“Great” Britain “Pardons” War Hero Alan Turing 61 Years After Driving Him to Suicide

Alan Turing is the late British mathematician who arguably made a greater material contribution to Britain's war effort than any other single individual (Churchill included, whose contributions were rhetorical, which served to steel the public's resolve and boost morale- that is, non-material- and bad ideas for military campaigns). Turing was key in breaking the Germans' Enigma code, a crucial advantage in defeating Nazi Germany. The Allies were able to decode and read the Germans' military communications as a result. Turing also was a path-breaking computer scientist.

In 1952 Turing was exposed as homosexual and criminally prosecuted by the ungrateful British government. Duly convicted of the heinous crime of having sex with men (also a religious offense under Christian ideology, despite the prevalence of homosexual church bosses in Britain), the British legal system magnanimously allowed Turing to choose his own punishment, from a menu provided by them, of course: imprisonment, or chemical castration by enforced administering of estrogen.

Turing went with castration, a violent assault on one's being, and two years later committed suicide by ingesting cyanide. He was 41. [1]

Several years ago, then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown “apologized” for the wrong that was done by the ingrate British establishment to the man who helped them win a war of national survival. I'm sure that made Turing's corpse feel better.

Now, finally, after years of pressure (mainly embarrassing PR), the British power structure has decided to “pardon” Turing. Like he needs their forgiveness. They're the ones who need to be pardoned. Thus their "Queen" [bee] has performed the formality of issuing a pardon.

Of course, since he's dead, this does no good at all, except to salve the bad consciences of the successor British elite. The actual guilty parties are now all dead or retired. (If Britain really wanted to repudiate its awful, bigoted past, maybe they should put them on trial.)

But I'm being a tad too negative here. What good it does is it repudiates official homophobia. That's a positive. It says the Government shouldn't have persecuted a man for being homosexual- at least if that man was a war hero. (No word on pardons for other gays victimized by the British government and criminalized for their private sex lives. Under a recent law, some are allowed to beg for pardons, which of course requires effort and expense on their parts.)

There has also been a push to “pardon” British soldiers executed in World War I for “desertion:” shell-shock victims who left the hellish trenches. (Their moron generals kept feeding them into a meat-grinder year after year, making suicidal charges into machine gun and artillery fire, and other insanities.)

Pardons? Gee, I don't know, it's only been 95 years, are you sure enough time has passed yet to “forgive” those “cowards”?

P.S.: Here in the U.S.A., in the year 2013, The Great State of Utah has just made three attempts to get an “emergency” stay of a Federal District Court ruling invalidating Utah's ban on gay marriage as Unconstitutional. (That would be the U.S. Constitution. Each of the fifty states has its own state Constitution, which are supposed to be superceded by the Federal one where they conflict.) Yeah, that's an “emergency,” alright. Can't let gays get married. More people getting married would simply DESTROY the “institution” of marriage!

Six Utah counties are defying the Federal Court ruling and refusing to abide by it. In the rest of Utah, 700 gay couples have married in the past three days. Quick, Mormons! Get a stay! Stop them from marrying! “Defend” marriage! (Mormons, a weird, power-hungry cult to which Mitt Romney belongs, rules Utah.)

1]  Some suspect that the British secret police may have murdered Turing. I do not have sufficient information to affirm this. However, given the sinister nature of Western secret police forces, which all are dominated by fascists at their cores, who also violently hate homosexuals, and given that this was the 1950s, we cannot rule the possibility out. Memoirs I have read of some British secret policemen of that era make clear how rabid they were. They even put the serving head of MI6 under investigation, believing their own boss to be a Soviet mole based on the fact that he wasn't a violently deranged fascist as they were. Turing's security clearance was pulled, and it may have been felt that leaving him alive was a "security risk," given his knowledge of "sensitive" information.

No Limit to Crass Cynicism of Western "Human Rights" Castigations of Foes

The Western media is administering daily verbal upbraidings to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the new anti-gay laws in Russia. The occasion for this politico-ideological offensive is the Olympics being held at Sochi, Russia.

The U.S. Government decided to stick it to Putin by appointing two prominent gays to represent the U.S. at the games, including former tennis star Billie Jean King.

What's truly cynical about all this is that until less than six months ago Federal law openly discriminated against gays. I'm referring to DOMA, the "Defense[sic] of Marriage Act." The heart of that law (not even the entire law) was only overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in late June. And it was only after that court decision that the U.S. "Defense" Department officially moved to stop discriminating against gay servicepeople.

But you're not supposed to notice this.

I'm not saying Russia's anti-gay environment is not worthy of condemnation. But it takes extraordinary cynicism for countries like the U.S. (or various European allies, some of which are physically dangerous for gays to even live in- and just how do the Poles view gays? What is the position of the Roman Catholic Church on homosexuality?)  to hop on its high moral horse and twit the Russians about how backward they are on treating gays! Not even six months since the U.S. modified its own anti-gay national legislation! And it wasn't the legislature (Congress) that did it, it was the courts! (And it only took 'em 17 years to get around to it.)

I can speak on this because I was against anti-gay bigotry since I was a teenager, back in the 1960s. (It is germane to mention that I am a heterosexual, so I have no bias stemming from self-interest.) So the U.S. government is really a Johnny-Come-Lately on this.

But wait, there's more!!

In the Ukraine, the population is split on whether to tie themselves to the European Union (the fools actually think that would benefit them economically- they apparently haven't heard of Greece, Ireland, Spain, or Portugal! Or Italy either, for that matter) to stay in Russia's embrace. The eastern part of the country, and its industry, is completely tied economically to Russia, and thus the people there back the President, who got cold feet about signing a deal with the EU when Putin applied some pressure.

The pro-EU section of the population, apparently believing in mob rule, responded by occupying City Hall and the town square. For good measure, they poured water on the police in freezing temperatures.

Imagine what American police would do to protesters who dumped water on them. It wouldn't be pretty.

Consider the numerous instances in which protesters standing exactly where the police ordered them to were suddenly pepper-sprayed. Or were sitting down and doused, as happened on the University of California campus not long ago. (You can watch numerous videos of American police brutality on youtube.com)

During the Vietnam War, anti-war protesters were often savagely clubbed and kicked by police, infuriated by the "traitors" moral opposition to a criminal war of mass murder.

Any time there's a protest against one of the ruling parties' political conventions, or a confab of the political bosses of the "advanced" world (G-8, WTO, and other such obnoxious "summits" rubbing our faces in their power) there is police repression.

Yet the Ukrainian protesters who attacked the police were allowed to stay in occupation. Unlike the U.S. Occupy movement, which was brutally attacked and dispersed by police in a campaign coordinated by the FBI.

John Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State, denounced the Ukrainian police action as "disgusting."

This from a guy whose boss oversaw the crushing of the Occupy Movement. This from a guy representing a country that smashes rallies against the WTO, G-8, and so on, whenever those organizations have a confab in the U.S. The U.S. police are far more intolerant of opposition rallies than the Ukrainian police have been.

Hypocrisy, once again thy name is America.

It's Not “Paranoia” When the Government is Persecuting You

Paranoia is a psychological or psychiatric disorder. When the government is persecuting someone, their victim isn't suffering from paranoia. He or she is suffering from persecution.

Paranoia is imaginary persecution. Paranoia means imagining nonexistent threats. Strictly speaking, unrealistic and impossible ones.

Being aware of the methods used by police states, including pseudo-democratic ones like the U.S. (which is only democratic in the most formal, pro forma, notional sense, for appearances' sake) and taking defensive measures against these malign methods, is not paranoia. It's a sign of emotional health, realistic coping, not pathology. The pathology is the malign power of the system brought to bear against the dissident.

Unfortunately even leftists have succumbed to this mystification and misuse of language, which protects the guilty- the police state agents. The terms “paranoia” and “paranoid” have become synonyms for “fear” and “afraid,” or worry or anxiety about possible threats from repressive government agencies.

Congress Moves to Worsen Problem of Sexual Assaults in the Military

The U.S. Congress, in its infinite wisdom, has rejected the reform measure championed by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) in favor of a version that on its surface would seem to strengthen protections for victims but that in a very important way will probably worsen things. Gillibrand's most important proposal was to take investigation and prosecution of sexual assault allegations against military personnel out of the chain of command and put it in the hands of independent prosecutors. This would prevent what now happens frequently- the quashing of charges by military commanders acting to protect sexual assaulters, and even the overturning of convictions. One of the changes in the current reform measure now set to be enacted into law as part of the Pentagon's gigantic budget bill would mandate the separation from service of those convicted of sexual offenses, presumably dishonorably. It would also take away the power of commanders to overturn convictions. But since commanders would still maintain control of the court-martial process, this gives them an even stronger incentive to quash charges against personnel they favor and would want to retain in military service, especially since they could no longer overturn convictions.

Way to go, assholes.

