Latest PsyWar Ploy Against Bradley Manning

Recent photos of U.S. Army political prisoner Bradley Manning indicate yet another creepy mind-manipulating ploy being used against him. News photos of Manning being led into "court" on the military base at Fort Meade, Maryland (which is also the main base of the National Security Agency, the giant Pentagon global electronic spying organization that strives to spy on all communications of everyone, everywhere) shows him being "escorted" by one soldier who looks like a twin of himself, only a head taller. Same receding chin, face, eyeglasses. Sort of a big brother. Obviously they searched through their personnel to find this guy, who Bradley would subconsciously trust and look up to, and presumably carelessly make self-incrminating statements to and/or items of intelligence value. The news media, while running these pictures, pretends not to notice. Or maybe they aren't very sophisticated. Obviously psychiatrists/psychologists are plotting against Manning along with the rest of the oppressive power structure Manning is trapped in, thanks to the secret police informer Adrian Lamo. Manning carelessly confided in Lamo, it is said.

 Here are three of the photos:

U.S.’ Saudi Pals Behead A Witch

What? Is that a satirical headline? Are we still in medieval times?  It is in Saudi Arabia, beloved ally of the U.S., bulwark against Iran, Shiite “extremism,” and “terrorism.” [This needs some translation: Al-Qaeda and its offshoots, the Taliban, the various Paki “militants,” etc. are Sunnis, not Shiites. As are the Saudis, who are the funders of Sunni terrorism and have been since the 1970s. Confusing, I know. You can’t analyze U.S. foreign policy and propaganda too closely because logically it’s incoherent. “Terrorism” in this context refers to enemies of Israel, mainly Hezbollah and Hamas.]

Anyway, the Saudis just beheaded a woman for “witchcraft” and “sorcery.” The provincial chief of religious police (sic) proudly announced the butchery.

I only heard this reported on Al-Jazeera, not on the BBC, or NPR, for example. Be interesting to see what kind of coverage it gets. (Of course, if Iran had done it, you’d be hearing plenty.)

Actually there’s a good reason for “the” media to ignore this story- it’s the 73rd beheading in Saudi Arabia this year. So it’s kind of like a dog bites man story, not really news! Much more important is which GOP Presidential aspirant made what catty remark about a rival. Or fires. Or crime stories. Lots of fires and crime stories in the local media in the U.S.

But hey, the Saudis have the U.S.’ back in the oil market, making sure the price never rises too high. You have to have your priorities straight. All that prattle about human rights has always been just so much guff anyway. (Look at U.S. history if you don’t believe it. Or look at the current police savagery against the Occupy Movement.)

Another story apparently only on Al-Jazeera (at least among broadcast media in the U.S.) is the murder of three Mexican students by the police in a protest against unsupportable prices to get an education. To be fair, that’s progress. In 1968 the Mexican government slaughtered at least 250 students in a sit-in, using army snipers, so the Olympics wouldn’t be “spoiled.” (It worked! The massacre-which was blacked out by U.S. media, which basically still blacks it out- in contrast to endless dredging up of Pan Am 103 downed over Lockerbie, say- didn’t spoil the Olympics, as apparently a student sit-in would have.) So this time the Mexican rulers only killed less than one one-hundredth the number of students they did in one day in 1968. Gotta give credit where credit is due.

The students had the effrontery to block a highway to demand a meeting with the Governor of Guerrero province. The Governor’s reply was sending an assassin to stand among the police with a rifle and gun down the students. That’s dialogue, authoritarian-style. (But remember, in the “Free World,” the word for “authoritarian” is “democratic.”)

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17th Global Climate Change Conference Achieves Breakthrough!

Well, not really. At least I don’t think so, despite some media reports claiming a “breakthrough.”

What actually happened at the seventeenth (count ‘em, 17!!) conference of the “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change” held in Durban, South Africa, was that nations promised to work towards a new treaty, which will supposedly be agreed to by 2020. In other words, they kicked the can down the road another nine years.

