Are Islamic Jihadists Fascist?

Ex-leftist Christopher Hitchens, now ensconced with his new buddies on the right at places like the neofascist Wall Street Journal, promotes the term "Islamofascist" to describe Taliban and Al-Qaeda types. (Ironic given his new bedfellows.) These fundamentalist fanatics are certainly violent and totalitarian in the extreme. Does that make them fascist?

Well, that depends on the definition of "fascist." People who use the term virtually never define it.

But here are what I see as some commonalities between one group of undeniable fascists, the Nazis, and the vicious, terrorist murderers of the (Sunni) Islamic persuasion:

-Hyperviolent and sadistic

-Extremely fanatical (thus uncompromising- yet we keep hearing naive talk of negotiating/compromising/listening to their grievances)

-Possessors of an anti-human ideology which they impose by extreme force

-Murderously intolerant of most other people on this planet

-Terrorists- systematically use terror not just as a weapon to seize power, but as a permanent instrument of rule, used ubiquitously to keep their oppressed subjects under their power

-Uncompromising as noted, except tactically when it suits them to gain advantage and then only temporarily. (The tactics of the Taliban in Pakistan, where they negotiated to take over the Swat valley, and then immediately grabbed more territory, are reminiscent of Hitler's prewar games over Czechoslovakia and etc.)

-Feign sham interest in "peace" & "negotiations" with adversaries, as a trick or ruse or temporary expedient to grab an advantage. Any "peace" thus gained is extremely temporary. Inevitably they must be fought by force of arms

-Despite their extreme ignorance and intolerant narrow-mindedness, possess a dangerous degree of animal cunning about power, politics, and manipulating other people

-Totally ruthless, unethical, immoral, and unburdened by conscience.

 So they certainly have things in common. But this description could apply to others. Perhaps "Islamofascist" is sloppy and lazy, an easy epithet used as a shortcut to a more accurate description. I guess it's serviceable if you need to reduce the description of these horrible creeps to only one word. (Forget 9/11- these shitheads throw acid on little girls to stop them from going to school, among other monstrous atrocities. What they do to other Muslims is far worse than what they've done to the U.S. And they've killed more Muslims in other countries than the number of Americans killed on 9/11 and in the attacks on the two U.S. embassies in Africa and on the USS Cole combined.)

Intellectual Architect of Kent State Massacre Finally Dies

Irving Kristol, one of the endless supply of rightwing ideologues who provide intellectual justifications for the current social, economic, and imperialist order in America, has finally died. Treated as a major figure, not because of his brilliant ideas, but because of his political significance as an ideological Godfather of one of the many strands of anti-human reaction in the U.S., in his case the one called "neoconservatism." (A claque of mostly Jewish reactionaries ensconced in New York City institutions, including academia, private propaganda nests, and right-wing rags which are always copiously funded by the right-wing rich.)

Days before the Kent State massacre, Kristol met with President Richard Nixon (a truly pathological creature and one of the most evil presidents in U.S. history, which is really saying something) and urged Nixon to crush the anti-war movement on the college campuses. Days later, Republican Ohio Governor Rhodes unleashed his National Guard on defenseless students, murdering four and wounding others, including one rendered paraplegic for life. This was preceded by and followed by a reign of repression directed against the students, turning the campus into a police state. Students wandering into town were subjected to baseless, summary arrest, and assault by local louts.

Of course, the establishment rag The New York Times rolled out a huge obit, fawning over The Great Man. As usual when they fete reactionaries, they do not quote his actual "ideas," which are shockingly stupid and vicious, as always with reactionaries, no matter the verbal finery they're dressed up in to appear "intellectual."

Kristol was an enemy of humanity in everything he wrote and did.

NY Times STILL Running Pinochet Propaganda

Chile is one of many countries in which the U.S. instigated a military coup and subsequent bloodbath in order to keep a society backward and oppressive, and ripe for economic exploitation. Immediately after the 1973 Chilean coup, led by traitorous fascist general Augusto Pinochet, the military junta put out the false story that President Salvador Allende committed suicide. In fact, he was executed in the Moneda Presidential Palace. The last photo we have of Allende is of him in a steel helmet carrying a gun, determined to defend the Moneda and Chilean democracy.  And none other than the FBI, a rightwing U.S. secret police organization, concluded that the suicide story was false.

The FBI came to this conclusion in the course of investigating the murders of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt by terrorist bomb in Washington, D.C. Within a week of that bombing, Newsweek ran CIA disinfo in their "Periscope" column saying the junta and DINA, their secret police, had nothing to do with it. That was a lie, of course. Turned out the junta hired American terrorist Michael Vernon Townley and some fascist Cuban terrorists to make and plant a bomb in Letelier's car. Pinochet's cover story was that Letelier bombed himself to be a martyr. (So much for the credibility of their "Allende killed himself, we didn't" story.) George Bush the Elder was CIA director at the time, and thus a terrorist accomplice. The CIA also helped smuggle Townley into the country under a false passport. The Bush family's material support to terrorists also include sheltering Orlando Bosch, an architect of an airliner bombing that killed 73 people. The U.S. continued to employ, and shelters to this day the terrorists responsible for that terrorist atrocity. [See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubana_Flight_455 or search "Cubana airliner bombing" for more.] [There are two good books about the Letelier-Moffitt assassinations and aftermath that I know of- Assassination on Embassy Row by Landau & Dinges, and Death in Washington: The murder of Orlando Letelier by Donald Freed. Only Townley was punished, and he only served 3 years. On the other hand, "ecoterrorists" get that and heavier sentences for vandalism, and Muslims running charities for Palestinians get 65 years in prison, which just happened. Which proves how blatantly political the U.S. "justice" system is.

So now, 36 year later, the New York Times is still running fascist propaganda. And apparently so is the rest of the U.S. corporate propaganda system (aka "the media").  They cribbed an AP obituary of Allende's wife, who just died, which repeats the suicide canard intended to exonerate the regime for its murder of the President and make Allende appear cowardly.

"By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 18, 2009

"On Sept. 11, 1973, while under air and ground attack at the presidential palace, Mr. Allende killed himself rather than surrender to the military."

Of course, the Times was an enthusiastic backer and celebrator of the Chilean coup, and hired a noxious propagandist by the name of Shirley Christian to write pro-Pinochet propaganda for the paper, at which task she was quite prolific. (You can search the NYT archives under her name. Christian was also a big fan of U.S. client dictator Somoza of Nicaragua, and excoriated the U.S. press for what she took to be their insufficient enthusiasm for that butcher. But they only soured on him after his thugs murdered one of their members, a stupid move.) 

It's a small lie as U.S. media lies go. Bigger ones: the Kennedy and King assassinations, "Yellow Rain" (bee pollen the U.S. media claimed was Soviet chemical warfare), the "Pope Plot," (Turkish fascist terrorist shoots a Pope, KGB and Bulgarian diplomat framed by CIA and their U.S. media pals) and on and on. 

This is not the first time the Times has included political/ideological propaganda in an obituary. It seems there is no part of the Times that is off-limits for nonobjective content. (For example, after Oliver Stone came out with the movie JFK, the Times, an assiduous promoter of the official coverup of the assassination, went ballistic, and for months afterwards barbs aimed at Stone would pop up in the middle of unrelated articles. You'd be reading a restaurant review, say, and suddenly read something like "the soup left one with a feeling of nausea as if one had just viewed an Oliver Stone movie." I don't know if they put out a memo to the staff to "get Stone," or the kind of careerist creeps who work at the Times just took it upon themselves to score brownie points with their editors, but it was truly batty.)

