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.

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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.

Assad Calls Obama's Bluff

Looks like Bashar al-Assad, the hereditary dictator of Syria, has taken the measure of U.S. President Barack Obama, and isn't impressed.

A while ago in the two-year-old Syrian uprising, Obama announced a “red line.” The “line” was the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. Obama in effect was saying, you better not cross this line. You can bomb your own people, you can shell your own towns, you can slaughter civilians indiscriminately, you can institutionalize rape as a weapon of repression, you can torture and execute people, and all I'll do is “demand” that you “step down.” (And prohibit you from having a bank account in an American bank. And we won't sell you arms, which we don't do anyway.) But you better not use chemical weapons! Because then you'll have to deal with the righteous wrath of the mighty U.S.A!

Well, Israel, and Britain, and France, now all say Assad has crossed the line. At first the Obama regime, including in the person of War Secretary Chuck “Wagon” Hagel, said there was no proof. Now, however, they've reluctantly conceded it seems to be so. (A British lab had samples of something to test, blood or soil.) But doubt has been cast on the claims of sarin use. [1] No surprise that Israel might try to instigate U.S. involvement, just as its American agents helped instigate the Iraq invasion and wants the U.S. to bomb Iran.

Assuming sarin use is confirmed, the question is: So now what happens? Nothing much, probably. Some verbal backing and filling and “clarifying” and more hollow warnings, most likely. A slight increase,maybe, in the dribble of “non-lethal” and “humanitarian” aid to the rebels (equipment and food and medicine, no guns or bullets or other stuff that shoots or explodes).

The U.S. “security” establishment now says sarin was probably used. So Obama is stalling. This is reflected in New York Times headlines, on the “World” page of its website, “Obama Not Rushing To Act on Signs Syria Used Chemical Weapons” (no, he sure isn't “rushing,” in fact he's dragging his feet) and a similar headline in the 4/27 print edition. ("Obama Avoids Swift Response to Report on Syria Arms." Love that mealy-mouthed Timesese, "Avoids Swift Response." Sounds so much better than "ducks" or "dithers" or "stalls" or "is indecisive.") 

The website version thumbnail of the story says:

         The president said he would respond “prudently” and “deliberately” to evidence

         that Syria has used chemical weapons, tamping down any expectations that he would

         take swift action.

In other words, don't rush me,I'm thinking, I'm thinking.

The first paragraph spells things out even more clearly, that Obama, by his words, was:

        tamping down any expectations that he would take swift action after an 

        American intelligence assessment that the Syrian government had used 

        the chemical agent sarin on a small scale in the nation’s civil war.

The NYT says that Obama's “remarks”

        laid bare the quandary he now faces. The day after the White House, in a letter to 
        Congressional leaders, said that the nation’s intelligence agencies had assessed “with
        varying degrees of confidence” that the Syrian government had used sarin, the president
        said he was seeking further proof of culpability for chemical weapons attacks. It is a
        laborious process that analysts say may never produce a definitive judgment. But Mr.
       Obama is also trying to preserve his credibility after warning in the past  that the use of
       chemical weapons would be a “game changer” and prompt a forceful American response.

      “Knowing that potentially chemical weapons have been used inside of Syria doesn’t tell

       us when they were used, how they were used,” Mr. Obama told reporters in the Oval Office. 

      “We have to act prudently. We have to make these assessments deliberately.”

      “But I meant what I’d said,” the president added. “To use potential weapons of mass

       destruction on civilian populations crosses another line with respect to international norms

       and international law. And that is going to be a game changer.” [Obama's use of the future   

       tense emphasized by me.]

What a bunch of doubletalk. He's stalling as hard as he can, then he repeats his empty threat, as if nothing has happened. And what the NYT means by Obama's “quandary” is that he painted himself into a corner with his bluffing. But they're too genteel and “respectful” to U.S. “authority” to ever be so blunt.

The UK Independent reports thusly:

         Obama, in his first comments about the new intelligence disclosure, said yesterday

         [April 26] : "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." "I've meant what I said."

