in its headlines without letting you know it was purely cheesy showbiz fodder for Stern's "show." On page one it read: "In Chaotic [false!] Scene, Weiner Quits Seat In Scandal's Wake- Vulgar Shouts During Announcement in Brooklyn- Relief for Democrats."
Well yes, but the "vulgar shout" were just staged by an entertainment-business clown on orders of his boss, a grotesquely overpaid peddler of crude, coarse titillation. Why legitimize and dignify that? Why elevate it to important news worthy of headline treatment?
The Times did the same thing on the jump page, page 30, with the headline there: "Amid Chaotic [again that falsehood- the photo showed no "chaos", nor does the article describe any] Scene in Brookly, Congressman Resigns in Wake of Online Scandal." Note to Times: one attention-hungry asshole on a mission from a professional exhibitionist-smut-peddler does not constitute "chaos." "Howard Stern Sends Lackey to Harass Weiner At Resignation Announcement." If you really think it's that important to put in a headline, that's what you should have said. But then, NY Times headlines are more often than not misleading, disingenuous, or downright disinformative.
I will leave it to you, dear reader, to reflect on the irony of Howard Stern, a lewd panderer whose entire "career" consists of talking smut and having sluts strip for him in his studio, sending a flunky to call Weiner a "pervert." And of the oh-so-prim NY Times aiding and abetting one of his sleazy, callous stunts. (This is a paper that leaves you guessing what curse words they're referring to when they reference them in some incident or other. Not even a hint.)
Interestingly, AFTER Weiner was successfully defenestrated by the media (the politicians are captive creatures of the media and dance to their tune, as they have no real popular support and are just hired hands for big money interests, and thus are totally dependent on the corporate media to present them in a positive light and exist in morbid dread of negative media coverage- obsession with avoiding "gaffes" being a symptom of this dread), on June 18, a Saturday, which is the least read day of the week for the paper, the New York Times buried a story on page A15 (suddenly Weiner is no longer page one news) about a cabal of neofascist stalkers who tried to entrap Weiner online. ("Fake Identities Were Used on Twitter in Effort to Get Information on Weiner," a totally misleading headline.) One of these fanatics posed as a 16 year old girl and tried to inveigle Weiner into being her "prom date." With his accomplices, he tried to create a drumbeat of people badgering Weiner into agreeing to this. Another fake identity was created as her "girlfriend."
Later, when tracked down, one of the plotters posed as the "girl's" "mother" and sent a fake California driver's license and fake school records to a reporter from the blog Mediaite. (How much you want to bet that "the authorities" don't even investigate these forgers? James O'Keefe, a serial stalker and libeler of social service organizations, got caught inside the offices of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu with wiretapping equipment, and was let off scotfree by the Obama regime, after all. And rightists have long had carte blanche in this country to commit politically-motivated crimes, including arson and murder, with impunity. The KKK murdered thousands of people in gruesome fashion, and anti-abortion terrorists have committed thousands of assaults, arsons, bombings, vandalizations, and some murders, mostly unprosecuted, for example. So this is small beer for the right.)
The fascist stalking group is on Twitter as #bornfreecrew. The fake Twitter accounts for the "girls" were later deleted.
None of this was revealed until the media ran the fascists' ball across the goal line and ousted Weiner.
To be sure, Weiner's behavior was juvenile and irrational. But basically harmless and trivial. And if his wife is so uptight that this is "devastating" to her, she needs therapy as much as he does.
It was the same thing with ACORN, with Shirley Sherrod, and USDA employee libeled by Andrew Breitbart and fired within the day by the Obama regime, with the attacks on Planned Parenthood and NPR. (an NPR executive and a consultant immediately fell on their swords because of some mild remarks the consultant made to fascist spies misrepresenting themselves as donors to the effect that NPR would be better off without Government funds- what a scandalous thing to say! Makes no sense, as that is exactly what the reactionaries say too. You'd think they'd applaud.) In fact, fascist purges have operated like this at least since the 1950s purge era. (Aka "McCarthy era," a way of false pretending it was all the doing of one Senator, not an entire reactionary establishment, and that it was an aberration. In fact, U.S. history is FILLED with political persecutions, from the very beginning.)
Sometimes the purge demands come from Murdoch's minions, as when Fox "News" redbaited White House adviser Van Jones and Obama immediately fired him. Apparently Obama wants Fox News to endorse him, or thinks if he appeases reactionaries by firing who they tell him to, he'll get their votes. What a cowardly jackass. Obama's consistent pattern is to always punish his supporters and reward his enemies.
Left unanswered was exactly how the likes of Andrew Breitbart and the neofascist cadres sometimes referred to as "the conservative blogosphere" got the photos in the first place, including supposedly one of Weiner's naked genitals which Breitbart had on his cellphone.
We were treated to a porn movie "actress"/"exotic dancer" named [pseudonymly?] "Ginger Lee" expressing her disapproval of Weiner sexting her (what does she expect from men? Isn't that exactly what she invites from them, sexual ardor?) being treated as a serious, major news story, even in the august New York Times (June 16). Ms. Lee's media foray was made on June 15, the day before Weiner threw in the towel (so to speak- oops, there I go!). Why the opinion of some professional slut should be more than a footnote in the matter- she added no new information, insight, or knowledge to the affair- is left unexplained.
And in a repetition as farce of Andrew Breitbart's hijacking of Weiner's first press conference in which he tearfully 'fessed up to tweeting naughty pics and lying about it, a clown working for the vulgar lout Howard Stern, posing as a constituent, yelled "pervert" and other abuse at Weiner during his resignation announcement. This lowlife lackey, named, supposedly, "Benjy Bronk," explained helpfully to reporters that "I'm trying to get to the truth and, uh, get on camera." Unfortunately the New York Times buried this information in the last 2 paragraphs of a lengthy story that started on page one. Instead, the Times played along with the Stern stunt by referencing it in its headlines without letting you know it was purely cheesy showbiz fodder for Stern's "show." On page one it read: "In Chaotic [false!] Scene, Weiner Quits Seat In Scandal's Wake- Vulgar Shouts During Announcement in Brooklyn- Relief for Democrats."
Well yes, but the "vulgar shout" were just staged by an entertainment-business clown on orders of his boss, a grotesquely overpaid peddler of crude, coarse titillation. Why legitimize and dignify that? Why elevate it to important news worthy of headline treatment?
The Times did the same thing on the jump page, page 30, with the headline there: "Amid Chaotic [again that falsehood- the photo showed no "chaos", nor does the article describe any] Scene in Brookly, Congressman Resigns in Wake of Online Scandal." Note to Times: one attention-hungry asshole on a mission from a professional exhibitionist-smut-peddler does not constitute "chaos." "Howard Stern Sends Lackey to Harass Weiner At Resignation Announcement." If you really think it's that important to put in a headline, that's what you should have said. But then, NY Times headlines are more often than not misleading, disingenuous, or downright disinformative.
I will leave it to you, dear reader, to reflect on the irony of Howard Stern, a lewd panderer whose entire "career" consists of talking smut and having sluts strip for him in his studio, sending a flunky to call Weiner a "pervert." And of the oh-so-prim NY Times aiding and abetting one of his sleazy, callous stunts. (This is a paper that leaves you guessing what curse words they're referring to when they reference them in some incident or other. Not even a hint.)
Interestingly, AFTER Weiner was successfully defenestrated by the media (the politicians are captive creatures of the media and dance to their tune, as they have no real popular support and are just hired hands for big money interests, and thus are totally dependent on the corporate media to present them in a positive light and exist in morbid dread of negative media coverage- obsession with avoiding "gaffes" being a symptom of this dread), on June 18, a Saturday, which is the least read day of the week for the paper, the New York Times buried a story on page A15 (suddenly Weiner is no longer page one news) about a cabal of neofascist stalkers who tried to entrap Weiner online. ("Fake Identities Were Used on Twitter in Effort to Get Information on Weiner," a totally misleading headline.) One of these fanatics posed as a 16 year old girl and tried to inveigle Weiner into being her "prom date." With his accomplices, he tried to create a drumbeat of people badgering Weiner into agreeing to this. Another fake identity was created as her "girlfriend."
Later, when tracked down, one of the plotters posed as the "girl's" "mother" and sent a fake California driver's license and fake school records to a reporter from the blog Mediaite. (How much you want to bet that "the authorities" don't even investigate these forgers? James O'Keefe, a serial stalker and libeler of social service organizations, got caught inside the offices of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu with wiretapping equipment, and was let off scotfree by the Obama regime, after all. And rightists have long had carte blanche in this country to commit politically-motivated crimes, including arson and murder, with impunity. The KKK murdered thousands of people in gruesome fashion, and anti-abortion terrorists have committed thousands of assaults, arsons, bombings, vandalizations, and some murders, mostly unprosecuted, for example. So this is small beer for the right.)
The fascist stalking group is on Twitter as #bornfreecrew. The fake Twitter accounts for the "girls" were later deleted.
None of this was revealed until the media ran the fascists' ball across the goal line and ousted Weiner.
To be sure, Weiner's behavior was juvenile and irrational. But basically harmless and trivial. And if his wife is so uptight that this is "devastating" to her, she needs therapy as much as he does.
It was the same thing with ACORN, with Shirley Sherrod, and USDA employee libeled by Andrew Breitbart and fired within the day by the Obama regime, with the attacks on Planned Parenthood and NPR. (an NPR executive and a consultant immediately fell on their swords because of some mild remarks the consultant made to fascist spies misrepresenting themselves as donors to the effect that NPR would be better off without Government funds- what a scandalous thing to say! Makes no sense, as that is exactly what the reactionaries say too. You'd think they'd applaud.) In fact, fascist purges have operated like this at least since the 1950s purge era. (Aka "McCarthy era," a way of false pretending it was all the doing of one Senator, not an entire reactionary establishment, and that it was an aberration. In fact, U.S. history is FILLED with political persecutions, from the very beginning.)