Ironically, this pro-fascist paper (there are plenty of other examples of its support for fascist regimes, like in "South" Vietnam, Indonesia, Argentina, El Salvador, etc. etc.) is reviled as "liberal" by domestic U.S. fascists and reactionaries. Guess they don't know how to read. (Ranting, raving and reviling they do, not reading. Or thinking.)

NY Times Runs Interference For Anti-Abortion Terrorists

In Wake of Tiller Assassination, NY Times Runs Interference For Anti-Abortion Terrorists

Monday, June 8, 2009, on page A10, the NY Times is at it again, running political interference for the anti-abortion movement. Almost the entire page is taken up by a puff piece on the anti-abortionists and their alleged dilemmas and uncertainty in the wake of their smashing victory resulting from the execution of Dr. George Tiller. The Times repeats over and over the phony disclaimers of responsibility and alleged regret over the murder by the anti-abortionists, and reinforces the sham contention that there is no terrorist wing to the anti-abortion movement. (This contention is belied by the support given to terrorists like Slepian assassin James Charles Kopp and clinic and Olympics bomber and cop-killer Eric Robert Rudolph, who were able to avoid capture for long periods because of support from the anti-abortion community. The Catholic press even editorialized on behalf of Kopp while he was on the lam.) The article reeks sympathy for these terrorist supporters, who are no doubt secretly gleeful over their success in permanently ending Tiller's medical practice after decades of attacking him, his workers, his family, and his clinic.

This most recent Times article on behalf of the anti-abortionists falsely distances the assassin of Tiller, Scott P. Roeder from the movement he is a part of, repeating absurd lies that no one knew him, he wasn't connected to them, etc.

And of course the times continues to hide FBI complicity in the latest murder, namely their refusal to enforce Federal law and arrest Roeder when he was caught redhanded by clinic personnel glueing their locks the day before carrying out the assassination, and previous Federal crimes he was seen committing. (The bogus Federal Clinic Protection Act is one of these window-dressing laws designed to dupe people and keep them passively waiting for the Government to protect them. It neutralizes people by keeping them corraled within the system, while with the other hand the Government allows terrorists to operate freely.)

The Times also ignores the vicious hostility of Kansas "authorities" (the legitimizing term for people in power) towards abortion providers, including Tiller, who they repeatedly harassed, investigated, and prosecuted, while ignoring criminal violations by the anti-abortion terrorists. (Screaming in people's faces to change their behavior certainly constitutes terrorism in its low-grade form. And as with mob pressure, the implied threat of violence backs up what the anti-abortionists do.)

The Times of course has long been anti-abortion, in a smarmy, underhanded, dishonest way, trying to undermine the beliefs of their "liberal" readers. It does this most obviously by using anti-abortion terminology in its "news" articles (which is pretends are "objective"). It never calls intact dilation and extraction just that, but uses the inflammatory anti-abortionist propaganda term "partial birth abortion." It calls the anti-abortionists "pro-life," another propaganda term. (These fanatics who allegedly find life so sacred, never made a peep about Reagan's massive state terrorism in Central America in the 1980s, for example.)

The Times also consistently slants its abortion coverage negatively towards women's right to control their own bodies. They paint pro-choice people are unreasonable and uncompromising.

This is a line the whole ruling class of the U.S. pushes. The right to abortion was one of the concessions the rulers of the U.S. were forced to make in the 1960s and '70s under pressure from militant movements from below. Ever since, they have been trying to reverse these concessions, including the right to abortion, which they constantly chip away at and demonize. Laws and court decisions keep adding more and more restrictions to the "right," (some right!). Abortion, when it is discussed in the media, is treated as something awful or tragic, or at best something undesirable to be eliminated. Pro-choice people are constantly invited to "the debate" in terms of how to eliminate abortion. Abortion providers have been effectively isolated from the medical establishment, forced to practice in standalone clinics which is like painting a bullseye on them.

The massive terrorism starting under Reagan, which included countless thousands of acts of intimidation, threats, vandalism, firebombings, bombings, maimings and now 8 known assassinations, is blacked out by the Times and the rest of the U.S. media. Only an out and out assassination is "newsworthy" to these propagandists. Environmentalists who commit property damage are reviled as "ecoterrorists" by the media, Times, FBI, and the full weight of secret police methods is brought to bear against them- infiltration, agents provocateurs, every kind of spying method, draconian "conspiracy" and "terrorism" laws, Grand Jury dragnets; the whole panoply of repressive methods the U.S. has in its arsenal. Same thing they did to the totally legal Central American solidarity movements. The FBI even tried to have one of its infiltrators, Frank Varelli, plant guns on one such group, according to Varelli's Congressional testimony. More recently, Muslim men were subjected to a massive roundup and brutal internment in the U.S. in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, but the U.S. Government covered up the Oklahoma City bombing conspiracy, even though they had moles inside the terrorists' nest in that case. No raids or roundups resulted. Muslim charities have also been shut down and persecuted, with draconian sentences for people sending humanitarian aid to Palestinians.

But repression by U.S. secret police agencies doesn't stop there. They also use rightwing terrorist organizations to carry out bombings and assassinations. A few of many examples include the San Diego “Secret Army Organization.” An FBI agent (i.e. badge-carrying member of the FBI, an alleged “law enforcement officer,” participated in a shooting attack on an academic perceived as leftwing by the FBI. He was in the car with the gunman who fired into the professor's home, hitting a woman in the elbow, permanently maiming her.

When the KKK assassinated civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo, FBI “informer” instigator Gary Rowe was in the assassins' car. The FBI was in the business of persecuting civil rights activists. Headed for years by notorious racist J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI tried to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr. into committing suicide before accepting his Nobel Peace Prize by making him aware of their tapes of his sexual trysts in motel rooms. (The “respectable” “commentator Patrick J. Buchanan, an avowed admirer of fascists like Franco and McCarthy and known anti-Semite, was the FBI's media conduit for “leaking” this sexual blackmail dirt into the public domain. It speaks volumes about the political economy of the U.S. that Buchanan is a ubiquitous presence in the U.S. media.)

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (part of the U.S. Treasury, which contains a number of repressive “police” agencies, has been involved in various acts of terrorism through surrogate organizations. The BATF had an infiltrator in the base camp (“Elohim City”) from which the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing emanated, and was forewarned by their mole.

BATF also had one of two Government agents inside the Klan-Nazi combine that murdered five leaders of the Communist Workers Party in Greensboro, North Carolina. In fact they organized the assassinations which specifically targeted the CWP leaders at a public demonstration. The NY Times went so far as to label a photo of the assassins taking guns from the trunk of their car as “CWP” members. (Stalinist propagandists had nothing on the NY Times.) Not only is this not secret, but the PBS show Frontline even had a program about it discussing the instigation by these Government agents provocateurs. (The assassins were acquitted at trial, this being the reactionary South. The CWP was effectively destroyed. The Government targeted the CWP because the CWP was effectively standing up to the Klan-Nazis and encouraging armed opposition to these Government-sponsored terror groups.

As in the Weimar Republic, where Nazis could murder leftists with impunity, but leftists who fought back were vigorously prosecuted for self-defense, the heavy hand of state power puts progressives, and indeed any decent human beings who want to be politically engaged, at a huge and physically perilous disadvantage. Since people who engage in what is supposed to be legal political activities are also targeted for “neutralization,” -anything from constant harassment, firing from jobs, evictions, false arrests, oppressive surveillance through electronic and other means, on through to long prison sentences on trumped up charges with perjured and fabricated “evidence” and even assasination, this makes it virtually impossible to effectively organize for change in America. (And then the impulse for change gets channeled and neutralized by gulling people into following Pied Pipers like Barack Obama.)