        Some lawmakers voiced concern that if Obama doesn't make good on his promise

        to respond aggressively if it's shown that Assad used chemical weapons, his inaction

       could send a damaging message to the world. [2]

Namely the “message” that the U.S. is a paper tiger, whose bluff can be called. But I think the U.S. has a long enough record of savagery that it would be foolhardy for other nations to test it. and the U.S. has a history of sneaky attacks using cyberwarfare, SEALs, financial sabotage, and so on. For example, a number of Syrian undercover officers were bumped off in retaliation for the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon during the Reign of Reagan.

At the same time, UK Prime Minister David Cameron says a “very clear warning” should be sent. He forgot to say the word, “again.” Well, he's just fulfilling the now-traditional role of a UK Prime Minister as a parrot sitting on the shoulder of the U.S. Emperor. (A recent exception to that role was Margaret Thatcher. Reagan, under the influence of the loathsome Jeane Kirkpatrick and Al Haig, tried to talk Thatcher out of a military response to the Argentine junta's invasion and conquest of the Falkland Islands, which were and are inhabited by British people. Thatcher was having none of it.)

Obama's minions are also using the lies about WMD that the Bush regime used to gin up war fever to invade Iraq as an excuse to inaction. Which of course continues to promote the lie that what happened prior to that invasion was a case of “faulty intelligence,” not BALD FACED LYING by the U.S. Government and the entirety of the corporate media. The- the establishment- have since constructed this myth that the CIA “got it wrong” somehow, that they made mistakes. In fact, they were fabricating “intelligence,” as has been extensively documented. All the history is being systematically ignored by the U.S. establishment in foisting this lie on the public, that the lies weren't lies, but were honest mistakes.

Let's briefly review a few salient points on that score. There was the man the Egyptians tortured into saying what the CIA said they wanted to hear, that there were Al-Qaeda links to Saddam Hussein. This “confession” was used by Bush and Powell as part of their “proof.” (Later the victim was handed over to Qaddafi for disposal. Jane Mayer of The New Yorker has described the details of this case.)

The con man code named “Curveball” by his German secret police handlers was a known liar, and the Germans told the CIA this, but his bullshit about “mobile chemical weapons vans” was a key part of Colin Powell's lies to the UN.

The Niger yellowcake hoax was exposed as false BEFORE the war by the man tasked with investigating it, Joseph Wilson. You might remember what the Bush regime did in retaliation- they publicly blew the cover of his CIA officer wife, Valerie Plame.

The NYT was part of the mendacious propaganda campaign designed to lead to war. It assigned the egregious reactoinary Judith Miller (who already had a long history of dubious propaganda disguised as “news” for that paper) to act as a conveyor belt for the disinformation of the con man and embezzler Ahmed Chalabi.

The corporate media was so solidly behind the Bush regime's aggression that MSNBC canceled its top-rated show, Phil Donahue, because he refused to drink the Kool-Aid and presented dissenting views from the rush to war propaganda.

I could go on, but it would fill (another) book.

The point is, it is particularly disingenuous for the establishment media (and no doubt much of academe will follow along) to pretend that the U.S. made an honest error about Iraqi WMD, that the phone “intelligence” was honest but “flawed,” “mistaken,” not deliberately fabricated on orders of Cheney and Rumsfeld. This is reminiscent of how they rewrote the history of the Vietnam War, to present it as well-meaning, even noble, but impractical (because the U.S. couldn't “win,”), a “mistake,” not criminal and vicious. (A “mistake” that killed several million Vietnamese, devastated their country, left a land poisoned by dioxin which produces birth defects and disease to this day, killed another million in Laos and Cambodia and led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, who killed another million plus Cambodian, and oh yes, killed a bunch of foolish Americans who consented to being used as instruments of crime. That's quite a “mistake.” A real whopper, you could say. And part of what so upsets the establishment about it is that it caused powerful resistance movements inside the U.S. But they managed to cool that all out. Now they're busily going back in time to the 1950s, at least- the 1920s if the GOP and their rich scum backers get their way.)

