U.S. Media Obsession Of The Day: Military Helicopter Causes Fatal Airline Crash In Washington, DC

I say "causes," because a Blackhawk helicopter has no business "training" next to a very busy airport, where it collided with an American Airlines plane coming in to land. Both craft landed in a freezing cold river. There were no survivors. The U.S. media didn't say "caused," even though it obviously did. It's "under investigation." 

For many years now, the U.S. military can do no wrong in the eyes of the U.S. corporate propaganda system. 

And once again, I am struck by the contrast between the obsession with a relatively minor tragedy befalling some Americans (33 people on the airliner, 3 on the "chopper") and the ongoing atrocities being inflicted by Israel upon Palestinians. Which total U.S. support makes possible.

For one thing, there's the sham "ceasefire" in Gaza. Israel continues to murder Palestinians there, including young children.  (Democracynow.org reports these murders, as do other non-corporate media which are not part of the U.S. power establishment.) And there is no "ceasefire," not even the pretense of one, in the West Bank, where an ongoing pogrom with "ethnic cleansing" (a euphemism for violent expulsion of a population) is invisible in the U.S. propaganda system. Over the last 15 months, this campaign of Israeli annexation has killed close to a thousand Palestinians (men, women, children, the elderly- there are no exemptions), destroyed or stolen Palestinian property, crops, olive trees, sheep, homes. Cynical Joe Biden made a symbolic move about that- putting empty "sanctions" on a few notorious Israeli "settlers" (most of those creeps are from Brooklyn, NY), but since they doubtless have little or no U.S. assets and don't move capital through the international (U.S.-controlled) financial system, these putative sanctions are devoid of effect. Trump cancelled even those pretend sanctions immediately upon taking office again.

And in case you believe there's a "ceasefire" in Lebanon, I must inform you that like all Israeli ceasefires these days, it is one-sided. Israel lashes out violently whenever it feels like it. Having decapitated Hezbollah and devastated southern Lebanon (a recurring habit of Israel's) Lebanon is virtually defenseless against Israel the bully nation. (Oh, Israel keeps gobbling up more pieces of Syria too. Or weren't you informed by American "journalists"?)

The only response to any of the facts by the U.S.-Israeli power establishment is to brand their victims "terrorists" and people who mention the facts "anti-Semites." We're dealing with closed-minded imperialist fanatics, fanatics who are incorrigible.

 

 

MARA- Make America (More) Racist Again

Trump cancelled an executive order of president Lyndon Johnson from 1965 to finally end racist discrimination in Federal hiring. So we're back to the era of Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic Party president (1913-21) and arch Southern racist who purged the Federal government of black employees. 

Trump has already done a lot of harm to the U.S. government and American society. He's revoked long-standing Federal government ethics rules, paving the way for his pre-planned tidal wave of corruption to enrich himself and the billionaire scum who toadied up to him, and bribed him with millions of dollars. [1]

The worst thing Trump has done is release 1,500 fascist terrorists from prison, mostly the mob of his stormtroopers who occupied the Capitol on January 6, 2021, seeking to maim or kill Nancy Pelosi and hang Trump's vice president on his instigation, Michael Pence. Two  of those freed were guilty of seditious conspiracy, the leaders of two violent stormtrooper-type organizations with a history of beating up small groups of progressive protesters with police complicity (who stand by smiling or simply do nothing) and genuine journalists (not establishment media propagandists who don't cover such protests. These two, Enrique Tarrio and Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, led respectively the violent fascist gangster groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who in addition to storming and semi-sacking the Capitol on January 6, 2021, specialize in beating up defenseless gays, anti-war protesters, real journalists, and assorted other objects of their hate, with complicity from police and prosecutors who allow it. This is the same situation that prevailed in the Weimar Republic, which paved the way for the Third Reich.

