Brace Yourselves For Unintended Ironies In Aaron Swartz Affair

Thought it was galling enough to see a life pointlessly destroyed in the name of morality by the U.S. Government, with U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz functioning as the spear point of power in this case? And then having to listen to the same Ortiz extol the professionalism and dedication of her junior Javerts?

Then wait! There's more!

The Somali puppet “president” Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was in Washington, D.C. January 17^th to stand next to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the two of them made nice, bloviating on with the usual gush about progress, democracy, community of nations, etc. etc. One thing Mohamud said struck me. It was this, in answer to a question:

“Somalia –  United States is a role model country for the democracy, for the freedom of people, for the development of human capital. And this model we are going to pursue, of course, as the rest of the world. “[sic]. (1)

Well don't copy it too closely, pal, or you'll have to destroy some “human capital” too, as happened with Aaron Swartz (and millions of others who lack employment opportunities, are poorly educated, and the smaller number singled out for active persecution).

Something about the U.S. power system is always producing unintended ironies.

By the way, Somalia ranks as one of the most corrupt governments in the world, along with North Korea, according to Transparency International. So take it from them, human potential means a lot to them!

And here's another one, although this could also be filed under “double standards” or “twisted priorities.”

Remember Massey “Energy,” the erstwhile criminal coal company that caused a mine explosion which killed 40 of its miners in 2010? (Some other corporation subsequently found the foul Massey so tempting it bought it.) Now one of its former managers has pleaded out to “conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Government.” Want to guess his sentence? 35 years, maybe? Nooo.

21 months. For helping to kill 40 people. But hey, he's cooperating with the Feds! (Too bad Aaron didn't have anyone he could have handed up to the Feds. Maybe he could have burned some members of Anonymous, like FBI puppet “Sabu” (Hector Xavier Monsegur) did, or help crucify a leaker, like amoral defective being Adrian Lamo did to Bradley Manning. Check your ethics and morality at the door, all who enter the Federal maw! Helps to not have any to begin with, I suppose.) Footnote (2)

A bit more information has dribbled out about Swartz case. A belated Wall Street Journal editorial [1/18/13] says U.S. Persecutor- excuse me, prosecutor- Carmen Ortiz demanded that Swartz plead guilty to all 13 felonies she slammed him with to get that cushy six month prison stretch. Which would have killed most of his employment prospects, but hey, he probably could have gotten a job in a car wash or something.

The ultra-reactionary WSJ, while deeming it unfair to blame Ortiz for Aaron's suicide, nevertheless rapped her for abuse of prosecutorial discretion. The WSJ also took the occasion to slam Swartz's ideological inclinations and the “information wants to be free” movement generally.

But this is hardly the first suicide prompted by U.S. Government persecution or harassment. Ernest Hemingway was apparently driven to suicide at least in part by FBI harassment, a fact that has only recently been “discovered.” (It was well known to Hemingway himself, however. One of his “friends” recently wrote a mea culpa in which he confessed to dismissing Hemingway as paranoid at the time.) And there was a vicious Federal narc who later went to work for the CIA testing drugs on unwitting “subjects” who captured a drug dealer who killed himself to avoid prison. In “retirement,” this thug prowled the beaches hunting for marijuana smokers.

Part of the requirement for maintaining the illusion of “freedom” and “democracy” and the dominance of an ideological system that perpetuates false consciousness on a massive scale is the constant work of destroying and preventing connections like these from being made. The forest must constantly be obfuscated by a focus not even on a tree, but on a leaf on a tree. (And preferably something to do with celebrities- i.e. something insignificant.)

Here's an example of the deliberate destruction of connections: the “Iranian hostage crisis” is something that the bourgeois commentariat is constantly circling back to, like a dog sniffing its own shit. I've heard it mentioned several times on the radio in just the past week. (NPR, BBC, among others.) But they never ever mention what precipitated the taking of the “hostages,” the fact that the U.S. allowed the Shah into the U.S. You'd think that would be an important fact. That fact, by putting things in actual context, of course creates an entirely different picture. Namely reality. Apparently we aren't even supposed to think “Why did the Iranians do that?” It's just because they mindlessly hate “us,” is what the indoctrinators want people to think. Of course, if you started pulling on that string, you'd have to go back to the 1953 CIA-MI6 coup that destroyed Iranian democracy and put in place a vicious tyrant (with a CIA-created and mentored secret police SAVAK, with a hideous record of torture and murder) that earned for Iran a ranking by Amnesty International as the worst regime for human rights in the world. 250,000 Iranians died at the hands of the Shah's regime until his overthrow in 1979.

That's not an endorsement of what followed. Since the SAVAK, under the tutelage of its CIA mentors, did such a good job of extirpating any and all possible sources of social organization, the only social force left in Iranian society was organized religion. So now it's a repressive theocracy. (It didn't immediately become that, but did in short order.)

So the Great Democracy Defender destroys democracy, and in the process of creating a “friendly” nation, sows the seeds of an “enemy regime.” An unintended irony? You decide.

But definitely a crime against humanity. A big one. So I guess we'd have to call what was done to Aaron Swartz just a small crime against humanity, relatively speaking.

Everything's relative, right?

[For the despicable actions of U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy around the issues raised by the persecution of Aaron Swartz, see "The Most Dangerous Person in the U.S. Congress."]

1) I heard Mohamud say this on the radio, which ran just that brief snippet of his remarks, apparently finding those words very significant. There's a transcript at a State Department website with the ironic (unintentional, of course) URL humanrights.gov. (URL is computerese for Uniform Resource Locator, in case you were curious. It's the address of the particular webpage. Most websites consist of multiple webpages, of course. The main page is the homepage.)

(2) The executive, Gary May, was a practitioner of Massey's routine practice of systematically violating safety rules and covering them up by disabling methane monitors and other safety equipment, entering false data into safety logs, warning workers of “surprise” mine “safety” administration inspections, and so on. The explosion resulted from the chronic failure of Massey to control coal dust, as (officially) required by regulations (which are mostly unenforced, and thus nominal) and permitting broken water sprays, which enabled a spark to ignite the aforementioned methane gas which Massey habitually allowed to build up to dangerous, “banned” (pro forma banned) levels, which triggered an explosion of the coal dust which Massey obdurately allowed to accumulate to dangerous levels in its usual manner of operations. Incorrigible corporations like Massey should be declared criminal enterprises, disbanded, their assets auctioned off by the government, and their executives imprisoned. But that doesn't happen. The government DOES use the RICO statutes to persecute political activists it doesn't like, however. And it uses “forfeiture” laws to steal assets of people who haven't been convicted or even charged with anything- people who cannot afford to contest the thefts. You should check out the weekly published lists of “Asset Forfeitures” (i.e. U.S. thefts) and see that they're mostly small amounts of cash, cars, and whatnot.

Of course, the Federal Government, operating under a laissez-faire capitalist ideology that is fundamentally hostile to regulation of business, was completely lax for decades in enforcing and inspecting mines. And Congress deliberately made the mine inspection agency feeble. And under the rules, Massey could also endlessly haggle and appeal any citation. And the rare penalties were laughably small fines. And Massey was a non-union company, a key factor in why Massey was worst of the worst among coal mining outfits. And the ex-Chairman and CEO Donald Leon "Deranged Don" Blankenship  is a raving fascist. (Read some of his rants if you don't believe me. He's a red-baiting bastard. His reaction to his own murderous crimes was delivering fascistic attacks on regulators and critics as commies.)

