The Newtown Massacre, and Political Agendas

The truly horrible Sandy Hill Elementary School massacre in Newtown, CT, is fast turning into a political vehicle for anti-gun forces, throwing the pro-gun crowd on the defensive.

A battle is being fought on the bodies 20 young children and 6 women school employees. (The media has put gunman Adam Lanza's mother, the first person he murdered, as she slept in their shared home, in a separate category as a less worthy victim.)

Immediately after the last “mass” shooting (just 2 killed actually) this time a genuinely mass one, on Friday, 12/14/12. Perhaps the media should stop inspiring these copycat massacres. We have seen this before, copycats attempting (or in this case, succeeding) in aping heavily-reported mass shootings.

The establishment media is really running the ball with this one. For five days running it's on the top of the front page of the NY Times, for example. Saturation coverage in multiple propaganda organs. Is it really that significant? Was the President of the United States assassinated? And the NYT has treated us to daily editorials demanding more gun control.

The BBC aped the U.S. media in obsessive coverage: “The story shaping the world,” was the intro to the broadcast 12/16. Later, as if giving an alibi for the saturation coverage, the announcer stated: “The shock value of this story has given it longevity.” Oh. [Apparently they weren't shocked when the 11-month old son of one of their own BBC employees, a Palestinian in Gaza, was killed in an Israeli air raid a few weeks ago. They waited days to give it more than cursory mention, and then dropped it. We could list many other examples of oddly “non shocking” atrocities that don't incite the BBC.]

And of course the media are pouring over scraps of info about the killer, a 20 year old named Adam Lanza, looking for clues and signs of weirdness. So far we have that he was a shy loner. (The media have treated us to a photo of him looking weird, eyes wide and unsmiling. Let us stipulate that he was “weird.”) The lack of many facts is no impediment to 24/7 repetitive “coverage.”

The direction the “debate” is going is to put anyone who's different under heightened scrutiny as a potential menace to society. Meanwhile it's obvious that the “liberal” segment of the U.S. media is gearing up for a push for tighter firearms and ammunition regulation.

So we'll have scapegoating of nonconformists and increased abuse and persecution of those perceived as different, as the likely result of mass shootings. How else to catch the Adam Lanza's of the world? He was not diagnosed as mentally ill (will any weirdness now constitute “mental illness”?) nor did he have a criminal record.

One obvious truth that the media can't seem to grasp is that people sometimes lose their minds. This is nothing new. People have been going mad for all of recorded history, and no doubt before that. The attitude that this is unusual is totally unrealistic, a denial of a longstanding truth.

And of course, in this case, the killer didn't even own guns. His mother did. Her guns were used to slay her and the 26 others. So what gun purchase restriction could have prevented this?

And even if assault weapons and large magazines are banned, no one would dare try to confiscate the millions of them already in private hands. Seems that the horse left the barn a long time ago.

But I do believe tightening controls could help. This time it looks like things might be different from the other mass shootings that got major attention.

One thing the “responsible” gun owners beloved of NRA propagandists need to be made to understand is that anyone can lose their minds. Including any of them. Just as anyone who is healthy can suddenly become physically ill. Mental illness is no different. It also strikes unpredictably at times. Not everyone who succumbs has a history of mental problems, no more than only people who are sickly get sick. It is not “the other.” It is one of us.

The reactionary propaganda orchestra is repeating the organized and orchestrated line they put out after the Representative Giffords massacre in Arizona: “this is not the time to discuss” gun control. So when is? After the story is old and people have “moved on”? Cynical bastards know that right after one of these shocking outrages is the ONLY time gun control would have any chance at all.

So for example immediately the Wall Street Journal editorial page swung into action, saying “There is time enough for that public debate and all the usual intellectual tensions put in motion by such discussions. But not at this moment.” (In the print edition the day after the massacre, referring not just to gun control but to treatment of and “protections from” mentally ill people, 12/15/12.)) And Murdoch's minions of course got the memo. On Fox “News,” one of the reliable resident reactionaries there, Neil Cavuto, a stablemember of the malign menagerie assembled by arch villain Roger Ailes, cut off Rudolph “Rudy” Giuliani (“America's Mayor!” the “9/11 Hero” himself!) when Giuliani started to make a peep about gun laws. “Now is not the time” Cavuto intoned. Giuliani obediently fell into line.

I do find the obsessive media-orchestrated national grieving somewhat unseemly, Just a few days after the Newtown massacre, ten Afghan girls aged 9 to 13 will killed in an explosion in Nangarhar province. That's just a filler item in the establishment media. (Go to Aljazeera for real coverage.) Like a storm in some distant land.

And the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has counted over 200 children killed in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen by the CIA and Joint Special Operating Command. That's ten times the number the U.S. And some foreign media are carrying on about endlessly who were killed in Newtown, CT. Ten darker skinned children for each Sandy Hill Elementary victim.

There are numerous atrocities by the U.S. military in Iraq, for example, that went unpunished. In Fallujah, for starters. It's too bad the U.S. media sweeps them under the rug, and the American people for the most part are willfully unaware of them, not to mention unmoved.

It's not that I put a higher or inferior value on any child. The U.S. media (and its accomplices like the BBC) are the ones doing that.

This is what we could call selective compassion.

To be sure, people always feel their own pain more acutely than others.

But why are the deaths of children we never knew, or the grief of their parents, who are strangers to us, something we “share”? It is a somewhat artificial empathy that is generated by having the tragedy shoved forcefully under our noses for days on end.

Whereas when scores of Palestinian children are killed by U.S. bombs dropped by U.S. Planes flown by Israeli pilots, that is like cockroaches being squashed. And no, that wasn't “self-defense” by Israel. Israel killed a 15 year old Palestinian boy. That prompted several days of rocket fire into Israel, which hit no one. Then the Palestinians declared a ceasefire. Two days later, the Israelis murdered the military commander of Hamas, who had been trying to negotiate with the Israelis! (No wonder the Israeli have “no one to negotiate with” and “no partner for peace.” They keep killing them. The Israelis don't want to have to agree to give up any territory- in fact they want more.) That in turn caused Hamas and the smaller, more radical groups to resume rocket fire, to which Israel responded with a bombing campaign and threats of invasion. The U.S. Media and other Western propaganda outlets (again, like the BBC) shameless obfuscated and flat out lied about it. NPR claimed, when the Israeli started their aerial bombing campaign, that it was in response to “four days of rocket fire” by the Palestinians, a flat lie. (If it wasn't a lie, than NPR is just a really incompetent, shitty news outfit.)

Then we come to Obama. Obama's contributions to gun control so far: he signed a law allowing concealed guns in national parks. And his DO”J” shelved rules that would have made background checks more effective. (Pure politician that he is, he would never do anything that could jeopardize his reelection.) And despite a 2008 law calling on federal agencies to share information about possible mental illness with the FBI database, it hasn't happened. The VA forwards data about benefit checks going to a trustee due to mental incompetence of the recipient. The Republicans, malign and destructive as always, are working to kill even that. They've introduced a bill called the “Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act.” [“Justice Dept.Shelved Ideas to Improve Gun Background Checks,” NY Times,12/16/12, p 1.]

Recall also that Obama did exactly zero after the Gabrielle Giffords massacre on the gun control front. Not so much as trying to ban large ammo magazines. Obama hasn't even enforced the requirement that prohibited buyers' names get entered into the Federal database by the states. Since the Virginia Tech massacre of six years ago, eight states haven't submitted any names to the database. [But I notice the Federal government has no trouble labeling hundreds of thousands of people as “terrorists” and prohibiting them from flying, among other things.]

But political jellyfish that he is, Obama is floating with the media-created tide and talking vaguely about doing something. Who knows, maybe he'll actually try to. More likely, he'll issue his usual earnest exhortations while leaving it to Congress to actually lead. Which is absurd. 535 leaders? Leading is supposed to be his job.