Of course, Congress has done worse. In a previous military spending bill, they included a provision empowering the president of the United States to brand U.S. citizens “terrorists” on his word alone, and order their indefinite imprisonment in a military dungeon without charges or trial. (This was the handiwork of “liberal” Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat. His party's boss, President Barack Obama, signed it into law. [1]) Previously the U.S. was only “allowed” to do this to that lesser order of beings, non-Americans.

But you don't hear anything about this from the U.S. media. You hear a LOT about how mean the Russians and Chinese are to dissidents, however. Which proves how much the U.S. establishment cares about human rights- so they'd have us believe.

But about Congress' fix for the epidemic of rapes and so on in the military; on the plus side, there are some sops that look good on paper but that in reality will probably do little to combat the plague of sexual assaults in the military. Retaliation against victims who report the crimes would itself be criminalized (good luck enforcing that one- try proving that being given an onerous assignment or a bad performance rating was “retaliation”). And they're going to expand a victims' counseling service. (Maybe put someone in charge of that who isn't a sexual abuser- remember the officer they put in charge of combating sexual assaults they had to replace after he was arrested for assaulting a woman in a parking lot?)

Let's see what Eugene Fidell has to say. He's the guy the media always go to as the expert on military law: “On the one hand, important progress has been made with respect to preliminary investigations. On the other hand, real reform in the structure of military justice [sic] has been put off.” (Fidell is an ex-officer and pro-military guy, by the way.)

In other words, victims will be lured in by the preliminary investigation, and then probably get screwed worse than if they'd never reported the crime in the first place, as usually happens now. Great.

I pity the fools who volunteer to be enforcers for U.S. imperialism. (Aka “defend our way of life.” Against all those third world poor people who threaten it!)

1] The loathsome Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is playing an essential role in the current sexual assault “reform” legislation too, as he controls what bills affecting the military get through his committee, and thus was a key negotiator with the House in agreeing to the sexual assault measure slated to be voted on by Congress.

Non-Terrorist Bomb Devastates Beirut Neighborhood Around Iranian Embassy

Two suicide bombers just attacked the Iranian embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, located in the well-to-do neighborhood of Bir Hassan, a Hezbollah stronghold. (Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia cum political party/social movement is of course supported by Iran, including with arms.) One bomber rode a motorcycle, the other drove a four-wheel-drive vehicle, according to the Financial Times. They managed to murder at least 23 people, including the Iranian cultural attache, and at least 150 people were wounded. Needless to say, almost all were Lebanese bystanders.

Al-Qaeda's Lebanese franchise, a gang that dubs itself the “Abdullah Azzam Brigades,” claimed responsibility for the attack. They're angry that Iran and Hezbollah are fighting on the side of the Assad regime in Syria. The “Brigades'” “religious guide,” some Holy Fanatic going by the name Sheikh Sirajeddine Zuraiqat, used Twitter to announce that “It was a double martyrdom operation by two of the Sunni heroes of Lebanon.”

Give 'em a medal.

Love the irony of some primitive fundamentalist who dreams of a return to the 9^th century using modern technology to spread his noxious propaganda.

By the way, Saudi Arabia is sponsoring the Sunni Jihadists fighting against Assad, who also behead people and try and impose their sick “religion” on areas in Syria in which they operate. They've already been killing members of the indigenous Syrian rebel militias to establish dominance.

Yet Saudi Arabia is not slammed as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” Nor is it on the U.S. State Department's list of “terror” nations.

Cuba is, though. Guess why. Not because Cuba actually backs any armed non-state organizations.

Iran blamed the bombings on Israel, apparently to avoid raising the level of tension. Lebanese politicians- Sunni, Shia, and Christian- uniformly denounced the bombings, which threaten to destabilize Lebanon and start a new civil war.

So, a bombing that targets a diplomatic facility, that deliberately attacks civilians, and that is done for a political motive to achieve a political end- fits the official U.S. “definition” of terrorism. Must be terrorism, right?

Nah. Iran is a U.S. enemy. So that isn't terrorism.

For that matter, the CIA bombing of an Islamic cleric's house in Beirut in 1985 wasn't “terrorism” either, by definition. That bombing didn't kill the target, but did kill over 80 unlucky Lebanese and wounded 200, while destroying two apartment buildings and a movie house. (Hey, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, right?) [See for example 1985 Beirut car bombing at wikipedia.org, and CIA uses car bomb in attempt to assassinate kill Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah.

In fact, Lebanon has been subject to many bombings like this. And aerial bombs too- dropped by Israel. And battleship shelling – ordered by Reagan in revenge for the “terrorist” bombing of a barracks in Lebanon of invaing U.S. Marines.

The Boston Marathon bombing- now THAT'S terrorism! (3 dead, 246 or so injured.)

Or some dumb jackass trying to blow up his underwear on a plane- that's terrorism.

Nelson Mandela was until fairly recently a terrorist in the U.S.' book. Officially.

You see, “terrorism” as used in the U.S. establishment's vernacular, is nothing but a propaganda term. It has no coherent objective definition. It is used the way “communism” was used for over 70 years, as a political epithet, a term of damnation. “Terrorism” is what Official Enemies do to US, and only that. Its usage is straight out of 1984, a propaganda word designed up whip up fear and hatred in the home population.

Why It's Hopeless to Hope for Effective Action on Climate Change

All these predictions typically state that something horrible will happen by 2050, or “by the end of the century,” i.e. 2100! Well, the politicians look at that and figure, I'll be dead before then. So why should they stick their hand in a political buzzsaw? For what? They'll just be hamstrung or ousted from power if they try and impose disruptive remedies- and any effective remedy is unavoidably going to be disruptive of the existing socio-economic order.

They aren't leaders, after all, despite that mendacious designation for them. They're rulers. Same as corporate bosses are BOSSES, not “leaders,” as their egotistical self-designation has it. (You never see the word “boss” in the U.S. media except like this: “union bosses.” Only unions have bosses. There are no bosses in business. Just intrepid, inspiring “leaders.”)

What a crock.

Invincible U.S. Navy SEALs Repulsed By Al-Shabab

Looks like the media glorification of those super-elite supermen American commandos is a bit exaggerated. The elite of the elite, SEAL Team 6, supposedly the best of the SEAL teams, the one tasked with assassinating Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, (which Obama ordered against advice in part with an eye to his reelection battle in 2012) raided an al-Shabab target on the Somalian coast in order to “take out” someone the U.S. claims was behind or involved in the terrorist attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, in September. But the assembled Islamoid fanatics fought off the SEAL Supermen, who retreated under fire. The U.S. is being vague about whether they killed their target- apparently they don’t know. At first they issued a boast that they had seized their target- apparently they compose their self-congratulatory statements in advance.

The target is a leader of al-Shabab, and it is unclear whether the U.S. actually has hard information that he was involved in the Mall attack or merely assumed he was- al-Shabab is factionalized to the point where it has become fratricidal. An American Jihadist member of the organization was just murdered by his former comrades after a falling out. And al-Shabab is split between Somalis whose ambitions are limited to controlling Somalia, and foreigners who are global in their power lust.

For decades, the American propaganda system has consistently presented the SEALs as some kind of awesome super-warriors. There’s an entire genre of literature and other media pushing this Supermen line. (To a lesser degree the Army’s Delta Force got the same treatment, and before them, it was the Army Special Forces, the Green Berets, hyped in this manner. Each of these forces is basically a U.S. death squad, also tasked with surreptitious and nasty sabotage operations. They also plant spy devices. But overall, the SEALs have apparently beaten their competitors in the public relations competition.)

But the U.S. scored a consolation prize for itself. At the same time as the Somalia raid, it sent a team of U.S. soldiers, FBI agents and CIA officers into Tripoli, Libya, and grabbed a guy they’d been looking for since 1998 who they blamed for the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, Africa, that year. (This guy is like, what, the sixth “mastermind” of that?) All they had to do was violate Libyan sovereignty. (They didn’t bother notifying the Libyan authorities.) Looks like the word “extradition” has been excised from American English. [See “International Law? What’s That? U.S. ViolatesAnother Nation’s Sovereignty- Again.”]

Islamofascists' Latest Atrocities and Crimes

81 dead in bombing of Christian church in Pakistan. Paki Taliban proudly claims credit, calling Christians “enemies of Islam.” (Seems like these guys are doing everything they can to make non-Muslims hate Muslims. Really destructive. Of course Osama bin Laden consciously wanted to spark religious war.) Repeated attacks on Christians and Shias in Pakistan, year after year.

Al-Shabab terrorists from neighboring Somalia attacked the Westgate mall in Nairobi, Kenya, killing at 68 patrons and wounding 175 others. They hopped out of their cars and immediately started shooting people down, including women and children. Also used grenades.

