Uzbek Murders 8 Bicyclists in New York City: Will Trump Now Ban Everyone From Uzbekistan from Entering the U.S.?

According to the logic of his various travel bans, surely he must, to "keep America safe!"

An Uzbek rented a pickup truck and used it to careen down a bicycle path in Manhattan, mowing down bicyclists, 8 of whom died. After about a mile of mayhem, he crashed into a school bus, whereupon a cop shot him and he was taken to hospital, where he is under guard. This vicious asshole lived in Paterson, New Jersey, and decided he needed to kill some people in New York. He will go unnamed by me as he is not worthy of that recognition. There's a good chance some or all of his victims opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, for example, or Israeli oppression of Palestinians, two of the Islamofascists' grievances.

In addition to the deaths, there were a dozen injuries. Five of the dead were Argentine visitors, one was German or Belgian, depending on the media report, and two were Americans. So the ISIS-manqué did a mediocre job of killing Americans. The attacker has a wife and two young children, whose well-being is apparently of little or no concern to him, since he has effectively abandoned them and they will be objects of opprobrium if not worse, and without a breadwinner for the family. He also must be indifference to the crap his Muslim neighbors will now endure.

The politicians and police have branded the attack terrorism, because he presumably had a "political" motive. (The use of a vehicle to commit homicide is one of ISIS' suggested ways to harm people in its exhortations to launch attacks, and was used previously in Germany, France, and Britain. A note in Arabic in the truck hailed ISIS, proclaiming obviously falsely that it would live "forever. Nothing in the universe does that. The killer was an Uber driver with 1,400 trips under his belt. Uber has swung into action and banned him from now on. Good idea.) [1]

Whatever fear is generated by this "terrorism" is being generated by the incessant media drum-beating on it, with the same scant details reiterated over and over, and politicians stirring the pot with exaggerated, doleful statements. One of the worst is the Mayor, Bill de Blasio, who has been positively maudlin. To hear him tell it, every New Yorker has just courageously endured an unspeakable ordeal yet remains unbowed and unbroken. (I'm not exaggerating, that is how he's talking.) In terms of the scale of tragedy, this is the same as a bad traffic accident! (And the Uzbek sure had a fearsome arsenal: a paint gun, a pellet gun, and some knives. Terrifying! Luckily a "hero" cop shot the guy. A cop so "humble," related the police commissioner, that he feels he was just doing his job! Amazing!)

As for what Trump should do, if he follows his own "logic,"  just banning all Uzbeks from entering the U.S. won't be "tough" enough. This man is a permanent legal resident and entered the U.S. in March of 2010. So to be truly "safe," the U.S. must DEPORT all Uzbeks.

However, a Muslim from any country could become a "terrorist." Shouldn't all Muslims be banned? After all, "we don't know who these people are!" as Our President has repeatedly pointed out.

But the U.S. loves religion, so it doesn't want to "discriminate" against Muslims. Nor are U.S. Federal judges showing an inclination to disregard U.S. anti-religious-discrimination law. So it needs to ban all people from countries where there are Muslims. That would be most nations on earth.

But I'm sure Trump, being a reasonable and sensible man, will instead call for some weak half-measure. Actually he'll probably just use this to argue for the necessity of his latest ban, which is irrelevant to this incident (he's never banned people from Uzbekistan entering the U.S., and as I said, the bicycle-butcher has been here since 2010) just as most of the gun control proposals are irrelevant after each headline-grabbing mass shooting. (Most shootings involve "legitimate" gun purchasers using legally-obtained weapons, so more background checks or background checks on gun show purchases or banning whatever are irrelevant. Banning buttstocks that increase the rate of fire, and large capacity ammo magazines, would probably lower the number of casualties in mass shootings, but would not eliminate them. But the U.S. Congress won't even do that, and the two-thirds of U.S. states controlled by the GOP have been removing restrictions on carrying guns in public, even allowing them on college campuses.)

Trump took absolutely no action and called for no new laws or regulations whatsoever after the recent Las Vegas gun massacre that killed 58 people at a concert and wounds and injuries to about 500. So far, in the aftermath of the NYC attack on bicyclists, he's responded by ordering intensification of scrutiny of foreign visitors under his "extreme vetting" regime. I suppose now it's "super-extreme vetting," "vetting like you've never seen before, believe me." Totally irrelevant to this case, as the perpetrator was a legal resident of the U.S. since 2010. He's also calling for an end to the particular visa program under which the Uzbek got his green card to live in t he U.S. In other words, punish thousands of completely innocent people. That's a good response, Trump.

As a measure of how irrelevant this is, ISIS hasn't even claimed responsibility for the attack! Apparently they find it disappointing. ISIS is quick to take credit for any mayhem it plausibly can, whether it was their operation or not.
 
The local media are reporting that the culprit is "bragging" and "unrepentant" and "unapologetic" from his hospital bed. They were expecting an apology?

One thing this shows, which no media notes because it conflicts with their desire for threat inflation (which is also a prime motivation of politicians and secret policemen) is this shows how WEAK ISIS is. ISIS DID NOT mount this attack. It did not infiltrate operatives into the U.S. It has no sleeper cells in the U.S. (I'm sure with ISIS being squeezed out of its territorial conquests, it would have activated them if it did.) It did not even train this jackass. He's being described as a "lone wolf" attacker by people like New York State Governor Andrew "Son of Maximum Unction" Cuomo. What kind of powerful organization is that? [On the afternoon of Nov. 1, a day after the attack, news broke that the FBI was interested in a second man in the attack. Also the attacker was identified in a previous terrorism investigation but wasn't the "subject" of that investigation. I wonder if they planted tiny cameras in his home, like they do to non-violent dissidents.]

As for the Attack Of The Uzbek, the FBI has seized charge of the New York investigation. The BBC announced that the FBI will be reaching out to other agencies, including abroad, to learn about this man's movements and contacts. BBC, the British government's global propaganda arm, said for sure this would be a multi-agency investigation. They forgot to mention the most important sources of data about people and their connections: the NSA and  its junior partners in the "Five Eye" countries, which includes GCHQ in the UK. The FBI has free access to the NSA's stupendous database of the world's Internet, telephonic, wire, and other traffic, including records from license plate readers and surveillance cameras. Using facial recognition software, they can search for places the man has been in the past.

The FBI will search the government's database of airline travel (they know everywhere you've flown- they have that automatically, oh, and all your financial and medical records too) and arrest records in the U.S. and abroad. Cooperating foreign police and secret police agencies will cough up whatever is in their files on the man. (Unless it would reflect badly on them. Like if he was once an informer, or worse, for one of them.) By 11 AM the next day the New York City Police (NYPD) informed the press at a "news conference" that they knew the killer exited the George Washington Bridge at 2:43 PM when their license plate capture system recorded his vehicle, and a surveillance camera outside the Holland Tunnel recorded the beginning of the attack.

Does living in an omniscient police state stop "terrorism"? Does it make people safer? It certainly doesn't make victims of state political persecution safer. Already the BBC's Uzbek correspondent has reported that the secret police there are expected to use this opportunity to increase the already severe repression in that nation.