Meanwhile the anti-abortion terrorists have scored another victory. Abortion is unavailable in at least 83% of all U.S. counties. Tiller's clinic is closed permanently. More people are intimidated. The official U.S. definition of terrorism is violence used for the purpose of achieving a political goal. If the U.S. media and Government weren't totally cynical in their use of law and language, they would have long ago used the words "terrorists" and "terrorism" for the violent arm of the anti-abortion movement and their crimes. But of course they won't even report their thousands of crimes with exceedingly rare exceptions.

The "law" is not neutral, and "justice" is not blind. Laws are instruments of power for rulers, which only fitfully are related to morality, and their application and enforcement are rarely evenhanded and in the interest of justice, understood in terms of normal human morality. This is true in most countries, and most certainly in the U.S. Meanwhile the pernicious false consciousness promoted and reinforced daily by the system's propaganda organs, aka "the media," needs to be chipped away at with facts and truth.
June 10, 2009

NY Times Phony "Reform" Editorials

Every week or two the New York Times runs an editorial bemoaning the dysfunction of the State Government in Albany and calling for "reform."  But when there was an actual chance for reform to occur, the Times went all-out to sabotage it.

I refer to the aborted Governorship of Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer, unlike all the phonies who preceded him in the office, actually was determined to reform the horribly corrupt, inept, dysfunctional and ossified political setup perpetuated by the horrible hack politicians who rule New York State. Spitzer was a driven and hard-driving, moralistic man who genuinely tried to shake up the venal political system. 

Immediately the Times and the other NYC daily rags (NY Post and NY Daily News, owned respectively by plutocrats Rupert Murdoch, a global purveyor of crude fascistic agitprop, and real estate baron Mortimer Zuckerman) set out to check Spitzer. Instead of supporting Spitzer, the Times ran character assassination pieces about what a rotten personality Spitzer had, this being the putative reason he was running into opposition to reform! (That the entrenched vested interests could care less about his personality, and resisted change because of their self-interest, is obvious, and was ignored in these Times' hatchet jobs.) 

Next, Joseph Bruno, a lifelong corrupt hack who was the Republican boss of the State Senate, was discovered to be misusing State Police copters to ferry himself around the state on partisan political errands. When Spitzer's people leaked this to the press, the press turned it into a scandal against Spitzer! That is, Spitzer broke some unwritten rule by investigating Bruno and by leaking the results. This was labeled "Troopergate" by the media lynch mob. Even to this day, "Troopergate" means a Spitzer scandal, not a Bruno scandal. Amazing.

Finally, the media found a sword with which to slay Spitzer. The FBI, one of the U.S.' secret police agencies, snooped into a prostitution ring. (Or were tapping Spitzer.) Of all the upper classs clients of the ring, ONLY SPITZER was named. Yes, he broke the law. Of course, it is oppressive and unjust that prostitution is illegal in the first place. And Spitzer was hypocritical (show me a person who isn't hypocritical about something!) because of his past public crusading against prostitution and johns. But Spitzer was in the bullseye of the finance capitalists and their Federal hatchetmen who held a grudge from when, as State Attorney General, he went after Wall Street and made them pay fines for their various crimes and misdemeanor. (The financiers and their organs like the Wall Street Journal were positively gloating when they got Spitzer.)

As recently as Saturday, June 6, 2009, the Times was at it again, with another hand-wringing, sanctimonious "reform" editorial. They're full of it. The Sulzbergers and their fellow plutocrats like the political system just the way it is, because the corrupt hacks in Albany (and in New York City for that matter) give them everything they want. For instance, when the Times needed to run roughshod over property owners in Times Square to seize a site for its new temple, the Government used its power to do the Times' bidding,

It's easier to control unethical, amoral hustlers who have no principles and are dependent on and beholden to the media. The reason these rags run fake calls for "reform" is pure posturing, and to fool the rubes who credulously believe the propaganda they're reading. Apparently you can fool most of the people most of the time quite easily.

Since this was originally posted,  the Times has run a couple of more editorials (through June 14, '09) bemoaning the political circus in Albany. Two putative Democrats, a girlfriend-face-slashing bully named Hiram Monserrate, and a sleazy crook named Pedro Espada Jr., were paid by a billionaire named Thomas Golisano to vote with the Republicans to seize control of the State Senate from the Democrats. Golisano had the brass to run a full page ad in the NY Daily News braying about how wonderful it all is. (Both Monserrate and Espada are under investigation for scams whereby they set up "nonprofits," fund them with taxpayer money, and siphon off the proceeds. Espada also lies about where he lives- he doesn't live in the district he "represents," as required by law, but lives outside NYC in an "upscale" area. They are classic examples of amoral, ethics- and scruples-free political animals who dominate politics, especially in New York.) 

So the times just deeps its cynical hypocrisy with each new handwringing editorial bemoaning the tawdry state of NY politics, which it helped perpetuate by sabotaging would-be reformer Spitzer.

The Shameless Moral Chutzpah of Vaclav Havel

Vaclav Havel is a Hero of Western Imperialism because for years he was the bourgoise President-In-Waiting for Czechoslovakia. Hailing from a rich landowning family, all he had to do was bide his time until the decrepit system of Soviet socialism collapsed in order to take over the country. (No such thing is possible in the U.S. Empire, because all potential opposition leaders in places like Latin America are systematically murdered. Miraculously, in a few countries new people's leaders have arisen anyway.)

Havel is an adoring fan of fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet (not a secret, but a fact never mentioned in the U.S. press). So it's sickeningly hypocritical (if not downright cynical) whenever Havel presumes to climb on a moral high horse and denounce/lecture.

Most recently he was at it on the NY Times op-ed page (May 11, 2009; May 10 in their online archive), denouncing the "tyrants" of the UN Human Rights Commission.

Sure, the UN is full of shit. A club of bosses of the world's nations would have to be loathsome. But the idea that Havel hates tyrants and loves democracy is a sick joke. Capitalism is what he loves. Salvador Allende, the President of Chile murdered by the fascist traitor Pinochet, was a democrat- too democratic, as it turned out. Since Havel celebrates his murderer, Havel is obviously an ANTI-democrat, notwithstanding his grotesque posturing to the contrary.

Of course the NY Times is guilty of the worst kind of bad faith for not only running such deceptive and dishonest propaganda, but for promulgating a totally fraudulent worldview, the purpose of which is to create and sustain a false consciousness of reality among the public. This false consciousness if a basic reason why America is hopeless and cannot evolve in a positive direction. (All you dupes of the Pied Piper Obama, President "Hope & Change," I hope you're keeping count of his broken campaign promises. He's been breaking several a week now.)

Neil deGrasse Tyson, the George Bush of Astronomy

Just as Bush by edict creates his own law, Tyson by personal fiat demotes Pluto from a planet to a...what exactly he doesn't say. Heavenly body, I guess. His grounds? It's too small, and it's orbit is too elliptical. Or as he says on the website of The Planetary Society (conveniently he's Chairman of the Board of said Society) “Pluto has 'peculiar' written all over it.” (His essay on Pluto is at http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/topten/tyson_pluto_is_not.html.) Another part of Tyson's rap against Pluto is that its moon, Charon, is too large in relation to Pluto.
But Pluto has three moons. The other two are Nix and Hydra. That's three times as many moons as Tyson's native planet, Earth, has. Spunky Pluto has enough pull to keep three moons in its ambit.
And why do all the planets have to orbit the Sun in lockstep conformity for Tyson to let them in the Planet Club? More to the point, who vested Tyson with the authority to eject longtime members in good standing of the club?

With their instinctive common sense, schoolchildren the world over have rejected Tyson's cruel banishment of Pluto from the family of Planets. Pluto is a planet whether Tyson likes it or not.

Hurray for Pluto! Long Live Planet Pluto!

