Aljazeera Joins Attack on NSA Leaker

Aljazeera has joined the assault on Edward Snowden, the cashiered Booz Allen Hamilton Corporation computer systems administrator who exposed a couple of the “National Security” Agency's hidden, massive surveillance programs that surreptitiously seize the phone and Internet records of the American public en masse.

Their Washington correspondent, Kimberly Dozier, joining the U.S. media offensive against Snowden, piled on, calling him a “liar,” because some U.S. politician says so. The story was headlined by Aljazeera calling Snowden a “liar.” (There's no substance to the smear.)

Yet Alajzeera doesn't call obvious, proven liars, like James Clapper Jr, U.S. “Director of National Intelligence,” liars. Clapper lied in Congressional testimony in March when Senator Ron Wyden asked him directly if the NSA was collecting data of Americans. Clapper said no. Then nervously added “not advertently,” another lie. (Now that he was caught lying, although the establishment media is too polite to point out the blatant lie, Clapper says his lie was the “least untruthful” thing he could have said, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. When the true answer is “yes” and you say “no,” that is the MOST untruthful thing you can say. It is the exact opposite of the truth.)

People like Clapper, and every head of the NSA, ever, lie every time they speak. Their counterparts at the major national and international secret police agencies, the FBI and CIA, also chronically lie. Right now, the FBI boss, Robert S. Mueller, III, is lying, claiming terrible damage to U.S. “security” has been done, which is obvious nonsense. [1]

Aljazeera is owned by the monarchy of Qatar, a U.S. ally. Nice of them to join the U.S. government side in this, especially considering how the U.S. treats Aljazeera, bombing their offices, kidnapping their employees, and much else. Ironically, the NSA is part of the Pentagon, it's a military agency, always headed by a general, and it's the U.S. military that keeps bombing Aljazeera, in Kabul and Baghdad, and almost in Doha, Qatar- Tony Blair managed to talk George Bush the Younger out of doing that. The U.S. also reviles Aljazeera as terrorist propaganda, and U.S. corporations have bent over backward to keep Aljazeera television out of the U.S. But not out of Washington, D.C. Apparently the U.S. Imperialist elite, including past Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, rely on it for information!

Kind of like if Heinrich Himmler had kept a secret copy of the Torah for reference.

1] Mueller was also boss of the FBI when the Al-Qaeda airliner kamikaze attacks of 9/11/01 occurred, so most likely he was part of the conspiracy that was watching the hijackers and deliberately allowed the attacks to occur, to enable the subsequent power grab by the secret police agencies. To mention just a few of the many facts that make this conclusion inescapable: Zacarias Moussaoui, the “20^th hijacker,” was arrested before 9/11. French intelligence had told the U.S. he was a “terrorist.” The Minnesota FBI asked FBI headquarters in Washington for a FISA warrant to search Moussaoui's computer. HQ said getting a warrant would be impossible. WHAT?! The FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court virtually never says no to warrant requests. In its history (1979-2012 data) it has granted almost 34,000 warrants and refused- hang on- eleven. That's right, less than one out of every 3,000 get turned down.

Two of the hijackers were living in California. Their landlord was an FBI informer. After 9/11, Congress asked the FBI to present the informer and his FBI handler for questioning. The FBI flatly refused. Congress slinked off with its tail between its legs. Obviously the FBI had a lot to hide. The incident also proves that the secret police are more powerful than the national legislature. That's one definition of a police state. (The FBI has always been more powerful than Congress. Historically, part of that has been due J. Edgar Hoover's practice of assembling blackmail dossiers on politicians. Another factor is the repressive laws that Congress passes, and the way the FBI si allowed to ride roughshod over alleged “Constitutional rights.”)

Mueller just came out with a stunningly cynical and dishonest statement. Testifying to Congress on June 13^th, he invoked the 9/11/01 attacks, claiming that if the just revealed NSA spy programs had been in effect then, they might have stopped the attacks. He admitted that “intelligence agencies” (in the description of the New York Times) was tracking one of the hijackers [i.e.one of the ones living in the FBI informer-landlord's place] and also looking at an Al-Qaeda safehouse in Yemen, and if only they could have connected the two by seizing the phone records of everyone in the U.S., they could have made the connection. How's that for brazenness! First of all, the NSA has ALWAYS spied on all overseas communications as that is their official mission. So any phones in that “safehouse” would have been automatically covered. And since the FBI had set up the San Diego hijackers in their informers pad, their phones no doubt were tapped, and probably the house was bugged too. Of course, the U.S. media won't mention any of this.

And Mueller knows that, which is what gives him the confidence to display such breathtaking chutzpah. [The NY Times pretty much hid what happened in the committee hearing Mueller appeared at. They buried the details in a long article about NSA boss Alexander allegedly promising more openness. There is no hint in the NYT's version of Mueller's appearance of conflict at the hearing between Mueller and the Congressmen. I had to go to foreign media to find that out- namely the Guardian. See “FBI chief Mueller says spy tactics could havestopped 9/11 attacks, June 13^th.]

Birds Gotta Fly, Fish Gotta Swim, Liars Gotta Lie

{VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE AT THE END OF THIS ESSAY!}

“National Security” Agency boss General Keith B. Alexander used a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing to claim that the just-exposed NSA spy programs had foiled “dozens” of so-called “terrorism threats”- not all of them in the U.S. Funny that the oppression establishment waited three days to make this claim. And just what constitutes a “threat”? Sounds like something less than a plot, say, much less an actual action. [1]

Anyway there is no reason to believe him, especially about such a vague claim without any details. Who knows what he's talking about?

Experience shows us that when they claim to have foiled “terrorist plots,” there's a lot of exaggeration involved.

And the secret police bosses lie every single time they make a public statement.

Yet the establishment media, which must know better, accords a presumption of believability and authority to these liars' statements.[2]

He also claimed Congress “authorized” his activities- even though “Congress,” that is, MOST MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, have NO IDEA what the NSA is up to. And the few who know more than most, the members of the so-called “Intelligence” Committees in the House and Senate, are not allowed to tell anyone what they know, including other members of Congress, on pain of imprisonment.

Alexander also repeated the same lies that others in the Obama regime are spouting, including Obama himself, claiming he welcomes “debate” - putting out lies and propaganda when caught is what they call “debate.” Alexander actually had the nerve to say “We aren't trying to hide it.” WHAT!!!

Like I say, the man has no credibility. It's like someone saying the world is flat.

Another whopper was his claim that the NSA is “protecting this nation and our civil liberties and privacy” under the alleged “oversight” of the “courts” (the secret rubber-stamping judges of the FISA court) and Congress. [My italics.] Congress conducts no meaningful oversight over secret police and secret military activities, which has been proven over and over for years now. The NSA's blatant violation of Americans' rights and illegal spying (now “legalized” at least to some degree by the FISA rubber-stamps, which for some reason the Bush regime couldn't be bothered to obtain) is what forced NSA whistleblowers like William Binney, Thomas Drake, and others to complain internally and finally to Congress, resulting in FBI terror raids on their homes and heavy criminal charges, which they were eventually, at great expense and energy and psychic wear and tear, able to escape from, thanks in part to their visibility and political support from concerned citizens.