The "terrorists" give the secret police of every nation just what they want: an excuse to tighten their chokehold on the lives of the citizens. In Kenya, the regime of the "democratic" dictator Uhuru Kenyatta, who just got himself "reelected" "president" unopposed, runs death squads under the tutelage of the U.S., Britain, and Israel, that murder hundreds of people a year. This is known as "counter-terrorism." Watch the excellent Al-Jazeera documentary exposing this ongoing campaign of extreme criminality by four states, which has been totally blacked out by the establishment media of the culprit countries. Which means those media are accomplices to state terrorism and murder and by rights should be held criminally culpable.  [2]  

Al-Jazeera is run by the government of Qatar, which is currently under blockade by Saudi Arabia, its Persian Gulf lackeys, Egypt, with the U.S. piling on. The main demands of the Saudi -led assault on Qatar, publicly endorsed by Donald "Pussy-Grabber" Trump, are three: adopt the same hostile posture towards iran as these states have; stop "supporting terrorism"- no explanation of what they're referring to; and shut down Al-Jazeera.

Al-Jazeera isn't hated by only the Saudis. Al-Jazeera has been a thorn in the side of the U.S. since 2001, for reporting things the U.S. doesn't want reported. The U.S. has responded with verbal attacks, branding it "terrorist propaganda," and with physical attacks, bombing Al-Jazeera offices at least four times, kidnapping its staff, one of whom was imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay torture center for years, where the U.S. tried to force him to agree to be a U.S. spy inside Al-Jazeera, and launching cyberattacks on it. Tony Blair, the loathsome, self-righteous, oleaginous former British prime minister who conspired with Bush the Younger in the invasion of Iraq, had to talk Bush out of bombing Al-Jazeera's main headquaters inside Qatar! Where the U.S. has military bases! Talk about being drunk on power. I guess Bush found a substitute for alcohol and cocaine.

So no surprise that the Saudis are demanding Al-Jazeera be killed. It reports real news from all over the Arab and Muslim worlds, much of which the totalitarian, hyper-repressive Saudi regime finds threatening. (Just about anything human is threatening to them.)

 Oh, by the way, Kenya is "an ally in the fight against terrorism." That is to say, it invaded Somalia to help out the U.S., which prompted Al-Shabab, the Somali Islamofascist organization, to counterattack inside Kenya, against "soft targets" like the shopping mall and university attacks. Notice the pathological symbiosis between Islamofascist fanatics and state terrorists. Each creates the conditions for the perpetuation of the other. Repression breeds resistance, which leads people with no other options except surrender and acceptance of random state murders and other forms of oppression, or joining up with the only armed opposition available to them, the Islamofascists. The continued existence of armed terrorist groups gives the regimes excuses to increase political repression and murder pesky dissidents and political opponents, along with "potential" or "likely" or "identified" "terrorists." That latter category, in the case of Kenya, is supplied by U.S. and UK "intelligence," and those named are duly "eliminated" by one of several Kenyan government death squads.

As Dick Cheney said, "we have to go to the dark side," or in the words of CIA goons like Cofer Black, they've "taken the gloves off." Which is to say, governments are flat-out murdering people they don't like. In Kenya, this has happened in cases after the government has taken people to court, where they were acquitted. On such thin "evidence" the government then proceeds to murder the victims, because in their minds, suspicion is certainty. Not suspicion of actual crimes either, but of possible future crimes.

Now, there's nothing to stop the Kenyan government from setting up internment camps for people with "radical views." Those are the so-called "terrorists" that Western "intelligence agencies" and the Kenyan regime have "identified."

Between the totalitarian Islamofascist rebels on the one hand, and the repressive "democracies" and make-believe democracies like Kenya trying to crush them (and eliminate dissent in the process) on the other, a normal human being must say: a pox on both their houses.

1]  A fellow Uzbek described the 29-year-old killer to the BBC as a malcontented loner. Apparently ISIS propaganda provided him with an explanation for his unhappiness, and ideas for discharging his rage on random strangers. The attack occured around 3 PM on Tuesday October 31. If this pathetic, malevolent jerk had waited a few hours, he could have attacked the annual Halloween parade just north of where he attacked. It's claimed a million people were there. He could have disrupted fun for a million people. Or in a few days this Sunday there's the annual New York Marathon, a major event that such an attack could potentially wreck. Yet the city mayor, Clinton machine politician Bill deBlasio, has been carrying on as if it's 9/11 all over again. (De Blasio insisted on hogging the mic at a "news conference" the next morning with the Governor, the city police and fire commissioners, the boss of the New York City FBI field office, and other government poohbahs.) So in terms of disrupting life in the city, this nasty fool was inept. Most of the disruption has come from the reaction of "the authorities."

The BBC calls the Uzbek truck attack "the main news" today, thus continuing the Western media's bad practice of inflating the significance of violent acts by people who self-align with ISIS, encouraging more attacks, and adding to ISIS' stature. Not only is it disproportional to the significance of these events, it makes the "terrorism problem" WORSE. And of course the U.S. media is waving the attack like a bloody flag. The "coverage" of what this one unhappy asshole did is nonstop, repetitive, and way overdone.

Here's some perspective: every year, about 250 pedestrians are killed in New York City by motor vehicles, plus about 50 bicyclists. So this is 8 more. It makes no difference to the victims whether it was accidental or deliberate or what the motive of the driver might have been. Dead is dead. Tens of thousands of people a year die in traffic in the U.S. The same goes for "terrorist" knife attacks. Many thousands of people a year get stabbed. Why is an "ordinary" knife attack yawn-inducing, but a "terrorist" one an occasion for near-hysteria? No good reason. The bad reasons are political: To induce the population to submit to police state measures and acquiesce in endless wars abroad. Those wars, by the way, are the motivation for the "homeland" attacks using trucks and knives and occasionally guns. That doesn't necessarily mean ending the military role against Islamofascism is the correct course of action. It means that it is disingenuous and dishonest to pretend the attacks are acts of inexplicable madness. (The Uzbek has already been labeled a "madman" by NYC radio station WCBS. His motives are comprehensible. To understand is not to condone.)

2]  "Al Jazeera Investigates - Inside Kenya's Death Squads," on YouTube.com.

Payment Extracted From Russian Government for Liquidation of Aleppo

As the murderous Assad regime snuffs out the last pockets of resistance to its evil reign in the city of Aleppo, Syria, a 22-year-old Turkish policeman took it upon himself to impose a small price on Russia for its aerial bombardment of the city, including all of the hospitals. Shouting " Don't forget Aleppo, don't forget Syria!" the off-duty cop shot dead the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, at "a posh art gallery" in the Turkish capital of Ankara. [1]

A video of the incident aired on Turkish media showed the man, a riot policeman named Mevlut Mert Altintas proclaiming in Arabic  "We are the descendants of those who supported the Prophet Muhammad, for jihad." We see once again that it often takes a zealot or fanatic to have the courage (and indifference to his personal fate) to sacrifice oneself and attack into the teeth of Power. (Some reports say Altintas was killed. If not, he's in for some savage torture. For one thing, the Erdogan regime will want him to “confess” to “the conspiracy” that Erdogan and Putin have already posited led to this killing.)