And he got even filthier rich from selling Massey after the mine massacre.

Obama Regime Creates Another Martyr

No, not yet another jihadist martyr. Those are a dime a dozen, The U.S. senses no consequences from that.

An American martyr. (No, not Anwar al-Awlaki, or his 16 year old son, or Samir Khan, blown to kingdom come by drones in Yemen in separate assassinations.)

Aaron Swartz, a computer genius, a child coding prodigy (involved in the creation of RSS at age 14), was driven to suicide by the prospect of 35 years in prison under draconian U.S. criminal law, plus a million dollar fine for good measure. [Free Speech Radio News says he was facing over 50 years.] He was alleged to be guilty of “computer crimes,” After two years of stress induced by the U.S. government, he hung himself.

Swartz was indicted on 13 Federal criminal counts- via the usual U.S. prosecutor procedure of turning one act into numerous “crimes.” (One way they multiply the charges is by counting everything as double- one for doing it, and one for “conspiring” to do it, although that shouldn't have applied in this case, since you need at least two people for a “conspiracy,” even if one of them is a government agent and creator of the “conspiracy.”)

The heinous act that Swartz did, worthy of 35 years in the slammer (he was 26 years old, so the U.S. Government was looking to steal the rest of his youth and most of his middle age) was sneak a computer into a closet at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.- an important node of the military industrial imperialist complex that provides scientific support for violent and repressive technology) and hook it up to M.I.T.'s network in order to download scientific papers hoarded by a company called JSTOR. JSTOR at the time charged for access to the documents. MIT had paid access to JSTOR's database. Swartz thought the information should be freely available. [One of his reasons for believing this is that because of the exorbitant prices charges by information-hoarding companies, scientists in the Third World are cut off from needed information to participate fully in the scientific process. The U.S. media has ignored that angle in its predictable misreporting of this sorry and tragic episode.]

Swartz's death stands as an example of several common and fundamental things about America: 1) it's extreme repressiveness, and 2) its waste of human potential. Even if he hadn't killed himself, as a dangerous “computer criminal” and Svengali in the eyes of the U.S., a la Kevin Mitnick, he would have been banned from computer use in prison.

Basically Swartz was facing 35 years for trespassing at M.I.T. and downloading data. The “victim” of the “theft,” JSTOR, was not interested in pressing charges, in fact M.I.T. instigated the prosecution. JSTOR settled with Swartz in June, 2011, with no claim of civil liability or interest in criminal prosecution. Swartz returned the “stolen” data at that time.

In justifying this draconian persecution, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz self-righteously fulminated that “stealing is stealing.” (Who ever heard of prosecuting someone for “stealing” from someone who refuses to press- or even bring- charges?) Of course, when you actually steal from someone- take a physical object, or money, for example- you deprive that person of what is stolen. JSTOR of course still had all its data. Downloading something merely copies it. Calling that “theft” would be as if I had a photocopy of your driver's license and someone said I “stole” your license. There may be good reasons not to allow me to do that, but I didn't “steal” it.

Now that Ortiz has hounded Swartz to death, she refuses to back down one inch, insisting that she and her myrmidons behaved “honorably.” (So did the Waffen-SS, by their own lights. And all the butcher fascist military juntas of Latin America. I think someone else should be the judge of your “honor,” Ortiz.) But Ortiz did offer insincere “condolences.” That's purely political, like a vending machine flashing the message “thank you for your patronage,” mechanical and emotionless and totally calculated.

[Oh, by the way, see what a great difference “diversity” makes? Ortiz is a Hispanic AND a woman- she's doubly “diverse.”

Do names like Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton, Madeleine “Killing 500,000 Iraqi children with sanctions was worth it” Albright, Janet “The Butcher of Waco” Reno, etc. ring any bells? How about Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain, Marco Rubio, Ileano Ross-Leitinen? Do not judge a book by its superficial cover.

It's the most brain-dead identity politics that equates female or “minority” with “progressive” or “Good Guy,” or even “liberal.”]

But I digress...

Of course this is all about defense of property- namely the property of corporations that “own” intellectual “property.” i.e. ideas.

It used to be that ideas came under civil copyright law. And even now, if someone steals my writing, the FBI and DO”J” isn't going to investigate and prosecute them under the recent laws that criminalize copyright infringement. This is all about defense of big business and its profits.

The new repressive computer “crime” laws are part of a counterattack against people violating what big corporations believe are their prerogatives in the Internet Age.

Ortiz's loathsome husband, an IBM executive named Tom Dolan, attacked Aaron's parents for not mentioning an alleged plea bargain his wife tried to extort their son into accepting, a 6 month prison term. He finds it “truly incredible” that they blame his wife for Aaron's suicide instead of Aaron's own stupidity for not taking the Great Deal Ortiz supposedly offered. (She also coldly offered to lock him up pre-trial so he wouldn't kill himself, when his lawyer told her he was suicidal a year ago. That would have done wonders for his mental health, and for his ability to prepare a defense. Cute move, Ortiz.)

Guess Aaron should have taken that offer! (If in fact it was actually on the table.) Especially since it's virtually impossible to be acquitted at trial in Federal courts unless one is charged with a “white collar” crime. People need to get away from stupid attitudes like “seeking justice” in the frame-up factory that is the U.S. legal system, a meat grinder of human beings, or seeking “exoneration” from the system, or trying to “clear their names.” Stop caring what stinking “respectable” people think. This system is illegitimate. Stop caring about their opinions, their judgments! “Oh, I'll have a conviction on my record!” Consider it an honor to be important enough to those creeps to be one of their targets. People need to become psychologically independent of the ideological system, to free their minds.You need to think of the government and its agents as your enemies.

More outrageously, the Government continued the persecution even though JSTORE

announced it was making the “stolen” material freely available, a few days before Swartz's suicide. That's an ironic kicker worthy of a great novel by Charles Dickens, or Victor Hugo. A remorseless, pitiless system that irrationally persecutes without mercy.

But of course that's “irrelevant.” Just as it was irrelevant that the Federal oil lease auction spoiled by Tim deChristopher bidding in it was later cancelled entirely by the Government. He still sits in the slammer doing a two year sentence for daring to interfere. (Wonder why they didn't just ignore his bids, or have a security guard escort him out?)

The issue here is messing around with the U.S. Power structure. It is a remorseless, merciless system. If you don't believe me, I can point you to millions of dead people around the world- indeed millions incinerated alive in U.S. wars in Vietnam, Japan, Germany. And millions forced to live under U.S.-imposed fascist military dictatorships (fewer of those around now, no thanks to the U.S.).

Maybe someday people will make some obvious connections between “domestic” and “foreign” “policy.” Policy is such an anticeptic, anodyne euphemism for terrible realities.