Sometimes the purge demands come from Murdoch's minions, as when Fox "News" redbaited White House adviser Van Jones and Obama immediately fired him. Apparently Obama wants Fox News to endorse him, or thinks if he appeases reactionaries by firing who they tell him to, he'll get their votes. What a cowardly jackass. Obama's consistent pattern is to always punish his supporters and reward his enemies.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Media Pit Bulls Finally Force Weiner To Resign
Congressman Anthony Weiner was just ridiculed out of office by the corporate media. Like dogs gnawing on a bone, they wouldn't let go of the trivial story until they drove Weiner from office.
Of course his fellow politicians piled on too- because they could see the media wouldn't let it go, making Weiner a liability to his party. And as various media stories pointed out, he never made friends with the other pols, so no one liked him.
To be sure, his behavior was adolescent, like that of a horny teenager. But put it in perspective: he sent revealing photos of himself to adult women. In a sexually schizophrenic society like the U.S., which is simultaneously licentious and puritanical, this apparently is a capital offense career-wise, for a politician. (Different standards apply to celebrities. And media propagandists? Do you ever even hear about their sex lives? Guess why not! The propagandists stand above all others, whom they judge.)
Comparisons were made to the case of GOP Congressman Christopher Lee, from an upstate NY district. The comparisons only mentioned the similarities between the two cases- well, the ONE similarity, that both sent barechested photos. The differences went unmentioned, to whit: 1) Lee lied about who he was to those he contacted; 2) Lee was trolling for dates, and, we can assume, actual sex; 3) Lee was a typical right-wing chestbeating "family values" Republican, thus making him a flaming hypocrit and betrayer of his political/ideological beliefs. Nothing Weiner did contradicted what he represented his political beliefs to his constituents to be.
And we should look at what is, as usual, a bit of a double standard when it comes to treatment of "liberals" vs. "conservatives." What Weiner did was a peccadillo. He didn't "cheat" on his wife. Personally I think his behavior was creepy, weird, and immature. Maybe he has too much time on his hands. Clearly he was rendered politically ineffective, so quitting is for the best. But GOP Senator David Vitter of Louisiana is a known patron of prostitutes. He still "serves." GOP Senator John Ensign of Nevada had an affair with the wife of a close aide, then had his parents pay the man hush money. Finally, facing possible criminal charges, he was forced to resign. Do you remember that scandal being a huge media story day after day after day? Me neither.
Let's take the contrasting case of 2 governors, the crusading reformer Democrat Eliot Spitzer of NY, and reactionary Republican Mark Sanford of South Carolina. Spitzer was exposed by the FBI (helping their Wall St. masters, who despised Spitzer for enforcing some ethical rules on them when he was NY State Attorney General, something the feckless lapdog SEC never does, nor the DOJ), and forced to resign. Mark Sanford, caught having an affair with an Argentine firecracker, and lying pathetically about it (he claimed to be on a hike while he was really secretly trysting with her, for example) wasn't. And him a Holy Christian Man!
On the day when Weiner's public humiliation was complete (June 16), the latest nail in his coffin, hammer in by the media, was news of a "press conference" by a porn "actress" cum "exotic dancer," who revealed that- get ready to be shocked- Weiner instructed her to lie. Gee, how awful. Of course, this highly ethical, upstanding, er, slut, I guess, feels this reflects badly on Weiner, I suppose. I mean, lying is so terrible. No one should ever lie. Most people never ever lie, right? To think, Weiner wanted to hide his behavior instead of immediately fessing up like the bad little boy he is!
Oh grow up, America.
One more scalp on the belt of the rightwing hitmen. In this case, Andrew Breitbart, a pathological liar, serial slanderer, and egomaniac who vastly overrates his own world historical significance.
Of course his fellow politicians piled on too- because they could see the media wouldn't let it go, making Weiner a liability to his party. And as various media stories pointed out, he never made friends with the other pols, so no one liked him.
To be sure, his behavior was adolescent, like that of a horny teenager. But put it in perspective: he sent revealing photos of himself to adult women. In a sexually schizophrenic society like the U.S., which is simultaneously licentious and puritanical, this apparently is a capital offense career-wise, for a politician. (Different standards apply to celebrities. And media propagandists? Do you ever even hear about their sex lives? Guess why not! The propagandists stand above all others, whom they judge.)
Comparisons were made to the case of GOP Congressman Christopher Lee, from an upstate NY district. The comparisons only mentioned the similarities between the two cases- well, the ONE similarity, that both sent barechested photos. The differences went unmentioned, to whit: 1) Lee lied about who he was to those he contacted; 2) Lee was trolling for dates, and, we can assume, actual sex; 3) Lee was a typical right-wing chestbeating "family values" Republican, thus making him a flaming hypocrit and betrayer of his political/ideological beliefs. Nothing Weiner did contradicted what he represented his political beliefs to his constituents to be.
And we should look at what is, as usual, a bit of a double standard when it comes to treatment of "liberals" vs. "conservatives." What Weiner did was a peccadillo. He didn't "cheat" on his wife. Personally I think his behavior was creepy, weird, and immature. Maybe he has too much time on his hands. Clearly he was rendered politically ineffective, so quitting is for the best. But GOP Senator David Vitter of Louisiana is a known patron of prostitutes. He still "serves." GOP Senator John Ensign of Nevada had an affair with the wife of a close aide, then had his parents pay the man hush money. Finally, facing possible criminal charges, he was forced to resign. Do you remember that scandal being a huge media story day after day after day? Me neither.
Let's take the contrasting case of 2 governors, the crusading reformer Democrat Eliot Spitzer of NY, and reactionary Republican Mark Sanford of South Carolina. Spitzer was exposed by the FBI (helping their Wall St. masters, who despised Spitzer for enforcing some ethical rules on them when he was NY State Attorney General, something the feckless lapdog SEC never does, nor the DOJ), and forced to resign. Mark Sanford, caught having an affair with an Argentine firecracker, and lying pathetically about it (he claimed to be on a hike while he was really secretly trysting with her, for example) wasn't. And him a Holy Christian Man!
On the day when Weiner's public humiliation was complete (June 16), the latest nail in his coffin, hammer in by the media, was news of a "press conference" by a porn "actress" cum "exotic dancer," who revealed that- get ready to be shocked- Weiner instructed her to lie. Gee, how awful. Of course, this highly ethical, upstanding, er, slut, I guess, feels this reflects badly on Weiner, I suppose. I mean, lying is so terrible. No one should ever lie. Most people never ever lie, right? To think, Weiner wanted to hide his behavior instead of immediately fessing up like the bad little boy he is!
Oh grow up, America.
One more scalp on the belt of the rightwing hitmen. In this case, Andrew Breitbart, a pathological liar, serial slanderer, and egomaniac who vastly overrates his own world historical significance.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
7 GOP Giants Debate
Actually it wasn't a debate at all. That is, they didn't take issue with one another, but just tried to outdo each other in extremist prattle.
And they're giants in the eyes of the corporate propaganda system (aka "the media") ONLY. Like top of p. one in the NY Times (June 14, 2011), with a big photo of the phonies waving triumphantly with huge fake grins on their faces like they're on laughing gas.
Dems of course are "dwarfs." This was the epithet applied by the corporate propagandists a few years back when a bunch of Dems were vying for their party's Presidential nomination. (That time a similar number of Repubs were running. In fact, as many as fourteen Repubs have run for President at the same time.)
Washington D.C. ruling class elitist Cokie Roberts (who was born into her post, she never had to get elected to it- that's "Democracy" U.S.-style) even invoked the "dwarf" epithet for those long-ago Dems a few months ago on NPR, the Government propaganda network emanating from the empire's Capital.
It's one of the propaganda system's common annoyances, namely a blatant double standard right in your face, and pretending it's not there. Another example is when Time magazine cattily referred to some old Soviet ruler as "younger," putting the word in quotes. This when Ronald Reagan, who was older than the Soviet ruler at the time, was President.
Of course, the most blatant double standard is U.S. criticism of repression by dictators they don't back. The vicious crimes of dictators they DO back are either ignored or greatly minimized in U.S. media "coverage." Perfect example right now- a 20 year old poet in Bahrain just got sentenced to a year in prison- after being viciously tortured of course- for reading a poem at a democracy rally that the rulers didn't like, and the U.$ media has ignored it.
Let's do a thought experiment: what is CHINA had sentenced a poet to a year in prison? How would the U.$. media (and lackey media like Europe's) have covered it? Well, we actually know, since we just had the case of Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei being arrested- not tortured, and not sentenced yet. This was a major story for days in the "prestige" U.S. media, with the non-prestige media copycatting as they always do.
Of course, the U.S. doesn't have a naval base in China. It has one in Bahrain, however.
And they're giants in the eyes of the corporate propaganda system (aka "the media") ONLY. Like top of p. one in the NY Times (June 14, 2011), with a big photo of the phonies waving triumphantly with huge fake grins on their faces like they're on laughing gas.
Dems of course are "dwarfs." This was the epithet applied by the corporate propagandists a few years back when a bunch of Dems were vying for their party's Presidential nomination. (That time a similar number of Repubs were running. In fact, as many as fourteen Repubs have run for President at the same time.)
Washington D.C. ruling class elitist Cokie Roberts (who was born into her post, she never had to get elected to it- that's "Democracy" U.S.-style) even invoked the "dwarf" epithet for those long-ago Dems a few months ago on NPR, the Government propaganda network emanating from the empire's Capital.