Meanwhile, the pro-gun zealots are laying low. NBC's Meet the Press invited all 31 pro-gun senators to come on the show the Sunday following the Friday massacre, and not one was willing to show up, the cowards.

However, the National “Rifle” Association did break its silence on Tuesday, 12/18, saying it “is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to make sure this never happens again.” It called this anodyne generality “an important statement.”

An ill-timed Michigan state law allowing pistol packers to carry them concealed into schools (!) and other public places landed on GOP Gov. Rick Snyder's desk. (That's the same dog that just double-crossed the people of his state, after pretending to be against “Right To Work” legislation, he and the GOP state legislature rammed it through.) Snyder felt compelled to veto it. So the handgunners (who already have carry permits) will have to openly display their guns when in public or on school grounds, (I'm not making this up.)

On the other hand, the very principled Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican apparatchik who as a U.S. Congressman was a criminal supporter of the contra terrorists, the Salvadorean state terrorists, and Oliver North (the American Otto Skorzeny) announced his intention to sign state legislation easing restrictions on toting guns around. “I think as we move forward, whatever we do, we don't want to erode the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens,” said he. Of course, Lanza the Newtown killer, Holmes, the Aurora, CO mass murderer, the Virginia tech rampager, the twin teen terrors of Columbine High in Colorado, and many other vicious lunatics were also law-abiding- until they weren't. (Colorado actually weakened gun restrictions after Columbine. Go figure.)

Yes, the U.S. Is mad, in a way. Other nations react to mass shooting with strict gun laws. Not the U.S. I guess the U.S. really is “exceptional.”

Just not in a good way.

"The Horror, The Horror..."

So soon after the last multiple slaying by firearm that received national media coverage (and my post about it) a much worse lethal tragedy has occurred.

The slaughter of young children in the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and 6 of their caretakers, is a terrible, heart-wrenching crime.

That said, there is more to understanding what is going on here then to merely mindlessly partake in the emotional sturm und drang that the media and government officials are leading the populace in, like manipulated sheep.

Not to be misunderstood, as a human being, I feel the awfulness of this event, and can well imagine the terrible pain being experienced by the parents of the 6 and 7 year olds who were gunned down by Adam Lanza, age 20 (when he killed himself as the police approached the school), who is being described as having developmental problems.

There is more to say about this than the endless handwringing and repetition of the same basic facts over and over by the media.

At the risk of being thought churlish, first the huge media coverage, day after day, strikes me as disproportionate. The President of the United States wasn't assassinated.

The crime occurred on Friday, December 14th. As of Monday, December 17, the media is still giving it saturation coverage. (Example: for three days running, the top of page one of the NY Times is dominated by the story, and several full pages inside are covering it.)

Another Day, Another Mass Shooting In America

This time, the usual white male asshole culprit did it in a mall in Oregon. Typically, he then offed himself in cowardly fashion to avoid being called to account for his viciousness. Apparently the tough guy can't handle opprobrium. He killed two, and wounded one. (Not counting himself.)

He was probably mad about gay marriage or marijuana smoking or something. These guys can't tolerate freedom for other people- they always feel freedom for others is oppressing themselves. Their “rebellion” is reactionary, not liberatory.

Instead of smearing the Post Office by calling it “going postal,” it should be called “going NRA.”

AND, with perfect timing, a three judge panel of the U.S. Appeals Court that covers Illinois (the Seventh Circuit, based in Chicago) ruled 3-2 that Illinois' ban on concealed guns is unconstitutional. The opinion, overturning a lower court ruling, was written by right wing judge Richard Posner, and cited the recent Supreme Court decision on gun rights and self-defense. The panel gave the state 180 days to write a new law legalizing weapons. But not to worry. As the NRA likes to point out in their celebrations of such decisions this is for law abiding gun owners. So once one of them goes on a mass shooting spree, he'll lose his gun rights.

Mass shootings in America are pretty much accepted as routine now. Here are some recent ones:

October: a guy who can't handle rejection murders his ex-wife in a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in a spa. For good measure he murders two other women. (Making a statement about his feelings towards women, I suppose. So he exercised his First and Second Amendment rights all in one action! Like Certs- it's a breath mint and a candy mint.) Then he killed himself. (That way, he doesn't have to say he's sorry.)

August: white supremacist kills six at Sikh temple, also in a suburb of Milwaukee. Police have to finish the rabid dog off.

And two weeks before that, the Mad Gunman of Aurora, Colorado, invaded that movie theater showing the latest junk Batman movie, killing 12 and wounding 60. He's in custody.

Ho-hum. So boring.

Remember when mass shootings were exciting? Like Jared Loughner's attempt to assassinate Representative Gabby Giffords? And that Virginia Tech killer- the bodies really piled up that time!

And who could ever forget the Crazy Columbine Kids of Colorado? (Actually most people probably have.)

I think I'll buy myself a bullet resistant vest. Like the latest killer wore. (Along with a white mask.) And like the Aurora Avenger wore.

Thousands of Syrians Must Die So Hundreds Of Westerners May Live (Maybe)

That's the (unstated but obvious) logic behind the reason given by U.S. Government officials via the media for why shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapons cannot be provided to the Syrians rebelling against the horrible dictatorship of the Assad gang. These weapons may fall into the hands of "extremists." And then, maybe, used to try to shoot down an airliner. Which involves three hypotheticals: 1) jihadists get the weapons, somehow, 2) use them to shoot at airliners full of white people, and 3) manage to shoot down an airliner.

Thus, the hypothetical possibility of a few hundred Westerners getting killed is reason to consign thousands of Syrians to death due to the aerial bombardments and resulting military advantage of the Assad regime.

Recall that there is one known jihadist attempt to shoot down a "Western" airliner with such a weapon. It was fired at an El Al jet taking off in Africa. It missed.

Of course, the U.S. is a nation that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to spare its soldiers lives. So why not let more Syrians die to avoid any risk at all to a few hundred Westerners?

But now the rebels have obtained anti-aircraft weapons from Assad's captured arsenals, and are using them. So it's time for the hand wringing to begin about jihadists getting those weapons too!

Morsi Overreaches: Western Media Piles On: What He Should Have Done

The Western media has been beating up on Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi for a week or so now, ever since he trumped Mubarak's judiciary and chief prosecutor by assigning to himself the right to ignore the judges' decrees and free himself from their vetoes of his decisions. He announced that this was a temporary, 2-month measure until the Constitutional Assembly wrote a new constitution. He also fired Mubarak's prosecutor. (A long-overdue measure.)

The Western media has painted him as a dictator as a result. (Funny, they never complained about the dictator Mubarak for 30 years.) The real beef is that Morsi heads the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is not considered reliable stooge material for Western imperialism.

Every day, Western media puts on Morsi's critics- but never his supporters. This includes "quality" media like NPR and BBC. Their bias and lack of balance is quite blatant. I'm not taking Morsi's side; I just think that if BBC, NPR, NY Times and their ilk are going to call themselves journalists, they should practice journalism, not state propaganda designed to advance the agendas of their respective governments. Might as well just be openly government propaganda.

The BBC night after night fills its airwaves with critics of Morsi and their on air hacks pile on, hour after hour.

NPR on 11/30 reported that the non-Muslim Brotherhood members of the Constitution-writing body were not present- ignoring that they volumtarily walked out.

On 12/1 NPR said they walked out "because they said their rights were violated." No explanation of what "rights" were "violated." Obviously they just don't like being a minority that is outvoted. But that's democracy, right?

"Democracy" to a Western imperialist means "who we want, wins." See Nicaragua, whose election results were rejected by the U.S. bloc until one produced a Sandinista defeat. Or Palestine, where the victory of Hamas is considered invalid. The U.S. even egged on the Palestinian "Authority" to start a civil war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which the P.A. lost. (Nowadays the media conveniently ignore the facts and claim Hamas "kicked out" the P.A. True, technically, but highly misleading.) Not that I'm pro-Hamas, mind you. As an atheist, I have no affinity for religious zealots of any stripe. (Including Christian and Jewish ones too.)