Now the U.S. is entering a phase parallel to the Third Reich. Six million Jews won't be murdered, but millions of Palestinians might be. Trump has called for Gaza to be "cleaned out" ( of its human filth, the Palestinians) and is trying to coerce Jordan and Egypt to take them. After that, he and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, want to "develop" Gaza as a tourist destination, as their comments have made clear. Of course, the Palestinians could do this if Israel and Egypt didn't run Gaza as an open air concentration camp, blocking virtually all entry and exit. The Nazis also had schemes to deport Jews to Madagascar, but ultimately opted for extermination. If deportation of the Palestinians doesn't pan out, extermination, which can be accomplished by disease and starvation as well as by "kinetic" means, will be the only way left to "develop" Gaza for Trump, Kushner, and Israel.

1] Elon Musk, the South African apartheid racist, spent $250,000,000 to help elect Trump. Amazon boss Jeffrey Bezos, and Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, each gave $1,000,000 to Trump's "Inauguration Committee." That entity took in a total of $250 million. Of course only a small fraction of that got spent on the one day inauguration. The bulk of it can be used for any purpose Trump desires, as no law controls its use. Not that Trump would obey any law. He has already trampled several laws in just his first few days in the White House. He fired the Inspector Generals of over a dozen Federal agencies and Departments, in violation of the law requiring Congress be given 30 days prior notice. He has fired civil servants illegally. He dismissed the top four officials in the Immigration court system. Indeed, he is living up to his threat to be a dictator- and for more than "one day," which he cynically said he would be when asked about it.

 

 

All 9 Supreme Court Justices Rule Against Free Speech Of 170 Million Americans

The Court, including the three "liberals," all upheld the law demanding that TikTok's owner, the Chinese company ByteDance, sell TikTok by January 19, 2025, or it will be forcibly shut down. Fines for violations are $5,000 per use. This forces Apple and others to deactivate the TikTok apps.

As usually happens when there is a conflict between power and rights, rights loses. There are numerous major legal cases in U.S. history where this is true. Understand, they don't say "power," they say "National Security." That is a euphemism, code words, for U.S. national power. That's what happened in this case, where the government invoked "national security" and all nine Supremos ruled that power trumps rights. And never mind what it says in the U.S. Constitution, the basic law of the nation, specifically the First Amendment, that "guarantees" freedom of speech. A phony guarantee with no actual assurance. For example: during World War I, the regime of Woodrow Wilson got Congress to outlaw opposition to U.S. entry and participation in the war. Some dissidents who threw anti-war leaflets off a roof were criminally convicted and imprisoned. The Supreme Court ruled that the vaunted First Amendment didn't protect them from being incarcerated. There are many other examples of how all the blather about American "freedom" and "liberty" and "free speech" is so much gaslighting propaganda. Basically the rulers tolerate some speech but certainly not all, and when the chips are down during times of "national emergency" (like the U.S. wants to fight a war somewhere, or is conducting a domestic political purge) the repression increases.

The Democrats are having second thoughts about pissing off 170 million people in this country who use TikTok. Many people make a livelihood from their TikTok videos. The Democrats' leader in the Senate, Charles Schumer, is now saying let's give ByteDance another 90 days to seek a buyer for TikTok. And incoming U.S. emperor- ahem, "president"- Donald Trump has reversed his earlier hatred of TikTok and now claims the power to unblock the ban. Except that the day before he becomes president on January 20, TikTok legally is taken offline in the U.S. And Trump can't order U.S. hosting companies to ignore the law and put it back on. Even if his Justice Department doesn't prosecute them, within the statute of limitations (seven years for most Federal crimes) a future regime could.

Surprisingly, I haven't heard of any organized movement among these 170 million people whose rights were violated, whose freedom was raped, developing. This is an example of the extremely low level of political consciousness in the U.S. population generally, notwithstanding the minorities that get agitated over, say, a genocide in Gaza, or a video of a black man being slowly executed on the street by Minneapolis police.
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DROPSITENEWS has these details about the TikTok ban: 

"Congress moved to prohibit Americans from visiting the number one site in the world, TikTok. But the “TikTok ban” bill goes much further than prohibiting Bytedance, TikTok’s parent company, from controlling the app in the United States. The measure gives new power to the president to determine which social media platforms from around the world are permitted in the United States.