The BBC interviewed a survivor who reported that the terrorists quizzed an Indian man on the name of their “Prophet's” mother. The man didn't know, so the terrorists executed him. Obviously he deserved to die. A-Shabab (it means “the youth,” but they left out a word: Psychotic) announced that there would be “no negotiations” to end the siege. (To naïve clowns who think it's possible to “negotiate” a “solution” with such goons, why don't we send you to do the “negotiating.” Just understand: we won't be paying any ransoms or releasing any prisoners to gain your release, so you're on your own.) [1]

Seems that al-Shabab is mad that Kenya contributed 4,000 troops to the African Union expeditionary force of 17,000 sent to Somalia to roll back the takeover of Somalia by the al-Shabab goons and creation of a new Islamofascist state. Kenya got involved to protect its border region from al-Shabab raids and inroads. They're demanding Kenya pull out. As always with Islamofascist terrorists, the only way they know how to enforce their unreasonable demands is with terrorist violence against anybody at all- in this case, shoppers and others hanging out at a mall.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, a Sunni funeral was bombed. It was a funeral for someone killed in an attack on a liquor store. Fanatical Sunnis find liquor intolerable, because of their religious beliefs, which they insist on imposing on everyone by terroristic violence.

The hidden implication of these far-flung attacks (hidden because Western elites refuse to discuss it in public at least) is that the so-called “War on Terror” is not defeating the Islamofascist movement. At best it is containing it. That's what happens when you have no strategy, only tactics, in a war.

The U.S. “War on Terror” is really a permanent political campaign of mass indoctrination and brainwashing, like “anti-communism” was, and the “War on Drugs” is, to justify the ever-increasing repressive power of the police, secret police, and the deep state, which increasingly is exposed as a concealed military junta. [2]

The U.S., which is the most repressive nation in the Western bloc, enforces conformity by the other bloc members to its increasingly oppressive rules and laws, aimed at foreign enemies (such as Iran), political dissidents and “troublemakers” (check out the “airport security” torture documentarian Laura Poitras has been subjected to, for example) and the citizenry at large. [3]

1] Another Islamofascist group, the Afghan Taliban, has shown pretty conclusively how interested it is in negotiating a “compromise” for “peace,” by murdering two consecutive heads of Afghan “President” Hamid Karzai's peace commission set up specifically to negotiate with them. Karzai, who's awfully wily when milking the sucker U.S. for funds and support, including millions in bribe money delivered monthly by the CIA to Karzai for him to dole out to various bribees, is strangely still trying to negotiate with/appease/buy off the Taliban (as is the U.S.), getting Pakistan to release high-ranking Taliban prisoners for free- a ludicrous gift to nihilistic terrorist oppressors and destroyers of civilization. (Recall, these goons destroyed the contents of Afghanistan's museums and libraries, blew up ancient Buddhist stone carvings in their mountainsides, outlawed music (!) and committed numerous cultural atrocities and assaults on people's right to live their lives and enjoy culture and entertainment. They certainly are proven enemies of human civilization. In a sense, calling them “fascists” insults fascists. Fascists never tried to eliminate all culture- they just made it into fascist propaganda.)

We have another example of what happens when the Islamofascists get what they want in the example of what they did to Timbuktu in northern Mali when they took it over recently. Again, a war on culture, knowledge, learning, even destroying ancient Islamic shrines which offended them. Amputating the hands of musicians- the usual, in other words.

2] Currently one of the leading figures of this military junta is General Keith Alexander, the boss of the “National Security” Agency, and simultaneously head of the Pentagon's Cyberwarfare Command. Alexander has assiduously created a nightmarish total surveillance state, a project that traces back to the early years of the Bush regime and the “Total Information Awareness” program. The goal, mostly realized now, is to be able to track any and all citizens in real time and have easy access to ALL records from ALL corporate and government sources on everyone: phone, Internet, personal computer, medical, financial, legal, business, and of course all government records at every level. Information thus gathered is then used to harass and persecute dissidents and construct criminal cases by passing the information to other repressive agencies, laundering the source of the information. It has just been revealed that an entire secret unit of the “Drug Enforcement” Agency is dedicated to laundering such information and using it to fabricate cases. Supposedly prosecutors and judges were unaware of this ongoing operation, which when caught out, the DEA said it was perfectly routine and normal (and of course “legal,” which it is not- unless you make your own “law”).

3] The repression is now so pervasive, capricious, and vindictive, with not even a pretense of a legitimate reason, that even the quasi-government propaganda radio network NPR aired a piece on its program “On The Media” about the experience of a Muslim-American family (U.S. citizens) being persecuted by U.S. border goons on their reentry into the U.S. from Canada, where they had gone to attend a wedding. Thus is happiness turned into misery. The police state is now so confident in its dominance that the agency refused to answer the simplest questions from the reporter, [whose family it was and who got the same treatment] treating her with obvious and high-handed contempt. The smugness in the voice of their public propagandist as he brushed off the reporter's questions- not at all defensive when confronted with the blatantly repressive behavior of his agency's goons- was very ominous in its implications about the state of the U.S. power structure. We are in a police state in the U.S. It's not a “possibility” or a “danger” or a “direction we may be moving in.” It is reality.

[My Detainment Story or: How I learned to Stop Feeling Safe in My Own Country and Hate Border Patrol, On the Media, 9/20/13.]

As the example (among countless others) of that victimized family of Muslims makes clear, making life miserable for others is the mission of these police state goons. In this they are exactly like their putative foes, the Islamofascists. Just as during the “Cold War,” another time there was no fundamental difference between the “good guys” and the “bad guys.” Then, Bolshevik (fraudulently called “communist”) police state and military apparatchiks were the same as their U.S. enemies, except for the ideology and economic systems (each of which benefited different elites). Their mentalities and methods were the same- although the U.S. came up with more diabolical and evil ones. I refer you to the CIA's “mind control” programs, for example, involving lobotomizing victims and other horrors. Nor have we heard of the Red Army subjecting its soldiers to drug “experiments” with LSD, BZ, and other drugs, or marching their troops straight to ground zeroes (detonation point) immediately after atomic bomb explosions. And the Soviet Union did not sponsor deaths squads in Eastern Europe to slaughter tens of thousands of people, as the U.S. did in “its” hemisphere, namely in Latin America.

The Elephant In The Room In The Washington Navy Yard Shooting

Gun control.

Or rather, the lack of it.

The mentally ill man who killed 12 people in the Washington D.C. Navy Yard had a history of violence, including firing a gun into a neighbor's apartment and shooting out the tires of a car. Police made reports on both incidents, so he was on record as having committing these acts.

This did not stop him from buying a shotgun in a Virginia days ago and using it to kill 12 people.

There has been very little media attention on this. On the other hand, there is now a lot of attention on the question of "why did he have a pass to enter the base?" [1]

Well, why do mentally ill people go untreated in the U.S.? Police reported to their navy counterparts that he told them he was hearing voices (a symptom of schizophrenia or other psychosis).

Barack Obama just made some mild comments very gently raising the idea of gun control- but only indirectly. The man can be positively shy sometimes. (Yet he's like a stone wall when it comes to defending the massive secret police state growing by leaps and bounds under his direction, barely giving an inch to the strong winds of outrage and opposition.)

1] For example, the egregious John Miller, a police and secret police groupie and career police propagandist, was nattering on about the pass issue today while completely ignoring the gun question, from his current perch at CBS. Miller started out as a local police cheerleader on local New York City television (even though he was called a "reporter," what he did could hardly be called "reporting," as it was public relations for the police), then went to work directly for the police (NYPD) as a propagandist. After that, he changed hats and became a "journalist" again at ABC TV, this time on a national level, before flipping once again to the police, this time the notorious and fascistic Los Angeles police. His role there was quite sinister: he was Bureau Chief for the Counter-Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau, which included the Major Crimes Division, and the Emergency Services Division and the Special Investigations Section (SIS). "Counter-Terrorism," "Criminal Intelligence," and "Special Investigations" are all euphemisms for political secret police operations, which includes harassment and repression of progressives of all stripes and black and Hispanic activists, and operations against bourgeois politicians the police consider "liberal." (This has been well-documented over the decades in numerous articles and books and "scandals," which always blow over with no changes to the department's operations.) Miller was also one of the original designers of the Los Angeles Joint Regional Intelligence Center (JRIC), which combines "intelligence"(political spying) and "analysis" (their twisted ideological interpretation of reality and self-justification for their spying and repression) for the LAPD, LA Sheriff, and the FBI. In other words, he's one of the architects of the ever-more-suffocating U.S. secret police state, conducted under the guise of preventing Muslim terrorists from blowing up the entire United States. (The absurdity of using the occasional inept attempt to blow up a plane or car as an excuse for this massive, hugely expensive secret police state may be unparalleled in human history. At least during the so-called "Cold War," the excuse they pointed to was an actual impressive power, the Soviet Union, that possessed thousands of nuclear weapons and so could theoretically actually destroy the U.S.)