Morsi should have simply called the regular assembly back into session- the elected parliament that Mubarak's judges disbanded. And called the Mubarak judiciary's bluff on that.

Yet Another Nail In The Coffin Of The Case For Obama

For any honest progressive, the shrill, desperate, even hysterical arguments for voting for the Democrats get thinner and thinner with each Democratic regime. Yes, the GOP seems intent on turning itself into a quasi-fascist party. But on almost no issue are the Dems materially better.

Certainly on human rights, the Democratic Party has been an abomination going back to Woodrow Wilson. Massive repression of progressives has been the rule.

Anyway, here's the latest example of the kindness and compassion of the Democrats, courtesy of NPR news (11/21/12 -2pm EST):

Obama is on track to pardoning the FEWEST prisoners since- get this- John Adams. (The second President, after Washington.) He's granted ONE WHOLE PARDON for every 290 beseechments.

Compare that to his predecessor, Bush the Younger. Bush granted mercy to one in every 55 requests.

Yeah, there's a whole lot of Hope for Change under Obama. Oh wait, there has been change. They've "legalized" indefinite imprisonment without charges for American citizens, in military dungeons. Just like in a military dictatorship! (All they have to do is call you a name: "terrorist!")

And Obama has killed a few thousand people with drone strikes.

But not to worry. As his cold-blooded AG, Eric Holder, Jr., says, "due process isn't judicial process." The killers decide someone is worthy of death. (Like the 16 year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki.) They discuss the matter among themselves. Then they decide whether to kill him. What could be more judicious?

Anyway, it was his own fault for having the wrong father. As Obama's senior campaign adviser Robert Gibbs explained after the murder, the boy "should have [had] a far more responsible father."

Recall, the son was killed two weeks after his father. There is no evidence- or even an assertion- that he was an Al-Qaeda member. ["Robert Gibbs Says Anwar al-Awlaki's Son, Killed By Drone Strike, Needs 'Far More Responsible Father'" - Huffingtonpost.]

One Member of Pussy Riot Freed; Tim deChristopher Still In Prison

One of the three members of Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot has had her sentence commuted to time served. Good news, of course. The other two are still serving two year sentences for playing an anti-Putin song in a Russian Orthodox Cathedral, outraging the reactionary Church hierarchy. For their disorderly conduct, a fair punishment would have been a small fine.

Meanwhile, U.S. political prisoner Tim deChristopher continues to serve his two year sentence for daring to bid in a U.S. Interior Department oil lease auction. Instead of having security guards escort him from the auction, which he in no way disrupted, (nor did he threaten anyone, attack anyone, scream or shout or destroy or damage Government property), the Obama regime prosecuted him for Federal felonies.

Thanks to the power of Western media, which continues to follow every twist and turn of the Pussy Riot case, Pussy Riot has gotten international attention and support from various Big Name celebrities like Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Yoko Ono.

Tim deChristopher, as it always the case for U.S. dissidents being persecuted by the U.S., is ignored and marginalized. Even most of the allegedly progressive media devotes insufficient attention to such cases- cases which reveal the hollowness of U.S. propaganda noise about "freedom" and "human rights,"- and never draw the obvious contrast to foreign dissident cases.

Amnesty International is blind and deaf to U.S. dissidents and political prisoners.

Perhaps progressives themselves have too much ideological and psychological investment in the myth of U.S. "freedom" and "rights" to bring themselves to face reality and attack the U.S. and its "Western" stooge nations for their rank hypocrisy.

South Africa, and the Sad Degeneracy of Power.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"- Lord Acton.

It's time to speak of  the disappointing and indeed, demoralizing degeneracy of the African National Congress. Enough time has passed with the ANC in power to pass judgment. It is now clear that their rule is a terrible betrayal of the impoverished black masses. The ANC is a gang of thieves allying themselves with the established big business and mining interests to line their own pockets.

For example, last month the police murdered 34 striking miners, then indicted 270 of the survivors for the murders of the 34 gunned down by the police! An outcry forced the government to back down after a few days. The establishment trade union, COSATU, is in bed with the government and miners. The so-called “Communist” party, apparently connected at the hip to the ANC, opposed the strikers. (Imagine that! “Communists” against workers! Where have we seen that before? The Soviet Union? “Red” China? Hmmmm.)

The miners were paid around $750 a month. The mine owners kept playing hardball, insisting on no deal until the strikers went back to work first. After the massacre, they agreed to a 22% wage increase (the miners had been demanding 100%). That ended that strike. Other strikes are ongoing at other mines.

The ANC has done virtually nothing to improve the lives of the black population. If anything, the masses of blacks live in worse squalor than ever. In all their years in power, the ANC has failed to provide even basic services to much of the population they rule. Instead they've made themselves partners with the preexisting upper class and shared in the spoils. If this was the deal Nelson Mandela arranged with the white supremacists, shame on him.

Today the BBC reported yet another horrific crime against the black population by the ANC. Poor black schoolchildren in Limpopo district have no textbooks because the local ANC overlords who control the “education” department apparently stole the money. There was a phony “bidding process,” in which 22 companies were disqualified, leaving only one, “EduSolutions,” standing. (Don't you love those bullshit faux can-do pseudo-progressive company names hustlers come up with?) They took millions of dollars, and delivered no books. Under their contract, the price was ten times the actual cost of just buying the books. (The old rigged-bid-cum-kickbacks trick. How unoriginal!) A civil servant who objected to the scheme was sacked. The ANC hacks running the show insist that nothing untoward happened. Now the central government is looking into $250 million in “unauthorized expenditures” disappeared to. (Obviously a lot of corruption.) Meanwhile classes are held outside on the ground for lack of facilities, sans textbooks. Thus are the lives of another generation stunted by the rulers.

The ANC! Building a Bright Future for the People of South Africa!

Jacob Zulu, the current ANC boss (and thus President) is a satyr and freak who thinks showering after sex prevents AIDS. His crackpot predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, was an HIV denier. These are the caliber of gentlemen who preside over this kleptocracy. I guess outside of Mandela and some others, the apartheid butchers and assassins managed to kill all the good leaders in the ANC.

To his discredit, Nelson Mandela has put loyalty to the ANC gang above principle, and as far as I've heard in foreign (non-South African) media, has maintained silence about the ANC's crimes against the people, malfeasance, and feckless, negligent misrule. It's a terribly disheartening legacy for the years of struggle and sacrifice, and turns the sacrifice of Mandela and so many others (many of whom are dead or maimed) to mud.

Unfortunately, one of the truest things ever said about revolutions is The Who song, “Won't Get Fooled Again.” (“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”) The same in that a new gang of exploiters and oppressors takes over. And any idealists who don't get with the program get purged, as “counterrevolutionaries.” (How ironic that epithet!)

Another example: Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and the execrable tyrant and head of another gang of thieves, the stone-cold thug Robert Mugabe. (The first thing he did after seizing power was to destroy the other black freedom fighting group, ZAPU. That was a tip-off to his nature, and what was to come. Like so many cynical “revolutionaries,” what he meant by “liberation” was “power for me!”)

Of course, virtually every African ex-colony is now ruled by tyrants and thieves. They despoil and exploit their lands in partnership with foreign corporations (including Chinese ones now) and brutalize their people for being in the way of this self-enrichment.

The challenge for humans who want the sorry state of civilization on this planet to evolve is to solve the conundrum of how power can be used for good, when those who are best at seizing power are the ruthless, selfish ones, the politicians, thugs, and mercenaries. The best I can come up with is “more democracy,” which means more political involvement by the masses of people directly in decisions that affect their lives. How to get people to fundamentally change their relationship to power in that way is the real hard problem. Most people do not want to be bothered. Plus they would have to create the structural mechanisms to exercise real power themselves. This would almost certainly involve overthrowing the existing power structures in most cases. And they would have to overcome their own deep psychology of authoritarianism, viewing the people in power as a child relates to parents, in a submissive, obedient way, deferring to them, and expecting to be taken care of. In that sense part of the problem is that many people on a deep level never grow up.