The Media Destruction of Eliot Spitzer

The GOP-controlled secret police units and Federal prosecutors lit a fuse in the media by illegally feeding them allegations about New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer's use of prostitutes. (We only can surmise they are true allegations because Spitzer threw in the towel. We can further assume that with his combative personality, if the allegations were false he would have at least initially denied the allegations.)

It was assumed from the start of the media firestorm that his position was hopeless. Somehow such a revelation automatically forces a Governor from office. (The media has no interest in the crimes committed by their "sources" in feeding them the dirt on Spitzer. Of course, such crimes impact the public and society far more than Spitzer's private sexual peccadilloes do. But the public interest has never been the guiding principle of what is "newsworthy" in the eyes of the corporate media. The interests of the permanent ruling class are what matters.)

A good example of the juvenile lynch mob mentality of much of the U.S. media is illustrated by the cover of New York magazine dated March 24, 2008. The cover consists in its entirety of a stark photo of Spitzer against a white backdrop, his hands clasped stiffly in front of him, smiling, and in large block letters in a lurid red box the word "BRAIN" with an arrow stabbing straight into Spitzer's groin. Unlike most New York covers, there are no titles of other stories inside, creating a mono-focus on humiliating the ex-Governor. (New York is a bourgeois rag dedicated to relentlessly promoting the most vapid materialism. It spawned a bunch of copycat rags that encapsulate the "Yuppie" mentality, or what would more correctly be called neobourgeois. The pushing of shallow materialism started as a counteroffensive against the Counterculture of the 1960s and early '70s, which the rulers and their minions correctly recognized as a threat to their system by challenging the arid, anti-human values of the Establishment. Unfortunately the counteroffensive, which included state violence and secret police persecution and repression in addition to media and ideological assaults, was successful.)

The same issue of New York apparently felt a need to explain away another apparent double standard or contradiction: namely why was Spitzer pulled down but not Bill Clinton? Various bogus explanations are adduced, ignoring the actual reason- Clinton had the POWER to hang on. The Federal Government, being under his control, wasn't going after him. The GOP hit man Kenneth Starr, appointed "special prosecutor" to get Clinton after the previous special prosecutor, also a Republican, failed to come up with charges against the Clintons. The Paula Jones lawsuit which led to the exposure of Clinton's dalliance with White House intern Monica Lewinsky was an arranged GOP plot. Starr took his case to the House, which under GOP control duly impeached Clinton (the equivalent of an indictment). Lacking a two-thirds majority in the Senate to convict him, Clinton beat the rap, which was mostly based on perjury and witness tampering. Spitzer, on the other hand, is subject to attack by the Federal Government (which I can guarantee you wouldn't be happening if the current President were a Democrat as Spitzer is).

Contrast the treatment Spitzer got, and his enforced overthrow within just days, to what happened when GOP Senators Larry Craig and David Vitter were caught in similar scandals. They're still in office. Both committed illegal acts (Craig soliciting sex from an undercover male cop in a public restroom, Vitter patronizing prostitutes in D.C., same as Spitzer.) Vitter isn't being investigated and prosecuted, like Spitzer is. (Spitzer hasn't been indicted yet, but that seems certain.) WHY THE DOUBLE STANDARD?

In an even more stunningly blatant example of naked double standards and media hypocrisy, the same day the replacement NY Governor, David Paterson, was installed to media and political huzzahs, he admitted that both he and his wife were adulterers! That may not be exactly the same, since presumably they weren't paying for sex, but in terms of not remaining sexually loyal to their spouses, it was the same. Also adultery is illegal in many states (perhaps not in NY however). The NY Times for one covered the news in a tone of complete neutrality. Of course Paterson is a creature of the corrupt establishment, having been in the corrupt and morally depraved NY State Legislature for the past 18 years. So he's "safe" for the powers-that-be.

The media, of course, get to have their cake and eat it too. While feigning shock and moral outrage that a man would want to have sex with someone other than his wife (which would occasionally require paying), the New York tabloids, two reactionary rags, the NY Post and NY Daily News (owned, respectively, by two foreign plutocrats and arch reactionaries, the Australian fascist buccaneer Rupert Murdoch and the Canadian Jewish real estate baron and ardent Zionist Mortimer Zuckerman), drooled and slavered over the prostitute and ran large photos of her breasts (in a swimsuit) and other such T & A fare. (That's internal media code for Tits and Ass.) It also provided an excuse to do "explorations" of prostitution, as if the public has no idea what it is. Merely an excuse for voyeurism and titillation. (Perhaps their readership, thus aroused, is expected to masturbate and steer clear of prostitutes.) The Times did the same, only more "tastefully," that is, archly and stuffily instead of openly salacious and tawdry. Because the tabloids are aimed at working class lunkheads and the Times fancies itself the paper for the socioeconomic elite, their tones and styles differ, but not necessarily their essential content.

The Times gave as part of the "explanation" for the inevitability of Spitzer's fall the fact that he has an abrasive, prickly, arrogant personality. Unlike, I suppose, Rudolph Giuliani! Giuliani was extreme in all those descriptions, even browbeating and abusing reporters at his press conferences (and many other people besides). It never hurt him in the slightest. The media constantly built up Giuliani, (as they did Reagan, Nixon, and numerous other pathological beasts who run the apparatuses of state power in America). All that time they told us he was "America's Mayor," a National Hero after 9/11. (Besides providing fleeting emotional comfort to bereaved citizens and making sure to get his photo constantly taken, it's hard to see what he did that was so "heroic." His ineptitude was shown by the fact that he insisted on locating his Emergency Command [Fuhrer]Bunker in one of the destroyed towers, against the recommendations of security personnel. So millions of dollars were squandered on a command post that was destroyed in the very first emergency it would have been used in! )

So neither the "sex scandal" explanation, nor the "lousy personality" line holds up to logical analysis.

Let us move on to the "he had no allies" explanation. This certainly has merit. But it wrongly ascribes his lack of allies to his rotten personality. Again, many, many successful politicians are bullies, are abrasive, are prickly. (Many are criminals and even mass murderers, like virtually all U.S. Presidents. Their reputations don't suffer as a result.) I cited just one example above, that of Giuliani. So why didn't Spitzer have allies?

Because the people who would be his natural allies, the Democrats, are part of the corrupt political system in NY State. By threatening that system, Spitzer was a threat to them. They could only be relieved to see him knifed, à la Caesar, by the media. And the media certainly wouldn't ally with him, since they too benefit from the corrupt system and thus support it.

As for the special interest groups like Common Cause and anti-rape activists, they actually have no power anyway. But the ones privileged to get a quote in the media also said he had to go- the good-government types because they decided he could no longer be "effective" (i.e., in terms of power, he was effectively castrated), and the anti-rape anti-prostitution activists because of the obvious- that he was the type of man they regard as the enemy. Not to mention amazingly duplicitous. And they hate non-monogamous husbands. (Interestingly, women's rights groups stood behind Bill Clinton during his sex scandal. One explanation proffered for this at the time was their view of him as a bulwark in defense of abortion rights.)

The assault on Spitzer actually began months ago. When Spitzer frontally assaulted the ruling caudillos of the State Legislature, Joseph Bruno and Sheldon Silver, two horribly corrupt machine politicians who rule their respective chambers with iron fists, the media attacked Spitzer, mostly by criticizing his personality. (Which is irrelevant, of course.) When Spitzer sought to expose the venal Bruno's misuse of State Police helicopters for partisan political purposes and personal use, the media made the scandal THE EXPOSURE of Bruno! Instead of Bruno being investigated, Spitzer and his aides were subjected to witch-hunts by various bodies. These "investigations" continue even now. The NY Times led this assault, with the two city tabloids. Despicably, the Times likes to pose as pro-reform and pro-good government. Apparently it is not. (Bruno also corruptly arranges deals with various businesses that fund him and his party, including outside clients to whom he sells his favors. This has been endlessly "under investigation," despite that the facts are well-known, indeed common knowledge within the corrupt political and media establishment.)