Anyway, now Obama the Ditherer is once again on display. Oh well. He can always kill some more poor Yemeni villagers as compensation, to feel powerful. And now there's a 19 year old prisoner to execute, the surviving Boston Marathon bomber. (Well, why not? If you can kill innocent children, and even target a 16 year old American because you'd just killed his dad two weeks ago and are afraid the son might try to not let it be forgotten- the al-Awlakis, of course- why not a guilty 19 year old bomber, an impressionable young fool under the malign influence of a zealous older brother?)

But Obama is slippery. Like Bill Clinton, a very similar Democratic Party political con man and dangerously intelligent operator, Obama is careful to plant weasel words and trapdoors and outs in his various speeches. So for example when he first laid down the “no chemical weapons, OK Assad?” marker back in August, he qualified it with a lot. Just don't use a lot of chemical weapons. I'm not sure that will get Obama off the political hook now. Senator John McCain has started beating his intervention drum again.

            

                                         Obama explaining complex matters to the less intelligent- us. April 26.

I think the U.S. should help the Syrian people with small arms, and maybe a no-fly zone, or at least taking out some Syrian aircraft. A brief reminder: 70,000 people are dead, hundreds of thousands are refugees, and thousands have experienced traumatic loss of loved ones, homes, livelihood.  Many are maimed, others have survived torture and rape. Cities and towns are being systematically reduced to rubble.

 I realize morality is irrelevant to our rulers, so I won't bother going over at length my moral reasons for why the U.S. should intervene. I believe that might should be used to defend right, instead of the operative principle of might makes right, that says power is its own justification, which is completely amoral. But here's an argument U.S. rulers might understand: politically it makes sense for the U.S. to try and head off jihadi influence in Syria by helping the bulk of the rebels succeed or at least strengthen their position. Instead, fear of jihadis seems to be a key reason the U.S. refuses to do this. Also, if the U.S. really cares about winning support from the Syrian people and Arabs and Muslims generally, supporting the uprisings of oppressed Arabs and Muslims is the best way to do this. Instead the U.S. is stubbornly sticking to its policy- a global policy- of wanting people to be controlled by dictatorships, and dealing with dictators, who are their kind of people. That is, people who are into power and rule. The U.S. figures it can just keep conning people with its cynical blather about how much they love freedom and democracy and human rights, and the ludicrous claim that these are “our values” and “principles,” that this is what the U.S. “stands for.” An empire founded on genocide and slavery, with a long record of conquest, aggression, subversion, destruction of democracies, and support for death squad dictatorships, saying this with a straight face. Wow, that is discipline, to be able to say that without cracking a smile. I guess repetition makes it easier.

There are two habitual U.S. practices that are principles- namely basic principles of propaganda: The Big Lie, and Repetition. Just keep repeating the lie, in this case, a Big Lie. These are well-established principles of modern propaganda practice, consciously understood by their practitioners.

1) Some of these doubts are summarized in the British Independent, excerpted below:

The picture which is emerging from accounts given by Western and Middle Eastern officials and members of the Syrian opposition is this:  the test so far have not yielded conclusive results; they have been based on blood, hair and soil samples as well as photographs and video footage; the samples have not been collected independently by Western investigators inside Syria but handed over by the rebels or, at least on one occasion, by Turkish intelligence; some of the footage may have been faked; the tests had been carried out at the UK's Defence Science and Technology Laboratories ( DSTL) and multiple locations in America: conclusions on them vary within US intelligence agencies and the experience of 'Iraq and WMD' is a very present source of caution among officials in Washington and London.

Dr Sally Leivesley, a chemical and biological analyst, a former scientific advisor to the Home Office who has worked for a number of western governments, said "There are things here which do not add up. A chemical attack using Sarin as a battlefield weapons would leave mass fatalities and very few people alive. From what one hears about the symptoms it's possible that a harassing agent rather than a nerve agent was used".

See article and video of hospital patients allegedly exposed to sarin at “HasAssad crossed ‘red line’? Graphic video footage emerges claimingto show victims of nerve gas attack in Syria, but doubts cast onevidence of use of chemical weapons”- Independent.co.uk, 27 April 2013.