Another big problem is that the kind of humane people who want to make the world better for humans are at a real disadvantage because violence is so powerful a weapon. Forget all that gush about “the power of nonviolence.” It is almost never a match for violence. This gives the criminal classes and the thugs they employ a huge advantage, since normal humans have no stomach for violence. The only times nonviolence has trumped violence is when there were no longer a sufficient number of thugs willing to be sufficiently violent to suppress the large number of people willing to risk their safety and well-being by physically opposing a regime. This happened in India after World War Two, when the British could no longer muster an army large enough to suppress the Indian masses, and when the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979. In the last week of his rule, his army killed 10,000 Iranians, then couldn't do it anymore. The Shah fled to the bosom of his benefactor, the U.S., precipitating the so-called “Hostage Crisis.” Someone challenges U.S. Imperialism, and it's a “crisis.” Today in Indonesia 2 million people are simultaneously striking. That's what it takes, massive numbers. But that is hard to organize, especially when regimes systematically murder organizers, as in Colombia, where the murder of labor organizers continues unabated with the tacit approval of the Obama regime. The strategy of systematically exterminating anyone with a normal, pro-human social consciousness, who are labeled “communist” or “terrorist,” has occurred repeatedly in U.S.-backed neofascist states since World War Two as a method of preventing the possibility of social progress and economic change.

As long as the oppressors are willing to be violent, unless there is some other force impinging on them, they will continue to use it.

Some examples where other forces impinged on the masters of violence: In the case of the Vietnam war, the U.S. Army was virtually mutinying in the field, and there was a massive anti-war movement in the homeland. (Nixon was bitter about the fact that the anti-war movement inhibited him from using nuclear weapons on the Vietnamese.) In the case of apartheid, external economic sanctions made the white business elite say “uncle.” In the case of the civil rights movement in the U.S., the cold war ideological competition with the U.S.S.R. Put the U.S. In a embarrassing position of bloviating about freedom and rights and how oppressive “communism” is, while lurid brutality and atrocities by Southern “sheriffs” and redneck mobs against people just trying to ride buses, register to vote, go to school, or eat at lunch counters, was on blatant display for the world to see. (And of course not all American whites were committed to the extreme form of anti-black racism practiced in the Confederacy.) This ultimately forced yet another round of civil rights legislation to be passed. (The set of laws and even Constitutional Amendments following the Civil War being mostly moot points.) Yet, there has been real progress. On the other hand, the CIA, with the aid of the FBI and Memphis police, murdered Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and the complicit power structure and establishment media are complicit to this day by their never-ending lies and coverup about that assassination.

Finally, another factor that can undermine oppressors is internal divisions among elites.

So in conclusion, The End.

Blind Israeli Army Bulldozer Driver Exonerated of Murder By Israeli Court

The blind Israeli Army driver of the specially-made Caterpillar bulldozer used to murder Rachel Corrie,

an American who thought her mere body would have moral force against a remorseless state (two states, actually, counting the U.S.) has been exonerated by an Israeli court in a futile civil suit pursued by Rachel's parents at great expense in their time and money (and emotional hope). Obviously a blind man couldn't be held responsible for running over someone who was right in front of him. Indeed, the judge went out of his way to blame Rachel for her own death. She was reckless, he officially opined, to put her body between an Israeli U.S.-supplied bulldozer and a Palestinian house.

And obviously the driver was blind, because that is the only plausible way he could have failed to see Rachel right in front of him, in broad daylight, moving around, in a bright safety vest, especially when he created a mound of earth with her on top of it so she was standing above the bulldozer's blade a few feet in front of his sightless eyeballs. But the Israeli state, and all its minions and accomplices, are sticking to their story. And for the U.S., one less pesky troublemaker for the FBI and CIA to have to spy on.

To Israel and the U.S., Palestinians are subhuman, and thus have no human rights. They are illegal squatters on “The Land of Israel,” given to “the Jews” by “God” thousands of years ago and theirs to own in perpetuity. U.S. Christian fanatics concur in this. Thus Palestinian humanoids are a pestilential infestation on the land.

Make no mistake, many Jews, here and in Israel, would like nothing better to physically exterminate these pests, if only it were politically viable. (I have personally heard them voice this desire, and for those who haven't, I recommend you check out the hate speech and literature of the more “radical” elements of the “settler” movement, the followers of Meir Kahane, the idolizers of the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin, those who pay homage at the grave of Baruch Goldstein,* the killer of Palestinian worshippers in their mosque, and so forth. Their attitude is barely concealed.

And those who have run the Jewish State from its inception have relied on murderous terrorism to drive out the Palestinians.

*Baruch Kopel Goldstein was an American-born Jewish doctor who slaughtered 29 Palestinian Muslim worshippers and wounded 125 in a 1994 massacre in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, a city in the West Bank where thousands of Israeli troops are stationed to impose a colony of several hundred fanatical fundamentalist Jews amid thousands of Palestinians. The ultimate goal of those who Goldstein represented and who honor his legacy today is to make Hebron (and indeed all of “the Land of Israel from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea”) Palestinian-free.

taboo-truths.blogspot.com

Neil Armstrong Dead, Yet Oddly, Dick Cheney Still Alive

Astronaut Neil Armstrong died today from complications from heart procedures at age 82.

This immediately raises the question: why doesn't Dick Cheney ever die from complications from the numerous heart procedures he's had?  He's had heart bypasses, heart attacks, stents and pumps implanted, and finally an entire real heart was ripped out of the chest of an actual human being and put inside Cheney. Yet he never dies.

This is more evidence bolstering the belief that indeed, Life is Unfair.

tabootruths.blogspot.com
jasonzenith.blogspot.com

Pussy Riot Get Exact Same Sentence As Tim deChristopher

The Obama regime threw environmental activist Tim deChristopher into the Federal gulag for 2 years. His "crime"? He bid at a Federal auction for oil leases during the Bush regime, even though he wasn't actually an oil driller. (The Obama regime subsequently cancelled the auction anyway.) For this symbolic political act, he's being given the usual harsh treatment that political prisoners get in the Federal gulag.

Interestingly, that's the same sentence the Russian female punk rock group Pussy Riot just got, to great tongue-clucking from the Western media propagandists. The New York Times actually put the news on the top of page A1!! I.e. that was the most important news in the world in their august judgment. Tim deChristopher has never been on the top of page A1. Indeed, he's rarely (if ever) been mentioned in the NY Times, or the rest of the Western media, which is just so concerned with human rights in adversary and enemies countries.

Not that I begrudge Pussy Riot the attention. I wish they hadn't been persecuted at all. (Persecuted is the correct word. I grant no legitimacy to persecutions carried under color of repressive law, like in Russia and the U.S., by calling them "prosecutions.")

As in Soviet days, the Russians never point out the hypocrisy, or lead noisy crusades on behalf of persecuted Western dissidents. They merely assume a defensive crouch, and decry "interference in internal affairs," the line the Chinese use too. Although both those nations seem not to care much about Western tut-tutting these days.

Maybe they feel that in the Age of Torture and Guantanamo Bay, global publics don't take Western bombast about "human rights" as seriously as they might have once. (Although given the horrible record of Western Imperialism's depredations in the world, the numerous slaughters and so on going back about 500 years - this is referred to as the glorious "Age of Discovery" in Western propaganda and pseudo-history, it's weird that anyone would ever have taken such gush seriously. What did they "discover" anyway, that they could subjugate, murder, and exploit "backward" peoples who were inhabiting the lands the conquerors- oops, I mean "explorers"- "discovered"? Let's see, the Belgian Congo, Spanish and Portuguese invasions of the Western Hemisphere, the Europeans dividing up Africa and Asia, the U.S.- well, there's a long list for the U.S., enough to fill books, which in fact has been done.)