What accounts for this support of a Soviet and Chinese-style legislature that "votes" in lockstep with party bosses? Firstly and most fundamentally, the rulers hate democracy, so the less democracy, the better for them. They don't want independent elected representatives who might actually represent the citizens who elect them (or who at least live in their districts if not actually bothering to vote). Secondly, the present arrangement allows for corrupt deals and favoritism directly for these three newspapers. The Post for example pretends for purposes of state taxation to be a nonprofit and is tax exempt. The Times just got the state to use its power of eminent domain to force out property owners on a site where it subsequently erected a new propaganda temple for itself to operate out of.

None of this should be construed as sympathy for Spitzer on my part. He himself is obviously a loathsome hypocrite, on several counts. As a prosecutor, he had a vindictive attitude towards the customers of prostitutes. And as Governor he pushed through more punitive legislation on this score. This is a sick deception on the level of all the gay-bashing reactionaries in the GOP and on "religious" right soapboxes who publicly hate gays and sponsor legislation to assault gays, while they themselves are in fact homosexuals! (There are numerous examples of them by now.) Or we could compare it to Jews who masqueraded as Nazis during World War II, although they at least had the excuse of survival, not mere opportunism and cynical self-promotion.

He is also a hypocrite (and a just plain liar), like so many politicians and other "respectable" elements of society, in that he pays homage to certain values which he claims to live by, and condemns those who don't, in this case, monogamy and the "sacredness" of marriage. He took a solemn vow when he wed his wife, which included a presumption of sexual exclusivity. Like so many pillars of the establishment, he wanted to have it both ways. He wanted to appear to believe in the values he claims to live by, but not really be restricted by them. So he "cheated." That is, he defrauded his wife, the mother of his children, the person he made a commitment to.

The members of the establishment, their minions, and all who want to be "respectable," the definition of which they endorse, don't necessarily want to live in the straitjacket they have
constructed for themselves. While hating "hippies," they want to have some of the same freedoms the hippies championed, while condemning those freedoms. But it doesn't work. There cannot be freedom in the context of repression. People who "cheat," betraying their wives or girlfriends, or who use illegal drugs and marijuana while condemning drug use and supporting repressive anti-drug laws, are not experiencing freedom. They are like burglars in the night, surreptitiously stealing pleasures they are ashamed to openly claim a right to. They cheat the rest of us by upholding our oppression while carving out a covert exception to the rules for themselves. And usually the rules are applied selectively so they get away with it even when caught. There are various legal loopholes and trapdoors and exceptions and carveouts and "diversion programs" by which the privileged and those who can afford expensive, politically-connected lawyers are allowed to slide for their indiscretions, even in the face of allegedly "mandatory" sentences.

Spitzer earlier in life could have chosen to live by less restrictive personal values. However he had ambitions to climb up the power structure, so he bought into that structure's repressive dictates, which includes demands of marriage and monogamy, upholding the criminalization of paid sex and using drugs for pleasure, and so on. (It's another irony that the police state instituted by establishmentarians like Spitzer entrapped him in its web. That is, banks filing "suspicious activity" reports is what led to his downfall. A half million of these reports are filed annually with Federal inquisitors. We can safely presume that the vast majority have nothing to do with real crime. Likewise, while the alleged purpose of currency reporting and "structuring" laws (that is, requiring the filing of reports of withdrawals of $10,000 and up in cash, or smaller amounts that add up to $10,000,) is to catch "terrorists," "drug dealers," and other despised scum, these laws are in fact used most of the time to punish "law abiding" citizens; ; that is, they are instruments of control and repression of the general population, i.e. us. Our money has to be controlled, our freedom of action is considered suspect, our privacy is considered a cover for evildoing, so we are stripped of it, and we are taught that we shouldn't mind if we "have nothing to hide." Thus is the desire for privacy and to be left alone by those in power, the "Government," itself considered quasi-criminal or evidence of criminal intent. The logic of repression, which demands ever-increasing controls and ever-shrinking freedom, was kicked into high gear after the 9/11/01 attacks, which the secret police deliberately allowed to take place for that very reason.)

Spitzer should have told his wife he was no longer willing to abide by their life contract. Of course he wouldn't do that because he needed a nuclear family to meet the definition of "respectable." (Apparently bachelors are unfit for public office, or for that matter high corporate positions, for which marriage is a strict requirement.) He not only double-crossed her ("cheated"), he potentially endangered her health by seeking condomless sex with prostitutes, a nearly sure way to spread diseases, including the lethal AIDS.

Politicians like him are usually allowed to practice a double-standard, until they get in the way or outlive their usefulness. If they're right-wingers exposed by some media outlet seeking immediate attention to juice their circulation or viewers, we see that they are usually allowed to stay in office. There is something arbitrary or capricious about Spitzer's treatment, but in no way is it akin to a Greek Tragedy. Nor do I buy the pop psychology analysis that it bespeaks some self-destructive impulse in him. More likely, having grown up rich and privileged, he merely assumed, with a combination of arrogance and thoughtless complacency born of habit, that he could do what he wanted if he was discreet. He was "stupid" in that he failed to calculate that, far from his position of seeming power making him less vulnerable, it made him more so, because he would be under heightened political scrutiny from his enemies in the GOP and on Wall Street, the financial plutocrats who sit at the very apex of power in this society, and who he antagonized when he put a brief fright into them with his threats and prosecutions as State Attorney General.

The establishment of the U.S. is pathologically schizophrenic about sexuality. While titillating the populace every day with scantily clad young women posing as sexual vixens and filling both the "news" and entertainment arms of its media with racy sexual content, it carries out increasingly puritanical policies. Sex education is mostly abolished in American schools today, replaced by anti-sex scolding called "abstinence education." Abortion is nearly illegal, now being unavailable in 87% of U.S. counties, subject to increasing restrictions and legal assault, and regarded as disreputable and a fit target for harassment and terrorism by primitive religious fanatics. "Family planning aid" abroad is barred to any entities that would even mention abortion. Chastity is the only method of birth control considered morally acceptable. The U.S. today practices a medieval sexual politics while its culture is drenched with overt sexual imagery. This is a form of mental derangement.

The counterculture implicitly made an honest critique of society's strictures. It said that relationships are naturally fluid and temporary, that sexual desire if polymorphous and fleeting and of its own accord cannot be limited to just a single person. In direct opposition to 2000 years of Western Christian culture based on guilt and suffering and repression, it said that pleasure is good, not evil. It advocated honesty in relations. Of course that was in theory. In fact the counterculture fell apart in part due to its own failures to live up to its ideals and the various contradictions they contained.

Rather than honestly advocate for greater human freedom, honesty and realism, the "solid citizen" duplicitous hypocrites want to have it both way, skulking around under cover of darkness to try and grab some furtive pleasures to fill the void in their bleak souls. Apparently the alleged satisfactions of "conservative social values" leaves them living in a spiritual desert, deeply unsatisfied with their lives and unconsciously groping for some gratification of an inner hunger they do not understand.

As for Spitzer and his ilk, a person who would deceive the person closest to them in life, their life partner, their soul mate, is obviously an untrustworthy person. In that sense, there is a "character" issue here that is relevant to a politician's public duties.

But you're a big boy or girl now. You didn't still trust politicians, did you? As a subspecies of (alleged) humanity, they are literally a different type of being from the rest of us.

But that must be the subject of another essay.

Get Ready For President McCain

Looks like John McCain is going to be the next President of the United States.

Most probably he will cinch the GOP nomination.