There was also a promise to create a fund to help poor nations adapt to climate change (a tacit admission that more warming is unavoidable, and not a “myth” as American reactionaries, including virtually all Republican politicians, and corporate rags like the Wall Street Journal, strenuously insist), but without any actual money amounts specified or pledged. Kind of like a “Have a nice day!,” an insincere expression of goodwill.

So that was the outcome of 72 hours of wrangling.

Under Obama, the U.S. still insists that “developing” nations like India, China, and Brazil shouldn’t get any special dispensation.

The European Union had wanted a “road map” spelling out the route to a legally binding treaty, but caved under Chinese and Indian pressure and U.S. fecklessness. Instead they had to settle for the sop of a vague promise of some future treaty or other that might or might not be actually ratified.

Recall that the moribund, ineffective Kyoto Treaty (which the U.S. always refused to sign, in part thanks to the utterly reactionary United States Senate, which unfortunately must ratify all treaties as per the U.S. “Constitution.”) was agreed to back in 1997, 14 years ago. So we’ll be into over 2 decades of stalling and foot-dragging, assuming there even is

an agreement in 2020.

Rabidly reactionary U.S. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma (what is it with that state? Is it an open air insane asylum?) a fanatical, rage-filled climate science hater, gloated in a video to his demented followers about the failure of the conference to actually do anything.

The assessment of the climate change and energy “fellow” at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, an organization of top-level U.S. Brahmins, a guy named Michael A. Levi, was a bit on the gloomy side:

“It is difficult to avoid concluding that the Europeans ultimately blinked.” “The reality is that there is no more agreement on the future of the climate talks than there was when negotiators first convened two weeks ago.” [I.e. NO progress was made AT ALL.] “Europe will continue to insist on a full-blown legally binding agreement; China and India will continue to oppose one; and the United States, while leaving the door open to an agreement that is binding for all, will continue to be unenthusiastic as well. These positions are largely rooted in incompatible views of the future, and there is no reason to believe that more talking will change them.” I.e., no reason to think there will actually be a meaningful treaty by 2020.

Aww gee, Mike, why you gotta bring people down? Can’t you find a silver lining to focus on? How about this: they didn’t throw their shoes at each other. That’s something!

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Israel Increases Repression of Media

Journalists in Israel are alarmed and up in arms over the latest attacks on free Israeli media. So far, a radio station the government doesn't like has been forced off the air, and the Knesset voted to shut down an investigative tv station in retaliation for exposes about the Likud-led government. (The pretext was unpaid "licensing fees" and "royalties" owed to the government.) Nasty Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is suing the station for $1.2 million for good measure for exposing misdeeds of his.

A new, extremely punitive "libel" law will quash investigative journalism, and also targets bloggers, making them extremely vulnerable.

So far the only reportage of this in the U.S. media, which glorifies Israel and presents only the propaganda vision of that country, has been in the American Jewish publication The Jewish Daily Forward.



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Obama’s Jamaican Massacre

The Obama regime is behind a massacre of 73 civilians in the Tivoli Gardens neighborhood of Kingston, Jamaica, on May 24, 2010, according to an article in The New Yorker. [Click on headline for link to article or go to http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/12/12/111212fa_fact_schwartz#ixzz1fmpNcq3Y A Massacre In Jamaica] The author spent eleven weeks in Jamaica researching the article. So far, the U.S. and Jamaican Governments refuse to explain their slaughter, who the victims were, or why they were murdered. Contrary to lying reports in the rest of the U.S. media, they were not “gunmen” working for a “drug gang” “killed in shootouts.” (The Jamaican state goons only claimed to have recovered 6 guns, belieing any possible “they were all killed in shootouts” claim.)

The massacre occurred because the U.S., once again arrogantly asserting its sovereignty over the entire globe and the supremacy of its “law,” demanded that a “drug lord” named Christopher Coke be handed over to the tender mercies of the its draconian legal system. (With over 2 million prisoners, the U.S. with its 50 states has more people locked up than any nation on earth, including China, which has over four times the population. And the U.S. has thousands of people who committed crimes as minors imprisoned for life without parole. In the U.S., thousands of prisoners are kept in solitary confinement for years, a form of torture. But there is no space to insert a book here about the horrors of the U.S. “justice” and penal systems.)