NY Times Obsessed With Plight Of Dissidents- But Only In Certain Countries

The New York Times has run full-length articles for four days in a row now, about the prosecution of the Russian female punk rock band Pussy Riot. These articles appear in the main news section, not Arts, for example.

Pussy Riot is being prosecuted for performing an anti-Putin and "sacrilegious" song in a Moscow cathedral of the arch-reactionary Russian Orthodox Church. (That church has the same kind of relationship to the Russian State as the Roman Catholic Church has to the New York State and City governments, that is, very close and influential.) Of course I don't think they should be prosecuted. (Wonder what would happen if some punk rockers performed a raucous, anti-Catholic and anti-U.S. Government song inside St. Patricks's Cathedral, say? Think they'd be prosecuted?)

However, unmentioned in all the Times' lavish coverage of the fate of three formerly obscure punk rockers in Russia, are the U.S. antecedents and precedents. The U.S. has a long history of persecuting rock musicians and other entertainers who run afoul of the establishment. The U.S. media keeps reminding us that the Russian punk rockers face a possible maximum of 7 years in prison. (All indications are that they won't get that. Putin himself publicly signaled as much.) Under the Nixon regime, radical band MC5 frontman John Sinclair was lured into giving two joints to an undercover agent of the U.S. police state, for which he was sentenced to ten (not seven) years.* And more recently, the Los Angeles County D.A. went after the scalps of the Dead Kennedys. The charge?  "Distribution of Harmful Matter to Minors" Despite being acquitted, their albums were subsequently banned from large chain stores. The Dead Kennedys broke up under the pressure. The D.A. openly announced his political intent: to "send a message" to the underground/alternative music scene that their expression would not be tolerated. (See http://www.alternativetentacles.com/bandinfo.php?band=jello&page=3. Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Kennedys and   http://www.lyricsfreak.com/d/dead+kennedys/biography.html )

When "Communists" (Bolshevik hacks) still ruled Czechoslovakia, the U.S. media liked to hold up that state's persecution of the band Plastic People of the Universe as an example of how repressive and unfree their Cold War enemies were, by implication in contrast to the allegedly "free" "West." What ludicrous, bald-faced hypocrisy. But the propaganda works, because the corporate media is as disciplined and uniform as the state media of any totalitarian system, so the fate of persecuted musicians and dissidents in America is completely unknown to the vast majority of the populace, since the propaganda system never reports it. (Or rarely, and only in the way that Soviet or Chinese media reports the persecution of their dissidents, in a way that portrays the victims as guilty, weird, different, dirty, depraved, sexually libertine, on drugs...gee, sounds familiar!)

While the NY Times gives loving coverage to every time Chinese artist Ai Weiwei sneezes (and I certainly think the Chinese regime is loathsome and should be overthrown, unlike what the U.S. elites think, for all their tut-tutting about dissidents there!) you'd be hard-pressed to find anything about the persecution of peace activists and "leftist" protesters in the U.S. It has long been routine to repress demonstrations against the WTO, NATO, the two corporate stooge parties, and so on. They are targets in advance for raids, arrests, infiltration, entrapments, bugging, wiretapping, the entire panoply of state repression. Obama imprisoned environmental activist Tim deChristopher for two years for bidding at a Federal auction for oil leases. (By contrast, James, O'Keefe, the reactionary libel-artist, who was caught red-handed trying to bug the offices of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, was let off scot-free, as I predicted, despite committing Federal felonies, including conspiracy. Because even Democrats don't prosecute reactionaries, only progressives.)

Here's another example of the NY Times obsession with harassment of dissidents in other places, from today's nytimes.com:

THE LEDE BLOG

Kremlin Critic Debugs Office. Tweets About It.

By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

Aleksei Navalny, a blogger and anticorruption crusader in Russia, arrived at work on Monday to find that his office had been bugged.

Gee, we never get bugged here! You bastards never report that.

And check out the first paragraph of this article on the Times website dated today (8/8/12):

 A Russian court reduced the prison sentence for a business partner of the oil tycoon Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky on Wednesday, a rare show of leniency amid a spate of criminal cases against opposition leaders. ["Russian Court Lowers Jail Term for Oil Tycoon’s Associate."]

"Rare show of leniency"? Speaking of which, in the U.S., there's no Federal parole. It was abolished years ago. And their are harsh mandatory minimum sentences- like ten years for a few grams of crack cocaine. (Lately the NYT has editorialized against some mandatory minimums, out of pragmatism. The U.S.is absolutely demented in its punitive penal policies, imprisoning far more people as a percentage of population than any country on earth. And the deranged "war on drugs" is as irrational and zealous as Nazi anti-Semitism.

And U.S. Presidents and Governors have gotten more and more merciless in refusing to dole out pardons to prisoners.

As for "criminal trials against opposition leaders": well, of course the U.S. has a very long history of persecuting leaders of dissident political movements, and lately the GOP has used the legal system to persecute Democrats, with barely a whimper from that supine party. Remember how the Bush/Gonzalez gang fired 9 U.S. attorneys for refusing to bring bogus criminal charges against Democrats? Nothing ever came of that. Imagine if Democrats had done that! A Democratic President doing that would have been impeached (with the "liberal" media leading the charge). And Craig Unger, author of a new book, Boss Rove, about "Turdblossom"-that's George Bush's nickname for him- Karl Rove, says that the GOP takeover of the judiciary has led to criminal prosecutions of "hundreds" of "up and coming" Democratic politicians on questionable or spurious charges, citing specifically the persecution of ex-GA Governor Don Siegelman. [Radio interview: "The Influential Karl Rove," Leonard Lopate Show, WNYC, 8/7/12.]

        

*John Lennon, through his very public drumming up of protests against the imprisonment of Sinclair, was instrumental in getting Sinclair freed early. This was yet another black mark against Lennon in the minds of the U.S. secret police and reactionary politicians like Nixon. Ultimately the CIA arranged Lennon's assassination through its MK-Delta program of hypno-programmed assassins.

Myth Of India As Economic "Tiger" Smashed By Blackout

Capitalist ideological cheerleaders have been subjecting us to years of bullshit about "emerging economies." Just about any despotic, corrupt, backward third world nation is suitable material for being hailed as "rapidly developing" with "tremendous potential." Could be some African kleptocracy with lots of oil, or a Persian Gulf sheikdom with a 14th century social structure and values- it's all good! (Hey, invest here now!!)

One of these tropes that we have been subjected to ad nauseam is the so-called "BRICs," Brazil, Russian, India, China. Supposedly these countries represent The Wave of the Future. (Brazil of course still has a huge majority of dirt-poor people, near-anarchic social conditions, massive destruction of the Amazon rain forests by rabid loggers and ranchers who murder anyone who gets in their way, and a host of other ills. Russia- Russia! Is that a joke? A nation with a shrinking population, a male live expectancy of 57 or 54 (it keeps dropping), an AIDS epidemic ignored by the government, and the world's worst alcoholism problem. Oh, and massive environmental pollution, vast areas destroyed by pollution and radioactive contamination. Did I mention the authoritarian regime headed by a former secret policeman, name of Vladimir Putin? (But he's ok, George Bush checked out his "soul" by looking into his eyes. And I always thought that was the retina in there!) China- ok, they're an economic powerhouse, and their oppressive one-party dictatorship is pretty clever and much better strategists than their idiot counterparts like the U.S. and Europe, which basically hand over their technological crown jewels (and what it doesn't hand over, China steals). Even Japan has been snookered and robbed by China. And did I mention the massive number of stock frauds perpetrated by Chinese hustlers in the U.S. stock markets? (The SEC didn't do squat to stop it, and still does what the SEC always does- bullshit symbolic actions to pretend it's regulating, just going through the motions.)

Now India is experiencing the world's largest electrical blackout by far. As if this writing, 22 of 28 regions are blacked out, leaving about 700 million people (more than half the entire population) without lights, transportation in many cases, and various essentials of living. (I just hope the hospitals have reliable backup generators. How much you want to bet many don't?)