2) “BarackObama says Syria chemical weapon use would change US 'calculus' overintervention

President insists chemical attacks are still a 'red line'” -Independent, 27 April, 2013.

How Harry Reid Killed The Gun Control Bill

The corporate media reports that a law with new gun purchase regulations “failed to achieve the necessary 60 votes” in the U.S. Senate. It got “only” 54 votes, “six shy of the 60-vote threshold.”

What the media didn't mention is that the U.S. Senate is a body with 100 members. To most people, “winning” a vote means getting a majority. A majority is more than half of something. More than half of 100 is 51.

So why is 60 votes needed to pass anything in the U.S. Senate? Is it a law? Is it required by the U.S. Constitution?

No, it's just a Senate “rule,” the so-called filibuster rule- although actual filibustering, that is, talking and talking on the floor of the Senate, is virtually never involved. A rule the Senate made up itself. [1]

A rule the Senate could change.

But won't.

More precisely, a rule the Democratic Party hack and Senate “leader” (or “fuhrer” in the German)

Harry Reid, a reactionary from Nevada, refuses to change.

Why is it up to Harry Reid to change it?

Because he controls the power to change the rule. You see, the “democratic” U.S. Senate is quite authoritarian like that.

Every new Senate term, a handful of Democratic Senators entreat Reid to allow “reform” of the filibuster “rule,” begging for it to be watered down a bit. So this year, Reid did. Now a single bill can no longer be “filibustered” five separate times in the “legislative process.” (Why more than one vote is needed to pass a law anyway would no doubt be a mystery to most people, if they were even aware of the fact.)

If Reid had ever, in all his years as Senate boss, allowed the filibuster rule to be abolished, or at least require actual filibustering (speechifying on the Senate floor by Senators), then a majority of Senators could pass laws, as every normal legislative body does. Therefore the failure to pass a modest tightening of gun laws is squarely the fault of Harry Reid, and of his party. [2]

So why does Reid- in fact why do the Democrats- keep handing the GOP veto power over legislation?

Well, there are various excuses. Some fall into the category of Fear. They're afraid of Republicans.

Another excuse is the sly hint that if (when) they're in the minority, they'll want to filibuster.

Which is bullshit. The Democrats never filibuster GOP outrages. In fact, the Democrats have helped pack the Supreme Court with reactionaries. (Which exposes as particularly cynical the Democrats scare/political extortion tactic of telling voters “If the GOP wins, they'll appoint anti-choice Justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade!”) To give just two examples: the slippery Joe Biden, as then-chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, helped install Clarence Thomas, a dumb ideological operative with no judicial experience, on the country's top court, telling Democratic Senators privately that Anita Hill was a liar. And Antonin Scalia, an utterly fanatical reactionary, was confirmed as a Justice by 98-0 in the Senate. Those weren't 98 all-Republican votes either.

No, the real reason is that the Democratic Party is pro-Imperialist and pro-corporate oligarchy. In order to dupe people who are loosely called “liberal” into voting for them and giving them money, they need an alibi and a scapegoat for the political crimes of the two-party dictatorship. Giving the GOP veto power, giving Republicans the power to decide the laws of the land even when they're a minority, suits their slimy political purposes perfectly. Can't ever do anything decent for the people? It's the GOP's fault! The Democrats tried! They just couldn't get enough Republican votes. The GOP gives the Democratic Party cover for the reactionary policies it secretly supports. [3] 
 

Well, the Republicans are supposed to be your opposition, assholes!

I mention in passing that the U.S. Congress has always in fact been reactionary, except for brief periods during and after the Civil War, and when it was forced by the economic crisis of the Great Depression to pass New Deal legislation to salvage capitalism. Before Southern White racists migrated en masse from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, the Democratic majority in Congress included a huge chunk of reactionary, virulently racist Southerners. Together with Republicans, these Southern Democrats in fact constituted a reactionary majority.

Aside from the filibuster absurdity, the U.S. Senate may be the most undemocratic elected “ democratic representative body” on the face of the earth.