FBI secret police chief Robert Mueller also chimed in today, with the standard “national security” and “protection” racket bullshit.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate “Intelligence” Committee, participated in the pacification track of the oppression establishment's response to the disclosures, claimed that the telephone records secret vacuumed up under the particular program Snowden revealed involving those records, are destroyed after five years. Believe her if you want.

Feinstein also let slip that the purloined data records aren't used just for counterterrorism. No kidding.

There are four main tracks to the eatablishment's counterattack. One track is justification of the spying, couched both in terms of protection of the American people and of “national security,” and claims of legality and oversight. Second is piteous cries of grave harm to their power to spy- absurd on its face, yet this claim persists. A third track is pacification, issuing soothing words like Obama's “no one is listening to your phone calls,” a completely disingenuous and dishonest claim typical of Obama. No, this particular NSA spy program doesn't collect the voice content of the calls. That is done under other programs. And of course various secret police and regular police agencies listen to the calls of many tens of thousands of people every year.

More pertinently to this particular spy program, the information contained in the metadata in fact is incredibly intrusive, as some people concerned with the increasing evisceration of civil liberties and privacy have pointed out. Dianne Feinstein and others contributed to Obama's minimization by claiming the NSA is merely taking the same stuff as is on your phone bill. (You might want to check your bill to see if it shows your location for every call you made and the location of the other party for every call, among other things that ARE NOT on your bill that the NSA is collecting and saving.) [3]

The fourth track is reviling Edward Snowden, calling him a traitor, and includes character assassinations by the likes of David Brooks and Thomas Friedman in their New York Times columns, and by Jeffrey Toobin, one of these fake New Yorker magazine liberals. [4]

Another liar, vicious GOP Congressman Peter King from Long Island, NY, slandered Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian columnist who broke the story, claiming Greenwald threatened to reveal the names of covert CIA officers. Greenwald called that a lie, and referenced King's support for the Irish Republican Army, officially a “terrorist” organization. King is a guy who revels in murder, wants to murder Julian Assange, and was glad to see the murder of the 16 year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki by U.S. drone, along with his teenage cousins, in a restaurant two weeks after al-Awlaki's assassination.

Murdoch's propaganda organ Fox “News,” provided the platform for King's smear. King also called for the prosecution of Greenwald and other journalists who publish the information revealed by Edward Snowden, the former Booz, Allen Hamilton Corp. systems administrator who “went rogue.”

By the way, “national security” is code for U.S. power. That is very important to remember whenever you hear them invoke that term.

1] Alexander is also the commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, the military arm that conducts cyberwarfare, both offensive as against Iran, and defensive, as in trying to stop Chinese cyberespionage.

2] Apparently I'm not alone in my doubts about the veracity of Alexander. The NY Times described unnamed members of the Appropriations Committee as “skeptical” during his testimony. [“N.S.A. Chief Says Phone Record Logs Halted Terror Threats,” 6/13/13, p. A18.] No word if he was testifying under oath.

The article also quoted former high ranking secret policeman Philip Mudd saying it's very hard for “terrorists” to function without using electronic communications, and that there's no way to do that without leaving a digital trail. So much for the “grave damage to our capabilities” line James R. Clapper, Jr, Obama's mendacious Director of National Intelligence is pushing, as are others. He's the guy who lied in Congress in March when Senator Ron Wyden asked him to his face if the NSA was collecting Americans' data and he said no. Now he says that lie was the “least untruthful” answer he could have given, whatever that means. These people never cease to amaze with their shifty circumlocutions.

3] For more on the uses of metadata and the long corporate media coverup of the massive NSA spying, these are good starting places with a number of links: Daily Kos, and the Government Accountability Project. Also Jesselyn Radack has been giving interviews on this topic. (She's a lawyer who represents persecuted whistleblowers. She had her consciousness raised when she was at the Department of “Justice” and warned that John Walker Lindh shouldn't be interrogated without his lawyer, and shouldn't be tortured. Of course both were done, and then she herself became a target of persecution, criminal investigation, and was put on the no-fly list. Some of the details of her persecution are at Wikipedia; also in interviews at democracynow.org.

4] One key leg of the character assassination of Snowden is sneering at his lack of a high school diploma. Thus do these bourgeois professional polemicists insult millions of people who never graduated high school. I guess those millions are collateral damage in the propagandists' smear campaign. Nothing like a little class snobbery by bourgeois blatherers.

Ironic thing is that a good number of the very smartest people leave the U.S. educational system before graduating high school because of its mind-numbing, stultifying nature. But as far as these privileged prattlers are concerned, they're all losers. Economically, most high school “dropouts” are, but not Snowden: he was making a low six figure salary before the age of 30.

{PSST! Buddy! Over here! I got a secret to tell you....

There's this special box on the top of this webpage. You put in your email address, click Submit, and you get confidential messages that the FBI and the CIA reads and the NSA collects and stores. And you can read them too! They tell you whenever there's a new essay posted here.

What? I told you. The top of the page. On the right side. I said, it's called “Follow By Email” I told you that already. Yes I did. I did so tell you! Well I'm telling you now, OK?! Don't be such a ballbuster, I'm doing you a favor here!! What are you, an ingrate? Hey, I didn't have to tell you!! Don't tell me to take it easy!!! Who do you think you're dealing with!!!! Okay Okay I'm calm I'm calm! Just hurry up and do it before they take it away. Whadda ya mean, “Who's gonna take it away?”! WHOEVER! DON'T ASK SO MANY QUESTIONS AND JUST DO IT, OK?

Sheesh! Some people just like to be difficult!}

In Latest Expose of Massive Police State Surveillance of Everyone, Many Liars' Pants on Fire

The same government and corporate honchos who run a secret secret police state are acting true to character, lying their heads off about the exposure in The Guardian of yet another “secret” NSA total surveillance program. (The NSA has numerous programs that vacuum up all the world's communications. This has been well-known, and documented, for decades in books and articles, yet for some reason this latest example is being treated as some kind of revelation.)

Two programs in particular, one that routes the data from Internet companies to the NSA, called Prism, the other that orders phone companies to turn over all their “metadata” on phone calls to the NSA, and not tell anyone about it, were revealed by a systems administrator at Booz, Allen Corp. (which just fired him) named Edward J. Snowden. [1]

Let's start with Obama's “intelligence czar,” the “Director of National Intelligence,” a lifelong apparatchik by the name of James R. Clapper, Jr. Just a few months ago, in March, he was asked a direct question in Congressional testimony by Senator Ron Wyden. Wyden asked the crooked Clapper if NSA was collecting data on Americans. Clapper lied through his teeth and said no. (It's been a known fact for years that the NSA does precisely that, and several former NSA employees have recently blown the whistle on such programs, which the Obama regime responded to by persecuting them, including William Binney, Thomas Drake, and several others.) Now three months later Clapper is proved a liar.

So does Congress demand his resignation? Impeach him? Naah! They mostly call for the scalp of Ed Snowden.

So what does Clapper do now? He goes out and tell more lies- this time with indignation. It's “reprehensible” what Snowden did. (It's admirable what Clapper and his secret police ilk do.) That's not a lie- that's Clapper's opinion. (Like the Nazis felt the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich was reprehensible.) Clapper claims finding out about this stuff “can render great damage to our intelligence capabilities” and moans about “the huge, grave damage it does to our intelligence capabilities.”