Of course, the idea of India as being "modern" has been a ludicrous fraud all along. It shouldn't have taken this event to show it. The huge majority of the people there live in poverty- many in squalor. Their noxious "caste" system, a system of rigid, super-exploitive class imprisonment, is still in place. Vicious crimes against women- hurling acid in their faces, burning them alive, and of course rape- are routine, and routinely unpunished. Officials are thoroughly corrupt, and have a habit of assaulting and murdering citizens who speak out about it. (Rather, they have goons do their dirty work.) Naturally those crimes go unpunished too.

India has a tiny urban "elite,"  and a small class of rich people, and a bunch of English-speaking drones to staff their companies that service Western corporate interests. (Like providing terrible "support" for Western consumers of tech products.) A low-wage reserve pool of labor to "outsource" U.S. jobs- i.e. pull the rug out from under American workers- is India's actual attraction to the capitalist shills of the media and "investment" commentary. Most everybody else in India is a subsistence farmer or small trader, and there's a class of landlords lording it over most of the geographical area of the country.

More and more, the great New Age of Triumphant Capitalism after the defeat (really, the collapse) of the Soviet Union, is looking like a Potemkin village.

By the way, "advanced" Europe, Japan, and the U.S. aren't doing so hot the past few years. Spain has 25% unemployment. Media propagandists call this a "recession." Huh? Recession? None dare say the "D" word.

How Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke Are Like Joe Paterno, Graham Spanier, et al

The Penn State pedophile protectors Joe Paterno (dead "legendary" football coach) cashiered "University" President Graham B.Spanier (it's really a sports franchise/business masquerading as a university) and their other accomplices, like canned campus police chief  Gary Schultz athletic director Tim Curley- the latter two facing criminal charges for lying to a Grand Jury, and failing to report the asssaults- are guilty of aiding and abetting serial child rapist Jerry Sandusky by hiding his crimes- not merely failing to report, but hushing them up. (A janitor who caught Sandusky in the act of one of his rapes had the good sense to keep his mouth shut, correctly intuiting that he would be fired if he reported it. And we know what happened when on another occasion an assistant coach caught Sandusky anally raping a boy- he told Paterno, who passed it along in a fuzzy manner to Curley, and a coverup when into train, which lasted for years.*)


Geithner and Bernanke did something similar with the LIBOR-fixing scandal by the megabanks whose servants and protectors they are. They kept quiet. They hushed it up. For years. But Geithner now points to a cover-his-ass email he sent to UK regulators, and thinks that gets him off the hook.


Bernanke, "explaining" at a Congressional hearing why he did nothing (and didn't even SAY anything PUBLICLY) says he had no authority to do anything about it! Of course, if he had merely made a PUBLIC STATEMENT about the fraud, or if Geithner had, that would have ended the game right there. Which they understood. Which is why they said nothing. Because their job is to aid and abet never-ending growth in profits for the biggest megabanks and oligarchic financiers.


In both scandals, aiders and abetters were effectively accomplices by throwing a protective blanket of secrecy over the miscreants. 


*More sickening details: the criminal cabal at Penn State investigated Sandusky for molesting two boys in their showers in 1998. After that they paid the child rapist Sandusky handsomely to just go away. (But not too far away. He went on to rape at least 9 more boys in the same university showers, AFTER 1998, for which he has just been convicted.) The Freeh investigation uncovered the facts that Mr. Sandusky, upon his "retirement" after the 1998 investigation/coverup, received both an unusual compensation package AND a special designation of “emeritus” rank that carried special privileges, including access to the university’s recreational facilities. (Including his favorite rape spot, the showers.)  Spanier, the president, approved a  payment to Sandusky of $168,000. The silent janitor spotted him raping again in 2000. And who knows who else knew something- perhaps many people, who now protect their own reputations by keeping their mouths shut. ["Abuse Scandal Inquiry Damns Paterno and Penn State," NY Times, 7/12/12.]

Poliovirus Has Ally In Islamofascists

The deranged Islamic totalitarian medievalists who are taking over increasing areas of the world (they've just taken over northern Mali: see for example "Jihadists' Fierce Justice [sic] Drives Thousands to Flee Mali," NY Times, 7/17/12) are effectively allies with one of humankind's enemies, the poliovirus. The three countries where polio cases still occur (striking children) are Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. In all three cases, it's because Islamofascists block polio vaccination programs. (One excuse/paranoid delusional "reason" they do so is they think the vaccines are actually a secret plot to sterilize the population. Actually if someone could sterilize these maniacs it would be a good thing! Since they are traitors to the human race by allying themselves with our enemies, and since they viciously attack human rights whenever and wherever they can, they obviously need to be wiped out.)

The Islamofascists in Pakistan just shot an African doctor working for the UN in a polio vaccination program there. ["Gunmen Attack UN Vehicle in Pakistan, Wounding Polio Doctor," NY Times, 7/17/12.]

And of course the Islamofascists are vandals of civilization with a nasty habit of destroying our common cultural heritage. They do this in many ways, large and small. Two of their splashier acts of cultural vandalism occurred in Afghanistan, when they blew up the magnificant, giant Buddha statues, and now in Mali with the destruction of Islamic tombs. These barbarian scum have no respect for anyone or anything except their only extremely narrow, fanatical ideology and their power-mad leaders, no tolerance for anything or anyone slightly different from their demented selves, and no appreciation or respect for human rights or anything of value.

They are patently pernicious, deadly enemies of all humanity.

Who's Guaranteed To Win The Summer Olympics? The Secret Police.

In the lead-up to the 2012 Summer Olympics, being held in London, we can already discern a clear winner: the secret police of "Great" Britain, and to a lesser degree their foreign partners, "other Western intelligence agencies." (Of which the CIA and FBI are first and foremost.)


Before the Olympics even begin, we're getting a steady stream of pro-secret police propaganda, planted by them in the corporate media, about foiled "plots" and "security preparations." The British domestic secret police, MI5, and overseas secret police, MI6, are assiduously working the UK media- with spillover into U.S. media, like the NY TImes- to burnish their image and position themselves ahead of the Olympics.


There are only 2 basic possibilities vis a vis "terrorism" at the Games: Number One, no "major terrorist incident" occurs, or a "plot" is "foiled," or only minor incidents occur. In that case, the gestapos will boast or their great prowess and competence, while also making the point that there is still Great Danger and thus a need for vigilance (and big budgets and lots of repressive powers for the secret police). This propaganda message will be dutifully transmitted to the public by their stooges in the establishment media, the reliable aiders and abettors of the     
secret police state. (The secret police might even create some "plots" to "foil," for propaganda use. Years later, the "cases" can be quietly dropped, with little media notice. The losers will be the pawns who spent a few years in jail.)


Possibility Number Two: there is a "major terrorist incident." Does that then prove the opposite, namely the incompetence of the secret police?


Not at all, you simplistic thinker you. It "proves" the need for yet more "resources" - money, and, especially more repressive power for the secret police. 


That propaganda message will then be dutifully transmitted to the public by their stooges in the establishment media, those, yes, still reliable aiders and abettors of the secret police state.


It's heads they win, tails we lose.


And anyway, pity the poor secret policemen, because, as they are regularly quoted in the media saying, year after year, mantra-like, "we have to succeed every time, the terrorists only have to succeed once." I.e. expect terrorist attacks to occur, and don't blame us the guardians if they do. Thus does the media inoculate the public, with regular booster shots, against thinking the "security services" should be held responsible for their failures. (Much less for attacks they deliberately allow to occur, like the seminal 9/11/01 attacks that birthed the never-to-end War On Terror, which is the second never-to-end war on human rights being waged by the bourgeoisie, joining the War On Drugs. (Really, the war on getting high. There's certainly no war on the products of the pharmaceutical industry, which are frequently dangerous and/or ineffective and fraudulently and corruptly marketed.)