Here's what I mean. Each state gets two U.S. Senators, regardless of population. As of July 2012, the population of California was 38 million. The population of the least populous state, Wyoming, Land of Cheney, most powerful VP in U.S. history, was 576,000. That means each resident of Wyoming has the same weight in the U.S. Senate as 66 Californians. A Californian is only worth 1/66th as much as a Wyoman. [4]

Even slaves counted as 3/5ths of a person.

Or look at it this way: the 22 least populous states have a population of about 38,970,000- less than a million more than California. They have 44 Senators- almost half the total, to California's two, or 22 times California's representation. Keep in mind the total U.S. population is about 313,282,000. So states with about 12.4% of the total U.S. population have 44% of the representation in the U.S. Senate.

Of course, the 632,000 residents of the District of Columbia, capital city of the self-proclaimed World's Greatest Democracy, Ever, have no U.S. Senators- and no voting members of the House of Representatives either..

This is the most grossly undemocratic legislature in any nation claiming to be a “democracy,” by far.

Therefore be it resolved: The U.S. Senate must be abolished forthwith.

I know, that was a joke. I was being droll.

The Constitution is written in such a way as to make it impossible to change the fundamental political structure of the nation. The states with unfair power will never vote to give up that power, which would be necessary to change the structure.

Of course, parts of the Constitution are routinely ignored. The first ten amendments, the “Bill of Rights,” for example.

But not this part.

1) The filibuster rule is also called the “cloture” rule, “cloture” being a pretentious term for closing debate. As if they actually debate things, a la that hoary Frank Capra propaganda movie Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. If you watch C-Span, you can see what the self-proclaimed "world's greatest debating body" considers "debate;" sole Senators reading prepared speeches in an empty chamber.

2) Posturing by Party Boss Obama notwithstanding. Recall that Obama was virtually silent on gun control for over four years, until a political breeze was kicked up by the massacre of young children in Newtown, CT. Not the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater massacre, not the maiming of U.S. Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and killing of several others in Arizona, not for that matter the tens of thousands of guns deaths during his time in office- or during his two years as a Senator either- bestirred him to make any effort for regulatory reform on this issue. He can pose all he likes, using the parents of slain children as stage props, but the evidence that this is an issue important to him is quite exiguous. (This isn't just my opinion. Glenn Thrush, Politico's White House correspondent, says Obama has avoided gun control “assiduously throughout his career.” [Thrush on Brian Lehrer radio show, WNYC, 4/18/13.] He also points out that Obama launched no “arm-twisting effort” that other Presidents have done to get legislation they cared about passed.) Even after Newtown, Obama dithered for a month, assigning Joe Biden to study the issue to come up with legislative proposals. Why didn't the Democrats already have a legislative agenda for gun control?

Poring over assassination lists every week is obviously a higher priority for Obama, for one thing. Perhaps he finds it a more satisfying exercise of power to kill, rather than to prevent killing. And I think better gun regulations, if they could potentially save thousands of lives, would save more lives than he imagines he's saved by bumping off the 16 year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, for example, or poor Yemeni villager, or rescue workers in Pakistan's tribal regions with drone “double-tap” attacks. Those latter attacks in fact have nothing to do with “protecting Americans,” as the rote propaganda catechism has it, but with trying to win a hopeless war in Afghanistan.

3) Actually the Democratic Party's real politics aren't really a secret. Just look at the records of Clinton and Obama. Or Carter. Or LBJ, who brought us the Vietnam War, the invasion of the Dominican Republic to reverse an election result, the Brazilian military dictatorship, and other crimes against humanity. Or Harry Truman. Or Woodrow Wilson, who laid the foundations for the modern U.S. police state with the “Espionage” Act and the Palmer Raids. By the way, he was so racist that his first act as President was to purge the Federal Government of all its black employees.

It's only not well known and understood what the Democratic Party is really about because of the assiduous efforts of the Party and the U.$ media to deceive the public.

4) All figures as estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau as of July, 2012. See “List of U.S. states and territories by population” at Wikipedia, or go directly to the U.S. Census Burea.

Is Islam “A Religion of Peace”?