NONSENSE. It doesn't affect in the slightest the NSA capability to keep right on stealing all the data that passes over the transmission networks they tap with the cooperation of the big U.S. telephone and Internet corporations. (3 billion phone records a day, according to 30 year NSA veteran William Binney, plus the ability to record chosen calls at will.- June 10 interview, democracynow.org)

The heads of the various Internet companies all came out almost simultaneously with the same lies, denying what the Prism documents clearly state- that the NSA has “direct access” to their systems. These liars are at Google, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Apple, and Microsoft (which has long built backdoors into its operating system software for the convenience of the NSA). Maybe they're just playing a secret wordplay game. Maybe they have their own covert definition of the words “direct access,” the way Obama has his own secret definition of “imminent threat” for the people he assassinates, or like his twin Bill Clinton had his own definition of “sex.” (And of “is,” for that matter- “it depends on what 'is' means” he said at one point when he was cornered during the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.)

Non-American power-insiders are lying too. After the Guardian exposed NSA's sharing of the massive daily data trove with its U.K. counterpart [see “UK gathering secret intelligence via covert NSA operation,” Guardian, June 7, 2013. ] British Foreign Secretary William Hague insisted that Britain's own NSA, called G.C.H.Q. (for Government Communications Headquarters) hadn't broken British law, and wasn't getting data on British citizens from the NSA- a flat, bald-faced lie he told Parliament in person. As anyone who has ever read a book about the NSA knows, there is a long-standing arrangement (going back decades) between the electronic secret police agencies of the English-speaking Angle-Saxon nations, the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to spy on each others' citizens and then give each other the data, so that each can pretend to not be eavesdropping on its own citizens. He also made the slippery statement that “to intercept the content of any individual's communications in the U.K. requires a warrant signed personally by me.”

Clever, Hague. We're not talking about a single individual. We're talking about everybody, wholesale. Everybody's communications are seized and stored, every day. After they run the data through their software screens and find “persons of interest,” then they can always get a warrant to make it look nice and legal. (But legality is really besides the point. Police states all have laws, always, that grant the oppressors crushing power. Sure it's “legal,” mostly. Except for the “off the books” stuff.)

Hague also made the same kind of noises about “oversight” that U.S. politicians and apparatchiks have been making. So the fact that the swine at the top are “overseeing” our oppression is supposed to make us feel better, I suppose.

Hague's master, Prime Minister David Cameron, belched forth the same kind of rhetoric that U.S. politicians have been spewing: “I see every day the vital work they [referring to the secret police- aka “intelligence” agencies] do to keep us safe, but it is vital work that is done under a legal framework within the law [redundant, David] and subject to proper scrutiny by the intelligence and security committee.” Furthermore, “The intelligence services [i.e. secret police] operate within the law, within the law that we have laid down, and they are also subject to proper scrutiny by the intelligence and security committee of the House of Commons,” he repeated himself, for the hard of hearing, I guess.

Sounds like a case of methinks thou doth protest too much, to paraphrase the Bard.

Well, if that “oversight” is anything like the see no evil approach of the U.S. Congressional “Intelligence” Committees, that ain't exactly reassuring.

Finally, one mustn't overlook the biggest liar of all, Barack Hussein Obama, President of the U.S.A. He says- after doing everything in his power to suppress the knowledge of even the existence of the institutionalized and apparently permanent spying, including repression of leakers and soon, apparently, reporters- that he welcomes discussion of such police state omni-surveillance programs- a claim even the establishment NY Times finds hard to believe, as reflected in such headlines as “Debate on Secret Data Looks Unlikely, Partly Due to Secrecy” (June 11, 2013, p. A1) and the lead editorial the same day, “A Real Debate on Surveillance.” (Posted on the NYT website a day earlier.)

The editorial is dismissive of “blithe assurances that the government can be trusted,” an amazing statement for the quintessential Establishment newspaper, and the first two paragraphs say:

“For years, as the federal surveillance state grew into every corner of American society, the highest officials worked to pretend that it didn’t exist. Now that Americans are learning what really takes place behind locked doors, many officials claim they are eager to talk about it. 'That's a conversation that I welcome having' President Obama said on Saturday. Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, said on Sunday that she was open to holding a public hearing on the subject now, a hearing next month, a hearing every month.

“This newfound interest in openness is a little hard to take seriously, not only because of the hypocrisy involved but because neither official seems to want to do more than talk about being open. If the president wants to have a meaningful discussion, he can order his intelligence directors to explain to the public precisely how the National Security Agency’s widespread collection of domestic telephone data works. Since there’s not much point in camouflaging the program anymore, it’s time for the public to get answers to some basic questions.

“So far, no one at the White House seems interested in a substantive public debate.” [2]

This is a welcome change from their credulous praise that followed Obama's cynical May 23rd speech at the "National Defense College," in which he once again played his game of rhetorical judo, throwing his opponents off-balance by saying "I'm on your side! I agree with you!"

For seven long years Obama has made sure to block the possibility of a “discussion,” getting lawsuits by the ACLU and others thrown out of court on “national security” grounds, and now he claims he “welcomes a discussion.” Oh really!

Speaking of Feinstein, she is such a pathetic stooge and shill for the secret police that she can't even get redacted versions of the secret “court” decisions “legalizing” this permanent NSA dragnet! [3] But she's a trooper; accepting her debased position in the power structure, she loyally yaps like a Chihuahua lapdog in defense of the power structure, now branding Snowden a “traitor.” (The traditional penalty for treason is death, by the way.) On her rounds on the Sunday morning political propaganda TV shows, she invoked the “World Trade Center.” Twelve years on, still milking that! Still using it as an excuse for every one of their crimes! Cunning of the CIA and FBI to deliberately allow the attack to go through. That's been paying political dividends for the system ever since!

Feinstein's political rise got a big boost from the fascist* assassin Dan White, who murdered San Francisco Mayor George Moscone (and Supervisor Harvey Milk). Feinstein immediately stepped into his shoes as Mayor, and she was off to the races. She's married to a so-called “investment banker” (finance capitalist parasite) and is thus filthy rich.

*By “fascist,” I mean violent right-winger.

1] By the way, the NY Times reported that the police came by Snowden's house in Hawaii last Wednesday, the same day the Guardian first published the story, and asked where he was. Snowden's identity wasn't publicly revealed by the Guardian until four days later on Sunday. That shows how hot and heavy they are about constantly spying on Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian commentator who broke the story and who is a persistent critic of Obama's crimes, and Laura Poitras, the documentary filmmaker who shot an interview in Hong Kong with Greenwald and Snowden on Sunday. She has been harassed by the U.S. for years, which seizes her computer and cellphone and etc. every time she crosses a U.S. border.

Or maybe the NSA merely checked its own treasure trove of stolen emails and phone calls and data logs and etc. etc. etc. The NY Times reports that the NSA started looking for the “leaker” on the same day the Guardian story came out, last Wednesday. Fighting terrorism, keeping America strong!