It's one of the propaganda system's common annoyances, namely a blatant double standard right in your face, and pretending it's not there. Another example is when Time magazine cattily referred to some old Soviet ruler as "younger," putting the word in quotes. This when Ronald Reagan, who was older than the Soviet ruler at the time, was President.
Of course, the most blatant double standard is U.S. criticism of repression by dictators they don't back. The vicious crimes of dictators they DO back are either ignored or greatly minimized in U.S. media "coverage." Perfect example right now- a 20 year old poet in Bahrain just got sentenced to a year in prison- after being viciously tortured of course- for reading a poem at a democracy rally that the rulers didn't like, and the U.$ media has ignored it.
Let's do a thought experiment: what is CHINA had sentenced a poet to a year in prison? How would the U.$. media (and lackey media like Europe's) have covered it? Well, we actually know, since we just had the case of Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei being arrested- not tortured, and not sentenced yet. This was a major story for days in the "prestige" U.S. media, with the non-prestige media copycatting as they always do.
Of course, the U.S. doesn't have a naval base in China. It has one in Bahrain, however.
Friday, June 10, 2011
The Solution To Anthony Weiner's and the Democrats' Problems
Simple. Weiner should quit the party and declare himself an independent.
This solves both his and the Democrats' problems. The Dems want to disassociate themselves from him, just as they threw ACORN, Planned Parenthood, Shirley Sherrod, Van Jones, overboard as soon as they came under rightwing attack.
Weiner is a lone wolf as it is. With $4 mil. in his campaign chest, he doesn't need the Dems anyway. If his constituents want to reelect him, they can. The Dems can say he's not one of them. And he can be the only politician on Capitol Hill to talk back to the neofascist GOP. (Something the Dems are too cowardly to do.)
Kindly give me credit if you use this idea.
This solves both his and the Democrats' problems. The Dems want to disassociate themselves from him, just as they threw ACORN, Planned Parenthood, Shirley Sherrod, Van Jones, overboard as soon as they came under rightwing attack.
Weiner is a lone wolf as it is. With $4 mil. in his campaign chest, he doesn't need the Dems anyway. If his constituents want to reelect him, they can. The Dems can say he's not one of them. And he can be the only politician on Capitol Hill to talk back to the neofascist GOP. (Something the Dems are too cowardly to do.)
Kindly give me credit if you use this idea.
Saturday, June 04, 2011
Bill Keller, Accessory To Murder
"I've long argued that every budding journalist should have the chastening experience of being written about.[sic]" -Bill Keller, New York Times Magazine, June 19,2011, p. 12.
Well Bill, you're hardly budding at this stage, but better late than never. So this is for you.
U.S. Establishment apparatchiks will never stop lying about the 1963 coup that murdered then-U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Since the Warren Commission was convincingly refuted almost as soon as it came out as a pathetic pack of transparent lies, and since then voluminous evidence has dribbled out proving the CIA (with help from the FBI, U.S. military, and Dallas PD, and complicity of the corporate media) carried out the assassination, you'd think the smart thing to do would be to avoid talking about it and waiting for people to just die off. Instead they engage in a chronic campaign of disinformation and ridicule to create a false historical record, a la in George Orwell's 1984. Not only are the absurd lies of the Warren Commission treated as gospel- without examining them of course- but people who challenge it or merely repeat inconvenient facts are ridiculed as kooks, nuts, and "conspiracy theorists."
Bill Keller, a particularly loathsome example of a bourgeois propagandist, has just been replaced without explanation as chief editor of the New York Times, an organ that fancies itself as the combined Tass and Pravda of the U.S. ruling class. His new job there is akin to what the mass murderer Abraham M. Rosenthal, one of his notorious predecessors, did after he stepped down from that post, namely to act as a sort of chief ideologue at the Times.
Keller, in his first post-editor screed in the Times Sunday Magazine, (a major platform at that rag), once again repeats the tired trope that anyone who doesn't drink the Kool-Aid and dutifully repeat the Establishment line on the JFK hit is a nutty conspiracy theorist. [6/5/11] (Conspiracies apparently are in the same category as unicorns and UFOs, namely mere superstitions, purely imaginary. Apparently the only conspiracies that exist are those imputed to people persecuted by the U.S. legal system- drug sellers, political dissidents, arms dealers who fall out of favor with the U.S., ex-U.S. allies now considered "terrorists," and assorted and sundry criminals. U.S. conspiracy laws are so broad and vague that prosecutors can use them in virtually any situation- even against single defendants, as long as they assert the existence of "unindicted co-conspirators," unindicted conveniently freeing the prosecutors of having to prove anything against those individuals. But a conspiracy by the U.S. rulers? You must be insane to think any such thing is even possible!)
He starts his column- placed right in the front of the rag- with an excerpt from someone who made the mistake of trying to reason with him about the FACTS of the JFK hit. This person's reward is to be used as an example of human irrationality and borderline mental illness.
Keller, and other Times hack propagandists, lately keep linking belief in JFK "conspiracies" with 9/11 delusions and "birthers," white racists whose need to reject the legitimacy of a (half) "black" President leads them to insist that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Never bothering to refute, they throw into one category obviously false and irrational beliefs (like "birther" nonsense- but the media, including the Times, was happy to give Donald Trump obsessive and big coverage pushing that crap- and speculating that Trump might run for President, when he obviously wasn't going to- the same media that blacks out legitimate opposition candidates like Ralph Nader, who actually DO run for President and DON'T spout nonsense). So they can discredit truth by lumping it in with crackpotism, without having to engage the facts, without having to have an honest debate. Meanwhile they pose as sober and responsible arbiters of what is real and what isn't.
Nothing better proves the essentially propagandistic nature of the Times and all its ruling class media ilk, and the fanaticism that motivates them, then the treatment of the JFK assassination/coup.
Well Bill, you're hardly budding at this stage, but better late than never. So this is for you.
U.S. Establishment apparatchiks will never stop lying about the 1963 coup that murdered then-U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Since the Warren Commission was convincingly refuted almost as soon as it came out as a pathetic pack of transparent lies, and since then voluminous evidence has dribbled out proving the CIA (with help from the FBI, U.S. military, and Dallas PD, and complicity of the corporate media) carried out the assassination, you'd think the smart thing to do would be to avoid talking about it and waiting for people to just die off. Instead they engage in a chronic campaign of disinformation and ridicule to create a false historical record, a la in George Orwell's 1984. Not only are the absurd lies of the Warren Commission treated as gospel- without examining them of course- but people who challenge it or merely repeat inconvenient facts are ridiculed as kooks, nuts, and "conspiracy theorists."
Bill Keller, a particularly loathsome example of a bourgeois propagandist, has just been replaced without explanation as chief editor of the New York Times, an organ that fancies itself as the combined Tass and Pravda of the U.S. ruling class. His new job there is akin to what the mass murderer Abraham M. Rosenthal, one of his notorious predecessors, did after he stepped down from that post, namely to act as a sort of chief ideologue at the Times.
Keller, in his first post-editor screed in the Times Sunday Magazine, (a major platform at that rag), once again repeats the tired trope that anyone who doesn't drink the Kool-Aid and dutifully repeat the Establishment line on the JFK hit is a nutty conspiracy theorist. [6/5/11] (Conspiracies apparently are in the same category as unicorns and UFOs, namely mere superstitions, purely imaginary. Apparently the only conspiracies that exist are those imputed to people persecuted by the U.S. legal system- drug sellers, political dissidents, arms dealers who fall out of favor with the U.S., ex-U.S. allies now considered "terrorists," and assorted and sundry criminals. U.S. conspiracy laws are so broad and vague that prosecutors can use them in virtually any situation- even against single defendants, as long as they assert the existence of "unindicted co-conspirators," unindicted conveniently freeing the prosecutors of having to prove anything against those individuals. But a conspiracy by the U.S. rulers? You must be insane to think any such thing is even possible!)
He starts his column- placed right in the front of the rag- with an excerpt from someone who made the mistake of trying to reason with him about the FACTS of the JFK hit. This person's reward is to be used as an example of human irrationality and borderline mental illness.
Keller, and other Times hack propagandists, lately keep linking belief in JFK "conspiracies" with 9/11 delusions and "birthers," white racists whose need to reject the legitimacy of a (half) "black" President leads them to insist that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Never bothering to refute, they throw into one category obviously false and irrational beliefs (like "birther" nonsense- but the media, including the Times, was happy to give Donald Trump obsessive and big coverage pushing that crap- and speculating that Trump might run for President, when he obviously wasn't going to- the same media that blacks out legitimate opposition candidates like Ralph Nader, who actually DO run for President and DON'T spout nonsense). So they can discredit truth by lumping it in with crackpotism, without having to engage the facts, without having to have an honest debate. Meanwhile they pose as sober and responsible arbiters of what is real and what isn't.
Nothing better proves the essentially propagandistic nature of the Times and all its ruling class media ilk, and the fanaticism that motivates them, then the treatment of the JFK assassination/coup.
Friday, May 27, 2011
RIght Wing Felon Granted Tax-Exempt Status By Obama's IRS
Right wing wiretapper James O'Keefe has just gotten IRS approval for a "nonprofit" organization he set up.
This is the same reactionary hatchetman who was caught redhanded trying to wiretap the phones in the offices of a U.S. Senator, Mary Landrieu.
I predicted at the time he would get off easy, because reactionary criminals virtually ALWAYS get away scot-free or nearly so for crimes that progressives get long prison sentences, in harsh conditions, for. (For that matter, progressives are framed up for crimes they didn't commit, and get sent away.)
Once again we see it makes no difference which corporate party controls the executive branch. In fact, Obama has been savage in attacking the fools who are the Democrats' allies.