The raid was necessary because supplying the U.S. market with recreational substances is a major source of economic substenance in Jamaica, especially in the poor areas viewed with contempt by the local rulers. So in order to take out a person who was a pillar of the community, a military invasion was required.

The massacre occurred during a Warsaw Ghetto liquidation type raid on Coke’s neighborhood stronghold. Soldiers and police barricaded the entire neighborhood, and those men they didn’t kill were shipped off to prison camps. (Of course some of the murder victims were women.) The area has been under military occupation ever since. (Guns, bullets, uniforms, etc. helpfully supplied by the U.S. That’s called “aid to Jamaica.” The apparent definition of “Jamaica” being “our local stooges in power” and “aid” being “the repressive weaponry and technology so they can keep the Jamaican populace underfoot.)

During the massacre, the U.S. Department of “Homeland Security” (i.e. Domestic Repression, which apparently regards Jamaica as U.S. territory- what, the U.S. an empire?) flew a spy plane overhead and sent a live video feed of the extermination operation to U.S. and Jamaican state officials for their delectation. (What a rush they must get from the power to kill!)

This was very very important, as Jamaica is deemed responsible for a whole 2-3% or banned drugs entering the U.S. So it’s certainly worth the price in (Jamaican) blood that was paid. Now no more drugs will ever transit through Jamaica ever again, nor will the drugs simply transit through some other country. Of that you can be sure. (If you’re a fool.)

Thus another Great Victory in the War On Drugs is scored. Pretty soon now, no one in America will want to get high ever again.

Ironically, Coke wasn‘t even captured during the raid. Instead he turned himself in later, to avoid more massacres. The Evil Drug Kingpin, you see, cared more for the lives of Jamaicans than their “Government” does, and certainly more than the U.S. does.

Since the imprisonment of Coke makes absolutely no difference whatsoever in the consumption of banned substances in the U.S., one might fairly ask what is the root of U.S. fanaticism about this. It is very reminiscent of the irrational hatred of the Nazis for Jews, which also defies logical analysis.

This being The New Yorker, a haute bourgeois organ, naturally moral condemnation of this U.S. state crime is absent.  (I mean, it’s not like Russia or Iran or Cuba did it or something!) You’ll have to supply your own moral outrage. You’ll have to supply the obvious conclusions yourself too. Look, The New Yorker is owned by Conde Nast, and is a vehicle for luxury goods and “lifestyle” ads. They can’t be so “radical” or “extreme” as to denounce U.S. criminality. That would be “irresponsible.” But they provide a useful service by presenting the overwhelming facts. Shouldn’t be hard to draw the proper political and moral conclusions in such an obvious case for anyone who isn’t an imbecile. (Unfortunately too many people are, especially in America.)

Let me make sure I’m being clear:

Barack Obama is a murderer.

The puppet president of Jamaica is a murderer.

The DEA is a gang of murderers. (So what’s new?)

Now perhaps the Liberals can explain again why having a Republican for President is so much worse than having a Democrat. I keep forgetting the reason(s).

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What You’re Paying For With AT&T Phone “Service”

That is, when you can even make a normal call on your cellphone.

One thing you’re paying for is millions of dollars for bogus, self’serving “advice” to the company boss from “investment bankers” (finance capitalist vampires) and corporate lawyers to tell him what he wants to hear, namely that buying T-Mobile is a slam dunk, no anti-trust problem at all, which is exactly what he wanted to hear, validating his own genius. (And generating fat fees for the advice-givers.)

Turns out that was dead wrong. The FCC is opposing the anti-competitive merger, and the “Justice” Department is suing under anti-trust law to block it. Oops!

Guess just because something is very very expensive, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s of high quality, including advice.

So here we have exorbitantly expensive “investment bankers” and corporate lawyers who provided a gold-plated vanity mirror to reflect Chairman and CEO’s Randall L. Stephenson’s brilliance back to his face.