Edward Snowden in a way fits the description of a self-sacrificing zealot, but of course his action was non-violent and very beneficial, if ultimately as futile as the assassination of the ambassador. But in both cases, at least some cost is imposed on the oppressors of humanity. That is worthwhile.

The day before the assassination, the Russian, Turkish, and Iranian foreign and war ministers met in Moscow to conspire on the ongoing crushing of the rebellion of the Syrian people against the despotic and ultra-cruel regime of Bashar al-Assad, an absolute dictator who inherited the dictatorship from his mass murderer father Hafez. (No slouch in the killing department himself. Like father, like son, apparently.)

With utter predictability, the state terrorist Russian president Vladimir Putin, Karlov's boss, immediately branded the killing terrorism, and vowed revenge. “The only answer to the murder of the Russian ambassador to Turkey must be the intensification of the struggle against terrorism,” Putin said darkly on Russian national television. “And the bandits will feel it,” he added menacingly. (No doubt to the approval of Donald Trump, who admires "strength." That makes Trump an authoritarian, of course, since fetishizing power is a key aspect of authoritarianism. But then Trump's authoritarianism has been on display for years, in his role as a Business Boss.) the Kremlin foreign ministry also weighed in with the"T" word, calling it “a terrorist attack,” I'd call it retribution for Russian crimes against humanity.

Showing he understands nothing, Putin also misunderstood the avenging gunman's motive entirely, even though the assassin said quite clearly what his motive was. Putin framed the killing in conspiratorial terms, seeing a “provocation aimed at rupturing ties between Russia and Turkey” in the act. "The crime that has been committed is undoubtedly a provocation aimed at derailing the ties between Russia and Turkey, as well as the peace process in Syria," Oh, undoubtedly. and I just love your "peace process" in Syria! Nothing like bombing people into submission to achieve "peace."

Yes yes I know, there are jihadists in Syria. But the 80% of the Syrian population that oppose Assad are not "jihadists" and "terrorists." This uprising began with street protests inspired by the Arab Spring, which started in Tunisia. The Assad regime responded by murdering protesters in the streets, and kidnapping and torturing people. THEN people took up arms, when they had no choice to defend themselves. Obama and his minions intoned "Assad Must Go," but Obama didn't want to support the rebellion with the necessary arms, especially anti-aircraft small arms, in part out of fear they'd end up in jihadists' hands. After a year or two, jihadists did appear in Syria, so Obama could rationalize, See? I was right.

The mayor of Ankara, Melih Gokcek, hopped on the conspiracy theory bandwagon, opining that the killer's intent was to disrupt Turkish-Russian relations. Why not take the gunman at his word? He said, shouted why he did it!

I guess politicians, being cold, callous beings, cannot imagine that there are people motivated by the suffering of others. That is just beyond their ken. So they must fabricate imaginary conspiracies and convoluted political conjectures. (The U.S. media and other elite sectors do that all the time too. For example, J. Edgar Hoover, the now-deceased longtime FBI secret police chief, thought that the movement for black civil rights was a "communist conspiracy." And president Lyndon Johnson thought that the massive popular movement against his war on Vietnam was being created in Moscow! He ordered the CIA to uncover this "plot" that somehow turned millions of Americans into zombie puppets of the Kremlin. I kid you not. That is how blind our rulers are to their own criminality- that they have to deny any possibility of fault by themselves that is provoking opposition from normal humans. Positing malign conspiracies is one way rulers evade facing up to their own responsibility for the reactions provoked by their crimes and oppression.)

The destruction of Aleppo, which has included the systematic bombardment of every hospital in the city and targeting of schools, among other atrocities, is characterized as a "liberation" from "terrorists" by the cynical Russian and Syrian governments, rhetoric adopted by knee-jerk anti-Americans in Western countries whose human rights principles are apparently lower in priority than their need to assume that whatever side the U.S. opposes are Good Guys. This stems from their simple-minded, lazy habit of seeing the world in binary terms. (Readers of this blog will have no trouble discerning that I am unsparing in my criticism of the U.S. for its crimes. Those who cannot see other sources of evil in the world have a most peculiar blind spot) Even though the U.S. has been largely AWOL in Syria, these ideologues blame the U.S. for the Syrian tragedy. They also consider Hillary Clinton a "warmonger" for wanting to intervene. Had the U.S. supported the rebellion in the first year, the Syrian people would have had a fighting chance to free themselves of the gothically cruel Assad regime. A bombing campaign to destroy Assad's air force would have stopped the dropping of barrel bombs and chemical agents, for example. Russia only sent in its air force to assist Assad in his slaughter a year ago. (The uprising is now five years old.)

The Washington Post claims that "Russian authorities vowed to reveal a larger plot — and some [UNNAMED] in Moscow suggested that the West was to blame for its support of moderate rebel factions in Syria." Unlike how it treats with ridicule discussion of actual conspiracies by the U.S. Deep State, this fanciful conspiracy theorizing is reported respectfully by U.S. media like the Post.

"Putin stopped short of that, [i.e. of blaming the West] saying only, 'We need to know who guided the hand of the murderer.” That is, who to take out our rage on. [3]

There he goes again, with a conspiracy theory. As if passionate (or obsessive, if you want to put a negative spin on it) individuals need to be someone else's puppet to act. Not everyone on earth is a puppet or a puppet-master, Putin.

Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan, already "knew" it was a conspiracy, and what it was about: “We know [sic] that this is a provocation aiming to destroy the normalization process of Turkey-Russia relations,” Erdogan said immediately in a speech he rushed to give. “But the Russian government and the Turkish republic have the will to not fall into that provocation.” It must be nice to be able to "know" things without having to investigate or discover actual facts. Makes life so much easier to just assume that whatever you want to believe is true. [4] 

Note Erdogan's repeated use of the word "provocation," a favorite word of Russian conspiracy-mongers that traces back to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, and probably earlier. Do I detect pandering to the Russians?

Erdogan called Putin to offer condolences, and the two reportedly pledged cooperation against "terrorism." "Terrorism" being code for opposition to state power, including non-violent opposition or even just protest. That's also the U.S. function definition, by the way, as the FBI, DHS, et al routinely brand protesters considered "left wing," such as the Occupy Movement, "terrrorists." So see? Even enemies can agree on something!

Here's a bet, Turkish autocrat Erdogan will blame Gulen for the assassination, or else the Kurds.

One more thing. A single man, motivated by conviction, has imposed more of a cost on Russia for its crimes in Syria than the Mighty Superpower Tough Talking U.S. The U.S. has only jawboned and condemned Russia over Syria. It hasn't even imposed economic sanctions, as it did to punish Russia for interfering with the U.S. takeover of Ukraine. That speaks volumes about actual U.S. "values" and goals. It doesn't care one whit about human rights, self-determination, or freedom.

Unwanted politics intrudes at "a posh art gallery."

A minion of autocracy bites the dust. He won't be dining on caviar tonight.