The specifics of the phone spying centers around a renewal of a 7 year old warrant by the FISA court under which Verizon is ordered to turn over all the metadata for its business phone customers. That would include cellphone location, numbers called from and to, length of calls. The NSA no doubt has similar court orders for all the telephone companies. Furthermore, the NSA does surreptitously capture all the voice content (and texts, and faxes) of phone calls, under separate “compartmented” programs, but is still pretending it doesn't. The U.S. media is going along with this ridiculous lie. The NSA also collects all your emails. Yes, yours. You really want this ruthless killer government to have all that?

2] One of the NYT's two resident reactionary columnists, David Brooks, contributed to the “discussion” with an op-ed opposite the editorial which in its entirety is a character assassination of Snowden. He repeatedly intones the word “betrayed” to describe Snowden's relationship to everyone and everything in his life, painting him as a social destroyer. It's a nasty, twisted hit-job from start to finish.

3] The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court- FISA court- isn't a real court, but a windowless room inside the Department of “Justice” edifice in Washington, D.C., inside which a rotating group of 11 reactionary judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (a series of rightists, Warren Burger, William Rehnquist, and now John Roberts Jr.) are on call to rubber-stamp warrant requests from the secret police agencies. There is no one there to contest the secret police warrant requests in the court. From its inception in 1979 through 2012, the “court” has granted about 34,000 secret spy warrants, while rejecting a grand total of 11. That's right, it says “no” once in about every 3,000 requests. (The Electronic Privacy Information Center has a table broken down by year, with a link to the Federation of American Scientists. The Federation website has copies of the annual reports to Congress on the numbers of applications submitted and granted, and rejected (usually none). A small number of applications are modified by the “court.” The warrants are for electronic surveillance and physical searches.

I tallied up the yearly totals and it's almost exactly 34,000, so I don't know why people still toss around numbers in the 20,000 range. That is an old, outdated total.

There are more applications granted than submitted in some years, which may be attributable to multiple warrants granted on a single application. Or maybe, like doting grandparents, the judges just like showering presents on the secret police.

For the first quarter century of its existence, the “court” didn't say “no” to the secret police even once.

Paki PM Summons U.S. Ambassador To Demand End To Drone Attacks

Nawaz Sharif, the new Pakistani Prime Minister, is at least putting on a good show of opposing drone attacks on Paki territory. He's summoned the U.S. ambassador to demand an end to the strikes after the latest one killed 9 people in North Waziristan. [Not 7 as the NY Times reported earlier. See "Pakistan summons US ambassador to protest against latest drone killings," Guardian, 8 June 2013.]

The Paki Foreign Ministry claims that today "It was conveyed to the US chargé d' affaires that the government of Pakistan strongly condemns the drone strikes, which are a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

"The importance of bringing an immediate end to drone strikes was emphasized." This according to a statement the Ministry issued.

We've been through this before. See "Pakistan Reissues Its Usual Objections About Drones-- Again." Any time Pakistan wants to stop the drones, all it has to do is shoot one down. It had a chance yesterday, it had a chance ten days before that, it will have another chance in a week or two, no doubt.

Actions speak louder than words, Pakistan.

Obama claims these drone strikes are ONLY against threats that are "imminent." Obama long ago redefined "imminent" to me "possible, someday," without informing anyone of his own idiosyncratic definition. But it is obvious that that is what he means.

Either that, or he's a shameless, bald-faced liar.

No one is making him lie and claim the people he's killing thousands of miles away (like the 16 year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki and a group of teenaged cousins, killed in Yemen along with nobody else, or the 35 women and children Obama killed in his first attack on Yemen in 2009, using a cruise missile, in order to "take out" a retired jihadist who had fought in the U.S.-Pakistani-Saudi war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan 3 decades ago) are an "imminent" threat. Seems virtually none are. Some are enemies of the U.S., mostly because they're fighting in Afghanistan, or in Somalia. Claiming an "imminent threat" is pure propaganda, to scare the American public into supporting his Murder, Inc. operations. Probably most Americans would support his executions of many of the victims of his attacks (even I would, in the case of Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorist leaders). But he refuses to make his case honestly and openly, while spouting off about how much he loves "transparency" and "dialogue" whenever there's a mini-uproar. He's like a philandering husband who coos sweet nothings at his wife every time she raises her suspicions with him.

We see the same pattern of saying the opposite of what he's doing with the massive police state surveillance program he's instituted, the persecution of whistleblowers and leakers, now moving on to target reporters, and the repression of the Occupy Movement.

He has proven more and more dishonest over time. He adamantly refuses to justify his actions, even to Congress, while unctuously claiming Congress is "informed." With breathtaking chutzpah, he claims to welcome "discussion" when in fact he moves heaven and earth to keep everything a secret, and goes after leakers, whistleblowers, and increasingly reporters, with the full might of the Federal government, kicking down their door in FBI raids, indicting them under the Espionage Act and other legal clubs the repressive U.S. Government has at its disposal.

U.S. Replies To New Paki PM Complaint About Drones With Another Drone Attack

Yesterday, Friday, June 7th, the U.S. fired a Hellfire missile from a drone at a house in Pakistan, killing at least 7 people. (Presumably "terrorists.")

This comes after the new Paki Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, has made several public statements already calling for an end to drone strikes. (See previous essay, below.) Sharif spent the day announcing his new cabinet. It's smaller than you might expect, because Sharif anointed himself as Defense Minister and Foreign Minister, in addition to already being Prime Minister. What a go-getter!

Actually a power-hog, just like he's a money-hog.

{WOW! Look at all the great new features on the right side of this blog! You can Subscribe to it! You can Follow it By Email! You can even Translate the whole page into another language! Have you ever seen anything like that before???

You have? On every other blog there is?... Oh..... I see...... Okay........Ummm..

So nothing special then.

.

Sorry to waste your time. Go back to your reading.}

New Liar Prime Minister of Pakistan Again Whines About Drones

Nawaz Sharif of the “Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz” (yes, that's the egotistical name of his party) has repeated his call against U.S. drone strikes- with an intriguing weasel-word.

Sharif is quoted (in the New York Times for example) as announcing to the Paki Parliament: “The chapter of daily drone attacks should stop.” Notice that word, daily. So would attacks every other day be okay? How about weekly? Or does he mean all attacks should stop? According to U.S. media, the attacks aren't “daily,” although the drones are apparently omnipresent in the skies over the terrorist-dominated regions that border Afghanistan.

Now here's the part where Sharif lies: “We respect the sovereignty of other countries, but others should also respect our sovereignty.”

No you don't. You launch terrorist attacks against India. You sponsor terrorist attacks inside Afghanistan, such as inside Kabul, including against sovereign diplomatic targets such as the Indian embassy. Your pants are on fire, man.

As I have previously pointed out, the Pakis could shoot down the drone any time they want, if they were serious. [See “Pakistan Reissues Its Usual Objections About Drones-- Again"]

Here's how the NY Times interprets Sharif's words: “His comment on drone strikes suggested a firm, and perhaps more distant tone in relations with the United States, whose alliance with Pakistan has frequently been stormy in recent years.” [“Pakistan's New Premier Calls for Drone Strike Halt,” NYT, 6/6/13, p. A6.] Stormy indeed!