Turns out there are Americans of a socioeconomic and status class who care about Swartz . Unlike the millions locked up in American prisons for outrageously long sentences, the people who care about Swartz 's fate have some influence in American society. The brilliant politician Obama didn't see that. Not that he was directly involved. He merely sets the tone and the priorities for the machinery that he and the medieval-minded Attorney General Eric Holder Jr.* (a Clinton regime retread, like so many Obama regime apparatchiks, brought back to do more evil). So the oh-so-politically-agile Obama regime screwed up this time. The question is, if Swartz had been sentenced to a long prison term for being a petty miscreant, what would the reaction have been then, from those now aroused by his death? Why does it take death to rile people up? Leonard Peltier is rotting in prison- where is the outrage over that? We are all living under hideously punitive laws- lots and lots of them, not just the Swartz was targeted under- with viciously draconian penalties. The problem isn't just the so-called Computer Fraud and Abuse act, with its breathtakingly absurd penalties. See,.e.g. “drug” laws. See 60 NEW Federal death penalty laws Bill Clinton enacted- how come no one ever brings that up? For that matter, how come no one ever speaks of Clinton's murders, not just the massacre at Waco, but in Haiti when he overthrew Aristede the first time, or the thousands of deaths resulting from his bombing the only pharmaceutical factory in Sudan as soon as it was completed, fraudulently calling it an Al-Qaeda chemical warfare plant!

And speaking of computer fraud and abuse, the U.S. Government thinks it's fine to “steal” this essay as it travels from my computer to a blog or email account, and to you, and store it in NSA supercomputers and run it through programs that sift all that “stolen” data. Of course, unlike with Aaron Swartz, their intentions are malign.

Yes, the suicide of Swartz is a tragedy. One of millions, really. His persecution was just part and parcel of the “normal” operations of the system we exist within. Oddly, people manage to believe the Big Lie that we live in “freedom” under a “democracy.” If only it were so. It will never be as long as the current system exists. Looking at things narrowly, through the prism of one's pet “issue,” will never resolve anything. Only millions of people united in a common movement can do that. And that requires stepping back and seeing the big picture. Each discrete issue, each individual tragedy, is connected to that big picture, to that larger reality in which it is embedded. One has to understand reality to begin to change it.

*Holder infamously (it should be infamous, at any rate) instructed a law school student audience that “due process doesn't mean judicial process.” (His emphasis.) It means a bunch of executive branch assassins secretly deciding who to kill, and ordering their deaths. There was no visible outcry or even refutation in the bourgeois media over this outrageous assertion. If the victim has no chance to challenge the “findings,” indeed even to know that there are “proceedings” against him, that is the exact antithesis of due process. Not to mention the absence of an ostensibly neutral third party- a judge- to hear the Government's (or King's) arguments, and the accused having a chance to respond to the accusations. So Obama in this area has the power of Kings prior to the Magna Carta, 500 years ago.

Of course, increasingly in the U.S., even when an issue of state repression is allowed into a court, the “evidence” is kept secret from the victim and his/her lawyers. We are truly in the Dark Ages in the U.S.

[For the despicable actions of U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy around the issues raised by the persecution of Aaron Swartz, see "The Most Dangerous Person in the U.S. Congress."]

With Chavez Dying, Obama "National Security Team" Preparing to Gloat

Of course, they'll do it in private. But we'll get glimpses of it, in artfully couched terms, in such ruling class rags as the New York Times and Washington Post. The Obama "team" (just another clique of imperialists) will be high-fiveing each other in the Situation Room and so on.

With the cult of Chavez, we see once again the problem with "systems" based on an individual. They're too vulnerable to being as mortal as their namesakes. That can be a good thing- think Hitler and Nazism. And in the case of Hugo Chavez and Venezuela, the flaws and pitfalls of the system mirror those of Cuba and Castro- a person with an overweening ego and unrealistically exaggerated sense of their own good judgment making all the decisions. What saved Chavez was oil, and its high price for much of his rule. Too bad more wasn't invested in modernizing their oil industry.

On the plus side, much was done for the poor. And not just in tangible physical benefits. Raising the class consciousness of the poor and uniting and rallying them is a plus. Hopefully they will realize they don't need Chavez.

And perhaps someday we will discover if the CIA gave him that cancer.

Bogus Pretext For FBI Targeting of Petraeus Quietly Fizzles Out

With the establishment media's (and thus your) attention absorbed by the Newtown, CT school massacre and political campaign for gun control as a convenient distraction, the Department of “Justice” has taken the opportunity to inform Paula Broadwell's lawyer that no charges will be filed against her. (Broadwell was the mistress and hagiographer of former media darling General David Petraeus. Oh, how that fickle establishment media turns on people! So like a catty high school clique! Conveniently, Petraeus' story is that his sexual affair with her only began after he left active service in the military- he's still a reserve officer- meaning he wouldn't be exposed to military prosecution for the “crime” of adultery. I suspect he's lying about that.)

Apparently emailing someone that you can make them “go away” isn't a scary enough "death threat" to warrant a Federal trial. (Unless you're a leftist, of course. Then anything goes.) But it was enough of an excuse to overthrow the head of the FBI's hated rival agency, the CIA.

There has been some scuttlebutt that elements within the CIA helped oust Petraeus. Maybe someday we will find out.

One thing the whole affair underlined yet again is the fact that the FBI outranks the U.S. Congress. When the Petraeus affair hit the news, we heard whines from the likes of Senate “Intelligence” Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D- CA), complaining that they weren't notified.

Well, so what? When it emerged shortly after the airliner suicide attacks of 9/11/01 that the landlord for two of the hijackers living in California was an FBI informer, Congress demanded that the FBI produce the informer and his agent handler for questioning. The FBI flatly refused, the Congress harrumphed, and slunk off with its tail between its legs. The issue was never mentioned again in the establishment media. [See “THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE INQUIRY;Congress Seeks F.B.I. Data On Informer; F.B.I. Resists,” NYTimes, 10/6/02.]

In other words, the FBI, a secret political police agency, outranks the national legislature of the U.S.

You don't see the secret police running the show in places like China! In most countries, the government controls the secret police, not the other way around. Here, the secret police agencies are states within a state.

And how's this for cheek: just days later, the then-head of the FBI, the execrable professional oppressor Louis J. Freeh, had the nerve to attack Congress for underfunding the FBI. And they ate that crap instead of demanding his head on the spot. 

[“Former F.B.I. Director FaultsLawmakers on Terror Fight,” NY Times, 10/9/02.]

How pathetic American politicians really are. But  they're great at imposing longer and longer prison sentences on us who resist them, or smoke pot. Or letting music corporations imposes fines iin the hundreds of thousands of dollars for downloading a few dozen songs. (An actual case.) Or immunizing the phone companies that aid and abet massive, warrantly NSA spying. Or locking up people for life without trial (you have to call them a "terrorist" first).

What, finally, can you say about such a bunch of pompous, cruel weasels?

U.S. Ranks #1 In Repression By Three Measures

The U.S. is the world's most repressive nation by at least three measures.

First, the U.S. has the world's highest rate of incarceration. One in 100 adults is imprisoned in the U.S. (Currently 2.3 million souls.) With 4% of the world population, the U.S. holds 25% of all the prisoners on earth.

Secondly, in terms of surveillance of the populace, no other nation on earth collects every single electronic and voice communication of every person who uses a phone or Internet communication method, as the U.S. does. (The NSA has a gigantic new computer center in Colorado to store all the data and paw through it with supercomputers and thousands of military personnel.)