Miller went on to bigger things as Assistant Director for Public Affairs at the FBI in Washington, D.C.; in other words chief propagandist for the FBI, the main Federal political secret police agency. But that isn't all he did there. He was also part of the "Strategic Execution Team" (SET), tasked with establishing performance measurement standards for "intelligence operations" (political spying, harassment, subversion and sabotage, and the occasional murder) across the FBI's 56 field offices.

Then, as I said, back to the big bucks at CBS, on the national level, where someone in his position would typically be paid seven figures annually (minimally high six).

To the Devil goes the rewards.

So, how many times has this operator hopped back and forth between the propaganda and secret police sectors of the power establishment? You go back and count.

Loathsome Lawrence Summers Shot Down For Fed Chairman Post

"Larry" Summers, one of the arch-crimininals who engineered the financial calamity and global economic collapse of 2008, won't be the next Chairman of the U.S. Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, after the current chairman, Republican Ben Bernanke (who the nominal Democrat Barack Obama nominated for a second term as Fed chairman in 2009) steps down in January of next year.

Before his nomination was even officially announced by Obama, opposition by Senators of both parties (Senate confirmation of the nominee is required) made it obvious Obama would have an uphill battle foisting this criminal on the nation. So today it was announced that Summers "decided to withdraw his name from consideration," This lie is told every time a regime withdraws a doomed nominee- the decision is attributed to the nominee.

What is the rap sheet on Summers? Let us briefly review.

Summers was a staffer on Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers. Reagan's economic policies were driven by a desire to make the rich as rich as possible while cutting social services (and incomes) for the lower classes. Reagan embraced a brand of pseudo-economic quackery known as "supply side economics."

Later, as chief economist at the World Bank, Summers put forth "economic" arguments claiming that it made perfect sense to dump toxic wastes willy-nilly in the Third World. (Later the story was put out that he was just joking.) He also dismissed as bunk the idea that this finite planet imposes any natural limits on "growth," that population could be unlimited, and that global warming is no big deal.

As Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary, he helped engineer the gutting of financial regulation, including the repeal of the essential Glass-Steagall Act that served so well since the Great Depression, which led to the near catastrophe of 2008 and the ensuing Great Recession, which the U.S. and Europe have yet to recover from. In this his patron and predecessor as Clinton Treasury Secretary, the corrupt Robert Rubin, was a co-conspirator. Both men, along with Alan Greenspan, politically mugged Brooksley Born, then chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, who attempted unsuccessfully to put dangerous derivatives under a regulatory framework. [1]

Summers then went on to being the boss of Harvard University, where he drove out professor Cornel West, and opined that the relative dearth of women "in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions".(i.e. joints like Harvard) may be due to a "different availability of aptitude at the high end;" a fancy way of saying dames ain't as smart as us guys. He claimed this was an "attempt at provocation."

Attempt successful, Larry. Or maybe we should call you Summers the Sexist from now on.

Obama reliably did the wrong thing in choosing Summers. As soon as he became President in 2009, Obama brought the economic wrecking crew into power in the Federal Government (Summers, the awful Tim Geithner, mole for Wall Street, and others of that financial oligarchy service class). Now hopefully he'll have to go with the rumored runner-up, Janet Yellen, who at least is a sensible capitalist economist and is currently Vice Chair of the Fed.

1] After his key role in helping abolish Glass-Steagall for Wall Street, Treasury Secretary Rubin went to collect his reward at Citigroup- a multi-million dollar per year sinecure there. Don't call it a payoff or a bribe!

U.S. Government Stands the Meaning of "Fair Trial" on its Head

You probably thought it meant fair to the defendant. No, it means fair to the prosecution.

In the case of Barrett Brown, a victim of savage persecution by the FBI and Department of "Justice" in Texas, the Federal judge has issued a gag order at the request of the prosecution barring Brown or his attorneys from discussing the case with the media. The transparent purpose of this is to stop the generation of political support for this victim of state repression. Brown is a published journalist and book author.

Brown has been locked up without bail for a year, and the government is looking to sentence him to over 100 years in prison. He must have done something pretty awful! Maybe he killed and ate a bunch of small children, perhaps.

No, what he did was 1) post a link to a site that had some stolen credit card numbers- this was part of the hack into the private secret police firm Stratfor, that targets journalists like Glenn Greenwald and activists like the Occupy Movement for destruction, and 2) hide his computers in his mother's house- this constituted "concealing evidence" (you're not allowed to hide your property from thieves if the thieves happen to be the FBI, apparently), and 3) he "threatened" an FBI agent- he posted a crazy youtube video, in which he was obviously emotionally distraught after the FBI threatened to imprison his mother (forcing family members to turn against one another is a habit of totalitarian regimes, often used in the U.S. media to revile enemy nations for doing it). In the video, Brown spouted at one point that he would kill an FBI agent if the agent attacked his mother's house.

Brown sometimes spoke for the Anonymous group of anti-corporate oligarchy hackers. So he presented a known target for the Government, which despises Anonymous for their political activism.

Seems the Judge thought it would be unfair for the defendant to try and defend himself (or his lawyers to defend him) to the public at large, who have been told by the media that Brown is a devil.

As it is, it is virtually impossible for defendants to get a fair trial in Federal courts. The over 90% conviction rate isn't because everyone is guilty. It is because all the laws and procedural rules are heavily slanted to favor the prosecution. Additionally, it either requires hundreds of thousands of dollars to mount any effective defense at all, or one is dependent on the Federal Defenders Service (for the indigent). The NY Times just reported that the amount of money Congress allocates to Federal prosecutors is 28 times as much as the budget for the Defenders- whose budget is being slashed, resulting in layoffs and less money to pay for investigations and expert witnesses. (Guess a mere 28-fold advantage for the prosecution wasn't sufficiently "tough on crime" for the politicians.)

And of course government agents are given a presumption of credibility, their testimony is assumed truth, despite the long, long record of their perjury and their "crime labs" fabricating evidence.

[See "US stops jailed activist Barrett Brown from discussing leaks prosecution,"
"Gagged: Federal court says accused hacktivist Barrett Brown can’t speak to the press," "Barrett Brown Faces 105 Years in Jail," "The Strange Case of Barrett Brown," "Why Is Barrett Brown Facing 100 Year In Prison?" For a description of Brown's published work, see Huffington Post. A more extended bio is at Wikipedia.]

Crafty Obama Gives Congress What It Wants

There's an old adage: Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it.

The U.S. Congress has been fluttering its feathers and making noises about how Obama needs to “consult” with them before launching a military attack on the Assad regime in Syria, how he had to abide by the War Powers Act, etc. 140 Congressmen even signed a letter to Obama demanding a vote by Congress. [1]

Obama's obliged them. He says Congress will have to vote on a military attack.

Which means, of course, that if Obama does eventually attack, and things go badly, Congress will co-own the policy along with Obama.

Clever fellow.

Obama long ago proved he was a shrewd politician (and a totally amoral person, and cynical manipulator who is willing to make numerous false promises he never intended to keep in order to get elected).

I think he did the right thing here anyway, aside from the cynical, calculated, self-protective motive. The very same (GOP) politicians demanding an attack would be the first to criticize if things go badly. (They would have done things differently, of course, is what they'd say.)

But some people are never satisfied. Already Representative Peter King is complaining that Obama should NOT ask Congress to vote, because that undermines future Presidents. He couldn't even wait one day to attack Obama. (Oh, did I mention that King is a Republican? Is it even necessary to state something so obvious?) Needless to say, King would be criticizing Obama if Obama took action “unilaterally.” You can't win with some people- namely fanatical partisans of one's rival party. [2] But King can't be totally dismissed in this case. He says he's going to vote for the Congressional authorization Obama seeks, yet “I strongly believe that the commander in chief has the absolute right to take military action.” Furthermore, “The president seems like he's weak at every level.” (Well, not at the level of creating a super secret police state, for example.)

One of Assad's flunkies says the fact that Obama is going to Congress proves there's no evidence and it's all “a big lie.” Uh-huh, right, Bub.

“We have a President who does, what he says he's going to do,” says Sec. of State John Kerry, defending his boss. Well, sometimes.

Congress is sharply divided, and the division doesn't break down along partisan lines. Perversely, Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham, who have been loudly beating the drums for military action against Assad's regime for a long time now, both say they'll vote AGAINST Obama's permission slip, because it's too weak and they want more robust (i.e. more violent) U.S. military action. They should take the half loaf and keep pushing for a meaningful attack. At a minimum, Assad's air power must be largely destroyed, and key nerve centers of regime command and control degraded.

Unfortunately Obama is already signaling a weak and largely symbolic strike, stressing over and over how “limited” the putatively planned strike will be, how short in duration, even saying on the government-controlled TV network PBS (Thursday August 29^th) that it would be a “shot across the bow,” i.e. a warning shot! The time for that was back in April, after the first chemical weapons attack!