So perhaps the tone will be more distant. What does that mean? It implies the relationship is currently friendly. How do you go from “stormy” to “distant”? Stormy is angry. Will it be angry from farther away? Less angry and more coldly contemptuous? There's no clue.

NY Times “news” articles are frequently larded with vague speculations like this, oblique hints that the reader is left to puzzle over. Maybe more facts an less attitude would make for better journalism. So much of what is in the NYT is about transmitting the NYT's attitude about a subject, person, or country to the reader. It's an underhanded form of indoctrination, hiding under cover of pseudo-objectivity,

By the way, this is the third time Sharif has been Prime Minister, which is a symptom of how tiny and inbred the Paki ruling elite is.

Last time he was PM, General Pervez Musharraf overthrew him in 1999 in one of the routine military coups that are standard practice in Pakistan. He was lucky, however; Musharraf didn't execute him, as a previous dictator, the loathsome General Zia ul-Haq, (one of Ronald Reagan's favorite dictators) did to the civilian ruler he overthrew, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. (Benazir Bhutto's father. Benazir herself was murdered with the connivance of Musharraf and indeed of the U.S., which refused her request for protection after a bombing killed many of her followers at a rally.) Ali Bhutto was President, and then PM, when ul-Haq overthrew him in 1977.

Like all the civilian bosses of Pakistan, Sharif is a theft and a crook. The oh-so-genteel NY Times, which hates to cast disrespect on any national boss, obliquely references this in a sentence fragment buried 3/4ths of the way down in their article (paragraph 17 of 24), mentioning that during Sharif''s previous term, “Back then, Mr. Sharif had little public support because of accusations of corruption and mismanagement, while the coup received a broad, if short-lived, welcome.” That's all you get in the way of facts- there were some “allegations.” Actually there was common knowledge of routine corruption, graft, and indifference to running a real government that provides services to the people- like an educational system (hence the rise of terrorist incubation centers, aka “madrassas”) or a health care system.

The NYT has rarely if ever given a detailed account of the massive thievery and governmental negligence of the Paki elites. This particular article wouldn't be the place for that, but a total whitewash is dishonest and far from objective. They couldn't minimize it any more unless they entirely omitted any mention whatsoever, which they almost did.

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Pentagon Moves To Protect Military Rapists

I guess the U.S. military and its nominal civilian bosses in the Department of "Defense" are incorrigible. It's not enough that  rape and sexual assault in the U.S. military has been a simmering scandal for at least a year now. It's not enough that a documentary film about it forced the previous Secretary of "Defense," Democratic Party nomenklatura member and lifelong politician Leon Panetta to open his mouth and pretend to be "concerned" and to make some fake public relations moves that changed nothing (by design- he figured it would blow over and anyone he'd be gone soon so why rock the boat?). It's not enough that an Air Force general threw out the sexual criminal conviction of another officer under his command, for no reason at all except upholding the Bonds of Brotherhood among professional macho killers. It's even not enough that several officers or NCOs who were put in charge of sexual harassment policy enforcement were caught committing sexual crimes themselves.

No, none of this is enough to force the military and its civilian supervisors to reform. Now that Congress, under pressure from the public, from media exposure, and from female members of Congress, are talking about actual steps that are necessary to be imposed, like taking away the right of base commanders to throw out convictions at their whim, and creating a separate investigatory unit for sex crimes with real power, that is outside the chain of command (the same chain of command that protects and indeed promotes sexual criminals, while subjecting their victims to harassment and retaliation), the Pentagon (Do"D" and military branches) is OPPOSING THOSE CHANGES as going "too far."

Right. Actually trying to stop rape and other sexual assaults in the military would be going "too far."

Well, what do you expect from institutions that commit war crimes and atrocities routinely (probably on a daily basis)? What can you expect when they protect and promote butchers like the killer pilots in the "Collateral Murder" video (available for viewing in many places online, including youtube.com) made available to the world by WikiLeaks, while that military is now in the process of imprisoning for life the soldier who revealed the evidence of the crime, Bradley Manning? These are not normal human beings with moral ethical standards. And as macho killers, naturally they are sexist, deeply contemptuous of women.

Nor is any of this new. The U.S. military has been committing atrocities since it nearly exterminated the Native American inhabitants of the nation, and in most of its wars since. As for rape and other sexual crimes, do an online search of "Tailhook Scandal," which occurred several decades ago, involving U.S. Navy pilots and at least one admiral, engaging in a drunken debauchery where they forced women to run a gauntlet of group groping.

But that's nothing compared to what U.S. troops do to women who are NOT their own comrades-in-arms. Such as the young Iraqi girl who was gang-raped, and then murdered along with her family and their bodies burned. (That was a bit much for even the U.S. military to overlook, after it was publicized.) And there were so many horrendous atrocities committed in Vietnam, such as the women who were gang-raped, spread eagles, and executed by having flares rammed into their vaginas and set off (according to the testimony of American veterans.)

Just saying "war is hell" to brush it all off won't do.

{Do you ever get that gnawing feeling in your brain when you find yourself asking: I wonder if Jason Zenith posted another commentary yet?

Don't suffer in silence. Now, relief is at hand. Get free email alerts whenever there's another essay! Merely go to the upper right side of this very webpage, and “Subscribe.” Or “Follow By Email,” and click “Submit.” It couldn't be easier.

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Look, I'm sorry I lied. But at least I'm admitting I lied, and before you caught me too, so go easy on me, okay?}

Scandals Real and Fabricated

Right-wing political groups asked for additional information before IRS recognition of them as tax-exempt- SCANDAL!

Associated Press phone records secretly seized by the Department of “Justice:” NOT a scandal. (Yet.)

IRS “targeted” Tea Party groups requesting tax-exempt status. Actually the IRS subjected them to more careful vetting than usual, asking for more information, which delayed the granting of the status. But they're free to operate as tax-exempt while waiting. [1]

All the establishment media keeps calling it “targeting.” Yet it turns out that liberal groups were also subject to delays and lengthy questionnaires. One of them shut down as a result. I only heard or read one report about that. If you missed it, you're still being misled to believe that the right-wing was “targeted.” [2]

Not sure how one person at a desk sending out questionnaires constitutes “targeting” anyway. [See “Confusion and Staff Troubles Rife at I.R.S. Office in Ohio,” New York Times, May 18, 2013, paragraph 3.]

Meanwhile the secret rifling through the phone records of Associated Press employees last year by Eric Holder's minions at the Department of “Justice” isn't deemed scandalous. Guess because the Republicans hate the media too. Instead they're rehashing the Benghazi, Libya, attack last year by Islamists that killed the U.S. ambassador and some guards. Okay, Obama put out lies because he was afraid a “terrorist” attack would hurt his reelection prospects. Too bad the Democrats are incapable of just saying that. Instead they sent UN Ambassador Susan Rice, who's close to Obama, to FIVE- count 'em, FIVE- Sunday morning TV political palaver programs in one day to put out the agreed upon line that a mob was spontaneously inflamed by a dopey anti-Prophet Muhammed video, grabbed their AK-47s and RPGs and mortars out of their larders and expertly assaulted the guarded and fortified U.S. compound. (It only sounds ridiculous when you include details like that. So leave out the details! Brilliant plan, Barack!)