Thirdly, the U.S. does the most thorough and sophisticated cross-linking of computerized databases, with search and surveillance software. State motor vehicle records, credit bureau databases, bank records, safe deposit box owners, utility and rental records, court records, arrest records, and on and on are all open to the police and secret police to search at will without any warrant requirements. And of course numerous other government records on all levels of government are tied in to this massive spy system. The FBI, NYPD, and others employ facial recognition technology to search photos in driver's license and passport records, among others. Video of faces from thousands of surveillance cameras is part of this massive surveillance blanket.

The U.S. is also one of the worst in terms of how draconian its punishments are. Coincidentally the NY Times ran an article on a few victims of mandatory life sentences for minor drug “crimes” after I wrote most of this essay.

As a follow up, I will discuss some of the viciousness of the U.S.'s punitive policies towards those unlucky enough to be labeled “criminals.” (Mainly racial minorities with darker than white skins, and the poor. And political prisoners, of course.)

Dead Man Walking: Hugo Chavez Doomed. CIA Dancing a Jig?

Well, it looks like the jig is up for poor Chavez, the socialist President of Venezuela long reviled by the U.S. media and Government.

I had a bad feeling about this from when it first became known that he was seriously ill, in June 2011. After multiple surgeries, radiation, and chemotherapy, this latest relapse bodes ill for his survival.

Thequestion left hanging is: did the U.S. do him in with one of the potent carcinogens in its arsenal of poisons?

That will be devilishly hard to ever resolve definitively one way or the other.

The possibility must be kept open, as a possibility. We can neither say it is a fact at this point, but nor should it be dismissed as “paranoia.” Only a naïve fool ignorant of history would call it paranoiac or implausible, given the sinister, evil history of the U.S. Government.and its malevolent arm, the CIA.

It's Not A “Fiscal Cliff,” It's a Mountain

That is, big Federal spending cuts and tax increases will create an uphill grade for the U.S. economy. That's why it's recessionary.

As others have pointed out, the deficit hawks should be happy, since shrinking deficit spending is supposedly their end-all and be-all.

Obama- Cruel Man

Hey, all you progressives who insist the Dems need your support- because the Republicans are so much worse.

Here's Obama's record on granting pardons to Federal prisoners:

ONE out of every 290 applications.

But his predecessor, the awful George Bush, granted one out of every 55- i.e. a rate almost 6x as frequently.

Obama has granted the fewest pardons since John Adams, the second President.
 This info from NPR, 11/21/12.

Can John Boehner Ever Open His Yap Without Invoking "the American People"?

No. Next question.

NY Times & Washington Post Reveal Reason For FBI Probe In Petraeus Affair

According to their websites, Petraeus' paramour, Paula Broadwell, sent threatening emails to another woman, who went to the FBI. Very foolish. Too bad other "news" outlets couldn't find that out. (Of course, Newsmax isn't actually a news site.)

E-Mails From Biographer to a Third Party Led to Petraeus NYT-

FBI probe of Petraeus triggered by e-mail threats from biographer, officials say -WP

Petraeus Defeated By Outmoded Sexual Mores, Secret Police

There are a number of ironies in the career downfall of CIA boss General David Petraeus. A darling of the establishment, top man in the imperialist enforcement apparatus of military and "intelligence" agencies, a man credited with victory in Iraq (tamping down the insurgency enough to hand the mess over to a Shiite semi-dictatorship), tweaking the war in Afghanistan with a nouveau "hearts and minds" strategy of "protecting civilians" (minimizing their casualties at NATO's hands, a good idea on practical political and military grounds, not to mention moral ones, which doesn't really matter to these guys even though they pay it lip service) and until a few days ago heading the CIA, which is waging more and more aggressive "paramilitary" operations; his services are now irrationally lost to the system. This has occasioned moaning and hand-wringing among politicians and commentators. (Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, opined that he should have stayed on, for example.)

The secret police state that is America today has chewed up a top apparatchik in its maw. The FBI was spying on emails between him and his lover. No one in the establishment questions the propriety of this. As a result, his career was finished.

Why? The potential for blackmail, we're told. But the reason that potential exists is because of the repressive, antiquated, unrealistic official sexual mores of the establishment culture. Lifelong monogamy strikes me as unrealistic. What man really is turned on by the same woman for decades? It's absurd. And sexual desire by its nature has innumerable objects. We are naturally attracted to more than one other person. Too bad the establishment rejected the sexual revolution of the counterculture. I suppose there is poetic justice in the fact that the repressive mores and oppressive secret police state they impose on others should bite themselves in the ass for once. Petraeus was one of their superstar apparatchiks. It's irrational to toss him overboard for this- he certainly can't be blackmailed over it now!

Leave it to the right wing tabloids of New York City to have their cake and eat it too, moralistically tut-tutting while pruriently wallowing in the "scandal." Australian billionaire reactionary media mogul Rupert Murdoch's NY Post (a rag with a special place in his heart, which is why he keeps it going year after year, even though it loses millions of dollars a year) screamed on p. 1 Saturday, Nov. 10, "CLOAK AND SHAG HER" "CIA boss Petraeus quits over affair." The Post cites the demented right wing website Newsmax as saying an FBI source (so many arch reactionaries inside the secret police! they leak to Newsmax!) says the FBI had been intercepting Petraeus' emails since spring "after it mistook one exchange with his girlfriend as a reference to corruption." Wait, so why did it start spying on his emails? Adding to the confusion, the Post asserts that the affair "prompted an FBI investigation over fears that Broadwell had accessed the general's e-mail, possibly gaining access to classified information." But how did the FBI find out about the affair? And why is it investigating people for sexual affairs? What made them think she had accessed his emails? Why didn't they go to Petraeus at that point?

You know what I think? I think this is a case of the FBI-CIA rivalry rearing its head. They've been feuding ever since the CIA was created. J. Edgar Hoover despised the CIA from the beginning.

The paramour, Paula Broadwell, is a West Point grad who hung out with Petraeus in Afghanistan and authored a hagiography of him. (She was merely following in the footsteps of establishment "journalism" which similarly lionized him.) She claims to have served from 2003-6 as liaison officer with "the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force." (NY Post. The Post apparently doesn't know there's more than one such task force, set up in major cities with police departments. Also what agency was on the other side of the liaison?)

On to the other New York City tab, the NY Daily News (owned by Canadian Jewish real estate mogul Mortimer B. Zuckerman). Same day (Saturday), p. 1 "Gen. Betrray U.S." across the top. Oh please, so he's a traitor? Really, Mort? (That's a low blow especially from an ardent Zionist like Zuckerman, about whom it's not a stretch to say Israel comes first.) Then splayed down the page are the words "Caught In the Act." The C-I-A in those words are in big red letters- clever, huh? What creative geniuses work at these mass propaganda sheets! Inside another clever headline: "KISS & INTEL." Man, what imagination at work! On their website, the top headline today reads

'SEX UNDER THE DESK' MISTRESS: Spotted just feet from CIA director David Petraeus' wife before affair was revealed

See what I mean about titillating the readers while simultaneous acting morally offended?

Amid all the hand-wringing by the politicians and pundits over the loss of services of this professional warrior, I predict there will be nary a word questioning the secret police surveillance state, the destructive rivalries between different organs of the repression apparatus (aka "the intelligence community") or the hypocritical, unworkable, puritanical sexual mores they officially adhere to- in a popular culture drenched with blatant sexual titillation and invitations to promiscuity. (I have no problems with honest promiscuity, as opposed to "cheating:" i.e. pledging monogamy while secretly betraying the pledge. One should not deceive one's mates, lovers, soulmates. Especially since sexual diseases are an issue, not to mention trust and emotional fealty, which is connected to sex for many, especially for women.)