Funny there could even be a debate about that. It's pretty obvious, if one looks at actual facts, that Islam is far more belligerent and violent than peaceful. It certainly is highly intolerant, even of variations of itself. (1) In other words, if one employs the method of science and reason, and looks at the data, the evidence clearly shows at a minimum the “religion of peace” claim to be not well supported, to put it mildly. I'd go further and call that an absurd and mendacious propaganda slogan of Islamists themselves who wish at the very least to divert people's attention from what other Islamists are doing all over the world, or worse to sinisterly dupe the rest of us and lull us into complacency.

In numerous countries, Islamists impose an intolerant and repressive ideology by force and violence. Islamic regimes rule by force (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iran, etc.). As Islam got its start by the sword, and spread through conquest, so now Islamists seek to conquer new territories by violence (Mali, Nigeria) and impose more extreme versions of Islam in countries that are already dominated by that religion. It is significant that the flag of Saudi Arabia includes a sword. What is that supposed to symbolize? Peace? Name me a Muslim nation with a dove in its flag, or two hands shaking. There are none. Saudi Arabia is the site of the “two Holiest sites in Islam,” Mecca and Medina. Every Muslim is commanded to visit Mecca at least once (if they can)- this is called the Hajj. S.A. is the “guardian” of the symbolic fonts and touchstones of Islam.

Yes yes, the friendly-face propagandists insist “jihad means struggle.” I'm sure it does. It also means religious war- or nowadays, religious terrorism. Maybe someone should tell the people setting off bombs in public places every few days in Pakistan, Iraq, Nigeria, and now Syria too (sometimes so enthralled by death that they willingly blow themselves up along with their victims- maybe instead of calling their god “Allah” they should call it by its right name, Thanatos) that jihad actually is a benign method of self-improvement via inner struggle, not a call to murder and mayhem. Clearly, words can mean different things to different people.

But that doesn't represent Islam, or not all Muslims. Ok, where are the Muslim denunciations of Islamic terrorism? What we get are fatwas (“Holy” commands) calling for the murder of cartoonists and novelists from top Islamic religious bosses. (Salman Rushdie's Japanese translator was murdered, Dutch filmmaker Theodoor "Theo" van Gogh was butchered by knife in the street for the “crime” of making a movie about the horrid abuse of women by Muslims, and you can add your own countless examples here.)

We do hear how Muslims are “intimidated” by “hate speech.” Really? So where are the Christian terrorists murdering Muslims for saying something the Christians don't like? Where are the mobs attacking embassies over cartoons? How many public orders to murder authors has the Pope, say, issued?  It sounds a tad hypocritical. [But oh, their delicate sensibilities need protecting. A guy who threw a Koran in a toilet at a college in New York City was charged with “disorderly conduct as a hate crime,” a felony. Felony thought crime, that is. To express contempt or hatred for a religion that has political clout by throwing a book in a toilet is apparently banned, at least in NYC. We can't allow such “intimidation.” All I can say is, if someone is terrified by seeing a book in a toilet, they better dig themselves a big hole to hide in the rest of their lives. People say mean things sometimes. You wouldn't want your feelings hurt. (2)]

The late Christopher Hitchens was the most eloquent public figure who tried to arouse defenders of what are called liberal values- free speech, tolerance, human rights including equality of women to men, pluralism, free thought, and freedom to live one's life without interference from totalitarian oppressors (remember, these guys ban even music and art, force women to cover their faces, who they also ban from going outside their homes unless accompanied by a male relative, and much else that is intolerable to any normal human being)- against what he saw as a menace to “civilization.” I suppose those of a certain ideological bent would attack his argument as rank Western chauvinism. But is not the cutting off of hands, beheading reporters and hostages, and reducing women to the level of chattel beasts not barbarism? (And that's an extremely partial list of the barbaric crimes committed by these fanatics. Committed proudly- they like to boast about the horrors they inflict, even videoing themselves doing them and posting the evidence online.) (3)

Or if you insist on cultural relativism and say “it's just different types of civilization,” very well, the Wahhabi one is waging war on the “western” one. It is seeking to impose its anti-human values by not just force, but by terrorism. Right now, Islamic terrorists calling themselves “Boko Haram” are trying to impose by terrorism their demands on all Nigerians. Boko Haram means “Western education (or ideas) is forbidden.” Forbidden by who? By this band of terrorists. Forbidden to whom? To everyone else in Nigeria (and once they take over Nigeria, there will be more countries on their list). Forbidden how? By vicious violence, meted out without warning to whomever they choose to inflict it on.