Hey, it worked. He got reelected, didn't he?

So why don't the Democrats just drop the bullshit and say Obama didn't want to jeopardize his reelection? I mean, as the inimitable Hillary Clinton says, What difference does it make?

That is to say, dead is dead.

Oh, that would be “cynical” of them, I suppose, to just come clean. That is, politicians are expected to maintain a facade of false at all times, lest their subjects- excuse me, “We The People,” lose trust in government. Wouldn't want that to happen, now would we! (Someone must be a bit out of touch if that's their concern. That horse left the barn a few years ago.)

One thing is a little sad. The ambassador who got killed, Christopher Stevens, if we are to believe the U.S. media accounts, actually was a decent guy. If the U.S. ever adopted a pro-human foreign policy, people like him would be important assets. Ironic that the sons of bitches, the John Negropontes of the world, never get what's coming to them. Instead it's the good guys who catch the karmic retribution. (That's not an endorsement of the Islamofascists who in this view are agents of that karma. I don't actually believe in karma. How about we just call it “blowback” and leave it at that.)

1] The issue is the particular tax status being sought by these Tea Party types. A political organization can have tax-exempt status, but it has to reveal its donors. These reactionaries seek to hide their donors' identities. (They should start something called the Bashful Billionaires Club.) In order to do that, they have to pretend they're “social welfare” organizations. This is what the mendacious Karl Rove does with Crossroads America, for example. The real problem with what the IRS did is that it just went after the small fry, apparently too politically weak to enforce tax law against blatant violators like GOP poohbah Rove. After all, Republicans control the House of Representatives, semi-control the Senate, the corporate media is mostly pro-GOP, and for that matter the men with the guns, the military and secret police and regular police, are overwhelmingly reactionaries and thus Republican- and that's no small thing. Oh, and most of the large corporate upper hierarchy is Republican.

There's a totally specious argument that reactionaries have trotted out at times to justify the need to hide their moneybag donors' identities. They point out that people who gave to the NAACP back in the 1950s and '60s were risking their lives. Good argument. Wouldn't want the KKK to kill the Koch brothers! (Uh, when exactly was the last time that a racist or fascist killed a rich reactionary? Oh, right, it was never.)

2] Brian Nailer, NPR Weekend Edition Sunday morning, when no one is listening, 5/19/13. A news co-op providing stories for the New York Times went out of business because of dilatory IRS tactics. Without IRS recognition of their tax-exempt status, they couldn't get necessary foundation funding to continue. So the only known actual IRS victim in the story gets ignored because it doesn't fit the “IRS targeted conservatives” script.

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Obama: Cynicism Squared

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We now return to Obama: Cynicism Squared.

Just as it has been revealed that the Obama regime secretly obtained the phone records- for both the business and personal phones- of one hundred Associated Press reporters and editors for a two month period last year, allegedly as part of a “leak investigation,” Obama is making a show of introducing a reporter's shield law in Congress, which he knows damn well will be dead on arrival.

Think that's cynical? Wait, there's more!

Obama's bill contains a "national security" exception! So it wouldn't even make the slightest difference in cases like the AP one!

How's that for cynicism!

But Obama wants to con us into thinking he's a First Amendment protector with his "shield law" stunt. (I'd like to see Congress actually pass it, just to see if Obama would veto his own law. Don't laugh, it's possible he would. Remember his backflip on the law to immunize the telecoms for helping the NSA illegally spy on us?)

If Obama is so concerned that the media be free of government interference (and persecution, for that matter), he'd do better to practice what he chooses to preach only at convenient moments. Like his Democratic predecessor Clinton, he's an slippery con man adept at deceptive feints and verbal tap-dancing. Much more dangerous than a tongue-tied simpleton like Bush II, because more complex and better at fooling people. [1]

One of the most important deleterious effects of this type of repressive activity is that it intimidates whistle-blowers from going to the media with information. That is probably the main intent here. This strategy works in tandem with the Obama regime practice of criminally persecuting whistle-blowers like Thomas Drake, William Binney, John Kiriakou, and others. (Complete with FBI terror raids on their homes. Hyperbole, you say? Imagine being at home with your wife and children when a dozen or more men in flak vests carrying automatic assault rifles kick in your door and swarm into your home, screaming commands at you and your family. Bet your wife and kids would be terrified, if not you too, tough guy. The terror may not always be achieved, but it is certainly intended.) [Go to democracynow.org and youtube.com to learn more about these and other cases.]

Obama's Attorney General, the professional oppressor Eric Holder, claims that he had nothing to do with the spying, because he recused himself from the “case,” oddly. Therefore he played dumb when asked by Congress why his minions issued a secret subpoena, which prevented the AP from knowing what was happening and thus being able to challenge the search. [“Due process” Obama-regime style.] He played dumb on lots of things during his Congressional appearance, in fact. [2]

Holder is defending this outrageous spying by saying that in all his years as a lawyer, this is one of the worst leaks he's ever seen. Naturally, he claimed that American lives were put at risk by the “leak.” (They always say that.) He refused to be specific. However...

NPR's secret police tool, Dena Temple-Raston, yesterday dutifully passed along the story the Obama regime wanted passed along. (Anonymously- hey a “leak!” Actually an authorized plant. So presumably they won't be secretly seizing her phone records. But that's ok, the NSA has the actual calls, just in case.) [Temple-Raston's current official title at NPR is “Counterterrorism Correspondent.” That highly ideological designation tells you quite a lot right there. She's part of what NPR calls its “national security team.” She- and NPR- are completely in bed with the secret police and military in their “war on terror.”]

Supposedly this terrible terrible leak that endangered all our lives concerned stopping Al-Qaeda from using- a nuclear weapon! A dirty bomb! A sarin gas plot! Uh, no, actually it was nothing like that. It was the story about the guy the CIA (and MI6 and the Saudis, but Temple-Raston didn't mention them) infiltrated into Al-Qaeda in Yemen, and got ahold of one of their suicide bombs by posing as a willing suicide dupe. After duly delivering the bomb to his actual masters, the secret police apparently couldn't help boasting about their great coup to their media stooges- or so it seemed to me at the time. If we believe Holder (and there's no reason on earth to take anything that man says on his word alone) it wasn't that at all, but some nefarious leak that was not authorized. (Or maybe both; you see the two explanations are not mutually exclusive. Some secret policemen might have decided to boast, and another level or rival organization might have been miffed by this.) MI6 was reportedly (at the time) bent out of shape over the Americans squandering the “asset” (the infiltrator) in order to score PR points with the U.S. public (anonymously of course) by boasting of their exploit. Just as “drug war” “warriors” like to parade the grass and drugs they seize in front of the media in order to keep the “war” going, U.S. “terror” warriors need to make it look like they're “winning” their war too.

I suspect the “leak investigation” was undertaken at least in part to mollify the British.

The part of Holder's bleating that is clearly false is the “American lives were endangered” part. All that happened was that their mole became useless and had to be relocated with his family with new identities, and with a fat payoff of course. If anything, you can say that the “leak” protected lives, namely the life of the infiltrator, and possibly his family and friends, because they were going to put him back inside Al-Qaeda after he'd pretended to be a willing suicide bomber and stole one of their bombs. No doubt Al-Qaeda would have gotten suspicious of the guy.