I guess we'll hear from some feminists who will see this as a powerful man "exploiting" a "vulnerable" woman. Nonsense. This isn't a starry-eyed intern manipulated by a clever Clinton. This woman is a mature adult (married with children), with a career, who obviously was willing to make love with a man she admired and considered a "mentor" (media accounts say).

Tell you one thing: if I were in the CIA, I'd be pissed at the FBI. But Petraeus was an outsider, so I guess they don't care so much. Still, they should.

'SEX UNDER THE DESK' MISTRESS: Spotted just feet from CIA director David Petraeus' wife before affair was revealed

David Petraeus has resigned as director of the CIA after admitting he had an extramarital affair.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york#ixzz2Br7NQ4Si

FROM  http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york  11/10/12

Iranian Regime Murders Blogger In Captivity

The Iranian theocratic regime has just beaten to death a 35 year old blogger, Sattar Beheshti, in prison, according to Reporters Without Borders. He was being persecuted for blogging things the regime didn’t like, which it considered a Threat To National Security. (The standard excuse of all governments when they persecute people, along with Threating Public Order.) The BBC reports that this is the 17^th prisoner beaten to death in the regime’s prisons in 9 years.

Whatever one thinks of the confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program, the regime itself is repressive, and totalitarian in its ideology. Recall the violent repression of the protests against the last, fixed election, which reelected President Ahmadinejad. (Ahmadinejad is more and more impotent these days. He can’t even make personnel appointments or keep his own people out of prison! His final term ends in Spring 2013. Yet we keep hearing references to “Iranian threats to wipe Israel off the map” which apparently refer to his past inane spoutings, despite the fact that he doesn’t call the shots.) It would be a blessing for the Iranian people to be free of it. (What’s the U.S. plan, to impose the now erstwhile terrorist MEK on Iran?) Nevertheless, the Iranian regime and Israel are obviously enemies- especially since Iran supports Hezbollah and Hamas, anti-Israeli organizations.

Coincidentally, the U.S. announced sanctions against more Iranian Government targets, including the communications minister and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance [i.e. Propaganda and Indoctrination]. Ironically, unnamed U.S. Treasury and State Department officials told the New York Times that these officials are culpable for censoring news media, jamming satellite broadcast, disrupting Internet activities, and “intimidating and detaining journalists” in the NY Times’ words. [“Iran Fired onMilitary Drone In First Such Attack, U.S. Says,” 11/8/12.] Except for the first of those, the U.S. does all of that too. In fact, it goes farther than these particulars against Iran, killing journalists, especially ones from Aljazeera (in Kabul and Baghdad), but also from Reuters, a Spanish journalist killed in the U.S. Army attack on a Baghdad hotel, and others.* (The Baghdad hotel was well known as a location for journalists, as we know from a former NSA worker interviewed on Democracy Now.) [However, the theocratic regime of Iran has killed at least one journalist in custody; odd that it wasn’t mentioned by the U.S. officials and NYT.]

One Aljazeera employee was imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for several years while he was interrogated on Aljazeera’s inner workings, and promised to be released only if he’d be a U.S. spy inside Aljazeera.  

*On the matter of intimidation of journalists, leaving aside whether Julian Assange qualifies as a journalist, increasingly the U.S. is trying to obtain journalists’ confidential sources via Grand Jury inquisitions, and seems to be inching closer to using the so-called  Espionage Act against reporters who report whistleblower-obtained secrets. The secrets the high officials choose to plant anonymously in organs such as the NY Times are treated differently, of course, those officials are free to keep committing the same “crime” of divulging “classified information” with impunity. And in a lawsuit brought against the Carl Levin-authored and Obama-signed provision of the most recent Military Money Act allowing imprisonment without charges of U.S. citizens labeled “terrorists” in military gulags for indefinite periods, journalists and others made the point that they were intimidated in their work by this. The Federal District Judge agreed, but of course the Obama regime is appealing. So different from Bush! Lucky thing Romney lost, too!

After "Super Storm Sandy," NOW Will They Stop Denying Global Warming?

Doesn't look like it. Broadcast media focused unrelentingly on the trivia of each moment's damage, hardship, and chicken soup poured on by politicians. Only mention I heard of the bigger picture was from scientists on Bloomberg's radio (figures, as he isn't in the denialist camp), and even that was a tiny fraction of airtime. Thus we are at the mercy of media oligarchs' personal attitude. Apparently the consensus within the corporate elite is to go along with the position of the fossil fuel extraction industry. (As always, fanatical noisemakers for hire are readily available to shout down reason.)

In brief, global warming makes hurricanes worse because hurricanes derive their energy from ocean heat, and the oceans are warming. Secondly, since the level of the oceans have been rising due to ice melting from glaciers and the poles (especially the north), that means higher surge levels and more flooding.

But just as no massacre shakes the ironclad two-party consensus against gun control, it seems no natural calamity can shake the climate change denialist consensus. Or not so much a consensus, but just that those who no better have no stomach for a fight with the fanatics of the Right.

The "Democratic" Party's Supreme Court Scam

The Democrats have a never-ending scam they trot out every 4 years when they're running their man (maybe a woman, someday; unfortunately it will probably be another Clinton) for President. They fill people with dread, using scary stories of what the Republican Bogeymen will do when they "take over" and get to make appointments to the Supreme Court. Their very subtle argument runs along the lines of this:

 “JUST ONE (or two or three) APPOINTMENTS WILL SHIFT THE BALANCE OF THE COURT!! THEN YOU'LL LOSE YOUR RIGHT TO ABORTION!” the Democrats and their auxiliaries screech, to induce people to go vote for them.

Excuse me? A few points are in order here. Reactionaries have been controlling the Supreme Court since Nixon's day. In fact, except for the aberrational Warren Court, the Supreme Court has always been deeply reactionary and hostile to human rights. And none of the 5-person majority reactionary bloc on the Court is about to retire. So there is NOTHING hanging in the balance because there already is a rightwing majority and there’s been one for over a decade.¹

More tellingly, and this really exposes the Democrats as deeply cynical con artists, the present membership of the Court is DUE TO THE DEMOCRATS as much as it is to the Republicans.

Take these very glaring examples of despicable Democratic complicity with the GOP in creating and imposing on us the arch-reactionary Court of today. 

Antonin Scalia, a horribly fanatical rightist, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate 98-0 in 1986. And I remember that it was obvious at the time how awful he was- his confirmation made me nauseous. In what eventually turned out to be ironic, and poetically just, then-Senator Al Gore was one of those 98 culprits. It serves the bastard right that Scalia was one of the five who stole the 2000 election from Gore, crushing his lifelong dream and ambition to become President. But don't cry for Gore: that made member of the nomenklatura is now filthy rich, with a net worth of around $100,000,000. That's one hundred million, in case all those zeroes confused you. [Sources: Forbes, CNBC, Fast Money, and many others.] [The Gang of Five GOP operatives on the Supreme Court who stole the election were Scalia, Rehnquist, Thomas, O’Connor, and Kennedy.]