That means this November, he will be running against either a woman or a black man. (Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.)

This still being America, it seems unlikely that a woman or a black man can beat a white male. Especially a "war hero."

McCain of course is deeply reactionary, contrary to his media-created image. (The corporate media always hides the truth about their reactionary front men.  They did it with Nixon, Ford, Reagan, the Bushes, and innumerable others.)

McCain is against the right of human beings to control their own bodies- if they happen to be women. That is, women must be forced to bear children against their will if they get pregnant.

He's also a very aggressive, dyed-in-the-wool U.S. Imperialist. Recently he said the U.S. may have to keep forces in Iraq for a hundred years. He didn't think there was anything particularly wrong with this, either.

McCain's incessantly self-touted (and the corporate media echoes him) qualifications seems to boil down to this: he flew a plane, he bombed 
the Vietnamese, he got shot down, and he was a prisoner for a few years. Somehow that makes him an expert 
in foreign policy and military strategy. Go figure.

Of course all the candidates acceptable to the establishment are Imperialists like McCain. Some are less aggressive about it. The ones who actually talked an anti-Imperialist line (implicitly, not explicitly), Ron Paul, Mike Gravel, and Dennis Kucinich, are media nonpersons. Since most Americans are sheep who follow the media, this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of marginalizing the "marginal" candidates. It's still only a minority who can break the mental chains and think for themselves.

No candidate who wishes to be deemed "viable" by the propaganda system can offer an alternative to imperialism as the continuing modus vivendi of America, or to challenge the tyranny of corporate oligarchy.
Those who do, whether from inside the two-party dictatorship that fronts for the corporate oligarchs, 
or outside it, as most recently Ralph Nader tried to do, have their candidacies suffocated by a
 media blackout, which is standard operating procedure.

Imran Khan is a Jackass

   A Pakistani cricket player named Imran Khan got the kid glove treatment in an interview on Democracy Now by Amy Goodman. Khan fancies himself the next President of Pakistan.
 [www.democracynow.org for Jan 30, 2008]

   I didn't disagree with everything Imran Khan said today. Dictatorship bad, democracy good, he opined- who could disagree with that?

    
   But according to Khan, the U.S. "drove the Taliban into Al-Qaeda's arms" What a dolt!  He also said the Taliban "inherited" Al-Qaeda. The Taliban are of the same ideological ilk as A-Q. That's why they sheltered them (it's not like A-Q were grandfathered in in Afghanistan and couldn't be expelled, as they were from Sudan, e.g.) and refused the U.S.' demand after 9/11/01 to hand over bin Laden and the other terrorists behind the attacks of that day.

   Oh, and how undemocratic for the U.S. to support the Northern Alliance, he added! What, the Taliban are democrats?

   And what this fool had to say about the Pashtun terrorist-shelterers in Pakistan was equally obtuse. Apparently he would just keep allowing terrorists to run their global operations from inside Pakistan if he became President! To assert the rule of law in those provinces is "attacking the Pashtun people." If that's how the Pashtuns view it, then they NEED to be attacked. Khan was all bent out of shape about the Paki army going into part of Pakistan in violation of some dusty agreement the Pashtuns forced on the Government years ago. An agreement that any self-respecting government would abrogate as soon as it had the strength to do so. (In fact, the Pashtun terrorist-lovers just broke the most recent agreement, whereby the Pakis army would stay out if the Pashtuns stop harboring Al-Qaeda.)

   I guess some people (leftists, e.g.) think it's ok for Islamic nuts to blow up trains and bridges and whatever in Europe, America, and everywhere else they don't like something. The truth is, Musharraf has run a scam and protection racket on the U.S. Instead of invading Iraq, the U.S. needed to attack Pakistan. THAT'S the country that was and is harboring the terrorists that Bush et al claim to be fighting. Since the Pakistan Government doesn't really control the territory anyway, their claims of sovereignty are purely pro forma. Musharral used most of the
"counterterrorism" money on weapons to use against India.

   It's time to end this charade and nuke Pashtunistan if necessary. Too bad the U.S. sided with these medieval reactionary scum in Afghanistan instead of letting the Soviets deal with them. The U.S. created this situation in alliance with the Pakis and Saudis. It's time to bite the bullet and go to the mat with them. The Bush gang are a bunch of phonies. Iraq was irrelevant to the "war on terror," until Bush created a front for them by destabilizing Iraq and opening it up to them.  

[See New York Times, "U.S. Officials See Waste in Billions Sent to Pakistan,"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/world/asia/24military.html?scp=7&sq=pakistan+military&st=nyt
"Militants Escape Control of Pakistan, Officials Say,"  
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/world/asia/15isi.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=pakistan+aid&st=nyt&oref=slogin
"Doubts Engulf an American Aid Plan for Pakistan,"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/world/asia/25pakistan.html?pagewanted=2&sq=pakistan%20aid&st=nyt&scp=2

NY Times continues coverup of GOP election frauds

The august New York Times ran a major article in their Sunday magazine section on January 6, 2008, by one Clive Thompson, which purports to expose "problems" with so-called "electronic voting machines."

Clive Thompson explains the problem with electronic voting machines as one of poor computer code which is prone to error and hacking. If that is so, why in EVERY CASE do the machines HURT DEMOCRATS AND HELP REPUBLICANS?? The machines are used to STEAL ELECTIONS from Democrats. That would not be the case if the problem were random errors or glitches. That one simple fact refutes entirely Thompson's angle and thesis. (Which was obviously preordained by the paper's editors, who gave Thompson his marching orders.)

The REAL story is the conspiracy by the GOP and their business allies to steal elections by programming the software to steal votes. Many voters have seen their votes switched before their eyes. The switching only goes one way, ever.

Thompson may be feigning naivete, or he may really be that stupid that he doesn't see that obvious fact.

Of course the NY Times, which hired Thompson to do this VERY BELATED article (the Times has been blacking out the scandal for years until recently- guess they've decided that Bush was a disaster for U.S. Imperialism and a mismanager of corporate capitalist oligarchy too, so they want a Dem Pres this time), has a powerful interest in hiding the fact that U.S. elections are crooked and illegitimate. They NEVER reported the massive voter fraud by the GOP in Florida in 2000 or in Ohio in 2004, only part of which involved the fixed voting machines.

The problem isn't one of inadequate technology. The problem is one of fraud. If it were the other way around, Republicans would be getting cheated out of elections. They never are.
The NY Times actively undermined the candidacies of both Gore and Kerry, who they subjected to ridicule. This revealed their political agenda. Not that the Dems are Good Guys. They're merely less evil than the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers).

See also the interview with former Republican operative Allen Raymond, "How to Rig an Election: Convicted Former GOP Operative Details 2002 New Hampshire Phone Jamming Scheme," at
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/8/how_to_rig_an
_election_convicted

Raymond, who served time in federal prison for jamming phone lines of the New Hampshire Democratic Party in 2002 to block a Democratic get-out-the-vote campaign, has come out with a tell-all book called How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative. In addition to the phone-jamming scheme, Raymond details other Republican tactics such as the use of scripted, phony automated phone messages to try to play on white voters’ racial prejudices in a 2000 New Jersey congressional race.

Crackpot Coulter Attacks A.D.L.

Rabid reactionary Ann Coulter, known for flaming fascist attacks on 9/11 widows and other worthy victims of her demented ire, has just smeared the Anti-Defamation League in her inimitable style (i.e. everything she says is the opposite of reality). This deranged fascist harridan inhabits some alternative universe. The fact that she has a following is symptomatic of the significant number of political psychos in the U.S. The fact that the U.S. corporate media built her up and acts as if she's respectable and legitimate and does valid commentary is indicative of how that media will bend over backwards to make this country as reactionary as possible.