But “consumers” never feel robbed by the extravagant wastefulness of corporations, or their stock buybacks, or dividends, or profits. And workers too accept their wages as “fair.”

But when it comes to taxes, somehow that is perceived as stealing. That’s “my” money that’s being taken.

Whose money is taken when you give it to a corporation? And it’s not as if you don’t get anything in return for taxes. You get a government. You get a fire department, a police department (a mixed blessing, to be sure). You get Social Security and Medicare (despised by the GOP and corporate media).

Point is, people are conditioned to see tax as theft, government as waste. As if the trillions of dollars corporations have amasses don’t come from the people too.

But the official ideology holds that the rich magically “create wealth.” Like magicians. Has nothing to do with workers working!

What’s Worse, Storming An Embassy Or Assassinating Scientists?

If it involves a hate-object nation like Iran, clearly mobs storming consulates is an outrage, worthy of condemnation by the UN Security Council and lectures by the President of the U.S. about responsibility. Assassinating Iranian physicists, however, is barely worth reporting in the papers. And when it is reported, it’s with the pretense that who’s doing it is a “mystery.”

UK PM David Cameron calls the overrunning of Britain’s embassy in Tehran by a mob  “outrageous” and “indefensible” and threatens unspecified “grave consequences.” Unlike any consequences the U.S. or Israel suffer for assassinating scientists inside another country. Or any that the UK and U.S. suffered for overthrowing the last democratic regime in Iran in 1953, imposing a vicious dictator, the “Shah” (“King”), who killed 250,000 Iranians during the course of his bloody reign. With the CIA’s help, his secret police, the SAVAK, did such a great job of torturing and exterminating anyone with a smidgen of progressive, democratic consciousness that when the Iranian people couldn’t take any more, only fundamentalist mullahs were left as an organized group to fill the power vacuum. So an oppressive, theocratic oligarchy is the legacy of the U.S.-UK coup. (During his quarter century reign, Amnesty International listed Iran as the world’s worst human rights violator.)

Now “international outrage” is the order of the day for trashing the British embassy. (No harm was done to any British personnel.) Murdering scientists? Don’t mention it. Take a guess what the reaction would be if Iran was assassinating people inside the UK or U.S.

There’s a history here, which the Western media assiduously blacks out so people won’t be aware of it. But people in Iran are aware of it. I suspect that is why, of all the countries with sanctions against Iran, the UK’s facilities were attacked. (The U.S. has no diplomatic mission in Iran.)

No, this doesn’t mean I’m on Iran’s “side.” I’m not. I’m objective. Something very rare.

By the way, Israel sacked the Soviet embassy in Beirut during their 1982 invasion of Lebanon. And the CIA had a plan to attack the Chinese embassy in Havana in the early 1960s, including killing Chinese diplomatic personnel. The Western media threw those bits of history down the memory hole. “History” in the West (and everywhere, unfortunately) is a process of selective “remembering” (often distorted or flat-out false) and convenient “forgetting,” driven by concealed political and ideological agendas, while feigning “objectivity.”

[After I wrote this, later in the day the BBC kindly illustrated my point about dishonest propagandists blacking out history.  The anchor on “World (Dis)Service” interviewed the BBC’s Jonathan Marcus, who “explained” Iranian behavior in terms of Iranian perceptions about British involvement in the region. No mention of the 1953 coup, or Britain colonizing the region by force, or dispossessing Palestinians in favor of Jews from Europe. Not that the Iranian regime is reasonable, or decent.  But painting it black and white, as in We the West are the Good Guys and Iran is Evil is clearly not journalism but propaganda. Propaganda designed to prepare public opinion for another war, in fact.]

Agents Of Financial Oligarchy Seize Direct Control Of Greek and Italian Governments

Without any vote by the people of those countries, agents of the top levels of global finance have seized direct government power in Greece and Italy. Their resumes, proudly put forth in the corporate media as superior qualifications justifying their anti-democratic imposition on the people, in fact are damning evidence of just who they are and what class they represent.