Another of the GOP Gang of Five that stole the 2000 election from the hapless Democrats, Sandra Day O'Connor, was confirmed by 99-0, in 1981, in yet another fine example of "bipartisanship," i.e. the ruling political class marching in lockstep to oppress us. O’Connor started as an apparatchik of the extremely rightwing Arizona Republican Party.

The lifelong nasty GOP apparatchik and Nixon hatchet man, William Rehnquist, another product of the Arizona GOP (that also gave us that fanatic avatar of the Right, Barry Goldwater) was confirmed first for Associate Justice and later as Chief Justice (under fascist butcher Reagan) by 2 to 1 margins by the Senate. This despite the fact that he cut his political eyeteeth by suppressing the votes of Latinos in Arizona, confronting and intimidating them in polling stations and challenging their right to vote. Then he lied about it later in his Senate confirmation hearings. That's ok; politicians are very forgiving of liars since they're liars too, so they have a natural affinity and sympathy for fellow liars. (Unless they're enemies of the U.S. Then they denounce them in high moral dudgeon.)  Rehnquist was Chief Justice and part of the 5-4 majority in the Bush v. Gore Florida recount case.

Yet another career reactionary operative, Chief Justice John Roberts, was given a “bipartisan” stamp of approval, voted in by 78-22, a 3.5 to 1 margin, in 2005.

Kennedy, an alleged "swing" vote on the court who helped the GOP steal the 2000 election, was confirmed in 1988 in another squeaker, 97-0. But Samuel Alito was given the green light by a less impressive 58-42, in 2006. (Well would ya look at that! Some Democrats actually voted against putting our fates in the hands of a reactionary, for a change!)

And in what may be the worst example in the modern era of the Democrats’ complicity in the evil of giving so much power over our lives to vicious reactionaries, one that needs special emphasis (particularly since the bourgeois establishment has done such a bang-up job of consigning it to the memory hole) is the case of the perverse (in several ways) Clarence Thomas, a man who seems to hate blacks as much as a typical Southern white racist. (That’s one way he’s perverse. Another way is, of course, his history of vulgar sexual harassment. Then there’s his image of himself as an 18 century member of the American landed gentry. His so-called “judicial philosophy” is nothing but nostalgia for his imaginings of how swell it must have been to be among their number, transliterated into legalistic mumbo-jumbo.)

At the time of Thomas’ ascension to the high court from hack GOP apparatchik (1991), the Senate was controlled by the Democrats. And the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who oversaw the confirmation process and very public hearings, was none other than one Joe Biden, the current Vice President of the United States. Beneath his slaphappy political goofball exterior, Biden is one venal, malign fellow. He’s especially big on repressive legislation, including of the “drug war” variety. (It was his idea to make club owners criminally liable for Ecstasy use on their premises. Hark, what Herald of Freedom Joe Biden is!)

Biden ran interference for Thomas to get him onto the high court despite Anita Hill’s revelations. It was Biden who blocked other witnesses who could corroborate Thomas’ behavior. And it was Biden who spread the word among the Democratic Senators that Hill was a liar, thus providing the crucial margin for the reactionaries’ 52-48 victory. You see from that margin what a close-run thing it was. The GOP couldn’t have done it without Biden.

We know this from the scrupulously documented, devastatingly detailed book, Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson. Abramson has since risen in the bourgeois hierarchy to become editor di tutti editors, the boss of all editors at the NY Times. So she has no excuse for not knowing better, and not assigning articles to remind people.²

So in fact, in most instances anywhere from few to no Democratic Senators vote against the extreme rightwing nominees the GOP puts forth to pack the court with. And Obama is so uninterested in lifting even a pinkie to resist the reactionary packing of the judiciary- part of a long term conspiracy by hard rightist lawyers in the Federalist Society, the GOP, and the top echelon of the corporate oligarchy. Lewis Powell, that corporate lawyer also put on the Supreme Court by the unholy alliance of Democratic and Republican Senators, wrote a memo before his ascension to Infallible Justice that was a clarion call mobilizing the reactionary corporate elite in this endeavor.

Meanwhile “liberals” mostly vote for these hard right wing nominees, only occasionally putting on a show of pseudo-resistance when the people they need to con raise a fuss. I say “pseudo-resistance” because they never go beyond “expressions of concern” and voting against, knowing full well the votes are there to confirm- unless they actually want to block by, say filibustering, or putting a hold on nominees. (Only takes one Senator to put a hold on. I’m not sure if that is “allowed” for Supreme Court nominees, as is commonly done with other executive branch nominees that some reactionary in the Senate doesn’t like, or occasionally for purposes of extorting legislative favors or money for their state’s business interests.)

The other thing “liberals” do is tell the chumps who they want to vote Democratic every four years that the sky is about to fall if the GOP wins the Presidency and appoints more Justices.

Take, for example, The Nation magazine. The cover, and most of the issue dated October 8^th was devoted to the “the Supreme Court hangs in the balance with this election!” line of propaganda. The issue harps on the pro-big corporate bias of the Court-  as if the Democratic Party isn’t a pro-big corporate Party. One dishonest article entitled “How The Right Packed The Court” completely ignored all the help the “Right” got from the Democrats in packing it.³

This article is a good example of how something can be accurate factually yet present a false picture of reality. By omitting the Democrats’ role, the article does not provide readers with the information they need to understand fully the cause of the problem, and certainly guarantees NO SOLUTION, EVER, as the implication (explicated elsewhere) is that the solution is to elect Democrats to the White House. I think reality and experience has conclusively proven that is NOT the solution. That is a guarantee to remain mired in an oppressive system with no escape route.

The Nation magazine crowd are Democratic Party cowboys.  Cowboys in the sense of what actual cowboys do. Their job is to herd progressives into the Democratic Party corral, to keep lefties politically penned up inside the Democratic Party’s fence, ideologically confused and politically neutralized so as not to pose any possible threat to the system of power. And these cunning political cowpokes roughly round up strays who are tempted to actually vote for people who want to change things, such as a Nader (who the Nationites savagely attacked for having the effrontery to think he had a right to run for President), or any Green or Socialist or whatever alternative. Just as cattle rustlers steal cattle, Nader was accused of “stealing” Democratic votes. (Guess you didn’t know you were the Property of the Democratic Party! Maybe they should brand us!)

Leftists are supposed to just dutifully go to the polls every 2 or 4 years and participate in the staged elections by voting for the Democratic head of the two-headed beast, validating the “democratic” legitimacy of the two-party corporate dictatorship we (and a lot of other people all around the world,  in effect) exist under. Anyone who is serious about pro-human change in the world has to become a conscious enemy of the system. That’s certainly how the system treats all progressives anyway. The secret police explicitly designates left of center dissidents as “terrorists.” Obama has sicced the Federal prosecutors around the country on activists, including in Seattle and Chicago. The FBI and the entire panoply of repressive organs of the state behaves no differently towards people who challenge the corporate status quo under Democratic regimes than under Republican ones. Fake progressives epitomized by The Nation are a sophisticated technique for neutralizing potential threats to the system, NOT vehicles for change, regardless of their usefulness as information sources.

1)       Remember something called Bush v. Gore? The bourgeoisie prefer that you don’t remember it, since stolen elections contradict their main propaganda themes- that the U.S. is the epitome of democracy. Of course, lots of things contradict that, like the fact that for most of U.S. history most adults were legally barred from voting. Or that there was a coup in 1963 in which the CIA, in league with the FBI and military, assassinated the President of the U.S., with “the” media acting as accessories after the fact to this day.