1]  "Russian ambassador Andrey Karlov shot dead in Ankara," Aljazeera, December 20, 2016. Aljazeera quotes the gunman thusly:

"'Don't forget Aleppo, don't forget Syria,' the attacker said in Turkish after gunning down the ambassador, as seen on a video shared by Turkish media from the scene.

"'Whoever took part in this cruelty will pay the price, one by one... Only death will take me from here,' the man said while holding a pistol.

"He then continued in Arabic, saying: 'We are the descendants of those who supported the Prophet Muhammad, for jihad.'"

2] "Turkish police officer, invoking Aleppo, guns down Russian ambassador in Ankara," Washington Post, December 19, 2016. The New York Times quoted Putin in almost the same words,  but claims he made the remarks "in an emergency meeting with Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov and other top officials." The Times version of the quote is  “There can be only one answer to this — stepping up the fight against terrorism, and the bandits will feel this.” "Russian Ambassador to Turkey Is Assassinated in Ankara," NY Times, December 19. The Times quoted the gunman as declaiming,  “God is great! Those who pledged allegiance to Muhammad for jihad. God is great!” The Post has him yelling, “We are those who pledged jihad to Muhammad!” Referring to Syria, he added, “Every single person who has a share in this atrocity will pay for it!”

3]  Washington Post, ibid.

4] New York Times, op cit. Funny thing, the guy who messed up Turkish-Russian relations was Erdogan himself. About a year ago, he had his jets shoot down a Russian fighter-bomber over Syria next to the Turkish border (the Turks and U.S. media falsely claimed or implied it was shot down overflying Turkey- it had strayed for a few seconds over the border but was shot down over Syria) because Erdogan was unhappy that the Russians were bombing ethnic Turkmen Syrian rebels. The Russians responded by cutting off the lucrative traffic of Russian vacationers to Turkey. This changed Erdogan's attitude, so he mended fences with Russia. 

Turkey's role in Syria is a mass of contradictions, and shows what a treacherous sea of boiling cross-currents "the conflict" there is. Turkey mainly wants to destroy the Kurds, which the U.S. supports in the Kurds resistance to Assad. But the U.S. makes distinctions between "terrorist" Kurds and "moderate" (i.e. "Good Guy") Kurds, which the Turks don't. Turkey for a long time supported jihadists in an underhanded fashion, allowing them to cross the Turkish border and obtain supplies through Turkey. Jihadists are U.S. enemy Number 1, or maybe Number 2, after Russia, these days, depending on which American ideologue/polemicist/apparatchik/or general you ask, and the day of the week.

Assad has shelled and bombed Turkish border villages several times, and Turkey semi-wants to see Assad gone. Russia is backing Assad in a major way, along with Iran, which has sent troops to help Assad crush the Syrian people, and the Lebanese "terrorist" (to the West) militia Hezbollah is also fighting on Assad's behalf. (Or rather it's the militia arm of Hezbollah, which is a religious/political organization and movement.) So U.S. ally Turkey, where the U.S. has air bases, is bombing U.S.-backed Kurds in Syria, and Assad foe Turkey is getting friendly and cooperative with main Assad backer Russia, whose air force is pulverizing rebel-held cities and towns. 

To make things more interesting, various Arabian peninsula Sunni autocracies- and the U.S. is good buddies with all those repressive monarchies, and supplies them with weapons and munitions and training- are funneling weapons and supplies to the jihadists in Syria-  the jihadists the U.S. wants to exterminate.. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are known to be doing this. 

But no hard feelings: the U.S. is currently helping the Saudis and other associated oil monarchies wage an aerial bombardment campaign of terror against Yemen. They've bombed 58 hospitals so far, with the jets the U.S. sold them, dropping the bombs the U.S. sold them, and flying to and from their targets with the aid of U.S. tanker planes refueling the jets dropping the bombs. And U.S. officers are in the Saudi command posts helping pick targets.

Is that all clear now?

Turkey Providing Material Support to Terrorism, And Destroying UNESCO World Heritage Sites à la ISIS

Certain more-thoughtful precincts of the U.S. elites occasionally fret over how to square the circle of glaring U.S. contradictions. This phenomenon gets manifested from time to time in New York Times articles that reveal more of reality than is standard in that publication, sometimes with sympathy for some victims, but that generally end with a throwing-up-of-hands attitude, at a loss for a solution.

Such an article was published today on the Times' website. [1]

The contradiction in question this time concerns the fact that Turkey and the U.S. have been operating at cross-purposes, to say the least, in Syria. The most effective fighting force against ISIS and the other Islamofascists (the main enemy of the U.S. in Syria, as the U.S. government sees it) are the Kurds.

But Turkey is waging war on the Kurds, both in Syria and in Turkey. Even in Iraq, in fact, where it has attacked Kurds.

And Turkey is even backing some of the Islamofascists.

But Turkey is a member of the U.S.-created-and-dominated military alliance, NATO. And has key military bases that the U.S. uses, particularly air bases, from which the U.S. is now flying sorties against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. (Turkey has been a key base for U.S. espionage and military activities since World War II. Turkey was the base from which many U-2 spyplane flights were launched over the Soviet Union. The CIA ran a fake defector program against the Soviet Union from Turkey. One of those well-prepared fake defectors was U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald.)

It's as if such articles are throat-clearing exercises to get the attention of the executive managers of U.S. imperialism. Like a tap on the shoulder saying "What are you going to do about this?"

The article doesn't explicitly say what I stated in the title of this essay. That would be too disruptive. The New York Times only very rarely engages in boat-rocking. But the following excerpts show that my title is true.

All emphases that follow are mine.

"Erdogan has offered limited help in the fight against ISIS, despite years of American lobbying. That has pushed the United States to rely more and more on the P.Y.D., which it views as distinct from the P.K.K. American Special Operations troops now arm, equip and advise these Kurdish fighters, even as Turkey shells their bases farther west — and pays Islamist militias [aka 'terrorists' as designated by the U.S.] to attack them."

"Islamist militias" are what are usually called "terrorists" in the U.S. media, and by the U.S. government. The Times discreetly avoids naming the actual "militias" it is referring to.

The U.S. designates the fighting groups in Syria it thinks are okay as the "moderate" ones.The "Islamist" ones, like the al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and their ilk, are the "terrorists."

Of course, for the New York Times, it is literally unthinkable that Turkey is breaking U.S. law by "providing material support to terrorists," or that Turkey should be on the State Department list of "state sponsors of terrorism."

Or at least, they don't want anyone reading the New York Times to have such thoughts cross their minds.

Then there's the destruction of UNESCO world heritage sites- the same crimes the U.S. and European medias are so exercised about (rightly, if hypocritically) when ISIS does it.

The article makes plain that Kurdish towns and cities are being systematically leveled by Turkish army artillery and tank shelling.

"In Diyarbakir [Turkey], the capital of a largely Kurdish province, [Turkish] artillery and bombs have destroyed much of the historic district, which contains Unesco world heritage sites. Churches, mosques and khans that have stood for centuries lie in ruins. Tourism has collapsed. Images of shattered houses and dead children are stirring outrage in other countries where Kurds live: Iraq, Syria and Iran."
The author also describes the destruction of Cizre by Turkish shelling, and that a similar fate awaits the surrounded and besieged city of Nusaybin:

"...it has been an outpost and a battleground for a half-dozen empires over the past 3,000 years, from the Aramaeans to the Ottomans. It still contains Roman ruins and one of the Middle East’s oldest churches. It has been a Kurdish town since a century ago, when Christian residents fled southward from Turkish pogroms that started during the upheavals of World War I."