In Greece, the political bosses appointed Lucas Papademos, the former vice-president of the European Central Bank, as Prime Minister. Papademos demanded, as conditions for his deigning to take over Greece without the approval of the Greek people (this lifelong elitist never had to be elected to anything in his life to weird  power) that he have a term of six months, thus cancelling the promised February elections (that’s the second canceled chance to vote for the Greek people, counting Papandreou’s promise of a “referendum” on the onerous “bailout” deal, a promise he reneged on just 3 days after making it), so that he’d have enough time to cram the “austerity” “medicine” down the throats of the Greek people; total control over cabinet appointments, and sweeping powers. Oh, and he acts like he’s doing everyone a favor by taking over.

According to the London Guardian:

“The appointment of Papademos, who has never been elected to any public office but is considered one of Europe's foremost experts in macroeconomics, was met with relief.

“Politicians, pundits, economists, business and industry leaders all expressed the belief that, liberated from the constraints of "political cost", Papademos was the ideal person to navigate the country away from the shores of economic disaster.

"’The new government is the last hope for the Greek economy," said Dimitris Daskalopoulos, who heads the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises. "If Greeks allow the new prime minister to work, if they overcome party politics … it can become a government of national salvation.’"

Who likes him speaks volumes. Papademos was indoctrinated in the U.S. In his “acceptance speech,” he called for “unity” and “consensus;” i.e. unity of the political elite behind his draconian plan to make the Greek economy scream to pay off the bondholders.

Meanwhile, in Italy, the President, an ex-Communist Party member (!) named Giorgio Napolitano, anointed another financial plutocrat, one Mario Monti, senator for life. This to pave the way for his appointment (again sans any input from the people) as Prime Minister to replace the absurd, corrupt lothario Silvio Berlusconi. This eminence is described as a “free market economist” by the Wall Street Journal, which of course approves. Monti is an ex-European Commissioner, that is, a member of the permanent ruling class in Europe (unelected of course), the capitalist nomenklatura, if you will.

The euphemism for these guys is “technocrat.” This is totally disingenuous, a disguise of their true nature. “Technocrat” implies, and the corporate media “news” reporting often states explicitly, that these agents are non-ideological, neutral technicians, like economic engineers, and “economics” is some value-free science, like physics or chemistry.

 In fact, what they call “economics” is mostly an ideology with a specific class bias. The “technocrats” are political agents who represent the transnational financial oligarchy. Far from being non-ideological, they have an agenda to defend the class interests of the top levels of finance capital. Their ideology, falsely put forth as neutral, objective reality, makes the economic interests of the financial oligarchy paramount over everything else. This attitude is a given, and is paraded under the false premise of economic reality, like rock strata in geology. But this is not science, and these class interests are not an immutable reality. And the submission of all other interests and values to their hegemony is pure and simply a policy choice, not an unavoidable imperative of reality.

Euro Fetishism

The financial elites and their political frontmen are waxing hysterical over the prospect of Greece “leaving the Eurozone,” i.e. reverting to its own sovereign currency, the drachman. Understand, if this happened, Greece would still be part of the European Union, as the 10 members of that Union that don’t use the euro are. (There are 27 nations in the European Union, 17 of which abolished their national currencies and adopted the euro as a common currency.)

Why a tiny nation of 11 million people is crucial to the viability of the euro is a mystery. If the euro is really that fragile, it’s not a viable currency anyway.

Of course, as critics predicted, problems would result from a common currency and collective central bank, but individual national fiscal policies and separate economies with separate rates of growth, inflation, unemployment, etc.

Greece desperately needs to jettison the euro and bring back the drachma. The drachma will be worth less than euros. Greek exports will immediately become less expensive and thus more competitive, generating production in Greece. Greece will draw more tourists since it will be much cheaper to vacation there. And while this is called “inflationary,” probably Greeks will find lower prices. Every country that adopted the euro socked its people with higher retail prices. In Greece a bottle of water went from half a drachma to one and a half euros (about $2.).

High Speed Railroad Set Up To Persecute Occupy Wall Street Protesters

New York City is expanding a special court for the express purpose of “processing” the 900 protesters rounded up by the New York Police Department (NYPD) in the past few weeks. 