The only reference to Florida 2000 you ever get from “the” media these days is “hanging chads,” an extremely misleading meme. Lately we have learned from Greg Palast that the ballots were deliberately manufactured with the chads mispositioned so they would not be properly punched out.

Anyway, the Democrats and their cowboys blame their loss in 2000 on Ralph Nader. If only he hadn’t run, the GOP and Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his gang wouldn’t have arranged to steal Florida, and their 5 operatives on the Supreme Court wouldn’t have blocked a recount! Nader caused all that! And Al Gore would have won his home state of Tennessee! And Gore and the Democrats would have objected to the brazen, racist disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of black voters! And the Democratic Supervisor of Elections for Palm Beach County, Theresa LePore, who designed a ballot that duped thousands of elderly Jews into voting for notorious anti-Semite Patrick Buchanan (much to that fascist’s amusement) wouldn’t have done that except for Ralph Nader! And “the” media wouldn’t have been blatantly biased against Gore throughout the entire campaign while going easy on former cokehead-alcoholic-war-dodger-National Guard-no-show Bush! It’s all Nader’s fault that Gore lost, I tell you!! Can’t you see that?

You see, the “democratic process” can’t work if there are more than two candidates. It can’t work if anyone tries to challenge the monopoly on political power held by the two corporate capitalist pro-U.S.-Imperialism parties! Allowing anyone to run outside the two-party dictatorship would just lead to anarchy! Why would you want to mess with The World’s Greatest Democracy? That’s why states make it so incredibly difficult for anyone not anointed by one of the two (two’s plenty!) parties to even get on a ballot. That’s why Democratic and Republican politicians pass convoluted, arcane, voluminous election laws. That’s why their lawyers go to court to get Democratic and Republican judges to throw people (like Nader) off the ballot, invalidate their qualifying petitions to get on the ballot, etc. It’s because they’re so dedicated to democracy and the people’s right to choose “their” “leaders.” Let’s not be cynical here.

2)       The New York Times ran an editorial October 16^th decrying all the Federal Court vacancies and upbraiding the Republicans for putting their petty partisan political interests above the Good of the Nation. It makes a passing reference to the next President possibly making Supreme Court appointments. It also briefly mentions Obama’s “slowness” in even nominating judges to the Judiciary. How diffident, passive, and Hamlet-like our Assassin-in-Chief can be about some things! Undecisive! ["Politics and the Courts,"editorial, 10/16/12.]

3)       No surprise that the Democrats’ crucial role in the court-packing wasn’t mentioned at all. First, it’s in The Nation, an organ put out by Democratic Party stooges, and second, it was penned by one William Yeomans, whose background is given in a footnote as a former chief counsel to Senator Edward Kennedy, a former “Justice” Dept. apparatchik who spent 26 years there, a legal director of something called “Alliance for Justice,” a program director at the “American Constitution Society,” and currently a “fellow in law and government” at American University. (Busy fellow! He must be very talented! Or considered politically reliable.) In short, this is a man steeped in Democratic Party politics. I wouldn’t expect a former chief counsel to the “liberal lion” Kennedy to say anything uncomplimentary about Democratic Senators, would you?

jasonzenith.blogspot.com     taboo-truths.blogspot.com

Iranian Economy Screaming In Pain

One thing the U.S. knows how to do is “make economies scream” (in the notorious words of Nixon, giving Richard Helms, CIA gestapo boss, his marching orders on Chile in 1970, being told by his leader to “make the economy scream,” according to Helms' notes of a meeting with Nixon). It's done it to Iraq, it's been trying to do it with some success to Cuba for 50 years, and now it's doing it to Iran. The Iranian currency just plunged 50% in a week, and is continuing to plunge. A full-fledged currency panic and loss of confidence is in train. (You see, “Bibi” Netanyahu? All We Are Saaay-ing, Is Give Sanctions A Chance.)

An Iranian rial will now get you an American dollar- or rather, 37,000 rials will buy you a buck. That's a lot more than the 24,600 rials it would have cost you a week ago. The rial is down over 80% year to date. (Talk about Weimar Germany-style inflation and currency debasement! I hope the Iranians stocked up on wheelbarrows already- the U.S. Is probably getting set to embargo those too. Maybe the U.S. will let some wooden barrels through so Iranians will have something to cover themselves with when their clothes wear out.)

Of course, the question that is never asked or answered in the U.S. media is: what if Iran says “uncle” and knuckles under to U.S.-led demands? The assumption the gullible U.S. public is allowed to believe is that then sanctions will be lifted. Not so. There's a propaganda technique at work here, that I called Deception by Omission.

The “offer” on the table from the U.S. Is this: Iran, shut down and demolish the Fordow uranium enrichment site (the one that's under a mountain that our bombs can't destroy), and hand over ALL your enriched uranium, and then MAYBE we'll EASE the sanctions.

I kid you not. That's the U.S. “offer” on hand.

Now maybe that's just a hardball negotiating position, to give the U.S. some bargaining room. But then there's the matter of U.S. Law.

As the latest rounds of sanctions was passed by Congress at the end of July, various Congresspeople stipulated that in order for the sanctions to be lifted, not only does Iran have to completely dismantle its nuclear program, it must also let its people vote the mullahs out of power i.e. Congress is demanding regime change to lift the sanctions- and abandon Hezbollah and Hamas, i.e. give Israel a totally free hand to do with them as it wishes. It's called “The Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Human Rights Act of 2012.” Funny title. “Accountability” of course is U.S. Imperialist code for “we're gonna make you pay for crossing us.” And the chest beating putative concern for the human rights of Iranians is just ludicrous, on many grounds, but I'll mention just two in passing: 1) the sanctions hurt the Iranian people most of all, and 2) the U.S. Imposed a brutal dictatorship on Iran from 1953 to 1979, during which a quarter of a million Iranians were killed, the CIA mentored the world's most savagely torturing secret police, the SAVAK, and Amnesty International branded the Shah's regime the worst violator of human rights in the world- which is quite something, considering the competition.

You see, until the Iranians “come clean on their nuclear program, end the suppression of their people and stop supporting terrorist activities, they will face deepening international isolation and even greater economic and diplomatic pressure,” Senator Tim Johnson, Democrat of South Dakota, said. (AP, 7/31/12, in NY Times, “DealStruck to Tighten Sanctions Against Iran.”)

And the always execrable Florida Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who sponsored the bill in the House, brayed that the latest law attacking Iran “blacklists virtually all of Iran’s energy, financial and transportation sectors, and cuts off companies that keep doing business with Iran from access to our markets in the United States.” This Stateswoman heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee. (Oh, here's a surprise- she really really hates the Castro regime in Cuba. No, really, she does.)

Our good Congresspeople also wanted to punish the directors and shareholders of Swift, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, which handles interbank transactions, unless they stop providing services to the Central Bank of Iran, thus cutting Iran off entirely from the world financial system. (The official, aboveground system anyway.) They didn't go that far- yet.

But maybe they don't really mean it. After all, it barely squeaked through the House by 421-6.

At the time the bill passed. Binyamin (his actual name) Netanyahu and current War Secretary and lifelong apparatchik Leon Panetta (his last gig was overseeing assasinations at the CIA) stood shoulder to shoulder and jointly issued a bellicose statement telling Iran that “time is running out” and other threatening language.