Holder is the same guy who says that his boss, Obama, can secretly order executions because due process does not mean judicial process, an utterly absurd, Alice In Wonderland type statement. The very concept of due process is that an accused is notified of charges or allegations and has the chance to contest them before penalties are imposed. The accused can also contest the punishment. Due process evolved in opposition to the arbitrary and capricious whims of Kings who could do whatever they wanted without challenge and without having to justify their actions. The point of due process is to restrict the power of the state (those in power) to punish people, even kill them, without having to prove just cause. Secretly ordering someone's execution is the diametrical opposite of due process.

Just as John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, and Jay Bybee, among others, wrote legal opinions for their master, Bush II, as if they could make law themselves, so Eric Holder has arrogated to himself the power to make his own binding Constitutional interpretations. (“The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process,” he said in his infamous speech declaring that a secret kill list constitutes due process for those condemned to death.)

When the public rumblings of unease over this self-authorized murder program reached a certain noise level, Obama and Holder caused to be planted all kinds of stories in the media about how carefully the faceless Imperialist apparatchiks who add names to the death list do the vetting. [And eventually Holder gave his chilling speech in March 2012, at a law school. More and more, U.S. law is coming to resemble the law of the Third Reich. I pity the fools who voted for Obama thinking he'd reverse that trend which began under Bush II.] We're told that King Obama personally approves or disapproves of each one he secretly sentences to death. Well that's awfully reassuring!

Of course, no one can challenge the alleged “intelligence information” that is the basis for the King ordering death sentences. The whole point of courts is to allow the accused to defend themselves.

Say that, and they pull another bit of flimflam. This is war, they say. So why the prattle about “what we do in secret is due process,” and “we're very careful about who we kill”? (And what about the hundreds of civilians killed in Pakistan and Yemen, for example? And why did you blow the 16 year old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and his friends into pieces sitting in a restaurant? Never mind, I guess the answer is “classified,” i.e. a secret.)

They disingenuously skip back and forth between a “legal” paradigm and a “war” paradigm, depending on what sophistry works best for them politically at a given moment. The Bush regime did the same.

Obama frequently pulls cynical stunts like the one he's pulling now with his “media shield” law. He also has a habit of totally mendacious public rhetoric, as in his blather about “transparency.” He runs a hyper-secretive regime, worse than the Bushes, Reagan, even Nixon. Under Obama, the number of documents classified yearly has skyrocketed. In his first year in office (2009), Obama doubled the number of classifications, to almost 55 million. Bush in his last year classified over 23 million. And Bush was no slouch himself. As you can see from this chart, the number has been rising inexorably, from under 6 million in 1996. So under Obama there's been about a nine fold increase since then. Incredible. At the same time, the number declassified- what they'll allow us to see, if we can find them, in the National Archives, has been shriveling over time. [See CHARTS here.]

Another example of how what Obama tells us “marks,” as con men call their victims, the opposite of what he does: He breaks new records every year for deporting people, while posing as a friend of immigrants.

It would fill a book to list all the particulars of his two-faced deceits. Just compare his mendacious campaign promises, especially in2008, with his actions as President.

One classic example bears repeating, since the corporate media has thrown it down the memory hole.

Back in 2008, when he was first running for President, Obama promised to filibuster a bill pending in Congress to grant immunity from private lawsuits for the telecom companies that cooperated with an illegal NSA eavesdropping program that collected all the phone calls, emails, faxes, and texts that passed through the telecoms networks. [3]

Well, he didn't filibuster it. In fact, he didn't even vote against it. He hurried back from the campaign trail to vote for it. Who could vote for a sleazy con man like that, a totally untrustworthy liar who is hostile to human rights? They wouldn't even let people sue the phone companies at the victims' own expense. (The Federal courts had already declared that the NSA had sovereign immunity to do whatever it wants with complete impunity, so the government couldn't be sued.)

So no one should be surprised by Obama's further depredations on human rights and civil liberties as President. Except maybe by his personal assassination program. Probably no one guessed he'd go that far- the guy who promised to close Guantanamo Bay- and within a year! (Oops!)

There is much more to say about the assault on the AP, in context of attacks on the media (including actual military attacks, as the bombings of Aljazeera) and the American establishment media's complacency and assumption of privilege for itself. I will take all that up in further essays.

1] The AP is more important than most people realize. A so-called “news service,” it provides news stories to other media organizations that subscribe to its services. (Originally the stories were delivered by telegraph, for speed, hence the term “wire service.”) Probably all the major U.S. news organizations use its stories, as do some news companies in other countries. Its subscribers aren't obligated to use its stories, they can pick and choose which ones to run, which they do.

In recent years the AP has covered a number of revealing stories that don't reflect well on the U.S. Government. These stories would otherwise have not become known. There is good reason to suspect this motivated the Obama regime to surreptitiously attack AP.

2] For those unfamiliar with the structure of the U.S. Government, especially my readers outside the U.S., the Attorney General is head of the Department of “Justice.” “Justice” enforces- selectively and sometimes quite arbitrarily- Federal criminal and civil laws. It also carries out persecutions of political targets, using various laws as weapons against its victims. The Obama regime has been zealous in criminally persecuting whistle-blowers and alleged leakers, for example. The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), the major Federal secret police agency that has a domestic purview, although it does and has long operated overseas also, is part of “Justice.” However in practice it operates as an independent fiefdom most of the time. (An Agency is an organizational unit that is part of a Department)

Heads of Departments are dubbed Cabinet Secretaries. The Cabinet is the level of authority in the Federal Government below the President and Vice President. Another example of a Department is the Department of “Defense” (which was more honestly named the Department of War prior to 1949, when in a Cold War propaganda move it was renamed).

However, authority and power aren't necessarily the same thing in the U.S. Government. In recent decades, real power has been increasingly concentrated in the White House (the President's official headquarters), whose staff frequently gives orders to the Cabinet Secretaries in the name of the President. This has given rise to the phrase “Imperial Presidency,” among people who find this concentration of power ominous. (“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,”-Lord Acton's famous aphorism, not an original idea with him, but well put.)

Another example: sometimes the President's so-called “national security adviser,” controls foreign policy, not the Secretary of State (“Foreign Minister” in most countries), as happened during the Nixon regime, when Henry Kissinger, a notorious serial mass murderer, was the “adviser” (chief henchman of foreign crimes) before he officially took over the State Department as Secretary of State.

3] NSA: National Security Agency, a Pentagon agency that is a gigantic global spying agency that collects all the electronic, radio, and other communications it can in the entire world. It even tapped an undersea military communications cable of the Soviet Union- a Navy submarine placed a special device on the cable.

U.S. Media As Foreign Policy Players, Not Journalists

Much of the bad reportage of the U.S. media seems to stem from its hunger to play foreign policy games instead of reporting news.

For example, Syria keeps attacking NATO ally Turkey. The evil Assad regime has shelled Turkish villages (killing Turkish citizens), shot down Turkish fighter jets over the Mediterranean sea, and set off terrorist car bombs in Turkey, at a border crossing and just a few days ago in the city of Reyhanli, which killed scores of people and devastated the town.