Earlier in the week it looked like Biden was elbowing Obama to attack, declaring that Assad had used chemical weapons, without a doubt. (This is similar to how Biden nudged Obama to declare for gay marriage rights, forcing his hand by doing it first.) Then Kerry gave a speech midweek blasting the Assad regime for the sarin attack and making it clear military retaliation would follow.

But then it wasn't so clear, because Obama suddenly pulled the rug out from under them. He announced that he would go to Congress, which isn't even in session, for a vote on the matter. The New York Times reports that Obama's top political and “national security” advisers opposed this.

But Kerry is a loyal trooper, just as when he was in the Navy in Vietnam, commanding a river patrol boat. He put the best face he could on this abrupt move by Obama.

Kerry made the rounds of the Sunday morning TV gab shows which function as platforms for the Washington D.C. political elite to discuss issues. Kerry had an obviously rehearsed line which it felt like he uttered fifty times in his various appearances on TV. For example, on ABC, in defense of Obama's decision to get a permission slip from Congress instead of ordering Bombs Away, he said “The United States is much stronger when we act in unity,” “and America is stronger when we act in unity.” Yeah, true, but probably the vote in Congress will be sharply divided, which will underline disunity. But Kerry is making the best of a bad situation. His boss, Obama, pulled the rug out from under him without warning. Asked why the Obama regime was “waiting,” he flatly asserted “we aren't waiting,” even though Congress doesn't come back into session until Sept. 9^th, and Obama did not call it back. (Just as well, since currently he would lose the vote.)

On Murdoch's reactionary Fox News Sunday TV elite politics show, Kerry insisted that the curveball Obama suddenly threw, announcing he's kicking the ball to Congress, is “a smart decision by the President, it's a courageous decision.” (Actually it's more like ducking and covering, covering his ass.)

Kerry also denied that he was blindsided by Obama's sudden pivot to Congress. “The Vice President a whole group of people believe it is a courageous decision,” he reiterated in his denial of what the media is reporting about Obama pulling a fast one on his own underlings.

Kerry repeated over and over the “we're stronger this way” line he trotted out in all his appearances. “I think we are stronger” by going to Congress, “America will show the face of our democracy and great strength,” and the delay is actually a good thing because “we can fine tune our strategy” (assuming you have one) and “find a unity of purpose here that makes us much stronger and is much more damaging for Assad.” (If only. In Syria, the regime's propaganda apparatus is crowing, calling it a “U.S. retreat.” I hope that's just bravado, but it's probably renewed confidence. This is a gangster regime, and gangsters are good at taking the measure of others.)

When someone has to assert so obsessively how “strong” they are, you have to wonder what weakness they're trying so desperately to cover up.

So going to Congress puts us in “a much stronger position,” Kerry insisted. He also denied, on TV show after show, that Obama would lose the vote in Congress. Pressed on “but what if you do, what will Obama do?” in every appearance he waffled, saying Obama still has the ability to order a strike, but carefully avoiding saying Obama would order an attack, even when he was asked directly on the programs that exact question. The hosts couldn't get Kerry to say Obama will order an attack if he loses the Congressional vote. (For that matter, can we even assume Obama will attack if he gets Congressional approval? Probably, I guess, but I wouldn't bet money on it.)

That gives me a sinking feeling. That is dangerously squishy. Obama obviously still isn't committed to making Assad pay a price for his latest atrocity.

It looks like Biden and Kerry were pushing a reluctant Obama. If he had made the Assad regime pay a price after the first use of chemical weapons, perhaps the regime would have been deterred from this much worse attack. Certainly not exacting a price only encourages more nerve agent attacks.

If the threats from Iran and Syria to attack Israel, for example, deter the U.S., while U.S. threats do nothing, than who is the more powerful? That turns the U.S. into a “pitiful, helpless giant” in Nixon's morbidly insecure words. Fear of unintended consequences is paralyzing if dwelled upon. To be sure, it is prudent to make careful calculations. Seems like Obama has done plenty enough of that already. It's time to act. The French, whom Americans habitually smear as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” seem to be harboring no Hamlet-like indecisiveness about this.(“To strike or not to strike, that is the question...”)

Congress might have to impeach Obama and let Biden do it, to avoid a disastrous loss of U.S. credibility and influence. (That was a joke, for you political unsophisticates out there.)

The worst of it is, where Obama should have spine, he doesn't and where he shouldn't, he's relentless and aggressive: persecuting whistleblowers, unauthorized exposers of state crimes, dissidents; crushing the Occupy Movement and others; creating a massive police state super-surveillance system, which he refuses to back off of one iota in the face of strong objections even from sections of the establishment; spying on and moving to criminalize journalists (AP, Fox News, the New York Times, and of course Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald and documentarian Laura Poitras) and even murdering at least one, Michael Hastings, or at least overlooking his murder. With Obama, you get the worst of both worlds. Weakness and vacillation where strength is required, and steely, remorseless resolve when it comes to repression and making repressive changes permanent. Obama is destroying investigative journalism, which alone radically changes American society. The permanent omnisurveillance state (NSA unleashed to collect and store all messages without limits in time or extent; cameras everywhere with face recognition, license plate recording and other technology; domestic drones, and god knows what else) whose creation Obama is overseeing will be irreversible, as it will be impossible to organize opposition or resistance. And this isn't just my opinion- cf. Chris Hedges, for example.

1] The War Powers Act “requires” the President to “notify” Congress after he launches a military attack. (See, Congressmen don't get news from TV, newspapers, radio, etc. like the rest of us do, so they need the President to tell them.) It was a face-saving maneuver by Congress to put a figleaf over the fact that they long ago ceded their war-making power to the President. (The U.S. Constitution, a Holy Document that is allegedly the fundamental law of the land, grants Congress the sole power to declare war. Yet for centuries presidents have waged military actions, including full-fledged wars as in Korea and Vietnam, without any such declaration of war by Congress.) For his own inscrutable reasons, Obama refused to obey even the pro forma requirements of the War Powers Act during the U.S. air campaign in support of the Libyan uprising against Qaddafi.

2] King is a vicious cretin who thinks Glenn Greenwald should be prosecuted for informing the public about the suffocating police state the NSA-FBI-CIA are putting in place. For good measure King libeled Greenwald on TV, claiming Greenwald “threatened to reveal” CIA officers' identities. Greenwald pointed out that not only did he do no such thing, he does not have such information. Anyone interested in hearing just how ignorant and thuggish this knuckle-dragging brute straight out of the 1950s is can watch news clips of him on youtube.com.

Assad's Useful Idiots

It's getting tiresome that every time it looks like we're going to be treated to a rare use of U.S. power to do good, the usual suspects pop up to screech in opposition. We saw it in the Balkans, during the Serbian depredations there. We saw it in Libya, when the Libyan people, inspired by the Tunisians, became part of the Arab Spring and rose up against their pathological dictator Qaddafi, and the U.S. and some European powers provided critical air support to the rebellion. (This is called “bombing Libya” and “the war in Libya” by the knee-jerk anti-American crowd.) Now they're at it again, rushing to protect the loathsome Assad tyranny in Syria.

There are now 1,429 people, including 426 children, counted as the dead from the latest Assad poison gas attack on August 21^st. Another approximately 1,500 are suffering the aftereffects of whatever poison Assad unleashed on them. Presented in this light, the victims are just numbers. Unless you have an imagination. But you don't even need an imagination. You can view some of the numerous videos of the victims. You can listen to the anguished and outraged voices of the survivors (on BBC anyway; I haven't heard the voices on U.S. media, including the “alternative” media, which confines itself to people demanding that the U.S. not “invade” Syria. Apparently firing cruise missiles constitutes “invasion”).

Lost in the struggle over a response to this atrocity is yet a newer atrocity, reported by BBC Panorama on BBC World Service radio, which had a team on the scene in Aleppo when an Assad jet dropped a firebomb on a school playground, instantly killing ten children and horribly burning scores of others, most of whom will probably die without the advanced medical treatment they require. (The survivors will be left gruesomely scarred.) This has gone virtually unreported by the U.S. media. If the U.S. had taken out the six remaining Assad airbases already, as it should have long ago done, this latest atrocity would have been prevented. (Assad's other air bases have been captured, at great cost, by the rebels, sloughing it out on the ground against enormous odds.) But there are hopeful signs that Obama's dithering is nearing its end: a sixth U.S. destroyer packing cruise missiles has been dispatched to the eastern Mediterranean sea, within striking distance of Assad's assets. (Assad is already placing human shields in and around possible targets, as I anticipated he'd do, so the regime can scream about civilian casualties if the U.S. attacks. That'll be rich. And privileged elites in Syria are scurrying for shelter.)