And just what are “Western ideas”? The aforementioned basic human rights and freedoms I already enumerated, among others. Oh, I left out the right of women to learn how to read and write. That too is “forbidden.”

But I recognize that a billion people cannot all be branded terrorists, nor do I wish to. The truth is, the majority of the victims of Islamic terrorism are Muslims. And it is Muslims who are most oppressed by Islam, especially females. I guess being able to oppress women is the compensation the men have for being repressed themselves by their religion.

Islam is a perfect example of how religion is an infectious mind disease. What is the purpose of demanding prayer five times a day? Mind control. Forcing boys to memorize the Koran? Indoctrination and brainwashing. [I don't speak as a partisan of any religion as I am an atheist.]

The U.S.' Saudi “allies” have chosen to bankroll the spreading of the most virulent form of this disease, Wahhabi Islam. This led directly to the 9/11 attacks and many others preceding and following it. The Pakistani military sees Islamic terrorists as useful cat's paws and cutouts for terrorist attacks on India.

There has to be an appropriate response to this serious situation. On one extreme are leftists and the most naïve pacifists whose ideology acts as a blindfold, preventing them from seeing what's in front of us all. On the other pole are people enraged by 9/11. They had a very strong reaction to the huge media propaganda campaign following that attack. [Too bad there has never been an honest accounting of the complicity of the CIA and FBI in those attacks. And remember how Bush had to be forced to even create an investigative committee? And how he and Cheney refused to testify under oath to it? Amazingly, that's all down the memory hole!] They paint with too broad a brush and see all Muslims as enemies. If civilization (there I go again, being chauvinistic) indeed has a billion enemies, we're in huge trouble.

A crusade a la the Roman Catholic invasions of the “Holy Lands” is not the answer. But naivete isn't either. You can't negotiate with unreasonable fanatics. And some force is unavoidable in dealing with them. But at the same time the main battle is ideological and psychological. Unfortunately “winning hearts and minds” is just a cynical euphemism for lame propaganda campaigns, cheap political tricks, and mendacious speeches by political con men. (Why does the name Barack Obama come to mind?)

A long ideological battle looms, and the U.S. and its allies don't seem to have a clue what to do about it.

I could give advice, but that will have to await another essay. (Besides, those in power don't take advice from me anyway, so what's the rush?)

A good start would be to stop supporting dictators and start promoting democracy. But “the West” has painted itself into a corner here. Since they supported for so long dictators who have successfully prevented the development of civic organizations and democratic consciousness in the countries they rule, the best-organized opposition (and thus most likely to win elections, as happened in Egypt with Mubarak's overthrow) are Islamists. Which of course the U.S. and its bloc do not want. But continuing to support dictatorships in the hope of suppressing a virulent and violent totalitarianism is proving risky- especially when one of those dictatorships (Saudi Arabia) is a source of the problem!

1) I refer of course to the mutual bombings and murders by Sunnis and Shiites of one another in several countries. And the two branches of Islam are fighting a proxy war in Syria. That civil war is not just a proxy war, but it is that as well as being a rebellion against the tyrant Assad. Iran and the Arab monarchies of the Arabian peninsula also compete for influence in Iraq, site of constant terrorism motivated in large part by this religious factionalism. The Saudis and their satellite oil sheikdoms are apparently pressing the U.S. in secret to take out Iran's nuclear program by any means necessary. Sure, Christianity in the past launched wars of conquest, fought sectarian wars between branches of itself (political conflicts masked as religious, which gave them extra fervor, as today between the Iran-Syria axis vs. the Arabian Peninsula one) and was violent and repressive. But that was centuries ago. All they do now is kill miscarrying pregnant women by denying them abortions, as just happened in Ireland. And support the occasional fascist death squad regime. But that's mainly Catholicism- and evangelical Protestantism, big backers of the former Guatemalan butcher Jose Efrain Rios Montt. [Actually that might make an interesting defense for Islam. Look at all the massive state terrorism, that killed millions over the past century, that the Roman Catholic Church aided and abetted.? That would be the "but they did it too" defense. But hey, I say mean things about the RCC too. I'm fair. And the Pope doesn't issue public calls for the murder of writers he doesn't like. So there is a difference. Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. It is better for tribute to be paid than not. And the RCC's preachings these days do not call for or promote violence. That obviously is a huge distinction from much of Islam.]