Obama helped O'Keefe and the GOP and corporate media destroy ACORN. ACORN's crime? Registering poor people to voter. The GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) figured they'd vote Democratic. You'd think the Democrats would thus defend ACORN. No way. Because the Democrats hate the idea of the population becoming politically mobilized as much as the Republicans do. All the Dems want is for the people to be like sheep and just dutifully go to the polls every 2 years and pulls the Democratic levers. (Or vote on the GOP's crooked electronic machines, which steal elections.)
And the corporate media covered up the kid glove treatment of the wiretapper O'Keefe. In fact, he's a media darling. Even the "liberal" NY Times covered up the wristslap, mentioning it only once, deeply buried in a long article. Their report on the IRS favor for this thuggish creep criminal never even mentioned his wiretapping or Obama letting him get away with it.
Contrast the kid glove treatment of the Democrat's enemy, O'Keefe, with how Obama is treating Tim DeChristopher. He "disrupted" a U.S. land auction in Utah for oil and gas drillers by bidding at the auction. He was charged with the felonies of making a false statement to the federal government and with violating the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act, which establishes a competitive bidding process for oil and gas leases. The Bureau of Land Management in the Department of the Interior refused to accept his offers of payment for his bids. At trial in the kangaroo court, the Judge, as is the usual practice in political railroad cases, refused to allow him to defend himself. Specifically, he was barred from preventing evidence of his raising money to pay for the bids. His "defense" was banned from talking about anything other than what happened on that day. And is de rigueur in U.S. political railroads, he could not discuss his motives. Only the prosecutors could do that, to show his "criminal intent." Duly convicted, Obama is looking to lock him up for 10 years. (Vs. not a single day in jail for the rightwing wiretapper of a Senator O'Keefe.) "Ironically," Obama's corrupt Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, a party hack, subsequently decided not to auction the lands for drilling after all! (The auction process had started under the Bush regime.)
The vindictive U.S. government always puts its political prisoners in especially harsh confinement. "Ecoterrorists," for example, (that's the Government's term for environmental activists they convict of vandalism, arson, etc.) are locked up with Muslim "terrorists" either in the inhuman "supermax" prisons, which are like coffins, or in "Communication Management Units." That's a euphemism for cutting off the prisoners from the outside world, with almost no visitation, phone, correspondence "privileges." The idea is to make them unpersons, get the outside world to forget them, prevent political organizing around them.
On the other hand, Bernard Madoff, sentenced to 150 years for a massive Ponzi scheme, isn't even in a regular maximum security prison! He's in one of those camp-like detention centers. Not locked in a cell during the day. Free to give lengthy visitors to all manner of journalist, visiting and by phone. No "communication management" for him.
This is the same reactionary hatchetman who was caught redhanded trying to wiretap the phones in the offices of a U.S. Senator, Mary Landrieu.
I predicted at the time he would get off easy, because reactionary criminals virtually ALWAYS get away scot-free or nearly so for crimes that progressives get long prison sentences, in harsh conditions, for. (For that matter, progressives are framed up for crimes they didn't commit, and get sent away.)
Once again we see it makes no difference which corporate party controls the executive branch. In fact, Obama has been savage in attacking the fools who are the Democrats' allies.
Obama helped O'Keefe and the GOP and corporate media destroy ACORN. ACORN's crime? Registering poor people to voter. The GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) figured they'd vote Democratic. You'd think the Democrats would thus defend ACORN. No way. Because the Democrats hate the idea of the population becoming politically mobilized as much as the Republicans do. All the Dems want is for the people to be like sheep and just dutifully go to the polls every 2 years and pulls the Democratic levers. (Or vote on the GOP's crooked electronic machines, which steal elections.)
And the corporate media covered up the kid glove treatment of the wiretapper O'Keefe. In fact, he's a media darling. Even the "liberal" NY Times covered up the wristslap, mentioning it only once, deeply buried in a long article. Their report on the IRS favor for this thuggish creep criminal never even mentioned his wiretapping or Obama letting him get away with it.
Contrast the kid glove treatment of the Democrat's enemy, O'Keefe, with how Obama is treating Tim DeChristopher. He "disrupted" a U.S. land auction in Utah for oil and gas drillers by bidding at the auction. He was charged with the felonies of making a false statement to the federal government and with violating the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act, which establishes a competitive bidding process for oil and gas leases. The Bureau of Land Management in the Department of the Interior refused to accept his offers of payment for his bids. At trial in the kangaroo court, the Judge, as is the usual practice in political railroad cases, refused to allow him to defend himself. Specifically, he was barred from preventing evidence of his raising money to pay for the bids. His "defense" was banned from talking about anything other than what happened on that day. And is de rigueur in U.S. political railroads, he could not discuss his motives. Only the prosecutors could do that, to show his "criminal intent." Duly convicted, Obama is looking to lock him up for 10 years. (Vs. not a single day in jail for the rightwing wiretapper of a Senator O'Keefe.) "Ironically," Obama's corrupt Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, a party hack, subsequently decided not to auction the lands for drilling after all! (The auction process had started under the Bush regime.)
The vindictive U.S. government always puts its political prisoners in especially harsh confinement. "Ecoterrorists," for example, (that's the Government's term for environmental activists they convict of vandalism, arson, etc.) are locked up with Muslim "terrorists" either in the inhuman "supermax" prisons, which are like coffins, or in "Communication Management Units." That's a euphemism for cutting off the prisoners from the outside world, with almost no visitation, phone, correspondence "privileges." The idea is to make them unpersons, get the outside world to forget them, prevent political organizing around them.
On the other hand, Bernard Madoff, sentenced to 150 years for a massive Ponzi scheme, isn't even in a regular maximum security prison! He's in one of those camp-like detention centers. Not locked in a cell during the day. Free to give lengthy visitors to all manner of journalist, visiting and by phone. No "communication management" for him.
Repressive West Shows Its True Colors Once Again
Today the Spanish Government (a "Socialist" government, they want people to believe), had its police beat sitting protesters in a Madrid square to forcibly break up an "illegal" demonstration against the economic policies that bleed the people to pay off the top strata of international finance capitalists.
Just as in Bahrain, or Yemen, or Jordan, or Israel, or Egypt, or Russia, or Syria, or China, any protest against the system is not allowed.
This is not new, nor unique to Spain. In Italy a few years back, people trying to protest a G-7 meeting were savagely beaten by Italian police, teeth kicked out while victims forced to lay on the floor, then made to sing fascist anthems back in their captors' lairs ("police stations").
The U.S. is notorious for smashing demonstrations against G-7 and G-8 meetings, and at the conventions of the two corporate parties ("Democrats," who represent plutocrats, so are hardly democratic, and the Republicans, also called the GOP, or Gang Of Plunderers). Seattle, Philadelphia, New York, and other places all saw police attack peaceful protesters and raid their gathering places in advance, arresting them illegally and destroying/stealing their signs, puppets, and other protest paraphernalia. In NYC at the last GOP convention in that city, thousands were rounded up off the streets, including people just passing by, and imprisoned illegally.
But OH, what a STINK the Western media is raising over China arresting the artist Ai Wei Wei.
Perhaps the propagandists of the corporate media should look in a mirror once in a while.
Just as in Bahrain, or Yemen, or Jordan, or Israel, or Egypt, or Russia, or Syria, or China, any protest against the system is not allowed.
This is not new, nor unique to Spain. In Italy a few years back, people trying to protest a G-7 meeting were savagely beaten by Italian police, teeth kicked out while victims forced to lay on the floor, then made to sing fascist anthems back in their captors' lairs ("police stations").
The U.S. is notorious for smashing demonstrations against G-7 and G-8 meetings, and at the conventions of the two corporate parties ("Democrats," who represent plutocrats, so are hardly democratic, and the Republicans, also called the GOP, or Gang Of Plunderers). Seattle, Philadelphia, New York, and other places all saw police attack peaceful protesters and raid their gathering places in advance, arresting them illegally and destroying/stealing their signs, puppets, and other protest paraphernalia. In NYC at the last GOP convention in that city, thousands were rounded up off the streets, including people just passing by, and imprisoned illegally.
But OH, what a STINK the Western media is raising over China arresting the artist Ai Wei Wei.
Perhaps the propagandists of the corporate media should look in a mirror once in a while.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Catholic Church Figures Out Who Is To Blame For Its Global Pedophilia Scandal
In country after country, the Catholic Church, that self-appointed arbiter of morality and repository of holiness, has been exposed as a nest of pedophiles. Pedophile priests are systematically aided and abetted by the bishops and cardinals who are their bosses. They are protected under a cloak of secrecy, and the victims were silenced until recently.
Now the Church, and its capo, the "Pope," an allegedly infallible being with the authority of some "God" behind him, has fingered the culprits in an official report. Turns out it was the hippies. I'm not kidding. They say the "sexual revolution" made them do it. See? The sexual revolution turned priests into pedophiles, and made their bosses protect, aid, and abet them. They were merely copying all those influential hippie pedophiles you heard so much about.
Oddly, they don't explain how they could be so weak in adhering to their own alleged values. Did they all smoke pot too? Drop acid? Drop out of their organization? Maybe they burned draft cards. (Of course it would have had to be other people's, since among their many privileges, they were and are exempt from the draft.)
This sick insulting bullshit should be the last straw from this gang of moral hustlers. For a couple of thousand years, these con men have been running a pathological mind control operation based on guilt and fear- fear of death, fear of the wrath of an imaginary superpowerful being, and fear of the awful physical tortures meted out by this "church" to anyone who dared cross it. Even today, their stranglehold on countries like Ireland, El Salvador, and even "leftist" Nicaragua, is so powerful that abortion is illegal, and contraception too in some cases. Yet in private these hypocrits commit sexual crimes.