Of course, this is all about power, and the desire to prevent Iran under its current regime from acquiring more leverage in the region, NOT about a threat to Israel's survival. The Iranian mullahs aren't the mindless fanatics the Taliban are, nor are they like suicidal car bombers. They know what would happen if they launched a nuclear attack on Israel. (It would take them years to develop miniaturized warheads that can be carried on missiles, and to build enough missiles to penetrate Israel's anti-missile defenses, plus Israel has an arsenal of several hundred warheads, and by the way, Israel's backer the U.S. has thousands of nuclear weapons, and for icing on the cake, Britain and France also have nuclear arsenals, and are allies of Israel.)

So here's how the propaganda technique, of misleading the public by omission, what I call Deception By Omission, works. You bury the crucial facts in the fine print and let the blaring trumpets and pounding drums drown out the whispers of critical information. Of course, people who go over printed media with a magnifying glass every day, and recall the one-time mentions of significant facts, and recognize their importance, AND remember them, aren't fooled. But everyone else is. We can't say “the media” didn't report it. See, they reported it! (Some did, anyway, one time.) But it's hardly the impression that's conveyed by the deluge of “coverage” we are fed on this issue. (And others as well.)

In Ironic Twist, Leftists Ensure Obama Victory

Looks like Obama will win in November, barring GOP electoral theft as they committed in 2000 (Florida) and 2004 (Ohio). Obama owes Mother Jones big time for unearthing a video of Romney's secret meeting with rich scum like himself, who paid $50,000 apiece to hear Romney regale them with their own class bigotry, which Romney shares to his core, and his utterly reactionary foreign policy "views."

 Nice to have confirmation of the obvious: that Romney is typical of his class, a class that has contempt for the masses. He and his ilk view us as parasites on "wealth creators" like himself. No wonder these scum love Ayn Rand.

In the wake of this video, which has gotten establishment media play for more than one "news cycle" (a day), Obama is opening a lead in the polls, now at 8%, supposedly the largest lead for a candidate at this point before a Presidential election since 1996.

Of course, Obama will have no gratitude for progressives. Leftists in America who slavishly support the Democratic Party suffer from a severe case of Political Abused Wife Syndrome. The Democrats abuse leftists year after year, and each election year promise that this time things will be different. Desperate, and trapped, feeling she has nowhere to go, the wife (Left) never leaves the abuser. Same story with unions and the Democrats.

The Democrats consistently do absolutely nothing for labor and progressives, in fact actively attack their interests. The Obama regime protects the Colombian bourgeoisie's murder of unionists, which is ongoing despite a cynical ploy in this year's "free trade" deal with Colombia, hailed by Obama, which Obama claims assures environmental and labor protections. (The Colombian death squad ruling class continues to murder unionists as this is written.)

Regarding progressives, if the vituperative contempt directed at them by the likes of Jim Messina (Obama's thuggish campaign manager) Jay Carney (the smarmy WH press secretary) and the vulgar obscenity-screamer Rahm Emanuel is not evidence enough of leftists' masochism, there's the Obama regime's record of increased domestic oppression of progressive dissent. Examples: nationally-coordinated repression of the Occupy Movement; persecution and imprisonment for Tim deChristopher; FBI raids on homes pf peace activists and Grand Jury inquisitions directed at them; refusal to release "cleared" Gitmo prisoners; signing the law, put forth by "liberal" Democratic Senator Carl Levin, giving Presidents the power to imprison Americans for life in the military gulag by merely labeling them "terrorist," a law the Obama regime is vigorously defending in court against legal challenge, despite his "promise" not to use it; personally choosing people for assassination; and on and on.

When you support your persecutor, you have a serious case of masochism.

Attack On Iran To Include Bombing Syria and Lebanon Too

You have to carefully monitor the enemy's publications, because sometimes significant information is slipped in.

For example, the June 25, 2012 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology, a trade rag for the military-industrial complex and to a lesser extent the commercial aviation industry, had an article under the heading "Defense" [sic] titled "Bombing Iran: U.S. military planners ponder when a kinetic attack might make sense."
["Kinetic attack" is a euphemism for attacking with bombs, missiles, bullets, etc., as opposed to "cyberwarfare," for example. In other words, directly killing people and blowing stuff up.] The story is illustrated with a photo of a B-2 Stealth Bomber dropping a string of bombs. It goes over the outlook from the perspectives of U.S. and Israeli imperialists, enumerates in minute detail the various weapons that would be used [e.g. "Lockheed Martin F-22s upgraded for the use of independently targeted, ripple-fired GBU-39 small-diameter bombs, which are designed to destroy or suppress enemy air defenses," and "The AGM-158 Jassm-ER," the kind of jargon weapons fetishists must drool over] quotes the U.S. ambassador to Israel saying the U.S. is ready to attack, and so on. Cyber and electronic attack were also mentioned as components of a direct military attack on Iran.

But what stood out to me was paragraph 15, which stated:

         "A worrisome issue for U.S. planners is that Iran also has intelligence allies. Syria's surveillance and air defense radars, command-and-control (C2) and sigint [jargon for signals intelligence, the interception of communication signals] organizations share information with Tehran. Any attack against Iran would likely have to travel over Turkey north of Syria, over Jordan and Saudi Arabia to the south, or directly over Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Any of those routes would require electronic or kinetic attack of Syrian radar, communications and C2 centers - some of which are in Lebanon - to hide the approaching force. Alternatively, the fall of Syria's current government could provide enough chaos to camouflage a raid on Iran." [My italics.]

While they're at it, they'll probably bomb the "terrorist" Hezbollah in Lebanon, despised enemy of Israel and seen as a cat's paw of Iran.

ANY of the routes to attack Iran would REQUIRE bombing Syria and Lebanon, they said.

On the magazine's website, the article is split into 3 pages. Here's the link to the third page, which has the paragraph in question.

http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_06_25_2012_p29-465266.xml&p=3

So, Paul Ryan Is a Fan of Rage Against The Machine, Is He?

That's what he claims. Odd thing is, the $ media practically ignored this biographical revelation. I'm sure they must be familiar with the content of that band, being the alert ideological watchdogs that they are.

Rage Against The Machine was a radical, anti-capitalist band that explicitly attacked the exploitative system of oppression enforced by the U.S. They even targeted specific U.S. corporations by name in the song “Wind Below” on the Evil Empire album. (And the empire they meant wasn't the U.S.S.R.!) They also cursed a lot. The dyed-in-the-wool capitalists I know hate RATM.

Ryan saying he's a fan of RATM is like Adolf Hitler revealing that in his spare time he liked to dance the hora. It's really rather stunning. I've have thought Ted Nugent would be more his cup of tea. Or a gay-basher like Axl Rose.

What is he, a closet commie?

Isn't someone like Ryan supposed to enjoy, oh, I don't know, country and western, or gospel, or maybe Lawrence Welk? (Ok that was a low blow. How about The Eagles then?)

Ryan was made to do a bit of squirming over the fact that his intellectual lodestar, Ayn Rand, was an atheist. The media made sure to bring that up. But liking RATM is no problem? It's not just a brand of beer, bourgeoisie!

taboo-truths.blogspot.com

jasonzenith.blogspot.com