Now why does the establishment media so assiduously safeguard and promote the interests of the secret police? Well of course both media and secret police are arms of the same system. That is the most basic reason. While there are occasional conflicts, which sometimes even rise to the level of "scandal," for the most part they are allies, if somewhat wary ones. (By the way, the monstrous crimes of the secret police, programs of mass murder and torture, are never the scandals, but are in fact kept hidden, briefly noted, and buried in the memory hole. LIke the Phoenix mass murder program in Vietnam, overseen by one William Colby, who later was ironically drowned by his former colleagues for telling too much to Congress, in their eyes. Gangsters killing gangsters- it happens a lot in crime organizations.)

Typically for a power structure, the corporate oligarchy needs secret police organizations to guard and advance its interests domestically and globally. Note that notorious coups have occurred in the interests of large transnational corporations, such as in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973 (ITT unnecessarily tried to bribe the U.S. government to overthrow Allende), and so on. A secret police state keeps the populace in line, monitors any incipient resistance to their rule or to particular policies/crimes they carry out, infiltrates dissident groups and movements to misdirect, subvert, and destroy them, and generally acts to prevent the development of groups and movements that corporate capital finds noxious. Hence the need for a Total Surveillance State, to nip in the bud any germinating seeds of opposition and resistance. 


Abroad, the secret police are part of the structure of force and violence to check, deter, and exterminate external enemies- whether or not those "enemies" realize they are enemies of the corporate oligarchy. (Naive democracy advocates and various labor and human rights workers and their lawyers frequently fall into this category and are exterminated. Oh, and academics who think bad thoughts. And "communist" church people- i.e. real Christians who understand Christ's gospel as meaning standing with the poor. And since U.S. power is the friend of the rich everywhere and enemy of the poor everywhere, this means they too have to be eliminated. And since most people on the planet are poor, being the enemy of the poor means that the U.S. is fundamentally an enemy of humanity. Wow, does that truth ever conflict with official propaganda!) 


So why exactly should the establishment media, the voicebox of corporate oligarchy, not support ever increasing powers for their secret police? Is it not the interests of the oligarchy that the secret police serve? Well, sometimes the possibilities of the secret police trampling on bourgeois privileges (which are called "rights" or "freedoms" or "liberties," but they're really privileges, because only some people have them) makes elements of the propaganda system a tad nervous. So they try and draw lines with editorials "warning" the secret police not to go too far. It's rather like tectonic plates bumping up against one another, forces pressed together in intimate contact. Mostly there is gradual shifting, sometimes an abrupt movement.


One more, somewhat minor point. The expansion of secret police repression largely bypasses right wing terrorists. Such as the recent case in Germany, where a neoNazi group was allowed to murder Turks for a decade, and even a policewoman. The day after it all blew up, the German secret police were burning their files on the group! (Reports BBC. Didn't see that in U.S. media.)  Or the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The government had advance notice from its informers, and allowed the bombing to occur, then covered up the extent of the conspiracy, pretending it was the doing of just two men. Right. Or the mostly free rein given to anti-abortion terrorists. There are numerous other examples that could be cited.

Governor Etch-a-Sketch Changes His Tune On "Obamacare"

It's great to be flexible. Let's you be as opportunistic as you wanna be.

Mitt Romney, the Republican President-wannabe, used CBS as a platform to suddenly complain that the Obama Health Care bill just given the green light by the Supreme Court constitutes an onerous "tax" on the sainted "middle class." As recently as two days ago, the position of him and his campaign was that it imposed a "penalty." [Romney, you see, didn't want it said that his virtually identical Massachusetts health care mandate imposed a "tax." And the GOP/reactionary attack on the law pre-Supreme Court ruling didn't take the tax tack because their offensive was premised on a Commerce Clause argument. Complaining it was a "tax" would have been hopeless as they'd have had to argue that Congress has no right to tax anyone! Reactionaries used to argue that when trying to overturn the Federal Income Tax a century ago, but apparently they're not ready to try and overturn taxation before they roll back the New Deal first.]

It was his own campaign manager who publicly characterized Romney's shifting positions on everything under the son as like an "Etch-a-Sketch." You just erase all the reactionary vomit he spewed to win the neo-fascists, religious fanatics, Confederates and racists who vote in GOP primaries, and dial in new positions to appeal to "the center," the political sweet spot in the minds of the U.S. punditry.

Given how square, stiff, and mechanical Romney is, I think Mr. Etch-a-Sketch is an apt sobriquet.

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

Destroyers Of Greek Economy Rewarded With Election "Victory"

That would be the "New Democracy" rightwing party. They ruled Greece before Pasok (the "socialists") took over, handing Pasok a bomb that exploded in Pasok's faces. "New Democracy" practiced financial and accounting fraud on a massive scale. Yet instead of being put in jail, they're now forming a "new" government, with the same old Establishment gang (themselves, Pasok, and a trick-party (called "Democratic Left") ostensibly to Pasok's left that exists to steal votes from the actual leftists of the "extreme" "hard left" "far left" "radical" (as the capitalist media characterizes them) Syriza party.

Even a former Greek finance minister pointed out how New Democracy created the crisis with its venal behavior in a BBC interview after the "victory." So it's no secret- except in the U.S. (and) Greek media.

"New Democracy" won its great "victory" with 29.7% of the vote. (Syriza got 26.9%- so they really got creamed by "New Democracy!") The New York Times, like the capitalist media generally, hailed this "victory" with the deceptive headline "Greek Voters Choose Party Supporting Bailout," plastered across most of the top of page A1 on June 18th. A large photo of the "New Democracy" boss, Antonis Samaras, accompanies the headline. It shows him grinning and making a fist. If you examine the "crowd" in the photo, you see it consists almost entirely of news photographers and bodyguards. (The BBC reported that there was no victory rally, no one was there. The Times chose to deceive with the photo and headline.)

Low turnout, under 30% if the votes, doesn't sound like "Greek Voters" chose "New Democracy,"

The Financial Times is willing to be more honest, as it's aimed at a capitalist elite that needs a more realistic view of the world than the NYT is willing to provide. Its headline on the story (same day) was "Samaras scrapes to Greek win." Precisely.

By the way, the sleazy Samaras caused the previous Pasok government to fall by refusing to go along with the "bailout/austerity" plan. Now he claims he'll "renegotiate" the terms a bit, by asking for more time to pay up. There is still an adamant refusal by all parties to admit the obvious, that GREECE IS BANKRUPT, and has been for some time. (Thanks especially to "New Democracy" fraudulent bookkeeping the last time they were in power.) Their "victory" can be chalked up in part to the Greek media's scare campaign against Syriza, coupled with the Greeks' desire to stay in the eurozone (an impossibility, although even Syriza promised to retain the euro).

"New Democracy" does get an extra 50 seats in Parliament for coming in first, under the screwy rules of Greek "democracy." ("Democracy" in the west is code for "bourgeois class dictatorship.") The same gang that destroyed the Greek economy is now supposedly going to rescue Greece. Good luck with that, Greek people.

Oh, and what's with this business of saying that an economy with 22% unemployment (the admitted rate), that is making people work without pay, that is running out of medicine, that can't even feed mental patients anymore (BBC interview with a Greek mental hospital administrator 6/20), and that's been shrinking for five years now, is in a "recession"? That's a depression. Dishonest asshole capitalist propagandists.

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

U.S. Media Down On Russia For Using U.S.-Style Repression

Add this one to the Annals of U.S. Hypocrisy: The American corporate media (propaganda system) has been running a campaign for several years now highlighting repression in Russia. Funny thing is, so much of what they tut-tut about is the same as U.S. domestic repression methods. In fact, in some cases the U.S. was there first, so arguably the Putin regime got the ideas for the methods from the U.S. example.


On June 11, the New York Times (the maestro of the U.S. propaganda system from which the rest of the corporate media often takes its cues) put smack on the top of the front page an article about Russian police rounding up protest leaders in advance of protests. (Posted online as "Raids Target Putin’s Critics Before Protest.")