But don't think Americans are callous. The story of a subway line being shut down in New York City while a couple of kittens were rescued from the tracks not only made it onto radio stations, but rated an article in the Newspaper of Record, the New York Times. [August 30^th.] Awww, that's so heartwarming! (Hey, don't get me wrong. I think kittens are cute too. But how about caring about human beings under brutal, unrelenting assault? Or is there only enough available compassion to care either about kittens or humans?)

But about those useful idiots. In both the U.S. and UK, they roll out common tropes to oppose U.S. military action. Here is a good example that encapsulates the themes of this “anti-war” campaign,

from a presumably intelligent fellow, given charge over an academic center by an American University,* who conflates missiles fired from offshore with an “invasion,” a guy by the name of Bassam Haddad, who first presents Assad regime atrocities as hypotheticals, and additionally equates them with rebel atrocities in sooo even-handed fashion (hey, during World War Two there were Jews who killed Nazis, so I guess that gets the Nazis off the hook for the Holocaust) with emphases added by me:

“What I think we should do first, before we actually begin to talk about any of this, is to recognize that this is not—no longer about the Syrian regime and whatever atrocities it may have committed and whatever atrocities the rebels may have committed. This is about invading a sovereign country before even the evidence is out, before even the U.N. inspectors are out. There are decisions to already invade, to attack, to launch a strike on Syria, by a country that we should actually check the record of. The United States is not qualified to do what it claims it wants to do, as a result of its own record in violating international law for a very long time and supporting dictators and rogue regimes and the apartheid state of Israel in opposition to all manners of international law. The United States violated international law by attacking and invading a country on false premise, which is Iraq in 2003. And most importantly, the United States, in Iraq, has actually used nerve agent, mustard gas and/or white phosphorus in Fallujah and beyond, left depleted uranium all over the country in Iraq, ruined and destroyed the lives of generations as a result, and now claims that it needs to do this to protect Syrian civilians, which is exactly the opposite of what will happen in any invasion or any strike on Syria, which is not possible to happen in the surgical manner that is being discussed right now.” [Democracy Now, August 30, 2013.]

He really touches all the bases there, eh? (Actually he forgot to mention slavery, and the near-extermination of the American Indians.) To his implied assertion that the U.S. has no right to act militarily because it has unclean hands, I would say this; standing idly by while a slaughter is occurring, when you have the power to stop it or at least impede it, is at least a moral crime. And the U.S. cannot atone for its past sins by refusing to use its power for good. To the contrary. And what other nation has the means- that isn't allied with Assad- to intervene? And to that dishonest bit about “invading a sovereign country before even the evidence is out, before even the U.N. inspectors are out,” I don't think more “evidence” would change Haddad's thinking one iota either. There is already no doubt that chemical weapons were used. And the UN team is explicitly NOT going to weigh on on who fired them.

And by the way, Bassam, what alternative universe are you living in that you think the U.S. is about to invade Syria? Obama MIGHT order some cruise missile strikes from the Mediterranean. He's made it abundantly clear that NO WAY WILL HE EVER INVADE. And there is no reason to doubt it.

But Bassam is not totally insensitive to the Syrians suffering, he's just “sensible.” Read on:

“What is happening in Syria is horrific, not just what just happened in the past week. The death of more than 100,000 people, the existence of more than two million refugees—many of them, if not half, are children—is, as we have heard in the earlier report, is just horrendous. This is actually all the more reason not to take such actions, because any strike will actually end up escalating the situation beyond any control.” (All emphases added.)

Will it? And what does doing nothing do? Solve the problem? Cause Assad to stop his war? At least other nations should degrade the regime's military assets, and try and deter it from using poison gas again. The regime already tested that “red line” Obama verbally drew earlier this year, and nothing happened. The pattern is clear: escalating use of nerve toxins, testing whether the U.S. will actually back up its words with deeds. Doing nothing will make things worse, guaranteed. And as others in the Hands Off Assad chorus do, Haddad uses a number of somewhat contradictory arguments to try and talk the U.S. out of striking- that it'll be ineffective; that it'll make things worse for the Syrians; that it'll unleash a regional catastrophe and a massive war that the U.S. will be embroiled in. Well, is it just a symbolic pinprick or Vietnam War redux? It can't be both.

I love his boldness is citing the mass death and suffering as “all the more reason not to take” military action. The worse things get, the more reason not to intervene. So counterintuitive, which no doubt is part of its attraction to an academic mind such as his. Academics HATE HATE HATE the obvious. It's so unsubtle. And it doesn't take a smart person to figure out. (Rendering academics superfluous.) Unfortunately for their preferences, the obvious is usually true. That's why it's obvious.

But you can't win with these people. The U.S. is blamed, rightly, for allowing the mass slaughter in Rwanda to occur, by blocking UN intervention there. But these jokers always oppose any use of military force by Western powers, based on the premise that any such use is ipso facto imperialist. (Although even if we were to concede the point, I'll bet that the people butchered in places like Rwanda would much prefer to be living “victims” of “Western imperialism” than dead victims of their own countrymen.) They wring their hands and condemn the West for not stopping every bad thing, but object to military action. They think the West is omnipotent, but rule out use of Western military power.

They have this airy notion that “negotiations” are the solution to all problems. So if someone had just “negotiated” with the machete-wielding maniacs in Rwanda, for example, they would have “Okay, we won't kill all the Tutsis.” Or Assad would say “Okay I'll allow free and fair elections and give up power peacefully.”

Like I said, useful idiots.

Stunning naivete even made it into the U.S. corporate media, in the person of Tavis Smiley, a radio host, who appeared on one of the Sunday morning Washington elite gab shows (This Week with George Stephanopoulos, on ABC, Sept. 1^st.) Smiley invoked Martin Luther King, Jr, whose whose 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech at the large rally in D.C. that year has just been memorialized on its 50^th anniversary by the establishment AND “alternate” media. He said King would oppose military action. (So what? So would Gandhi, and Howard Zinn, and all committed pacifists. Zinn came to believe that it was unnecessary to fight fascism in World War II.) Smiley repeatedly said this would lead to mutual annihilation. His “solution”? Some vague peaceful resolution, with no actual plan to bringing such an unrealistic thing about.

Apparently the “any conflict can be solved by negotiations” crowd didn't notice that several UN special envoys tried futilely to engage Assad, and that the U.S. and others have been dickering with the Russians and Chinese for two years in the Security Council. (Some joker on the BBC just called for “talks with all parties,” including the Russians. As if multiple efforts to “talk” haven't occurred already.)

Never thought I'd ever agree with Peggy Noonan about anything, who was on the same show with Smiley, but she nailed it exactly right. It would be awful for the world to stand by and just watch while a dictator gassed his own people, she said. (Unfortunately that has happened before, indeed worse. During the Iraq war of aggression against Iran in the 1980s, Saddam Hussein gassed Kurdish villages in his own country, thanks to chemicals sold to him by the U.S. and Europe. Oh, and the Pentagon's “Defense Intelligence Agency” put out a bogus report blaming Iran for the gassing! In other words, covering for Hussein. Going back farther, the first use of poison gas against civilians was by Winston Churchill in the 1920s against uppity Kurdish tribes in then-British-ruled Iraq who were being ornery about submitting to their English masters. One more point about Noonan: too bad she didn't have the same moral clarity when she worked as a propagandist for Ronald Reagan, the butcher of Central America and southern Africa, during the 1980s)

Now it's true that the U.S. is imperialist, and commits many crimes. That doesn't make everything it does criminal. Nor does it mean that anyone or nation it attacks is an innocent victim of U.S. aggression. And I'm certainly not so naïve as to think that moral or humanitarian concerns motivate U.S. behavior, the fine words of its officials and propagandists notwithstanding. As I have said before, a good act is still good even if the motives are selfish, calculated, political. It is unrealistic to demand purity of motive. Doing the right thing is good enough, and certainly better than not doing it. It ill behooves people who present themselves as progressive, humanitarian, and peace-loving to block action that could save victims of vicious tyrannies. But increasingly that's what many leftists are doing. In this they are the mirror-image of the right. The right defends U.S.-allied dictators and attacks ones the U.S. opposes. With the left, it's exactly the opposite. In both cases, intellectual and moral dishonesty is required for the exercise. Both cloak their ideologically-driven positions in moral terms. That is a sham, as their inconsistencies prove.

From the first word of the latest nerve agent attack, voices in the Western media have cast doubt on the regime's guilt by claiming it would be irrational for then to do it (as if the regime is rational!). After all, it makes the regime look bad, they reasoned. And there was already a UN inspection team in country to investigate previous chemical attacks. And cui bono, who benefits? Why, the rebels do! (As if the rebels could count on Western intervention. They've given up on that, through two years of bitter disappointment and empty promises. There has been plenty of examples of them voicing their disillusionment and sense of betrayed in the western media. I doubt if they'd calculate “Aha! Let's gas ourselves! Then the U.S. will intervene!” Obama had just broken yet another promise- to send arms. Apparently the skeptics have a lot more faith in the eagerness of the West to get involved than the rebels do.)