"Signed into law in April of last year and upheld by the Supreme Court on January 17, H.R.7521, not only prohibits TikTok starting January 19, 2025—it gives the president authority to prohibit any foreign-owned social networking app through a simple two-step process. [My emphasis. Part of the process is the president submitting a CLASSIFIED annex to Congress of what he wants banned- that is, a SECRET list. The excuse for this repression is "threat to U.S. national security," the usual magic wand phrase that unlocks magical powers to brush aside any and all rights.]

[dropsitenews describes how giant U.S. tech corps ganged up on TikTok to eliminate a successful rival. The tech giants always either buy out or use market muscle to kill smaller successful companies that come up with new digital services and platforms. Forcing a sale or closure of TikTok accomplishes that anti-competitive, monopolistic goal using state power.]

"Ahead of the ban, Tik Tok’s U.S. based competitors actively lobbied for the bill. The strategy for large tech firms and social media companies has been to rid the market of competition, known as “catch and kill.” Facebook’s parent company, Meta, paid a consulting firm, Targeted Victory, to run a nationwide media campaign bashing Tik Tok. According to internal emails, leaked to the Washington Post in March of 2022, the firm was hired to “get the message out that while Meta is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threat especially as a foreign owned app that is #1 in sharing data that young teens are using.”

"Tik Tok was only the bill’s first target. H.R.7521, the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” specifically determines “ByteDance, Ltd.; TikTok” is a “foreign adversary controlled application.” In accordance with the bill, it will be unlawful to “distribute, maintain, or update” Tik Tok in the United States 180 days after the bill’s enactment. Unless, of course, TikTok is under new ownership and determined by “the President… through an interagency process” to no longer be controlled by a foreign adversary.

"The bill is sweeping, prohibiting any “covered company" that is “controlled by a foreign adversary” and is “determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States.”

"H.R.7521 places a shocking amount of power in the hands of the President, allowing them full power to determine which foreign-owned social media platforms live or die in the United States. The hyperfocus on Tik Tok may be a red herring, distracting from the sweeping impact of the measure: Ushering in a new era where the commander-in-chief decides who Americans are able to connect with around the world—potentially sowing deeper divisions among the U.S. and its foreign adversaries."

In other words, a state of quasi-war.

When it comes to Israel, the U.S. is a totalitarian society.

 That is, dissent from the official pro-Israel anti-Palestinian propaganda is actively suppressed. There is no tolerance whatsoever for the "free speech rights" of anyone who wants to describe the agonies of Palestinians under Israeli rule, Israeli aggression, or the actual history of Israel.

Here's a video from 2015, which sounds like what's happening today. This video describes the kind of repression of dissent from Zionist propaganda, and the forbidding of truth about Israel's repression and the Palestinian people, and the activities of Israel's fifth column in the U.S., the so-called "Pro-Israel lobby." 

The speaker, Dr. Alice Rothschild, is Jewish. She details numerous incidents, some personally experience, of the overt repression of dissent from Israeli propaganda in the U.S. Her examples come from the school system, academia, and medical institutions. 

The campus institution of organized Zionist Jews, Hillel, claimed that Dr. Rothschild's mere presence to give a talk made "Jewish students feel unsafe." Exactly the same bogus claim shouted today by agents of Israel in the U.S. and politicians in Congress and elsewhere. 

Mere facts are taken as "anti-Semitic" when the facts show the reality of life under Israeli oppression. For example, a photo in a poster of the wall Israel built to imprison the entire Palestinian population is evidence of anti-Israel "bias."

The New York City school system unofficially bans any mention of actual history, as one of Dr. Rothschild's anecdotes illustrates.

Dr. Rothschild traces the forceful suppression of deviation from Israel's propaganda creation story to 1948.

Today we see University presidents purged after being accused by reactionary Republican politicians of being insufficiently repressive towards any expression of sympathy in their institutions for the Palestinian victims of Israel. Such sympathy is referred to as "anti-Semitism." Thus regarding Palestinians as human beings entitled to human rights is twisted into a form of bigotry against Jews. 

What a vile and grotesque political transmogrification!