This scam has helped them amass billions in wealth, and great political power, which they use in league with the worst reactionary scum on the planet- fascists like Franco, Mussolini, Salazar, even Hitler, and Latin American death squad regimes. Now they have the nerve to try and blame the counterculture for their misdeeds!
This cult should be indicted under the RICO act as a racketering organization.
Now the Church, and its capo, the "Pope," an allegedly infallible being with the authority of some "God" behind him, has fingered the culprits in an official report. Turns out it was the hippies. I'm not kidding. They say the "sexual revolution" made them do it. See? The sexual revolution turned priests into pedophiles, and made their bosses protect, aid, and abet them. They were merely copying all those influential hippie pedophiles you heard so much about.
Oddly, they don't explain how they could be so weak in adhering to their own alleged values. Did they all smoke pot too? Drop acid? Drop out of their organization? Maybe they burned draft cards. (Of course it would have had to be other people's, since among their many privileges, they were and are exempt from the draft.)
This sick insulting bullshit should be the last straw from this gang of moral hustlers. For a couple of thousand years, these con men have been running a pathological mind control operation based on guilt and fear- fear of death, fear of the wrath of an imaginary superpowerful being, and fear of the awful physical tortures meted out by this "church" to anyone who dared cross it. Even today, their stranglehold on countries like Ireland, El Salvador, and even "leftist" Nicaragua, is so powerful that abortion is illegal, and contraception too in some cases. Yet in private these hypocrits commit sexual crimes.
This scam has helped them amass billions in wealth, and great political power, which they use in league with the worst reactionary scum on the planet- fascists like Franco, Mussolini, Salazar, even Hitler, and Latin American death squad regimes. Now they have the nerve to try and blame the counterculture for their misdeeds!
This cult should be indicted under the RICO act as a racketering organization.
For U.S. Dissidents, Life Keeps Getting More Like Being a Jew In Nazi Germany
If you've ever studied the history of the Third Reich, you know that the Nazis increased their repression of Jews and other "enemies" by degrees. Jews were banned from various professions, banned from using public transport, banned from more and more activities, and so on. Later came the roundups and eventual extermination.
Immediately after 9/11/01, the FBI used its new powers to put Greens and other activists on the no-fly list, banning them from air travel. Now New York Senator Charles Schumer has a brilliant idea- he wants to put the hundreds of thousands of people on the no-fly list on a no-train list, meaning they can't travel by train. I guess next will be a no-bus list, and finally a no-driving list. (Ironically, this guarddog of Wall Street interests refuses to oppose an actual menace, the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which endangers at least 20 million people who live within a 50 mile radius of it. His pet duckling, the junior U.S. senator from New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, does likewise, since she copies all his positions.)
The FBI has for decades kept lists of thousands of people they hate on detention lists, to be rounded up and put in concentration camps during "national emergencies." In the past few months they have been raiding the homes of peace activists, seizing their computers and other property, and dragooning them before grand juries to force them to give information on their organizations, contacts, and activities. I.e. the U.S. is a police state that monitors and represses dissent.
This is not new. In fact, it has been this way since John Adams was President. Under Adams, Alien and Sedition Act, publishers and critics of Adams were imprisoned.
Meanwhile the Supreme Court has just "legalized" police breaking down people's doors without warrants if they THINK "evidence" is being "destroyed" inside. The case arose out of a marijuana case. Marijuana, of course, shouldn't even be illegal. Under the excuse of a "war on drugs," for 40 years now civil and human rights have been systematically stripped from people in this country. Since 2001 the "war on terror" has provided an excuse to ramp up this repressiveness. (In the name of "defending freedom," of course. Paging George Orwell...we've got a case of Newspeak here, where words mean their opposite, straight out of 1984.
World War One gave us Wilson's "Espionage" Act, used to imprison pacifists and anyone who spoke against U.S. involvement in that war. Today it is being used by the Obama regime to persecute NSA whistleblowers for daring to expose abuses by that super-secret-police spy nest to their own superiors and to Congress.
The tiny minority who think for themselves, or even "worse," dare to protest and resist, are isolated from the pacified sheep majority, so there is no way to reverse this fascist tide from continuing to rise. The only hope is eventually their economy will collapse and something new can arise out of the rubble.
Immediately after 9/11/01, the FBI used its new powers to put Greens and other activists on the no-fly list, banning them from air travel. Now New York Senator Charles Schumer has a brilliant idea- he wants to put the hundreds of thousands of people on the no-fly list on a no-train list, meaning they can't travel by train. I guess next will be a no-bus list, and finally a no-driving list. (Ironically, this guarddog of Wall Street interests refuses to oppose an actual menace, the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which endangers at least 20 million people who live within a 50 mile radius of it. His pet duckling, the junior U.S. senator from New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, does likewise, since she copies all his positions.)
The FBI has for decades kept lists of thousands of people they hate on detention lists, to be rounded up and put in concentration camps during "national emergencies." In the past few months they have been raiding the homes of peace activists, seizing their computers and other property, and dragooning them before grand juries to force them to give information on their organizations, contacts, and activities. I.e. the U.S. is a police state that monitors and represses dissent.
This is not new. In fact, it has been this way since John Adams was President. Under Adams, Alien and Sedition Act, publishers and critics of Adams were imprisoned.
Meanwhile the Supreme Court has just "legalized" police breaking down people's doors without warrants if they THINK "evidence" is being "destroyed" inside. The case arose out of a marijuana case. Marijuana, of course, shouldn't even be illegal. Under the excuse of a "war on drugs," for 40 years now civil and human rights have been systematically stripped from people in this country. Since 2001 the "war on terror" has provided an excuse to ramp up this repressiveness. (In the name of "defending freedom," of course. Paging George Orwell...we've got a case of Newspeak here, where words mean their opposite, straight out of 1984.
World War One gave us Wilson's "Espionage" Act, used to imprison pacifists and anyone who spoke against U.S. involvement in that war. Today it is being used by the Obama regime to persecute NSA whistleblowers for daring to expose abuses by that super-secret-police spy nest to their own superiors and to Congress.
The tiny minority who think for themselves, or even "worse," dare to protest and resist, are isolated from the pacified sheep majority, so there is no way to reverse this fascist tide from continuing to rise. The only hope is eventually their economy will collapse and something new can arise out of the rubble.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
How We Know IMF Boss Is Guilty
Do you really think they'd pull the head of the International Monetary Fund off a plane, drag him into a police interrogation room, and then lock him up on Rikers Island, the New York City jail complex, denying him bail, if there was any doubt about his guilt?
And some poor African immigrant, a widowed single mother supporting a teenage daughter, immediately reports the attack, is going to lie? Her lie would have fallen apart after 10 minutes of police questioning. She's had to tell her story over and over and over again to detectives, prosecutors, and now the grand jury under penalty of perjury if she lies. The case is being handled by a special detective unit that deals with sex crimes- 6,000 cases a year. They're specially trained and highly experienced. No way someone could create the massive tissue of lies that would be required to fool them, and have it jibe with the physical evidence, other witnesses, and totality of the circumstances- especially an unsophisticated immigrant cleaning woman!
Of course, sexist assholes ALWAYS say the woman is lying. Apparently there's no such thing as rape. And that the victims are golddiggers after money. (Preposterous assertion in a criminal case such as this.)
At least Dominique Strauss-Kahn is at least having to do a week locked up. Although he not only has his own cell, he has an entire jail wing to himself, and a tv to boot, according to the New York Times today.
His scumbag attorneys, Benjamin Brafman (who specializes in defending particularly loathsome clients) and William Taylor (imported from D.C.) are already making absurd statements- that if there was sex, it was consensual. And Brafman, before the evidence has even been all gathered, and before the prosecution has shared it with him, already KNOWS that "the forensic evidence will show" his client is innocent. Gee, he already knows what the evidence will show! Amazing seer!
There are honorable ways to defend despicable clients, and their are despicable ways. Brafman and his ilk specialize the latter, which includes sliming and slandering the crime victims.
And some poor African immigrant, a widowed single mother supporting a teenage daughter, immediately reports the attack, is going to lie? Her lie would have fallen apart after 10 minutes of police questioning. She's had to tell her story over and over and over again to detectives, prosecutors, and now the grand jury under penalty of perjury if she lies. The case is being handled by a special detective unit that deals with sex crimes- 6,000 cases a year. They're specially trained and highly experienced. No way someone could create the massive tissue of lies that would be required to fool them, and have it jibe with the physical evidence, other witnesses, and totality of the circumstances- especially an unsophisticated immigrant cleaning woman!
Of course, sexist assholes ALWAYS say the woman is lying. Apparently there's no such thing as rape. And that the victims are golddiggers after money. (Preposterous assertion in a criminal case such as this.)
At least Dominique Strauss-Kahn is at least having to do a week locked up. Although he not only has his own cell, he has an entire jail wing to himself, and a tv to boot, according to the New York Times today.
His scumbag attorneys, Benjamin Brafman (who specializes in defending particularly loathsome clients) and William Taylor (imported from D.C.) are already making absurd statements- that if there was sex, it was consensual. And Brafman, before the evidence has even been all gathered, and before the prosecution has shared it with him, already KNOWS that "the forensic evidence will show" his client is innocent. Gee, he already knows what the evidence will show! Amazing seer!
There are honorable ways to defend despicable clients, and their are despicable ways. Brafman and his ilk specialize the latter, which includes sliming and slandering the crime victims.
GOP DoubleCross On Unemployment Insurance
Here's another reason to never make deals with the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers); they doublecross you and don't keep up their end of bargains. (A primary reason is that appeasing fascists never works. They interpret it as weakness and just make new, even more outrageous demands. We see it in their relentless drive to roll back the U.S. to the 1920s, pre-New Deal, pre-unions, and their evisceration of abortion rights, among other things.)