Again, the obvious similarity to ISIS crimes is overlooked.

One difference between ISIS and the Erdogan regime of Turkey is that ISIS makes a point of publicizing its crimes, as it takes a perverse pride in them. It sees its destruction and murders as making ideological points. The Turks, on the other hand, ban journalists from the cities they are laying waste to. Typical of states, they seek to hide their crimes, clumsily, from the rest of the world. (The Times reporter had to do some sneaking around to get the story. Which is fine.)

It's not just in Turkey that the U.S. has tied itself up in a ball of contradictions. The same is the case with Saudi Arabia, with Pakistan, with Afghanistan. In all these cases, its "allies" are part of the problem, indeed the root of the problem in the cases of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

On top of all its strategic incoherent, the U.S. slathers a thick layer of incredibly hypocritical, self-righteous, moralistic rhetoric about "terrorism" and "freedom," and applies draconian laws (and assassinations) in extremely selective, biased fashion. This rotten ideological crust is supposed to hide the political incoherence from public view.

Which, with the help of the loyal U.S. media, it largely does.

1] "Behind the Barricades of Turkey’s Hidden War: A simmering conflict with the Kurds threatens to consume an American ally and inflame an already-unstable region," New York Times, May 24, 2016.

Turkey Bombards America's Kurds in Syria

The wars in the Middle East are looking more and more like a free-for-all. What a Pandora's Box the Bush-Cheney regime recklessly ripped open when it invaded Iraq!

The would-be Sultan of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has dreams of Ottoman Empire glory, has been attacking armed Kurds wherever he can find them. First he restarted the war of extermination against the PKK, the Kurdish guerrilla organization that arose as a reaction to the extreme repression of Kurds in Turkey. (For decades, Turkey sought to eliminate Kurdish identity completely, which is to say, the Kurds were subjected to a genocidal assault under the legal definition of genocide. There is a popular misunderstanding that genocide necessarily means physical extermination. It actually is defined as destroying a people by whatever means, or attempting to.) Then he extended his war over the border into both Syria and Iraq. The Iraqi government has feebly protested the invasion of Iraq by Turkish troops attacking Kurdish forces. Those Kurds have been the main bulwark against the advance of the hated ISIS, the self-styled Islamic State, reviled for their Saudi-style beheadings.

The latest Turkish attacks against the Kurds is the aerial and artillery attacks on Kurdish forces in Syria. The BBC, and thus we can assume by extension the British government, supports, given today's reporting, which was sympathetic to the Turkish position. For exanple, they hauled on air a woman from the reactionary U.S. Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, to say that the PKK and the other Kurds the Turks are now attacking are birds of a feather. [1] Of course, the Kurds the Turks are now trying to destroy in Syria are also the main U.S. proxy ground forces against ISIS in Syria.

So Obama gave his vice president, Joseph Biden, an errand, to ask Erdoğan to please stop bombing the U.S.' Kurds. Erdoğan, predictably, refused to comply. Which Obama probably foresaw and sought to avoid being humiliated, thus the delegation of the task to Biden.

So where do we stand? The U.S. and whoever it can get is fighting ISIS. The U.S. is also against the Assad regime, but isn't fighting him and doesn't want its proxies to fight him. ISIS is fighting Assad. The Russians are fighting "terrorists," using the Assad regime definition of that word- namely anyone opposing Assad or even living in areas not under regime control. The U.S. is fighting "terrorists," namely ISIS, the al-Nusra front, and the always-mentioned-but-never specified "associated forces." (Being vague gives the U.S. the freedom to attack anyone they suddenly decide they don't like.)

The Iranians are fighting everyone Assad and the Russians are fighting, in Syria. So they're a U.S. Enemy in Syria, even though they're fighting ISIS.

In Iraq, the Iranians are allied with the same government the U.S. is backing, and against ISIS. But they're still an Enemy.

U.S. ally and NATO member Turkey is hosting U.S. warplanes that are bombing targets in Syria and Iraq, in support of the Kurds that Turkey is bombing and shelling.

Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf oiligarchies support Sunni extremists like al-Nusra. But they're U.S. allies, and Saudi Arabia has supposedly offered to contribute "special forces" (commandos) to fight in Syria against- well, the Sunni extremist ISIS. They've even contributed a few warplanes to bombing. (Most of their forces are tied up destroying Yemen at the moment.) Britain, France, all the usual suspects, are pitching in with bombing and/or aerial surveillance, although Canada, under a new liberal regime, will no longer drop bombs, just help look for targets. (The new prime minister Trudeau is apparently a peacenik.)

Is that all clear now?

I didn't think so.



1] The Wilson center is named for a former extremely racist president of the U.S., who inaugurated the modern U.S. police state with the Espionage Act (under which people who spoke against Wilson's entry into the First World War were imprisoned, First Amendment "free speech rights" be damned), the Palmer raids, in which thousands of leftists were rounded up without any judicial involvement- carried out by one J. Edgar Hoover, heading the precursor of the FBI, which he went on to run as the top secret police chief in America- and other depredations against human rights. The actual history of Wilson's regime- which is to say, truth- has been replaced by an absurd myth of Wilson as a noble idealist and liberal who believed in self-determination for people! Thus is the power of propaganda manifested yet again.


The lady "scholar" from the Wilson Center made sure to carry out her political and ideological duties by cueing us in on which side is the Good Guys and which the Bad in the Turkish bombing of Kurds. The Kurds have been fighting "a NATO army" for a decade, she gratuitously put in. I suppose that's one (twisted) way to look at it. Or the Turkish army waged a vicious "counterinsurgency" campaign against the Kurds for a decade, "disappearing" people, torturing them, razing villages, and killing tens of thousands of people. People who would have settled for being allowed to speak their own language, publish their own newspapers, broadcast in their own tongue, and just allowed to be Kurds. But that was asking too much, various Turkish regimes decreed. The BBC forgot to mention the reality of Turkish state oppression of the Kurds. And commonly the death toll is blamed on the PKK, or on "the conflict," even though it was Turkish state forces that killed theoverwhelming majority of the now-dead.

By the way, that NATO army also invaded Cyprus and imposed its will on the Greek inhabitants there, supposedly to aid Turkish residents. Greece is in NATO too.

Political Uses Of The Boston Marathon Bombing

[I use the singular, bombing, to denote a single incident. Two bombs were set off seconds apart, in relatively close proximity.]

This latest “terrorist” bombing has in many ways been a godsend for the U.S. establishment. (The term terrorist is so politicized at this point that one is almost compelled to put it in quotation marks, yet to do so immediately subjects one to attack for “apologizing for” or “justifying” terrorism- whatever “terrorism” is- or at the least for being insufficiently appalled, grief-stricken, shocked, horrified by the particular bombing or attempted bombing.) [1]

Most obviously, it provides an opportunity to administer a booster shot of War On Terror indoctrination to the public. As “9/11” recedes in time, and the effects of the massive propaganda campaign that was launched around that one-day event wanes, reinforcement of the indoctrination is necessary.