If Muslims hate each other to such a murderous degree, how are the rest of us supposed to see them? They are obviously a menace. You could ask the relatives of 200 dead Australian tourists murdered in the Bali resort bombing shortly after 9/11/01 about that, among other people.

By the way, quite a few Muslims hate Jews too. And that isn't because they care so much about Palestinian Arabs either. They would hate Jews anyway. [Which unfortunately is used as an excuse by Israel and its U.S. backers to continue to remorselessly, relentlessly dispossess the Palestinians of their homes and land and makes their lives miserable, with an eye to goading them to leave.]

2) This censorship of free speech and free expression is justified with the seemingly liberal demand that “people should respect other people's religion.” That is an example of rhetorical jui-jitsu, calling suppression of criticism or negative remarks “tolerance.” It is intolerance in the name of tolerance. But you have no right to demand that I genuflect before your religion. Personally I think that all religion is SHIT. Ignorant, superstitious, primitive idiocy. I reject the demand that I “respect” moronic, imbecilic “beliefs.” If someone “believes” in unicorns, or flying elephants, or “believes” that the moon is made out of green cheese, I would refuse to submit to a demand that I “respect” those beliefs, nor would anyone attempt to impose such a demand- or at least they'd lack the power to enforce it. The content of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions (each a successive knock-off of the preceding one) is as least as ludicrous. Forcing people to smile and nod respectfully at religious zealots in the name of “tolerance” is suppression of freedom of thought and expression. It is a hijacking of liberal values to enforce its opposite. If someone's “beliefs” are so obviously absurd that they can't withstand dissent from them or criticism or even mockery, maybe they need a more reality-based set of beliefs!

3) Hitchens was getting increasingly dogmatic in some ways in the last few years of his life. I fear he was going to end up sounding indistinguishable from the neocon bedfellows he was lying with in his later years. (He became a regular on panels and TV shows put on by such nests of reactionaries as the Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institution, the Hudson Institute and the Claremont Institute. You can see videos of these sessions on youtube.) Lately he had taken to calling for war on Iran. So maybe it was a bittersweet blessing in disguise that he died before degenerating further. I prefer to remember him as intellectually sharp, morally acute, and witty. He was in danger of becoming a hectoring warmonger. We do need to resist the encroachment of barbarism, but starting major conventional wars is more likely to backfire, and drive even more Muslims into hateful fanaticism. There are better levers to use against Iran, and for that matter Pakistan and Saudi Arabia should be dealt with more toughly, instead of being coddled. The West has the means to do so. The Saudis are just as much a hostage to the Western banking and investment system as Iran, in fact much more so. And they need to sell their oil at least as much as others need to buy it. As for Pakistan, it largely exists on U.S. largesse, especially since its corrupt ruling elite refuses to tax itself, engorging itself like leeches with undeserved wealth while their country falls apart. Yes, their nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the fanatics is a problem. If U.S. regimes, especially starting with Reagan, hadn't allied the U.S. with military Islamists starting with Zia ul-Haq, we'd be in a very different place now, probably. Once again the chronic refusal to actually ally with democrats is proving to be the opposite of “realism.” It is in fact stupidity. So we see that morality isn't just nice window-dressing. Morality is a fundamental part of our existence. It is part of the fabric of being. One ignores it at one's peril. This goes for nations too.

BONUS VIDEO: Yusef Islam (nee Cat Stevens) calls for the public immolation of Salman Rushdie.

(“Peace Train” indeed!)