The A.D.L, a right-wing organization dedicated to pressuring the U.S. on behalf of Israel, spends its time sliming critics of Israeli policy as anti-Semitic. (It also does a tally of punks who paint swastikas to get a rise out of adults and hysterically portrays this as the coming of the next Holocaust.)

Coulter claims, in her typical crackpot fashion, that the ADL only attacks rightists, and is scared of leftists, and that " They represent not Jews or women or civil libertarians, but the left wing of the Democratic Party."

[How Long Before the A.D.L. Kicks Out All its Jews?

by Ann Coulter

Posted: 10/31/2007 on the website of the vicious rag "Human Events," which actually hates humans and humanity. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=23174 if you need to vomit.]

What I'm wondering is, will the ADL, a fierce ideological warrior and scourge of leftists and critics of Israeli policy, respond to this violent assault? I'm betting it will either be silent or give a wan reply.

The Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide: Moral Double Standard

When Iranian President Ahmadinejad said the Holocaust should be open to "debate" and convened a panel of scholars to discuss it, he was roundly denounced as an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier. (Personally I think anyone who thinks the Holocaust isn't a totally well-established fact is at best an ignorant jackass and very likely an anti-semite.)
When the Turkish President Ertogan just did exactly the same thing re: the Armenian genocide of 1915, calling for historians to get together to study it, this provoked no outrage in the western media.

At the time it occurred, the Armenian genocide was the subject of official government reports by the U.S. and other nations which left no doubt that it was nothing but an organized massacre. It wasn't part of a "civil war" or Armenian "uprising" or Armenian fifth column supporting a non-existent Russian invasion- all lies the Turkish Government currently promulgates. To pretend there's a "controversy" is to obfuscate historical fact. It is an assault on truth and memory, masquerading under a facade of reasonableness and open inquiry. No one says the Holocaust needs to be subject to a "debate" to decide if it really occurred. Except those who wish to rewrite history. It SHOULD BE the same with the Armenian Genocide. [Anyone who thinks there's uncertainly about what "really" happened should check out the historical record. Various nations issued reports at the time, including the U.S. State Dept., describing in graphic detail the organized extermination of the Armenians by the Turkish State. See International Affirmation of the Armenian Genocide

The BBC is probably the most shameful in this regard, repeating all the Turkish lies verbatim without contradiction, presenting totally one-sided reports that omit any Armenian or just honest voices, pushing two lines- the Turks are mad, and the Turks are a vital ally so saying anything about the Armenian genocide is dumb and a bad idea.

The Armenian Genocide paved the way for the Holocaust. It emboldened Hitler. As he told his associates:   "Who remembers now the destruction of the Armenians?" (See full context at Hitler and the Armenian Genocide) Every suppression of memory of historical crimes helps pave the way for future criminals to commit such acts.

Why I Take Photos

Why I Take Photos

When I see something that I feel like photographing, it is either because I just have a sense that it would make a good photograph, an aesthetic reaction to a scene, or I feel like I am seeing something significant and I wish to preserve and capture that aspect of reality. In both cases, what guides me is instinct, something nonverbal and nonintellectual.

Later, I can analyze the photos I shot and understand intellectually and verbally why I took those photos, both aesthetically and in terms of the meaning I was seeking to capture.

I picked out 3 photos from a roll I shot in July 2007 which I particularly liked. Here are my thoughts about them. [Click on the photos to enlarge them.]

One I call “The Mystique of Jewelry,” is a shot of a two-sided billboard wrapped around a building at the corner of Madison Avenue and 63^rd St. in Manhattan. The billboard is cast in green and consists of giant headshots of women modeling jewelry. Both the scale and nature of the images are designed to make the women seem like Goddesses. On the same roll I have a shot of a billboard across the street with a giant expensive watch on it. Madison and Fifth Avenues are both awash with huge displays of luxury consumerism like this.

                                                       


Advertising projects into our minds a Valhalla of Luxury and Leisure, an imaginary realm that it is intended we long for and aspire to enter, via purchasing and consumption. Even though it doesn’t really exist, this imaginary realm holds itself out to us as an attainable existence. Advertising sings its siren song to lure us onto the treadmill of working in order to be able to spend money. We validate ourselves as “successful” (as opposed to “failures”) by our status, which is determined by purchasing and displaying brands.

The process of personal status through brand identification has reached the point of near burlesque with people wearing t-shirts with “designer” and “prestige” brand names on them, and with ersatz status conferred by counterfeit “brand” name goods.

In the marketplace society, you are what you consume. You are validated by purchasing.

Yet almost everyone is left feeling inadequate, since the model of success that is presented, and the world of the “in” crowd, the hip, those at the center of excitement, is obviously a world of wealth. We are left like orphaned urchins with our noses pressed up against the glass of a toystore, longing for toys beyond our reach.

Of course, the rich are themselves caught in an endless quest for status, since there is always someone richer. Only one person is “richest,” at the very apex of the pinnacle of wealth.

How different from the values of the erstwhile Counterculture, which explicitly rejected materialism and commodity status symbols. The Establishment has successfully defeated the Counterculture, standing its values on its head. (Yet a surly rejection of Establishment values persists, in the form of the punk and other inchoate semi-rebellions. Not rap, however, which glorifies materialism.)

Much of the above remarks apply to “Trump Tower Gucci,” a shot of a gargantuan display that looms over Fifth Avenue at 56^th St. We see a mass of young beautiful female bodies apparently lolling about, entangled with each other. The motif is Harem. One young man’s face is in a lower corner. The scene is drenched in a feeling of narcotized sensuality. Apparently buying a Gucci handbag will open the door to a realm of sensual delights, an indolent existence of pure pleasure detached from the world as we know it. Who are these people portrayed here? Do they have jobs? (I don’t mean the actual models, whose jobs are posing for photos like this.) How do they live? Where is this imaginary scene?
                                                  

In our minds, is the answer. Or rather, it started in the minds of advertising manipulators, who then transmitted it into our minds.

“Big Model.”

This is a giant billboard on Fifth Avenue in the 50s of a young woman in a fur coat, her body splayed out for our delectation. I captured an ordinary woman walking by the billboard. This shows us the scale of the sign. It also implies the contrast between the mass of real women in the world, and the imaginary “beautiful” woman on a pedestal in our minds, an artifact of make-up, lighting, and assiduous image manipulation in Photoshop. (Not that the model isn’t young and reasonably attractive in the actual flesh, and “white” and blond, the cultural preference. Not that there isn’t room for the occasional exotic dark-skinned specimen with high cheekbones.) The subliminal message is that wearing the fur transfers sexual desirability to the wearer.

[Kindly note: these photos and essays are copyright-protected. Feel free to link to this site but kindly do not misappropriate my creative output.]

"Hitler was elected..." FALSE!!!

Heard that lying asshole Col. Lawrence Wilkerson again ( a rebroadcast) today on Democracy Now claiming that "Hitler was elected," the new excuse they use when they want to IGNORE elections that didn't come out the way they wanted. (In this case the Haitian elections won by Aristede. Wilkerson's boss Colin Powell personally arranged the spiriting away of Aristede into captivity in the Central African Republic, a French satrapy.) Wilkerson was Powell's right hand man when Powell served U.S. Imperialism as Secretary of State. (Powell devotes his life to such service. In Vietnam as an army officer he was one of the culprits in the coverup of the My Lai massacre, which was successful for a year. Later he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Throughout his tawdry criminal career, he and the ruling establishment have used his skin to score points, both to "prove" that they're Equal Opportunity Imperialists, and to enlist nonwhite fools into their criminal enterprises.)