Notice that “9/11” is used as a totem. All they have to do to press people's buttons is say “9/11.” All the hours and hours of pictures of the burning Twin Towers are permanently embedded in people's minds now on a deep level, as “a horror.” Every invocation of “9/11” causes a mental vibration, an emotional harmonic to occur. It “strikes a chord.” Over and over, the media strums that same note. [2]

I think it no accident that the year is omitted from the date, 9/11. How different to say, 9/11/01, as I do. Now you see how old it is, how long ago it was. Putting it in the past makes it part of history, an event that once occurred, not an ever-present, timeless reality hovering over your shoulder like a malevolent god, a bad dream that never ends or a recurring nightmare stirred up every time some nasty fanatics set off a bomb inside U.S. territorial borders or tries to blow up his underwear or shoes on a plane.

The propaganda system doesn't want people to get over it. They want to keep people in a permanent state of anxiety and fear. (Contrary to what they say, such as Obama saying after the Marathon bombing that “we” will not be frightened. In fact they want people to be frightened, or they WOULDN'T HARP ON IT SO MUCH. I guess politicians lie- who knew?)

Keeping people anxious and fearful makes them submissive to “authority” (the people in power). It makes people feel dependent on those in power for protection and security. (Not for nothing is the word “security” bandied about constantly, in dishonest ways, when they're really talking about the power of the people in power, as in “security services,” or “national security.” This is true in other countries too of course.) It makes people accept living in a police state, submit to paying for a gigantic military establishment and constant wars. I.e. life in an Imperialist state.

The timing of the Marathon bombing was also very fortuitous for the establishment, as two other events occurred around the same time that they wouldn't want too much attention focused on. First, a private group called the Constitution Project came out with a report that finally called U.S. torture, torture. Furthermore, it blamed the top officials of the U.S. for it. (That would be Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc.) The 11-person panel that produced the report was co-chaired by Asa Hutchinson, of all people, a former GOP Congressman and deputy Secretary of Bush's Department of Homeland Security. It did make the front page of the NY Times on April 16th, the day after the bombing, on the bottom. (The bombing took up more than the top half of the front page, including a large photo of the bloody scene.) The second to last paragraph of the article lets drop that the report contains dozens of cases of the U.S. prosecuting similar treatment or denouncing others for doing the same things. That is, it exposes utter U.S. hypocrisy. The report also confirms that the CIA is lying through its teeth when it claims it only ever water-boarded three people. (Which in the article the NY Times still falsely calls “near-drowning,” as if you have to die to be drowned. Drowning means getting water in your lungs, which is what water-boarding does.)

Later that week, a fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas, blew up, killing 14 firemen and injuring 200 residents. The significance of that: first, notice that almost five times as many people were killed by that explosion as by the bombs in Boston, which killed 3, and more were wounded than the 170 in Boston. But that was “just an accident,” so not worthy of week after week of wall-to-wall obsessing over.

Was it an accident? More like an accident waiting to happen. That is, when one examines the details (which I won't go into here but you can easily find information about it) one discovers that it's that old U.S. story of a paper-thin facade of regulation, reckless practices, wrist-slap penalties, and a dominate ideology that insists that regulation of business is BAD. This noxious ideology is especially powerful in Texas. And this explosion will change nothing. Just watch. Because this has happened before. In fact it happens often. 

In 2005 there was another major explosion in Texas, in a BP (remember them) refinery. That "accident" killed 15 workers (5 times the death toll in Boston last week) and injured 170. BP chronically refuses to follow reasonable safety procedures, and after every "accident" it promises regulators to reform itself and shape up, and then proceeds to violate its promises. In Texas, in Alaska, everywhere. Every single time.

I know nothing will change because the U.S. is in the iron grip of an anti-human ideology that elevates private profit over all other values, including human life. The other way I know this is from history: for example the Texas City explosion of 1947 that killed at least 581 people, including all but one member of the local fire department. Thousands were injured. At least 1,000 homes and other buildings were damaged or destroyed. Like the latest disaster, this explosion started with a fire. 

Yet look where we are today. Toothless regulators on the Federal level (OSHA) and regulation-hating “regulators” on the state level in Texas and most other states. Both are feckless and ineffective. The West, Texas plant, situation in a populated area and near a school (they don't even care about children) was effectively unregulated, subject to a mere facade of oversight. As the phenomenon of Ronald Reagan proved, ideology is more powerful than reality. (Religion proves this too, even more starkly. How can people believe that absurd stuff?)

In fact, things will get worse. The NY Times has just reported that the evil Koch brothers are scheming to buy the newspapers of the Tribune Company, which include the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, the better to foist their noxious anti-regulation ideology on the public. (As if those rags were ever pro-regulation.) These papers have long been the propaganda tools of rich reactionary families- the Chandlers in L.A., and the McCormicks in Chicago. Tribune Company bought the Times from the Chandlers, and then the crude and vulgar philistine real estate hustler Sam Zell seized control of Tribune Company with a leveraged buyout, gutted the newsrooms, and bankrupted the company. [3]

1) Yes, even attempted bombings are supposed to elicit shock and horror and terror, no matter how ludicrous- the sad sack “underwear bomber,” the moronic “shoe bomber” (Richard Reid), both lame attempts to bring down passenger planes, or the inept Pakistani whose defective car bomb made some smoke and fizzled in Times Square, or the various “plots,” some fabricated by the FBI. All these trivial things the media won't stop reminding us of. (Yes, trivial It's not as if people are being blown apart weekly, as in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Nigeria, for example, or less often in Indonesia, or India, or in the Gaza Strip, in many of these cases by U.S. munitions. The U.S. media apparently is in the threat-exaggeration business, to justify the relentless increase in domestic repression and global aggression. There is a threat- there are always threats, that's just life- but there are reasonable responses and uses of force to deal with it. What the U.S. ruling system is doing is deliberately portraying itself- and us- as being in mortal peril to justify its own crimes and human rights depredations and flat-out terrorism.)

At exactly the same time that the U.S. media was in a hysterical tizzy over the “terrorist” bombing in Boston, political bombings in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan were described in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, to take examples from the apex of the U.S. propaganda system, as being the work of “militants.” It is standard practice to describe bombings aimed at civilians in those places as committed by “militants,” never “terrorists.”

Unless the victims are “white.” So bombings by jihadists in Indonesia are done by “militants,” except that the Bali bombing that killed 200 mostly Australian tourists is a “terrorist” bombing.