The truth is, the regime benefits plenty. They already knew they'd just lie. And they calculated that once again, the U.S. would do nothing. And they would just claim the rebels gassed themselves, just as they'd previously pinned their own atrocities on rebel forces. And they could count on useful western idiots speculating that indeed the rebels did it to their own people, to provoke a Western military response. (Assad's backer, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, is helping out by asserting that the rebels gassed their own turf to provoke the U.S. into riding to their rescue. Only problems with that little theory: 1) the rebels don't have the extensive poisons used in the attack, not to mention all the evidence proving the regime did it, and 2) the rebels have given up on the U.S. helping them.) [1]

The Assad regime is utterly ruthless. Apparently the skeptics are blithely unaware of how savage and extreme their violence has been. And the area attacked was a Damascus suburb, dangerously close to the center of the regime's power, Damascus itself, a launching pad for rebel attacks on the preeminent stronghold of the Assad regime. If Assad lose Damascus, Syria would fracture into pieces. The rebels needed to be stopped there decisively. There was no reason NOT to use gas, to inflict mass casualties on the “terrorists” (anyone in rebel-held areas).

For the morons who just won't accept facts (including not just “alternative” media but even U.S. establishment media, including the government's National Public Radio system, who keep calling the gas attack “alleged,” not who did it being alleged, but the fact of the gassing itself even occurring), here's some of the evidence:

96 videos documenting the victims suffering and deaths.

Numerous reports from Syrians trapped in the area.

Doctors Without Borders, which sponsors the medical facilities in the areas, reporting on what happened, and their rushing more atropine, the antidote to nerve agents, to the area.

Satellites tracked he launching of rockets from Assad areas into the victims' location.

Assad regime forces donned gas masks.

Assad regime officials and officers overheard discussing the attack, before and after. One heard worrying about the UN inspectors finding evidence. (What a “wimp,” by Assad regime standards!)

The regime bombarding the area after the attack to destroy evidence.

Stalling the UN inspectors from going to the area for five days, and then shooting at their vehicles, forcing them to turn back.

Of course, the Assad-Alawite regime says it's all “fabricated.”

As we have seen, one line that various “anti-war activists” (a disingenuous and deceptive designation for a motley crew of sectarian leftists and people with an extreme allergy to American power, and ONLY to American power) are pushing is that the U.S. used chemical weapons (white phosphorous, and depleted uranium, which they misrepresent as a chemical weapon, used in tank shells) in Iraq, (some also toss in the fact that Israel used white phosphorous, which indeed is nasty, and in the case of using it on Gaza hospitals during their last full-fledged invasion there, a crime) with the implication (I presume, since they don't spell out any of the following) that therefore the U.S. has no right to retaliate against Assad for doing the same (or maybe it's okay if Assad uses sarin on the people he insists on either ruling or killing since the U.S. did such and such) and is hypocritical. (I can think of worse sins than hypocrisy. Standing idly by while a depraved dictator commits atrocities and doing nothing, for example. And besides, Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, so it isn't always so bad.)

By that logic, the U.S. shouldn't have fought on the same side as the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany because the Soviet Union did bad things too. Power is not pure.

Oh, and don't forget, the rebels have done some nasty things too. (Surprise! When people are subjected to atrocities, they sometimes take revenge, and not always justly.)

In their alternative universe, the “anti-war” leftists seem to be under the delusion that the U.S. is going to invade Syria. (Some perhaps know better and are simply being cynical.) They keep talking about a U.S. “invasion” and “troops going into Syria.” No such option is under consideration, which is obvious. It's simply irrational to present the issue in these terms.

“Hey hey, ho ho, war in Syria has got to go!” So went a chant by several hundred sectarians and professional anti-Americans (who claim to be “anti-war,” but they seem to be real selective about which “wars” they oppose) and pro-Assad Syrians at an “anti-war” rally in Times Square, in New York City. Another catchy slogan they bellowed went “We Don't Want No World War Three!” Right. According to this ilk, any proposed U.S. military action automatically starts World War III. Opinions of participants at the rally: “We are tired of U.S. aggression around the world...the U.S. doesn't have the moral authority” to intervene, and U.S. wars such as in Iraq and Afghanistan “end badly;” “We here don't want another war...wars don't bring peace.” (Actually they do, once they end, although “bring” is the wrong word. Of course wars aren't supposed to bring peace, they occur in order to resolve conflicts by force in favor of one side. Sometimes they do this, sometimes they partially do this, sometimes they fail utterly to resolve underlying conflicts.) The rally was mostly Syrian supporters of Assad, and a gang called “The International Action Center.” Their “action” consists of rushing to denounce and trying to block any action against dictators on the outs with the U.S., such as Slobodan Milosevic, the Serb who wrecked Yugoslavia. A former “Communist” political hack, he decided the best way for him to grab power post-Tito was by stoking murderous Serbian chauvinism- aka “nationalism.” When, finally, after years of atrocities like the massacre of 8,000 defenseless Muslim men and boys, the years-long siege of Sarajevo, rape camps, and much else, the West was finally forced to do something, the IAC saw it as U.S. “aggression” designed to steal “Yugoslavia's” oil. (Huh? Yeah, that was actually their line. I know, they're nuts. Their current line on Syria parrots exactly the Assad regime's line, namely the whole thing is a case of U.S.-sponsored terrorism and war against Syria. And Turkey's an aggressor too. You remember Turkey. That's the country whose citizens Assad has shelled and murdered, and a couple of whose jets the Assad regime shot down over the Mediterranean. That aggressor.)

Too bad the “anti-war” crowd doesn't seem to oppose the civil war Assad is waging against 80% of the Syrians. Or the war the Serbs waged against the Croats and Muslims. Or the war Saddam Hussein waged against Kuwait- that was also an occupation and annexation. And why oppose just the Israeli occupation of Lebanon and not the Syrian one? Speaking of hypocrisy and double-standards, it's not just the U.S. that is guilty of them.

Of course they have a boilerplate “solution,” always the same one. “Dialogue.” Fine. As if no one has tried to talk to Assad for two years. As if several high-level UN envoys weren't dispatched to try and reason with him. As if there hasn't been two years of futile palaver in the UN Security Council. Or to take Afghanistan, the U.S. has been desperate to engage the Taliban in peace talks. So far all that has happened is the payment of millions of dollars in bribes to con men, and the sequential murder of the top Afghan peace negotiator, appointed by Karzai, twice, by Taliban assassins. You know, sometimes you can't talk your way out of a problem. (These clowns might learn something if they look up the record of a fellow named Hitler, Adolf, and the various negotiations and deals that were cut with him and how those ended up.)

But the “average” American apparently agrees that the U.S. should do nothing about Syria. A Zogby poll finds only 7% support U.S. military intervention. Similarly the British public is opposed to involvement. The indifference of Western populations contrasts in a way unflattering to them with the heroic fortitude of the 80% of the Syrian populace under unrelenting, savage assault from the sociopathic Assad regime.“We can't be the world's policeman” is a sentiment now voiced by “average” Americans. Thus the objection to the U.S. being the “world's policeman” has migrated from the political margins to the mainstream. (The idea that U.S. aggression and imperialism to impose desired regimes on other countries constituted a form of law enforcement actually originated in U.S. Imperialist jargon, to distort and cover the illegitimacy of coups, invasions, and impositions of U.S. client dictators on victim peoples. So now the very idea of a global cop is discredited, even though there is a need for enforcement of international law, including humanitarian law, and laws of war, such as prohibition on use of chemical weapons. Unfortunately the U.S. does commit crimes too, and refuses to submit to international law, as when it blew off the World Court verdict against it for crimes against Nicaragua in the 1980s.)

But a few cruise missiles blowing up some buildings doesn't amount to a war. The actual war in Syria is the savage civil war started by the Assad regime gunning down protesters for democracy in the streets of Syrian two years ago. Limited U.S. strikes wouldn't be a war, although they would be acts of war if the Assad regime chose to so construe them. (Those experts on international law, the Russians, have weighed in with the assertion that a U.S. attack would be illegal. Thanks for the free legal consultation, comrades. Much obliged. Oh, almost forgot to mention- the Russian are continually resupplying the Assad regime with the weapons to keep slaughtering Syrians. By the way, the Russians are “experts” in crushing insurrections. Take a look at the photos of what they did to Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, Looks like Berlin, 1945.)

Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan has just called for Assad's ouster. Good idea. But that won't be easy, since Assad has powerful allies in Russia and Iran, plus Hezbollah, which is firmly embedded in Lebanon. And there is reasonable trepidation about unpredictable consequences, such as region-wide sectarian violence, terrorist attacks, and Assad playing the Israel card by attacking Israel. And the always feckless and morally disgusting “Arab League,” a club of dictators and oligarchies, declines to call for a U.S. response to the gassing. (Human rights? What are those?)