Obama caved in on continuing the expiring Bush-era tax cuts for the rich, in return for the Republicans agreeing to an extension of unemployment insurance for the millions of workers considered useless by the capitalists running the country. Expert hostage-takers, the economic terrorists of the GOP are ruthless. (They play the same extortion game with shutting down the government to impose vicious cuts in social spending- never military or secret police spending- and now are threatening to crash the financial markets, and with them, the economy, as just happened a couple of years ago, by refusing to raise the debt ceiling if the Dems don't agree to gut Medicare and Social Security.)
Well now they're reneging on the deal Obama cut in secret behind the backs of the Congressional Dems (who should defy this "leader" who backstabs them) while he strung them along and had them engage in what turned out to be sham "negotiations" with the neofascist GOP. They're moving to slash unemployment aid to the states.
"The Republican plan takes $31 billion from unemployed workers and throws it to the states, allowing them to cut taxes on businesses, re-pay their loans to the federal government, or fill in other state budget cuts." said Representative Sander Levin (D-MI). According to Levin, "Essentially what the Republicans are doing is reneging on what they voted for," namely the commitment by both parties to extend benefits through 2011, last December. "Every Republican on the Ways & Means Committee voted to extend this program through the end of this year and now essentially they are reneging." For some reason Levin is baffled by this insensitivity to workers. Of course insensitivity isn't the problem. Callous, ruthless, ideological fanaticism in the support of greed is.
Of course, as usual the Gang Of Plunderers has a slimy line to spin things- they say throwing more money at business in the form of tax cuts will enable them to create jobs. Of course, that is nonsense. Businesses don't create jobs just to create jobs. They hire the minimum number of workers they need. Big U.S. corporations currently have about 2 trillion dollars in cash. Obviously they have plenty of money to "hire workers." Their goal, as the GOP well knows, is first, last, foremost, and ALWAYS, ONLY to maximize profits.
"Well what's wrong with that?!" defensive ideologues sometimes retort at this point. If nothing is wrong with it, why don't you ADMIT it instead of always obfuscating it? Why do you make up bullshit cover stories? And why do corporations- especially oil and chemical corps- run ridiculous ads claiming their dedication to humanity is what drives them?
Right or wrong, the nature of capitalism is that profits aren't everything, they're the ONLY thing. So don't pretend otherwise.
And don't make deals with doublecrossing, lying eels.
Obama caved in on continuing the expiring Bush-era tax cuts for the rich, in return for the Republicans agreeing to an extension of unemployment insurance for the millions of workers considered useless by the capitalists running the country. Expert hostage-takers, the economic terrorists of the GOP are ruthless. (They play the same extortion game with shutting down the government to impose vicious cuts in social spending- never military or secret police spending- and now are threatening to crash the financial markets, and with them, the economy, as just happened a couple of years ago, by refusing to raise the debt ceiling if the Dems don't agree to gut Medicare and Social Security.)
Well now they're reneging on the deal Obama cut in secret behind the backs of the Congressional Dems (who should defy this "leader" who backstabs them) while he strung them along and had them engage in what turned out to be sham "negotiations" with the neofascist GOP. They're moving to slash unemployment aid to the states.
"The Republican plan takes $31 billion from unemployed workers and throws it to the states, allowing them to cut taxes on businesses, re-pay their loans to the federal government, or fill in other state budget cuts." said Representative Sander Levin (D-MI). According to Levin, "Essentially what the Republicans are doing is reneging on what they voted for," namely the commitment by both parties to extend benefits through 2011, last December. "Every Republican on the Ways & Means Committee voted to extend this program through the end of this year and now essentially they are reneging." For some reason Levin is baffled by this insensitivity to workers. Of course insensitivity isn't the problem. Callous, ruthless, ideological fanaticism in the support of greed is.
Of course, as usual the Gang Of Plunderers has a slimy line to spin things- they say throwing more money at business in the form of tax cuts will enable them to create jobs. Of course, that is nonsense. Businesses don't create jobs just to create jobs. They hire the minimum number of workers they need. Big U.S. corporations currently have about 2 trillion dollars in cash. Obviously they have plenty of money to "hire workers." Their goal, as the GOP well knows, is first, last, foremost, and ALWAYS, ONLY to maximize profits.
"Well what's wrong with that?!" defensive ideologues sometimes retort at this point. If nothing is wrong with it, why don't you ADMIT it instead of always obfuscating it? Why do you make up bullshit cover stories? And why do corporations- especially oil and chemical corps- run ridiculous ads claiming their dedication to humanity is what drives them?
Right or wrong, the nature of capitalism is that profits aren't everything, they're the ONLY thing. So don't pretend otherwise.
And don't make deals with doublecrossing, lying eels.
Monday, May 16, 2011
IMF Boss a Rapist: How Ironic
The “managing director” (boss) of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, appears to be a rapist. He tried to rape the cleaning woman at his $3,000 a night suite in a New York City hotel, forced her to blow him, then immediately fled, hopping an Air France jet destined for Paris. But the police held the plane and pulled him off.
Oh sure, we have to “assume” he’s innocent. Actually just the jurors, if he ever goes to trial, have to assume that. The rest of us can make assumptions based on information available to us. The guy takes it on the lam, leaving his cellphone and other items behind. The car service driver who took him to Kennedy Airport says he was nervous, stressed, and in a big rush. And do you really think the cops are gonna drag an important poohbah like him off a plane unless the charges are solid? Today he was denied bail!
By the way, he’s done this before, in France, but it was hushed up. The victim that time was Tristane Banon, a journalist and novelist, in 2002. Le Parisien reported the attempted rape, and the victim described it on TV cable channel Paris Premiere in 2007.
Plus he’s a serial adulterer, including during his stint at the IMF.
The irony here is that the IMF is a rapist of entire countries. It rapes them on behalf of the top strata of finance capital, headquartered in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. It was set up, with the World Bank, at the end of World War II, to enforce big capital’s domination of the world.
P.S. We all assume Osama bin Laden and others like him are guilty. So the “presumption of innocence” is a nicety reserved for the privileged.
Oh sure, we have to “assume” he’s innocent. Actually just the jurors, if he ever goes to trial, have to assume that. The rest of us can make assumptions based on information available to us. The guy takes it on the lam, leaving his cellphone and other items behind. The car service driver who took him to Kennedy Airport says he was nervous, stressed, and in a big rush. And do you really think the cops are gonna drag an important poohbah like him off a plane unless the charges are solid? Today he was denied bail!
By the way, he’s done this before, in France, but it was hushed up. The victim that time was Tristane Banon, a journalist and novelist, in 2002. Le Parisien reported the attempted rape, and the victim described it on TV cable channel Paris Premiere in 2007.
Plus he’s a serial adulterer, including during his stint at the IMF.
The irony here is that the IMF is a rapist of entire countries. It rapes them on behalf of the top strata of finance capital, headquartered in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. It was set up, with the World Bank, at the end of World War II, to enforce big capital’s domination of the world.
P.S. We all assume Osama bin Laden and others like him are guilty. So the “presumption of innocence” is a nicety reserved for the privileged.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Bush's Treason At Tora Bora
Kind of ironic that reactionaries are demanding that George Bush get the credit for Obama's assassinating Osama bin Laden. The Wall St. Journal and every other of the seemingly endless neofascist media outlets that blanket the U.S. consciousness has been harping on that ridiculous theme. Their justifications boil down to two: 1) he "started the process," whatever that vagary is supposed to mean, and 2) "enhanced interrogations" (what normal humans call torture) produced intel that led to bin Laden.
Of course, if Obama were a Republican, and Bush had been a Democrat, these neofascists wouldn't be demanding credit for Bush, they'd be sneering at what a failure Bush was compared to the manly Obama.
Of course, "enhanced interrogation" is torture. Aside from the fact that it obviously is, by the descriptions of the "techniques," the whole point is to FORCE prisoners to TALK by physical pressure and pain. If it wasn't torture, they wouldn't be doing it.
And it's a lie to say they got critical intel that way. In fact, Sheikh, Khalid Mohammad, the "mastermind" of 9/11, was waterboarded (drowned) 183 times, and he refused to give up the courier that supposedly led to bin Laden. So if anything, we now have proof that torture DOESN'T work (it certainly didn't work in this case). Fact is, as the former chief army interrogator in Iraq says, FALSE intel derived from torture sent them on time-and-resource-wasting wild goose chases. If anything, torture RETARDED the hunt for bin Laden.
Now, on to Bush's treason. The CIA's former head of the Get bin Laden squad, Michael Scheuer, said on at least one radio interview that I heard personally that he was at Tora Bora when bin Laden was cornered there. Scheuer radioed to have 450 army Rangers sent to get bin Laden- and this was REFUSED.
Now this is just 2 months after 9/11. You might remember the frenzy the U.S. was in at that time about bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. They were going to turn the world upside down and shake it until bin Laden fell out.
Instead they decided to outsource getting this #1 monster to the ragtag "Northern Alliance," a grabbag of Afghan opportunists, mercenaries and warlords!