And of course, the U.S.' own bombings can never be “terrorist.” Right now, a young Yemeni man* who went to high school in the U.S. and, ironically, was mentored by a USAF officer, just testified before Congress about a recent U.S. strike on a Yemeni village that slaughtered people, blowing them apart, literally into bits of flesh, with cluster bombs far more devilishly murderous than the crude bombs the Boston Marathon “terrorist” bombers constructed out of pressure cookers, black powder, nails and ball bearings. The “target” was a known man, not in hiding, who the Yemeni government could have easily arrested. But the U.S. under Obama is apparently in a take-no-prisoners mode, so poor villagers must be randomly slaughtered and live in terror, in Yemen, in Pakistan, in Somalia, in god knows where else. Because the U.S. is “fighting terrorism,” don't you see? So how fortunate that its obsession with the Boston Marathon bombing gives the U.S. media a convenient excuse to ignore this, and a distraction for the public.

The U.S. doesn't even bother using the words consistently, let alone logically. Nor does it follow its own official definitions. The U.S. government and media uses the words when it wants to whip up hatred and outrage towards a political target or, and justify a war, or aggression, or “suspension” of civil liberties, or get away with gross human rights violations, or draconian punishment.

Terrorist, like Communist, is a political curse word,.That's all it is when they use it. And terrorism and communism are ill- or never-defined terms that are understood and used as synonyms for Pure Evil.

So using the words “terrorism” and “terrorist” in the way the U.S. establishment uses them is to play Simon Says, with them as Simon and us as copycats.

The same with “terrorist states.” Cuba is a “terrorist state.” Says who? Says the U.S. The U.S. puts nations on its “state sponsor of terrorism” list as a political punishment, NOT because of any actual actions by the targeted state.

Of course, one nation that will never be on that list is a nation that actually has created terror in the hearts and minds of millions of people around the world, for many decades. A nation that mercilessly bombed and slaughtered millions of people in Indochina not too long ago. A nation that has overthrow governments around the world, and installed fascist dictatorships in their places (which killed hundreds of thousands of people in two cases- Iran and Guatemala- and killed almost a million in Indonesia in a political holocaust instigated and orchestrated by the instigating nation's global secret police); a nation that assassinates routinely, with impunity, in several nations at once, spreading chronic fear among impoverished villagers who live under killer drones; the world's greatest sponsor of state terrorism,the good ole self-righteous U.S. of A.

*Farea al-Muslimi was the Yemeni who testified on April 23 before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee convened to examine the drone war. The Obama regime didn't send a representative to testify. [See “As Obama Shuns Hearing, Yemeni Says U.S. Drone War Terrifying Civilians, Empowering Militants," at democracynow.org.]

2) To me, the attacks that day were not a horror, but a disaster, a man-made one, and a tragedy for those who lost loved ones or suffered injuries or disease. As are many things. The idea that it was unique, or unusually awful, is simply counter-factual. More people die in earthquakes and tsunamis all the time. And all but the smallest wars kill more people. And Bashar Assad is doing the same thing on a smaller scale daily in Syria, bombing and shelling buildings with people in them. Every time Israel launches one of its wars on Gaza, again, same thing, only smaller buildings and fewer casualties. What difference does calling one thing “terrorism” and calling other attacks on populated buildings something else make? Dead is dead.

3) A so-called leveraged buyout is a form of theft. It's like a virus invading a bacteria or cell and hijacking the cell, turning it into its slave. In a leverage buyout, the thief doesn't buy the company with his own money. Instead he “buys” it by using the assets of the victim company- which he doesn't yet own- as collateral to borrow the “purchase” money, generally from an “investment bank,” heaping the resulting debt on the company he's “buying.” In other words, in effect the invader forces the company to buy itself and hand itself over to the invader. Mitt “Robber Baron” Romney used this invading-virus technique to make fortunes at Bain Capital, gutting workers' benefits and robbing them of their pensions and often their jobs in the process. In some cases, the companies were completely destroyed.

Anti-Abortion Terrorists Still Allowed To Operate in the U.S.

It seems that the “War On Terrorism” really isn't, or is even more selective and hypocritical than that other excuse for political repression and convenient cover for various covert agendas, the “War On Drugs.”

Now an anti-abortion terrorist assassin is being allowed to incite murder from inside prison.

As always in matters involving terrorism (or so-called “terrorism” we should say when referring to protesters, activists, dissidents, and scholars branded with the label) the U.S. displays the most blatant double-standards, hypocrisy, and bad faith. Here we have yet another example of all that, thrown right in our faces.

Scott Roeder is a convicted political assassin currently instigating murder from inside a state prison in Kansas. Roeder is the hitman who assassinated Dr. George Tiller inside Tiller's church, shooting him dead in front of a full house of Tiller's fellow parishioners (he obviously wasn't worried about witnesses) in Wichita in 2009. Roeder (and his terrorist comrades) is now making death threats against the director of the recently reopened clinic he shut down by murdering Tiller. Roeder even targets the clinic director, Julie Burkhart, by name, turning her name into a slur- with a bit of projection I might add, a common psychological tic in reactionaries- calling her “Julie Darkheart” and saying menacingly that she is "kind of painting a target on her[self]." (Nice; blame the next victim for her own impending murder.)

Here's what else Roeder had to say:

     "To walk in there and reopen a clinic, a murder mill, where — where a man was

     stopped, you know, it’s almost like putting a target on your back, saying, 'Well, let's

     see if you can shoot me,’ you know? But, you know, I have to go back to what Mike —

     Pastor Mike Bray [1] said: If 100 abortionists were shot, they would probably go out of business. 

     So I think eight have been shot, so we’ve got 92 to go. And maybe she’ll be —

     maybe she’ll be number nine."

“A man was stopped;” i.e. Roeder murdered George Tiller, some nameless “man.” And those horrible abortionists are taunting the terrorists, “'let's see if you can shoot me,' you know?” says Roeder, imputing a death wish to the next designated victim. Why, those abortionists are just asking for it! Didn't they get OUR message from the previous murders? We want you to stop performing abortions! Do what we demand or we'll have no choice but to murder you. Sounds like any Islamofascist terrorist, doesn't it? Do what we want or we'll kill you. Roeder and his terrorist accomplices don't even feel the need to hide the identity of the Imam- I mean Pastor- egging them on to commit political murders. (Guess how long a Muslim religious leader would be allowed to walk the streets if he spoke like this.) And exactly like their Islamofascist ilk, these “Christians” claim divine religious and moral authority for their murders.

But this is fine with the state of Kansas and the U.S. Government. A terrorist assassin can openly goad his fellow terrorists to kill a named target, as long as it's a terrorist with a politically-approved goal, in this case the termination of abortion rights, the basic human right for more than half the population to control one's own body.

But wait, there's more. The anti-abortion terrorists are so emboldened by the liberal attitude of the state of Kansas and the Federal government towards them that they recorded the terroristic threats of the convict Roeder and posted them online on their own website. The local anti-abortion terrorist leader who did this apparently has no fear of prosecution, since he feels no need to hide his identity. Roeder also names an anti-abortion Holy Man (“Pastor Mike”) as an inciter of terrorism. That also would be used as evidence of conspiracy if the U.S. were inclined to enforce its own “anti-terrorism” laws and the law “protecting” clinics and providers. But the first of those laws are intended as political clubs against designated enemies domestic and foreign, the second as a sop to the part of the duped Democratic “base” that cares about women's rights, indeed the human right to be free of compulsory childbirth.