[See "New York Times Confers Legitimacy On Taliban Terrorists"]

NATO is allegedly a collective defense alliance. When a member nation is attacked, the other members are supposed to intervene on their side. Of course, that's crap. In reality, NATO is nothing but a tool of U.S. Imperialism. The lackey member nations get to feel like the U.S. will protect them. That may or may not be the case, depending on how the managers of the U.S. Empire perceive U.S. "interests" in the particular situation.

NATO is used by the U.S. as a vehicle for pursing its own policies, with subordinate NATO members dragged along to help carry the load.

As the U.S. has made clear it has no intention of intervening in the rebellion in Syria, that means NATO is going to continue to ignore Syrian aggression and terrorism against Turkey.

Hence, the U.S. media downplays Syria's crimes. The media doesn't want the public wondering why the U.S. is doing nothing in one situation, while claiming it has to attack other nations, nations that aren't attacking a NATO ally, a nation like, say, ohhh, IRAN.

So dual car bombings in Reyhanli, Turkey, that killed at least fourteen times as many people as were killed in the Boston Marathon "terrorist" bombings, are not recognized as terrorist in the U.S. media. Because terrorism is the new communism, the blackest evil that must be fought anywhere and everywhere.

See the link above for detailed examples and discussion.

[By the way, I'm often asked, "Is there an easy way to find out when there are new essays on your website, without having to go there and check?"

Why yes, there is! You can enter your email address in the little box on the upper right of the page and click the "Submit" button. Then you'll be notified by email when there's something new.

"Why that's fantastic!" I hear you saying. Well, not literally. I imagine you thinking it. Although you could be saying that out loud. But I can't hear you, of course. You've not within earshot of me. I could imagine you saying it aloud, however. Or perhaps you're saying something else, or not saying anything at all. I'm not going to sit here and try to imagine every possible thing you may be thinking or saying at this moment, ok? No offense.

 You might not be talking at all. Who knows? Maybe you're eating and your mouth is full of food. But perhaps the news about email alerts was so stunning that you exclaimed "THAT'S FANTASTIC!" when your mouth was full of food and spewed it all over your computer screen. If that's the case, I'm willing to take partial responsibility and apologize. But just for my share of the responsibility. You'll have to apologize to yourself for the rest.

Of course, maybe you're here a lot already. You may be catching up on the many postings from the past that are still valid today and have much to teach. You can expand the entries by clicking on those little triangles by the dates in the right hand column, or search by words in the search function for topics of interest in the little search box on the upper left corner with the orange B next to it. In that case I owe you another apology for wasting your time with all this chatter about email updates.

I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.]

Police State Noose Tightens Another Notch Around Our Throats

California has long been a leader in pioneering new methods of police state repression. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in particular has long spearheaded the drive to put police in control of society. Over the years its infamous chiefs, such as Parker and Gates, have been driven by ideological fanaticism.

Now NPR reports (Morning Edition, 5/7/13) that the ACLU is suing just to get access to a sample of a license plate data base the LAPD has assembling. In a secretive mass surveillance program, the LAPD has been surreptitiously recording the license plates of all cars driving down the street and creating a searchable database. Of course the LAPD refuses to talk about it- their excuse now is the standard “cannot comment because it's the subject of a lawsuit.” There's no law or rule that prevents government agencies from talking about a topic because they're being sued. For a private individual, it may be wise to refrain from comment, especially if they're being criminally charged. But governments and their arms should have to explain themselves.

Of course, this horribly repressive development will be justified as a “crime-fighting tool.” But much of its use will be to track dissidents, activists, and politicians. [See also: "FBI Used Facial Recognition Software To Identify Boston Bombers"]

For some insight into the nefarious political repression activities of the LAPD, you could start by reading the book The Glass House Tapes, an account by Louis E. Tackwood of his experiences as an agent provocateur and infiltrator of black and leftist groups for the “intelligence” division of that Department. [Amazon.com has it.] He also describes various operations he learned of. (Of course the LAPD secret police unit works closely with the FBI in particular, as well as other police state agencies including the CIA, which is “banned” from domestic operations. HAH. Funny joke the establishment made when they created the CIA.)

Speaking of California police state operations, a few decades ago there was an FBI-run right-wing terrorist organization in San Diego called the Secret Army Organization. Apparently this was used to intimidate people seen as leftists, and maybe as an assassination unit. Anyway, one fine evening an undercover FBI agent and an SAO terrorist were stalking a “left-wing” college professor, and they were in their car outside his house. The terrorist shot at a woman he saw inside, hitting her in the elbow and crippling her permanently. That created a smallish problem for the FBI. But not to worry. The U.$ media always has the back of the secret police. And why not? The secret police are there to serve and protect the corporate oligarchy. “The” media is the mouthpiece, the propaganda organs, of that same corporate oligarchy. So basically they are on the same side, if occasionally there are minor conflicts or tactical differences between them. There can also be criticisms of the competence of the secret police (or of the media) in how they carry out their jobs. But no fundamental critiques, and certainly no calls for real accountability- for example criminal prosecutions for crimes committed by secret policemen, (In best Orwellian fashion, referred to as “law enforcement officers” in the case of the FBI and similar agencies. The CIA, a global mega-terrorist outfit, is called an “intelligence” or “spy” organization.)

Since the corporate media is a hegemonic system of consciousness-control in America, as long as they have the backs of the secret police, the secret police can persecute progressives with impunity. Leftists are either ignored or reviled and smeared by the corporate media. The crimes against them either go unreported or are treated as insignificant.

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Is Obama Assad's Defense Lawyer?

Here's Barack Obama after being forced to concede that Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad probably used chemical weapons against people in Syria:

“And what we now have is evidence that chemical weapons have been used inside of Syria, but we don't know how they were used, when they were used, who used them.  We don't have a chain of custody that establishes what exactly happened. ” [Press conference, 4/30/13, WH transcript.]

That sounds like objections Assad's defense lawyer would make, if Assad were on trial.

Obama isn't talking about “red lines” anymore. Now it's “game changers.” Specifically, IF he could REALLY REALLY prove Assad did it, and did it A LOT, why, then he'd reexamine his options.

Furthermore, "For the Syrian government to utilize chemical weapons on its people crosses a line that will change my calculus and how the United States approaches these issues," Obama said April 26^th.

Uh-oh, his calculus might change! And that's not all...

"I've meant what I said."

So watch out, Assad!

Of course, it isn't irrational for Obama to try and avoid getting sucked into Syria. The problem is he was bluffing about that “red line,” and Assad is calling him on it.

And of course, the U.S. is constantly being exposed as insincere when its fine rhetoric about human rights and freedom and democracy and blah blah runs smack up against the reality of its actions, actions that reveal that it is just another power mad, greedy empire, ruled by ruthless, selfish politicians (who in the case of the U.S., do the bidding of an elite class of super-rich people).

More fundamentally, in a normal human world, people wouldn't be living under tyrants like Assad. There wouldn't be horrible torture-murder regimes like that. And if there were, other nations would fight to free the people oppressed under those regimes, especially when they rebel against their oppressors.

That all sounds so utopian, doesn't it? The fact that it does starkly reveals how how far we are from existing on a human level in this world.