The special “court” dispenses with such niceties as juries or allowing defense attorneys enough time for preparation. (Bet you thought the U.S. Constitution “guaranteed” you a right to a jury trial That’s what it says, true, but words don’t always mean what they say, I guess.)

An enthusiastic NY Times article on the matter hails it as providing “swift justice.” Egyptian military “court” style, I’d say. [“Special Manhattan Court Trims Case Backlog, but Defense Lawyers See Drawbacks,” NYT, 11/3/11, p. A25. “Drawbacks” like the fact that the whole setup is skewed to favor prosecutors and produce convictions.Link to article on blogpost title.]

The Times gives an example of how the “court” works by citing the case of an African street vendor arrested for selling umbrellas without a permit. His lawyer asked for a ONE DAY delay in the “trial” so that a defense witness could appear.

The “court” said no. (Time is of the essence in such serious matters, you see.) Duly convicted by the “judge,” the African was fine $500 for the crime of trying to survive.

Next up, $500 fines for silly people who think the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution “guarantees” their freedom of speech and assembly. And if you don’t pay, they imprison you.

Of course, these being misdemeanor charges, defendant-victims can still be sentenced to jail for a year, say. But in a country where stealing a slice of pizza can get you life in prison, as happens in California, what’s the big deal about having a year of your life stolen? Quit your whining!

Euro Bosses Beat Back Threat Of Democracy Breaking Out In Greece

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou didn't even have the decency to wait half a week before reneging on his offer of allowing the Greek people to vote in a referendum on the economic holocaust being imposed on them. "Summoned to explain himself" (as all media reports phrased it) by his political superiors to the G-20 meeting site in lovely Cannes, France, he was handed an ultimatum to decide if Greece was in or out of the Eurozone (i.e. the euro currency bloc). Oh, and no more money until after that referendum.

Back in Greece, Papandreou revealed that all he really cared about was staying Prime Minister as long as possible. That's all that matters to him. But let him tell you. Here's what he said to the Greek Parliament:

"I will be glad even if we don't go to a referendum, which was never a purpose in itself. I'm glad that all this discussion has at least brought a lot of people back to their senses," he said in the text of his speech released to media. Can you get more nakedly cynical than that? He says it right out in the open.


All he wants is a "unity" government with his bourgeois opposition party. He wants to hang on to his pathetic job as underboss of Greece for High Finance. Facing a no-confidence vote tomorrow, his "referendum" offer was just a ploy to save his own job. What he wants is to force the opposition to sit in the same sinking boat he's in. The right wing opposition party wants early elections, which they will cynically win by pretending to seek a "better deal" from the financiers and political bosses of Greater Europe.


This is the trouble with bourgeois class dictatorships. There is actually no electoral choice in places like Greece and the U.S., where no real alternative is organized as a political party that can genuinely compete for state power.


The Greek people need to overthrow their current rulers and go the Argentine route: go back to their own currency and default on "their" debts- the debts run up by the misrulers who listened to the siren song of Goldman Sachs et al and piled up reckless, feckless, irresponsible debt. The "investment bankers" made a killing "financing" Greek government spending, and now the banks stuck holding the bag want bailouts and rescues. Once again Goldman conned the other financiers, just as it did when it peddled bum bundled junk mortgages as AAA investments to its suckers- I mean, "clients."

German-French Ultimatum To Greece

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou is "summoned" to Cannes by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who demand that Greece make a snap decision whether it wants to stay in the Euro Zone or not.

He was told Greece won't receive more aid until after the January referendum on the latest economic squeeze ("austerity program") so creditors could see if the Greeks would accept the deal.

 "Europe cannot be kept waiting for weeks for the outcome of the referendum" sniffed French Prime Minister Francois Fillon to parliament. "The Greeks must say quickly and without ambiguity whether they choose to keep their place in the euro zone or not."