But is doing nothing really preferable? What a pathetic cop-out that would be. (And morally craven to boot.) But it seems Obama maybe realizes now that he has no choice, having painted himself into a corner with his “red line” bluff. Now U.S. credibility is on the line, a precious commodity that other U.S. politicians insist must be defended. So as usual, if the morally justified (indeed morally imperative) is to occur (in this case attacks to degrade Assad's ability to slaughter), it is only because coldly calculated political pragmatism forces it.

To a great extent, recent acts of imperialism are catching up with the U.S in the current crisis, namely the invasion of Iraq. (The long war in Afghanistan is also lumped in with that, although it is simplistic to see that as imperialism, or only imperialism.) And the cynical alibi and pretext the Bush-Cheney regime drummed up to invade Iraq, the fake “weapons of mass destruction” hoax, is coming back to bite the successor Obama regime on the butt. That obviously fraudulent “intel” is now being invoked to discredit or at least cast doubt on the overwhelming evidence that Assad is using lethal nerve agents to defeat the rebellion against his monstrous misrule. But this time it really is different.

First, there IS NO DOUBT that Assad HAS these weapons. It is no fabrication to say that. No one denies it, not even the Assad regime. (The situation was the opposite in the case of Iraq. The regime of Saddam Hussein denied having so-called weapons of mass destruction- and many Western experts agreed, including former disarmament inspector Scott Ritter- and in fact the regime didn't have them.) And the evidence in the Syrian case is solid. Even before Iraq was invaded, the “evidence” was discredited, although the U.S. media ignored that fact for the most part. [2]

It's unfortunate that Kerry's speech, the content of which was perfectly reasonable and true, unavoidably sounded like Colin Powell's fraudulent UN presentation when he pounded the table presenting the “case” that Iraq had WMD, including imaginary mobile chemical weapons labs. (Or were they bioweapons labs on wheels?) That's the trouble with lying; when you get caught, you lose credibility. (The other kind of credibility, that is, trustworthiness.) The speeches certainly sound the same, superficially: a tone of moral outrage, with claims of atrocious and unlawful behavior. So the opponents of doing anything, who range from the war weary masses (don't see why they should be war weary, it's not as if they've been under bombardment, or subject to rationing, or to onerous taxation, or have lost millions or hundreds of thousands or even tens of thousands of dead) to the professional anti-Westerners and various sectarian cultists, have an easy layup shot here, (dare I call it a “slam dunk”?), invoking the Iraq invasion with its attendant false claims to provide a pretext.

Another big difference between Iraq and Syria, besides the fact that this time the call to action is not based on lies, is that the U.S., or at least its President, DOESN'T want to get involved, and certainly doesn't want to invade and ISN'T GOING TO INVADE.

Finally, there was no concern at all for the welfare of the Iraqi people in the U.S. invasion of that country. Here concern for the Syrians provides pressure to act. (Of course the primary motives are restoring U.S. credibility, and responding to the possible threat of future use of chemical weapons against U.S. targets or its allies, by Syria, terrorists, or other states emboldened by U.S. fecklessness. Humanitarianism is NEVER sufficient motive to prompt U.S. military action, not in the Balkans, not in Haiti, not anywhere ever. That's a sad commentary on the backward state of our species' evolution. The entire world should always respond to stop atrocities. That would be what one would expect. The fact that it doesn't happen points to the dangerously undeveloped condition of homo sapiens.) [3]

The Assad regime's response is smarmy, disingenuous, insulting, and at least in large measure the opposite of truth, as always. They're '”waiting for normal nations, for civilized nations, to realize that we are fighting al-Qaeda here,” in the words of an Assad accomplice. And of course denying they used sarin, the rebels did it to themselves. [On Sunday Sept. 1^st, John Kerry revealed on his TV talk rounds that chemical proof of sarin was found in hair and blood samples taken from victims.]

To take another case where “peaceniks” and “anti-(only U.S.)imperialists” see the U.S. and its allies as the culprits; who is bringing suffering to the Afghan people? They don't notice the Taliban terrorizing people, assassinating anyone with a job connected to the foreigners, murdering Afghan police, targeting women who refuse to be chattel, planting bombs that blow up busloads of Afghan civilians and more. (They just kidnapped a female legislator, by the way.) Here's another fact that eludes their notice: 80% of the civilian deaths in Afghanistan are caused by the Taliban. You'd think that would be germane to a discussion of what's going on there, and who really is the root of the problem.

Some people just have a problem with moral complexity, I guess.

*Haddad is Director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Mason University.

1] Putin confidently asserted the gassing was a rebel “provocation” to draw the U.S. in. He demanded the U.S. show evidence to the UN. Which the U.S. should, since it's already been reported that they have satellite data and electronic intercepts. They won't be revealing “sources and methods” or telling the Assad regime anything they don't now know. (Word to the wise: one of the NSA's specialties is code-breaking, which includes cracking encrypted messages, both voice and data.)

2] Recall that when Ambassador Joseph Wilson exposed the fact that there was no purchase or attempt to purchase uranium yellow cake from Niger by Iraq, the Bush-Cheney regime retaliated by exposing the identity of his undercover CIA officer wife, Valerie Plame, a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act for which Robert Novak, the reactionary “commentator” and Washington, D.C. fixture who was fed the information and made it public, was not prosecuted. In fact no one was, although Cheney's lieutenant, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, ended up convicted for lying to Federal agents and to a Grand Jury. Bush commuted his prison sentence so he did no time. But Cheney was bitter that Bush let the conviction stand. Cheney called it “leaving the wounded on the battlefield.” What a fanatic. The fact that Bush wouldn't wipe out the conviction leads me to suspect that he was kept in the dark about the conspiracy to out Valerie Plame. Blowing her cover infuriated the CIA, necessitating the subsequent investigation.

3] Another difference, which some might find ironic: in the Iraq invasion, the UK performed its usual role as the parrot on the U.S. pirate's shoulder, seconding everything the U.S. said and participating in the invasion and occupation. This time, the UK Parliament has effectively blocked Prime Minister David Cameron's attempt to participate with the U.S. in military action. France, which in the Iraq case was excoriated and reviled in the U.S. for refusing to fall into line (the American Congress renamed French fries and French toast on their food service menus “Freedom fries” and “Freedom toast,” an obnoxious, chauvinistic, juvenile move) this time backs the U.S. France was and is correct, in both cases. If the U.S. had announced that it was invading Iraq to free the Iraqi people, that would have been arguably justified morally, if not legally under international law. Of course it did nothing of the sort, contrary to the version presented by the rewriters of history.

BONUS ENDNOTE: Short roundup of other saps helping Assad, (unwittingly or not):

Phyllis Bennis, of the Institute of Policy Studies, who is a reliable ally of anyone under U.S. pressure, says “We may not be able to determine who is responsible” for the gas attacks. (Counterspin, August 30^th, the radio program of FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, which generally does good work analyzing and exposing corporate media awfulness, but sometimes falls into the Anyone-America-doesn't-like-must-be-right attitude.)

Speak for yourself, Phyllis. Why did the regime stall the UN inspectors from entering the area for five days, and then have their goons shoot up their lead vehicle to force them to turn back? She doesn't have to answer that since she and her interlocutors simply ignored that fact, among many other damning facts against Assad, who they talk like they're defense lawyers for.

Republican Senator Rand Paul went on TV Sunday morning Sept 1^st (Meet the Press, NBC) sounding like he was channeling leftie peaceniks and sectarians. No war, he says. He invoked Vietnam, quoting (more or less) Kerry about “how can you ask someone to be the last man to die in a mistake. well I would ask him how can you ask someone to be the first American to die in a mistake.” (No Americans military personnel are going to die firing cruise missiles from ships hundreds of miles from Syria, Rand.) Paul, like the lefties, asserts that taking military action will make things worse, will increase the chance of more chemical attacks, etc. (Funny how they figure that doing nothing lowers the chance of a repeat of sarin attacks, and exacting a price from Assad raises it.) Paul, like his father, is an “isolationist,” as we say, someone who wants the U.S. to be as uninvolved as possible in the world. He says “American interests” aren't “threatened” in this case.

Paul of course is the son of retiring Republican House member Ron Paul, a stubbornly persistent presidential candidate over the years. Father and son are both libertarians, meaning they think except for police and the military, government shouldn't exist. Why the media thinks first-termer Rand is worthy of coveted slots on TV over and over (he's one of 100 Senators) is something the corporate propaganda system should explain.

And finally, the West's top Holy Man, the Godfather of the Roman Catholic Church, the “Pope,” chimed in helpfully, calling use of chemical weapons a no-no and putting forth his divine solution: negotiations and prayer. He called for “world peace” for good measure. Hey, the guy's infallible, so it can't miss!