So why on earth would they deliberately allow bin Laden to escape? Simple. They needed to bogeyman to still be out there. They were still in the process of passing more repressive laws, grabbing more and more secrety police powers for the FBI, NSA, CIA. And critically, they needed bin Laden as an excuse to invade Iraq. Recall, on the very day of 9/11/01, Donald Rumsfeld, Bush's War Secretary, ordered that the attack be connected to Iraq. Even before they came into power on Bush's coattails, the so-called "neoconservatives" (mostly Jewish hard-right reactionaries) had been pushing for years to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein, presumably to serve Israel. There is plenty of public papers and articles by this gang to that effect. (Even more sinisterly, they wanted "another Pearl Harbor" to galvanize public opinion to invade Iraq. And they got one. Plus, the evidence is overwhelming that the FBI and CIA had the 9/11 plotters in the U.S. under surveillance, and deliberately allowed the plot to go forward. That's another essay, but I'll just mention two key facts- the refusal of FBI D.C. headquarters to allow the FBI office in Minnesota to search the computer of captured 9/11 would-be pilot Zacarias Moussaouri, who was arrested prior to the fateful day, and who French intel had told the U.S. was a terrorist; and the fact that the landlord for 2 of the hijackers was an FBI informer. When Congress wanted to qauestion the informer and his FBI handler, the FBI flat out refused, and Congress backed down. Which by the way proves the U.S. is a police state. How else can a secret police force outrank the national legislature, except in a police state? [See, NY Times, Oct. 6, 2002,
So the traitor Bush should get credit for killing bin Laden. That's rich. Typical of GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) and general reactionary over-the-top GALL.
Of course, if Obama were a Republican, and Bush had been a Democrat, these neofascists wouldn't be demanding credit for Bush, they'd be sneering at what a failure Bush was compared to the manly Obama.
Of course, "enhanced interrogation" is torture. Aside from the fact that it obviously is, by the descriptions of the "techniques," the whole point is to FORCE prisoners to TALK by physical pressure and pain. If it wasn't torture, they wouldn't be doing it.
And it's a lie to say they got critical intel that way. In fact, Sheikh, Khalid Mohammad, the "mastermind" of 9/11, was waterboarded (drowned) 183 times, and he refused to give up the courier that supposedly led to bin Laden. So if anything, we now have proof that torture DOESN'T work (it certainly didn't work in this case). Fact is, as the former chief army interrogator in Iraq says, FALSE intel derived from torture sent them on time-and-resource-wasting wild goose chases. If anything, torture RETARDED the hunt for bin Laden.
Now, on to Bush's treason. The CIA's former head of the Get bin Laden squad, Michael Scheuer, said on at least one radio interview that I heard personally that he was at Tora Bora when bin Laden was cornered there. Scheuer radioed to have 450 army Rangers sent to get bin Laden- and this was REFUSED.
Now this is just 2 months after 9/11. You might remember the frenzy the U.S. was in at that time about bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. They were going to turn the world upside down and shake it until bin Laden fell out.
Instead they decided to outsource getting this #1 monster to the ragtag "Northern Alliance," a grabbag of Afghan opportunists, mercenaries and warlords!
So why on earth would they deliberately allow bin Laden to escape? Simple. They needed to bogeyman to still be out there. They were still in the process of passing more repressive laws, grabbing more and more secrety police powers for the FBI, NSA, CIA. And critically, they needed bin Laden as an excuse to invade Iraq. Recall, on the very day of 9/11/01, Donald Rumsfeld, Bush's War Secretary, ordered that the attack be connected to Iraq. Even before they came into power on Bush's coattails, the so-called "neoconservatives" (mostly Jewish hard-right reactionaries) had been pushing for years to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein, presumably to serve Israel. There is plenty of public papers and articles by this gang to that effect. (Even more sinisterly, they wanted "another Pearl Harbor" to galvanize public opinion to invade Iraq. And they got one. Plus, the evidence is overwhelming that the FBI and CIA had the 9/11 plotters in the U.S. under surveillance, and deliberately allowed the plot to go forward. That's another essay, but I'll just mention two key facts- the refusal of FBI D.C. headquarters to allow the FBI office in Minnesota to search the computer of captured 9/11 would-be pilot Zacarias Moussaouri, who was arrested prior to the fateful day, and who French intel had told the U.S. was a terrorist; and the fact that the landlord for 2 of the hijackers was an FBI informer. When Congress wanted to qauestion the informer and his FBI handler, the FBI flat out refused, and Congress backed down. Which by the way proves the U.S. is a police state. How else can a secret police force outrank the national legislature, except in a police state? [See, NY Times, Oct. 6, 2002,
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/us/threats-responses-inquiry-congress-seeks-fbi-data-informer-fbi-resists.html?scp=14&sq=fbi&st=nyt click on title of this post for link.]
So the traitor Bush should get credit for killing bin Laden. That's rich. Typical of GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) and general reactionary over-the-top GALL.
Monday, May 09, 2011
Obama Seeking Reelection as President Death
Barack Hussein Obama is maximizing the political advantage of killing Official Enemies of America. A week after ordering the assassination of Osama bin Laden by a SEAL death squad, he appeared on CBS TV's 60 Minutes show, taking up the entire hour (minus commercials) to expound on how he ordered the killing. "Me me me," was the content.
The same day, he tried to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen who exhorts people to wage jihad against the U.S. and "Western interests" as they're called. Basically, a man with dangerous opinions. A drone, Obama's favorite weapon, attacked a couple of cars in Yemen, where al-Awlaki and his group, "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula"- it's a franchise- is. It missed the first time, and the second time killed a couple of confederates of al-Awlaki, but missed him. Oh well. Obama has another 18 months before the election to try and add al-Awlaki's scalp to his belt. (By the way, a U.S. court threw out a suit by al-Awlaki's father to challenge his son's presence on the U.S. death list. The court ruled that the father didn't have "standing," i.e. the matter didn't affect him directly! Also, it was a "political" issue, not a legal one. The Federal judge who threw out the suit did opine that it seemed strange that a warrant was needed to wiretap a citizen, but not to kill one. Gee, life is strange, huh, your honor?)
And anyone who thinks there's something wrong with assassination, is sick in the head. So says Obama, in the last words in his 60 Minutes interview:
" Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined."
Anyone who would even question what Obama did is crazy. Talk about a totalitarian impulse.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”- Lord Acton.
The same day, he tried to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen who exhorts people to wage jihad against the U.S. and "Western interests" as they're called. Basically, a man with dangerous opinions. A drone, Obama's favorite weapon, attacked a couple of cars in Yemen, where al-Awlaki and his group, "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula"- it's a franchise- is. It missed the first time, and the second time killed a couple of confederates of al-Awlaki, but missed him. Oh well. Obama has another 18 months before the election to try and add al-Awlaki's scalp to his belt. (By the way, a U.S. court threw out a suit by al-Awlaki's father to challenge his son's presence on the U.S. death list. The court ruled that the father didn't have "standing," i.e. the matter didn't affect him directly! Also, it was a "political" issue, not a legal one. The Federal judge who threw out the suit did opine that it seemed strange that a warrant was needed to wiretap a citizen, but not to kill one. Gee, life is strange, huh, your honor?)
And anyone who thinks there's something wrong with assassination, is sick in the head. So says Obama, in the last words in his 60 Minutes interview:
" Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined."
Anyone who would even question what Obama did is crazy. Talk about a totalitarian impulse.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”- Lord Acton.
Saturday, May 07, 2011
How Killing bin Laden Makes the World a More Dangerous Place
It has nothing to do with Al-Qaeda. It has to do with legitimizing government assassinations of enemies.
Most of the time, the enemies governments assassinate are not violent. Numerous examples abound, including in the U.S. (Martin Luther King Jr., Terry Santana, the arson murder of John Trudell's family on the same day he led an AIM protest outside FBI HQ in Washington, murders of Puerto Rican Independistas, etc.). The Russians went to Britain to murder Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium. Pinochet, the U.S.-installed and backed butcher of Chile, sent death squads to other Latin American nations, Europe, and the U.S. to murder "enemies" (called "traitors" in twisted fascist-speak). More examples would fill books.
Just as it did with torture, the U.S., by openly sending death squads to murder opponents, which it calls "justice," morally degrades the whole world by lowering the level of civilization. As the lies of the Obama regime are peeled away day by day, it becomes clear this was an assassination. Now they admit that bin Laden was unarmed, and shot through the head, and Paki photos reveal he was apparently shot in bed.
The New York Times and other U.S. media sources keep spreading the lie that there was a 40 minute "firefight," while at the same time if you read the fine print it turns out that ONLY ONE person in the compound fired back, and he was killed at the outset. The rest of the 40 minutes was spent killing 4 defenseless people, including bin Laden and one of his sons, and scooping up computers and data storage devices. They also dropped the "woman used as a human shield" story, a hoary favorite whenever they kill civilians- the Israelis too use that as justification for the mass slaughter of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians in their periodic punishment attacks.
Just as the "human shield" story was recognizably bogus on its face, so was the "40 minute firefight." There was no mention of large numbers of Al-Qaeda fighters to be the other side of this mythical "firefight." How would even 5 guys with guns hold off a force of 24 (or 79- they keep switching between two numbers) highly trained elite killers for 40 minutes? Just not possible.
Another line is that "bin Laden was the most dangerous man in the world," hence needed to be shot on sight- like he's Bruce Lee or something. Ridiculous, deliberate confounding of two senses of the word "dangerous." He certainly wasn't dangerous in a personal physical sense, like say, Mike Tyson. But I guess we're supposed to visualize bin Laden like a comic book villain, with superhuman power. Just as we're supposed to imagine a 40 minute "firefight" by SEALs against a faceless hoard of Islamic fanatics, a la the Hollywood movie propaganda that is burned into our brains. (And guns never run out of bullets in those fantasies either!)
We also got doubletalk about him not surrendering, Reuters already revealed on the very first day (Monday) that it was a "kill not capture" mission. But the U.S. media just ignored that, allowing liars like chief White House mouthpiece Jay Carney to say the SEALs' orders were to capture him if he surrendered." But CIA boss Leon Panetta, who directed the mission and provided live narration for the edification of the top U.S. Imperialists watching the show, said he didn't think bin Laden had time to say anything. (Obviously not, since he was shot on sight, as per orders.)