Hello, Sulzbergers and company! The U.S. police have been doing that for years now every time there's a progressive protest organized against one of the insufferably self-important meetings of national bosses ("world leaders" in their obnoxiously conceited jargon). G-8, G-12, G-20, G-X, NATO, WTO, whatever the hell it is, the cops bust into the houses of organizers, round them up, steal their computers, cellphones, placards, protest puppets, materials, and oftentimes charge them with bogus crimes, including "terrorism." Part of the NY Times article also pointed out that some of those arrested faced heavy sentences. (But nowhere near as heavy as the sentences faced by people branded "terrorists" by U.S. "authorities.")

Most recently, in Chicago, the "terrorism" rap was dropped on people preemptively arrested.

Today (June 12th) the NY Times cheerleads for the Russian protests on its website, including a large photo of the protesters. ("Putin Opponents Defy Kremlin Efforts to Muffle Protests".)

The U.$. propaganda system is also assiduous about pointing out repressive laws aimed at protesters in Russia. They're quite a bit less attentive about noticing the same sort of laws in the U.S. For example, the new caudillo of Chicago, the loathsome and vulgar Rahm Emanuel, (who is celebrated for habitually abusing people by yelling and cursing at them!) instituted new, repressive statutes to smash the protesters coming to his town for the recent NATO summit just last month. The propaganda system treated us to video of Rahm and his mate hugging and smiling with Obama and his mate upon the arrival of the latter. We also got the local political rulers announcing the arrests of dangerous "terrorists" (protesters) to stifle the protest. Not covered was the systematic repression and police violence meted out to those who dare to find something objectionable about NATO.

Likewise new repression laws in Tampa Bay, Florida, in preparation for crushing demonstrations aimed at the GOP convention to be held there also are ignored by the U.$ media.

Reading the details of the awful new laws in Putinland, I see they are no worse- indeed are milder than- the various U.S. laws aimed at crushing unwanted dissent in the streets.

Then there's the very very low key reporting of the Canadian Harper regime's anti-demonstrator laws, for example in Montreal, where protest has been effectively outlawed. Protests require police permission in advance- something the U.S. media finds highly objectionable in Russia, not in Canada. (The loathsome NPR "news" is part of this anti-Putin propaganda campaign, ostensibly on behalf of Russians' right to protest. Wish NPR was one-quarter as concerned with our right to protest. Don't get me wrong, Putin is a scumbag authoritarian in my book. The hypocrisy and double standard is the issue here. Say, does Russia imprison people without trial or even charges for years, like Israel does, or for life, like the U.S. does? Has it assassinated thousands of people with killer drones in the last few years? Just asking.)

The pattern throughout the 20th and 21th centuries has been for the U.S. media to cover repression abroad in proportion to the degree of unfriendliness of relations the U.S. has with the country in question. Where the U.S. is itself responsible for the most horrible atrocities and mass murder, such as in Central America in the 1980s, there is a total blackout. Instead one is told that a friendly "democratic" (Orwellian language there!) regime is fighting a "communist insurgency." (Which apparently always includes lots of professors, students, unionists, poor peasants, women and children, and so on.) And of course since it is a matter of ideological dogma that the U.S. is just the freest country on earth, there cannot be reporting of repression here, since by definition repression in the U.S. is impossible.


Here's another article from the NY Times, from November 17th, 2011: "With a Russian in a Tajik Jail, Moscow Aims Its Reprisal at Migrant Workers." This covers the entire top half of page A14. Somehow the Times considers the plight of Tajik migrants to be a major issue. The Times moans that the "roundup" of 300 Tajiks "has underscored the vulnerability of the millions of migrant laborers who work and live in Russia, often in squalid conditions."

 Of course, the U.S. rounds up and deports hundreds of thousands of Latinos yearly. Wonder how vulnerable that makes them feel. And of course many, especially farm laborers, "work and live...often in squalid conditions."

The treatment of Chinese dissidents is another example of galling U.S. hypocrisy. The NY Times and the rest of the corporate media have made celebrities out of Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei, and of the blind lawyer who was just allowed to come to the U.S. Now I think the Chinese treatment of them is despicable, but it's a lot milder than how many U.S. dissidents are treated. Elmer Pratt was framed up by the secret police (FBI) for murder and imprisoned for 30 years until the system admitted it was a bum rap. The FBI framed up Leonard Peltier with bogus ballistics "evidence" from its "crime lab." (The name is accurate if you interpret it to mean a lab that commits crimes.) Apparently the bourgeoisie are determined that he will die in prison. An FBI bomb almost killed Judi Bari, whose "crime" was opposing logging of old growth forests. (The CIA seems to have taken her out with breast cancer.) There are countless thousands of other examples. Judging from U.S. media attention, it seems that the rate of political murder in Russia is comparable to that in the U.S. (Of course you don't learn of U.S. state murders from the corporate propaganda system.) That includes murder of journalists too. (Danny Casolaro springs to mind.*)

In the case of China, the U.S. uses "human rights" as a prybar to try and force China to be more "open"- to penetration by foreign capital. Do they really care so much about some artist or lawyer? They don't seem to care about such people when their buddy-regimes in Honduras and Colombia murder them.

Another example: the extreme repressiveness of Saudi Arabia gets very light and infrequent treatment in the U.S. media. I think the reasons are obvious. Iran, on the other hand, is one of those nasty devil countries.

Obviously, when "coverage" is so obviously biased, and so blatantly follows hidden political and ideological agendas, it cannot be called "news." This is the realm of propaganda. Thus the U.S. corporate media should not be analyzed as a journalistic enterprise, but as a propaganda one. The critical flaw in much media "analysis" and "criticism" is precisely this fundamental misidentification and misunderstanding. (The Ben Bagdikian school of Acceptable Media Criticism is a seminal example of this.) This basic error in turn leads to all kinds of bogus alibis for the corporate media's crimes, distortions, coverups, and lies. "Laziness," "two sides to every story," "credulousness," "advertiser pressure," "time constraints," and other such tactical explanations are put forth. While of course these have some validity, most of the time they obfuscate the real explanation for the media's behavior, which is ideological and political, and stems from its role as propaganda organs for the U.S. economic and political system. A system of rule of big capital by an Imperialist nation, masquerading as a "democracy" that fancies itself an avatar of freedom and defender of human rights. The fact that an empire founded on slavery and genocide, that consistently commits massive crimes against humanity, can pull off such a brazen propaganda coup, attests to the power of the Big Lie. If there's a Hell, Goebbels must be looking on in grudging admiration.

*Think that's a paranoid crackpot conspiracy theorist delusion? Well then add ruling class poohbah Elliott Richardson to your list of "nuts." He believes Casolaro was murdered. See his NY Times op-ed, "A High-Tech Watergate," paragraph 19.

Incorrigible Killer Obama Won't Stop Murdering Hondurans

Bad enough the U.S. supported the Honduran coup, and a regime that keeps murdering citizens there. Now Obama has unleashed DEA death squads in Honduras to assassinate "drug smugglers," and like all death squads, they aren't too discriminating about who they actually kill.

Having murdered a bunch of poor villagers, which they then lied about and claimed were "drug smugglers," Obama isn't backing off an inch. 

[See "Despite Deaths in Honduran Raid, U.S. to Press Ahead With New Antidrug Policy," NY Times, 5/31/12. Only it's not "new." Nixon also unleashed U.S. assassins on drug dealers, using CIA hitmen like Lou Conein.]

So to Afghans, Pakistanis, Yemenis, Somalis, now add Hondurans to the list of targets on Obama's death list. (Teenage girls too. Sweet, Barack! What a cool dude you are!)

 
Gunmen identified as "Honduran naval troops." Note typical death squad face masks. 
State criminals hide their identities as standard operating procedure. (Much as U.S. police cover their badge numbers and name tags prior to attacking demonstrators.)