And Merkel made it clear that the dominant European powers were out of patience and wanted to bring matters to a head one way or the other. "We agreed a plan for Greece last week. We want to put this plan into practice, but for this we need clarity and the meeting tonight should help with precisely this," she said.

European Political Bosses Desperate To Head Off Greek Democracy

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s surprise stunt of calling for a referendum so the Greek people can finally have a say in the economic assaults being waged on them for the past two years (aka “bailouts” and “rescues,” although it’s bankers and other bondholders  who are the objects of concern) has European political bosses (called “leaders,” just as corporate bosses aren’t bosses, but are “leaders”) in a tizzy. Sarkozy of France, Merkel of Germany et al are insisting that the deal is done, and the Greeks just have to swallow it, no voting by the Greek people allowed.

The Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, was particularly blunt. He told his Parliament in no uncertain terms that the planned referendum was “very unfortunate” and “we have to do everything to prevent it.”

We have to do everything to prevent it. Some CIA goon couldn’t have said it better. God forbid the Greek people have a say in their own fate. God forbid decisions made by the rulers should be subject to popular approval. That would be…democratic!!!

“Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou was summoned to Cannes to explain himself…” to the other countries’ bosses. NPR actually said this today Nov 2 at 4:31 pm. Can you get more nakedly highhanded and arrogant? But I suppose that’s accurate. Various newspapers in the U.S. and Europe also used the verb “summoned” to describe the action.

Whiff Of Democracy In Greece Sends Markets Into A Tizzy

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou pulled a surprise today by announcing that he would put the latest "bailout-reform-austerity" deal to a vote of the Greek people- those who stand to suffer under it.

This threw the financial markets for a loop, with stocks in Europe and the U.S. down several percentage points. The financial elite and its various mouthpieces were all in a lather about this terrible idea. What right do the people who are losing their livelihoods have to weigh in on the plan the rulers have decided on for them?

Already the speculation on one voice of finance, Bloomberg Radio (owned by the same billionaire who is Mayor of New York City, the self-proclaimed "Greatest City in the World," or, as a Bloomberg Radio slogan has it, "The Financial Capital of The World," perhaps the same thing) is that Papandreou would either back down- or be ousted! Well, the masters of the world (or of "the universe," in their own megalomaniacal phrase) are good at ousting disobedient politicians. (Why not? They have professionals working for them, like the CIA and MI6, et al.) Click on the title of this post for a link to an example of finance hysteria.

Already on the same day another member of theso-called "socialist" party of Papandreou is whispering in the $ media's ears that the referendum is a nonstarter. We shall see.

If the so-called "cradle of democracy" won't allow its own people to have any say in their own fate, they need to overthrow that regime.

Oops! OMG! Now I'm guilty of "subversion"! I better not tell this to anyone else, because then I'll be guilty of "seditious conspiracy"! That's no joke, the U.S. still has such laws on its books- and it uses them. Would that apply to a foreign government? Well, Jose Padilla was convicted of "terrorism" for aiding Bosnian Muslims being slaughtered by Serbs in the Balkans. And Victor Bout is about to be convicted for "terrorism" in a U.S. court because the DEA tricked him into talking to some of its "informers" who were pretending to be from FARC- and Bout never set foot in the U.S. until the U.S. had the Thais arrest him and hand him over. And all those Colombian and Mexican and other "drug lords" who never were in the U.S. except when they were brought here in chains, their crimes were committed on foreign soil. U.S. writ extends over the entire planet. So who knows how they might interpret a "threat" against a friendly foreign government? People who send money for the social needs of Palestinians under Israeli blockade are imprisoned in the U.S. for "material aid to terrorism."

Obama just put Tim DeChristopher in prison for two years for bidding at an auction for oil drilling leases on Federal lands. Seriously, that's all he did.

The truth is, there is no limit to U.S. repressiveness. Insofar as I have received a death threat from U.S. secret policemen in the past, and they have assassinated American dissidents repeatedly over the years, you can't put anything past the evil bastards. Just hope the current crop of naive Occupy Wall Street protesters gets wised up soon about the ruthless nature of who they're up again. (The police are giving them a great education on that score with their vicious brutality.)