Hitler WAS NOT ELECTED. He was appointed Chanceller by President Hindenburg, a WWI field marshal and arch reactionary. Then the Nazis set the Reichstag (German legislative building) on fire and used it as an excuse to arrest and imprison all the Communist and Socialist legislators in concentration camps. With the resulting rump legislature under Nazi control, the parliament then voted to give Hitler dictatorial powers.
The Nazis never got more than about a third of the vote in any national election. In fact, in the last election before they seized power, their percentage of the vote fell.
These are basic historical facts. Any history of the Third Reich contains them. ( E.g. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by Will. L. Shirer).

This Big Lie, that "Hitler was elected," seemed to have started a few years back with a Newsweek column by George Will making the false claim. Ever since, it periodically pops out of the mouths of rightists as justification for overturning elections the U.S. doesn't like. It needs to be refuted whenever it is asserted. Since it is never challenged or corrected, it is becoming "fact" by default even though it is totally false.

Why I Hate People Who Only Care About Money

Why I Hate People Who Only Care About Money

I was riding to work on my bike, listening to radio news. There was a business report (on “Marketplace” on NPR) about the sale of domain names. “checkcredit” (or maybe it was “creditcheck”) was sold for $2 million by someone with the prescience to register the domain name. Hedge funds are buying and selling domain names, the value of which are said to be rising faster than property.

I imagined someone suggesting that I think up domain names to register and sell. It’s probably late in that game. You’d have to sit around and give it a lot of thought. I don’t have the time for that. I have more important (to me) things to think about.

People who only care about making money of course spend ALL their time doing just that- thinking up ways to make money. If you want to devote your whole LIFE to making money, you can do it. There are “opportunities” for that, esp. in “The Land of Opportunity.”

Since money is power, and money brings greater freedom of action, and the possibility of enjoying life more (nice vacations, living in a nice house and environment, having nice possessions), those who have it have a material basis for lording it over others.

The kind of people who only care about money look down on people (like me) who care about other things. They consider themselves superior. Because to them life is a game, and making money is how they keep score. By reducing life to a game, they radically devalue it. The game ends when they die. They enjoy this superficial existence, the unreality of a game-universe.

I hate them for radically devaluing life itself, and for reducing existence from something awesome and profound to a shallow money-grubbing competition.

July 12, 2007

Sy Hersh, Defender of Innocent Little Torturers

I had to stop listening to Seymour Hersh on Democracy Now! today (a radio show hosted by Amy Goodman and carried by Pacifica radio network and others) on the topic of the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal, after he started doing that SHIT of calling ADULT WAR CRIMINALS "kids." "These kids" he said twice (before I turned it off) referring to Army Reserve MPs. These are ADULTS, fully responsible for their actions. As reservists, they are AT LEAST in their twenties, and have already done full tours of military duty prior to joining the reserves. And saying that MPs are only trained to be traffic cops is bullshit. MPs receive full law enforcement training. Anyway, who has to be "trained" to know torture, abuse, rape, and murder are wrong? Didn't they have parents? Didn't they go to church? Aren't they humans with an innate sense of morality, of compassion and empathy for others?
Hersh has a bad habit of defending the torturers by portraying them as hapless, innocent children, calling them "kids." He's been doing it since the scandal became news over a year ago. They are adults. I actually saw him on TV once arguing that the torturers shouldn't be prosecuted for violating the Uniform Military Code of Justice. An officer actually had to take the position that they shouldn't be exempt or immune!
It's not as if you ever hear Hersh calling for prosecutions of Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and their Nazi-type generals. And insisting it's unfair to hold lower ranks accountable because they were just following orders is the essence of the Nazi defense. I wonder if Hersh were German if he'd be calling concentration camp guards "innocent kids."

The Porn Trap For U.S. Troops

A Lt. Col. William H. Steele was arrested by the U.S. military and charged with crimes including one that carries a potential death sentence. The New York Times reported the charges as follows:

"BAGHDAD, April 26 — The American military has charged a top commander at its main detention center here with nine violations of military law, including “aiding the enemy,” a rare and serious accusation that could carry a death sentence.

"According to a military statement released Thursday, the officer, Lt. Col. William H. Steele, provided aid to the enemy between Oct. 1, 2005, and Oct. 31, 2006, “by providing an unmonitored cellular phone to detainees” at Camp Cropper, an expansive prison near Baghdad International Airport that held Saddam Hussein before he was hanged.

"Colonel Steele, who oversaw one of several compounds at Camp Cropper as commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment, was also charged with several counts of illegally storing and marking classified information; failure to obey an order; possession of pornographic videos; dereliction of duty regarding government funds; and conduct unbecoming of an officer — for fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee since 2005, and for maintaining “an inappropriate relationship” with an interpreter in 2005 and 2006. There were no further details given to explain the circumstances of the accusations."

One thing that is somewhat amusing is the" possession of pornography" charge. Virtually ALL U.S. male military personnel possess "pornography" (or some sexual material that could be so labeled). It provides a convenient catchall for dropping the hammer on any soldier for any reason,
 a built in "Gotcha!" It's like the famous scene in "Casablanca" where the French Vichy Officer closes
Humphrey Bogart's club on orders from the Nazi officer, using the excuse that gambling is going on, at the same moment his underling gives him his "winnings" (bribe) from said gambling. The porn excuse was also used against the Muslim interpretor at Guantanamo Bay (among other charges) whom the military falsely and paranoiacally 
suspected of treachery.

Three Card Monte Media Distracts the Public

The media has spent the past six days blaring about the Virginia Tech massacre. Apparently 32 dead Americans is a Major Event. 200 or so murdered Iraqis every day is just routine, like snow in Siberia.
Here's a couple of important stories the U.S. media shoved into a corner to make room for the really important story (which should have been major for one day, no more):
The Supreme Court took an axe to women's right to not be forced to be breeding animals against their will, legalizing the ban on intact dilation and extraction, even saying it was ok that some women's health would be endangered.
Alberto Gonzales told some more lies to the Senate Judiciary Committee, about the purge of U.S. Attorneys. Several right-wing GOP Senators called for his resignation to his face in the hearing!
Not stuff the reactionary U.S. corporate propaganda system wants people to notice anyway.

Giuliani's Bathetic Blather about Virginia Tech Massacre

Rudolph Giuliani beat his chest about the Virginia Tech massacre yesterday. The upshot was he wanted the dead killer to know that when he attacks people, he attacks "all of us." Apparently that punishes the dead killer, and deters others.
Except that it was precisely the intent of Cho (and other such sociopaths) to attack "all of us." If anything, such pointless bluster provokes and reinforces the anti-social impulses of such killers. They want to feel they are striking a blow against everybody else.
But apparently Giuliani is so confident in the power of his personal moral revulsion that his attitude alone can defeat evildoers, a la some adolescent comic book superhero.
As far as offering any actual possible solution or action to do something about the problem, Giuliani offered nothing. The Old Giuliani would have offered gun control. The New Giuliani, running for the reactionary vote outside NYC, is silent.
Not that I'm a knee-jerk gun banner. It's true that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Esp. in a country with over 100 million guns already. Perhaps having more people armed is the answer. Instead of hundreds of people being like helpless sleep being slaughtered by one asshole, people could fight back. The downside would be more suicides, more murders, more road rage assholes shooting people. Whether the trade off would be worth it would be a worthy topic of intelligent debate. But there is no intelligent debate presented to the public at large in America.
By the way, I'm not buddies with Giuliani, so unlike the U.S. corporate media, which always promotes right-wing pols, I don't call him "Rudy." He's not a "regular guy." Of course, "Rudolph" is a weird name in a U.S. context. What are the associations? Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer; Rudolph Hess, the Nazi. (Although Giuliani personally is not like Hess, he's like Mussolini.)
I leave it to his "buddies" in the press to call him "Rudy."