This has nothing to do with whether bin Laden "deserved to die." This has to do with murderous governments summarily executing enemies. If they decide YOU'RE an enemy, they could do the same to you. And in fact, they've made many "mistakes" in the "War on Terror." Many times the "wrong" people are killed in night raids in Afghanistan. Drone missiles blow people up on the ground, in vehicles, etc. A Yemeni provincial Governor was blow up by drone driving to a meeting with Al-Qaeda types to try and reach an agreement with them- a meeting authorized by the U.S.-backed tyrant, Saleh. So if they're killing even government officials of allied regimes, you KNOW they make a lot of mistakes.
We already know how bad their vaunted "intel" can be. Since over two-thirds of the Gitmo prisoners were "mistakes" and have been released- remember Donald Rumsfeld called them "the worst of the worst"- you still stupidly believe what people in power tell you?- and the Pakis and Afghans sold hapless victims to the credulous Americans as "Al-Qaeda/Taliban terrorist" for the money, and such atrocities have occurred as the Afghan taxi driver hung from a cell wall in a U.S. dungeon in that country by a "contractor"- some "national security" sadist- who beat his legs to a pulp and left him hanging to die, as documented in the file "Taxi to the Dark Side" and elsewhere- I could go on, but since we know all this, why would you WANT the U.S. or ANY government to have the power of summary execution? Because sometimes they get it right and kill people YOU believe "deserve" to die? But you only believe it because of what you "know" from a mendacious propaganda system, aka "the media."
The progress of thousands of years of struggle to advance human rights is being ripped up. People are no longer entitled to a trial, no longer entitled to have an opportunity to contest evidence against them, in fact no evidence is needed to put them to death, or imprison them for life or however long is desired by their captors, as long as the label "terrorist" is affixed to them. Just as it was affixed to the Al-Jazeera cameraman imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for 6 years while the U.S. military pumped him for info about that hated organization and tried to force him to return to Al-J as a spy. (The U.S. has bombed Al-Jazeera 3 or 4 times, in Kabul and Baghdad, and killed their employees.)
A world where governments no longer feel the need to hide their dirty needs, where government murder is openly celebrated, is a much more dangerous world than the previous one, where governments had to go to the trouble of hiding their murder of their enemies, whether they "deserved" to die or not. No longer is hypocrisy the tribute that vice pays to virtue- although the U.S. still want to have it not both ways, but every which way. (Jay Carney again: bin Laden showed signs of resistance, whatever that means. Like some skinny old man who doesn't get exercised can't be cooled out with a gunbutt to the head or whatever by one of the dozens of supermen SEALs in his room!)
Just so stupid people don't misinterpret this- I don't like bin Laden. He was a vicious, murderous, fanatical, medieval nihilist. But there are people in the government who hate me too- and maybe you. If being hated is sufficient reason to be murdered without trial, an awful lot of people are in danger. So the "war on terror" not only has stripped us of our civil liberties and basic human rights, it has put us in grave danger, from the governments who claim to be protecting us. Because "your own" government has a lot more power over you than any bank of Muslim nuts thousands of miles away. And your chances of being killed by terrorists are a lot lot less than your chances of being killed in a motor vehicle accident. (That's like 40,000 people a year in the U.S., roughly.) Probably less than the chance of being killed in a hurricane or by lightning. Strip out the one anomalous year of 2001, and statistically the chances of a terrorist- the non-state kind- harming you are virtually zero.
The U.S. Government- not to mention other governments- has killed many millions of civilians over the years. Al-Qaeda's a bunch of punks next to them.
Most of the time, the enemies governments assassinate are not violent. Numerous examples abound, including in the U.S. (Martin Luther King Jr., Terry Santana, the arson murder of John Trudell's family on the same day he led an AIM protest outside FBI HQ in Washington, murders of Puerto Rican Independistas, etc.). The Russians went to Britain to murder Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium. Pinochet, the U.S.-installed and backed butcher of Chile, sent death squads to other Latin American nations, Europe, and the U.S. to murder "enemies" (called "traitors" in twisted fascist-speak). More examples would fill books.
Just as it did with torture, the U.S., by openly sending death squads to murder opponents, which it calls "justice," morally degrades the whole world by lowering the level of civilization. As the lies of the Obama regime are peeled away day by day, it becomes clear this was an assassination. Now they admit that bin Laden was unarmed, and shot through the head, and Paki photos reveal he was apparently shot in bed.
The New York Times and other U.S. media sources keep spreading the lie that there was a 40 minute "firefight," while at the same time if you read the fine print it turns out that ONLY ONE person in the compound fired back, and he was killed at the outset. The rest of the 40 minutes was spent killing 4 defenseless people, including bin Laden and one of his sons, and scooping up computers and data storage devices. They also dropped the "woman used as a human shield" story, a hoary favorite whenever they kill civilians- the Israelis too use that as justification for the mass slaughter of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians in their periodic punishment attacks.
Just as the "human shield" story was recognizably bogus on its face, so was the "40 minute firefight." There was no mention of large numbers of Al-Qaeda fighters to be the other side of this mythical "firefight." How would even 5 guys with guns hold off a force of 24 (or 79- they keep switching between two numbers) highly trained elite killers for 40 minutes? Just not possible.
Another line is that "bin Laden was the most dangerous man in the world," hence needed to be shot on sight- like he's Bruce Lee or something. Ridiculous, deliberate confounding of two senses of the word "dangerous." He certainly wasn't dangerous in a personal physical sense, like say, Mike Tyson. But I guess we're supposed to visualize bin Laden like a comic book villain, with superhuman power. Just as we're supposed to imagine a 40 minute "firefight" by SEALs against a faceless hoard of Islamic fanatics, a la the Hollywood movie propaganda that is burned into our brains. (And guns never run out of bullets in those fantasies either!)
We also got doubletalk about him not surrendering, Reuters already revealed on the very first day (Monday) that it was a "kill not capture" mission. But the U.S. media just ignored that, allowing liars like chief White House mouthpiece Jay Carney to say the SEALs' orders were to capture him if he surrendered." But CIA boss Leon Panetta, who directed the mission and provided live narration for the edification of the top U.S. Imperialists watching the show, said he didn't think bin Laden had time to say anything. (Obviously not, since he was shot on sight, as per orders.)
This has nothing to do with whether bin Laden "deserved to die." This has to do with murderous governments summarily executing enemies. If they decide YOU'RE an enemy, they could do the same to you. And in fact, they've made many "mistakes" in the "War on Terror." Many times the "wrong" people are killed in night raids in Afghanistan. Drone missiles blow people up on the ground, in vehicles, etc. A Yemeni provincial Governor was blow up by drone driving to a meeting with Al-Qaeda types to try and reach an agreement with them- a meeting authorized by the U.S.-backed tyrant, Saleh. So if they're killing even government officials of allied regimes, you KNOW they make a lot of mistakes.
We already know how bad their vaunted "intel" can be. Since over two-thirds of the Gitmo prisoners were "mistakes" and have been released- remember Donald Rumsfeld called them "the worst of the worst"- you still stupidly believe what people in power tell you?- and the Pakis and Afghans sold hapless victims to the credulous Americans as "Al-Qaeda/Taliban terrorist" for the money, and such atrocities have occurred as the Afghan taxi driver hung from a cell wall in a U.S. dungeon in that country by a "contractor"- some "national security" sadist- who beat his legs to a pulp and left him hanging to die, as documented in the file "Taxi to the Dark Side" and elsewhere- I could go on, but since we know all this, why would you WANT the U.S. or ANY government to have the power of summary execution? Because sometimes they get it right and kill people YOU believe "deserve" to die? But you only believe it because of what you "know" from a mendacious propaganda system, aka "the media."
The progress of thousands of years of struggle to advance human rights is being ripped up. People are no longer entitled to a trial, no longer entitled to have an opportunity to contest evidence against them, in fact no evidence is needed to put them to death, or imprison them for life or however long is desired by their captors, as long as the label "terrorist" is affixed to them. Just as it was affixed to the Al-Jazeera cameraman imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for 6 years while the U.S. military pumped him for info about that hated organization and tried to force him to return to Al-J as a spy. (The U.S. has bombed Al-Jazeera 3 or 4 times, in Kabul and Baghdad, and killed their employees.)
A world where governments no longer feel the need to hide their dirty needs, where government murder is openly celebrated, is a much more dangerous world than the previous one, where governments had to go to the trouble of hiding their murder of their enemies, whether they "deserved" to die or not. No longer is hypocrisy the tribute that vice pays to virtue- although the U.S. still want to have it not both ways, but every which way. (Jay Carney again: bin Laden showed signs of resistance, whatever that means. Like some skinny old man who doesn't get exercised can't be cooled out with a gunbutt to the head or whatever by one of the dozens of supermen SEALs in his room!)
Just so stupid people don't misinterpret this- I don't like bin Laden. He was a vicious, murderous, fanatical, medieval nihilist. But there are people in the government who hate me too- and maybe you. If being hated is sufficient reason to be murdered without trial, an awful lot of people are in danger. So the "war on terror" not only has stripped us of our civil liberties and basic human rights, it has put us in grave danger, from the governments who claim to be protecting us. Because "your own" government has a lot more power over you than any bank of Muslim nuts thousands of miles away. And your chances of being killed by terrorists are a lot lot less than your chances of being killed in a motor vehicle accident. (That's like 40,000 people a year in the U.S., roughly.) Probably less than the chance of being killed in a hurricane or by lightning. Strip out the one anomalous year of 2001, and statistically the chances of a terrorist- the non-state kind- harming you are virtually zero.
The U.S. Government- not to mention other governments- has killed many millions of civilians over the years. Al-Qaeda's a bunch of punks next to them.
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