This isn't the first example of how anti-abortion terrorists are allowed to openly organize and instigate terrorist murders. There was- still is for all I know- a website death list of abortion providers with their names and addresses and other useful information for assassins. Whenever one was murdered, his name would be left on the list with a line crossed through it. Get the message?

The U.S. and state governments refused to lift a finger against this either. Instead it was left to terror victims to sue the terrorists by bringing a civil lawsuit against them. Of course, the terrorists claimed they were only innocently exercising their “right of free speech.” (Anti-abortion zealot Nat Hentoff took the terrorists' side with his usual excoriating arm-twisting sophistry, bludgeoning the victims of impending murder as awful free speech violators and shredders of the Bill of Rights. Over his career he has often taken the reactionary side in various controversies and painted it in civil liberties colors, spreading confusion with his ideological jui-jitsu. He also acted to disrupt and sabotage the ACLU from within. But that's another story that will have to wait its turn to be told.)

Roeder, shortly before he was allowed to murder Dr. Tiller, was caught red-handed by a clinic worker gluing the locks to their doors. Roeder was known to them. He'd been harassing and threatening them for some time, along with his terrorist collegues. The clinic reported this latest violation of the Federal clinic “protection” law to the local FBI agent. The agent brushed them off and told them it was a matter for the local county prosecutor, a known ally of the anti-abortionists. Of course enforcing Federal law is a Federal responsibility.

So just as the FBI aided and abetted the KKK by looking the other way when they committed their terrorism, so does the FBI studiously fail to enforce Federal law against anti-abortion terrorists.

To head off any possible embarrassment after the assassination, immediately following the murder of Tiller the image-obsessed FBI planted simultaneous puff pieces about themselves in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. (This is an old police trick. The NYPD did the same thing to divert the NY Times from pursuing a negative story about them by planting that bogus tale about the murder of Kitty Genovese (that falsely painted her neighbors as indifferent bystanders) with A.M .Rosenthal, a notorious propagandist. Thus was born a zombie myth that can't be killed. [See “The Witnesses That Didn't,” transcript or audio, On The Media radio show, WNYC.] (2)

And the terrorist Roeder is not only allowed to communicate freely from within prison, he is allowed to goad people to commit more murders.

Contrast that with the treatment meted out to people the U.S. labels terrorists, which it refuses to do with anti-abortion terrorists. (The anti-abortion terrorists may not be terrorist, but the Occupy Movement is, says the FBI.) Consider the case of the “blind Egyptian sheik,” Omar Abdel-Rahman. Or rather, that of his former attorney.

It isn't enough to satisfy the U.S. to hold Abdel-Rahman incommunicado for life. The U.S. imprisoned his lawyer, Lynne Stewart, on a ten year sentence, for circumventing the blockade of her client by passing a press release to Reuters, with a message aimed at his followers in Egypt, to reconsider their “truce” with the U.S. client dictator and torturer, Hosni Mubarak. (Since overthrown, no thanks to the U.S.) Stewart is now being left to die of cancer in a U.S. dungeon in Texas. Her crime? “Conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism.” (3)

Meanwhile Roeder is allowed to call for the murder of an abortion clinic manager. And there won't be any prosecutions or ten year stretches in the pen for the terrorist leaders and Christian Holy Men for passing his message on to domestic terrorists, not to mention for openly inciting murders and bombings right here inside the U.S. Meanwhile, the terrorists work their way down their list of 100 murder victims.

Let's see if they now even block Roeder from continuing to incite murder from within prison, or so much as restrict his privileges in any way.

And what do you suppose the Federal and local “authorities” will do to protect Burkhart, the one “with a target on her back”? Why, they'll go and warn her that her life “may be” in danger. As if she doesn't know that. And then they'll leave this part unspoken: You're on your own, toots.

Thanks a million, officer.

Roeder's threat in and of itself is evidence of conspiracy and intent, a clear piece of evidence of a premeditated, calculated plan to murder 100 abortion providers for the political purpose of ending abortion by violence. Yet this is allowed in the U.S. Contrast that with the man recently sentenced to 17 years in prison for translating Al-Qaeda statements he accessed online, and only for doing that, not for any “links” or “connections to” Al-Qaeda, which weren't even alleged by the Government.

What's that you say? That's different? Al-Qaeda terrorists threaten the lives of millions of Americans? That's a bit of an exaggeration. Al-Qaeda threatens the lives of millions of Americans the same way that lightning threatens the lives of millions of Americans- as something that might theoretically strike anyone. But anti-abortion terrorists do impinge on the rights of millions, and are now threatening to end those rights for millions. That is actually a far more substantial threat than what Al-Qaeda poses to people in America. (4)

But it's not just the destruction of the rights of over a hundred million people that is the political goal of the anti-abortion terrorists. Anyone forced to get an illegal abortion is at significant risk of death. So in actual fact millions of lives will be put at some risk when these terrorists achieve their goal, and thousands of women will die if- or when- the anti-abortionists achieve their victory through terror.

There have been countless acts of terrorism against abortion clinics and workers over the past few decades. Almost none have ever been prosecuted. There are many more acts of intimidation, and even more of harassment, and against patients too.

The State government of Kansas happens to be controlled by anti-abortionists. And the anti-abortion movement and its terrorist wing shelters under the protection of right-wing Protestantism. Christianity is politically powerful in America, just as Islam is powerful in other countries. Indeed, many of these Christians overtly lay claim on the right to control America, claiming that it is a “Christian” country, that the Christian nature of the U.S. is embedded in the U.S. Constitution. (It isn't, but no amount of pointing this out stops these fanatics from bellowing this falsehood as undisputed fact. As Reagan once said in a convention speech, “facts are stupid things.” It is higher ideological “truth” that matters and that trumps mere facts every time.) Apparently envious of their counterparts in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and increasingly Israel, they are trying to turn the U.S. into a theocracy- using as cover claims of “religious freedom” and spurious history about the foundation of the U.S.

Nor is the attack on women's right to control their own bodies an isolated case of an establishment-sponsored reactionary “backlash” (recrudescence of “popular” repression). Rather, it is one of the clearest examples of the establishment's assiduous attempts to roll back the human rights gains in the U.S.- gains that came about as a result of social resistance and ferment over roughly ten years from the early 1960s to the early 1970s. The ongoing assault on abortion rights has been aided and abetted by the U.S. establishment every step of the way. It has always thrown its weight behind the anti-abortionists and left those providing the service out on a limb, isolated and alone. The very fact that abortion, a medical procedure, is forced to be provided in stand-alone clinics, instead of in hospitals or gynecologists' offices, sets it apart from the medical establishment (which is totally craven about abortion) and makes it vulnerable to attack by anti-abortion fanatics.

The anti-abortion movement and its terrorist wing has been very successful in gradually strangling abortion rights in the U.S. 48 out of 50 states now have fewer abortion providers than in 1978- 35 years ago, when the U.S. population was considerably smaller. And the number of physicians and clinics providing abortions have fallen by 25 percent since the 1990s. Some states are down to a single abortion provider in the entire state, such as Mississippi and North Dakota, which are repressive states to begin with. The providers in those states are in their death throes as their GOP state governments strangle them with anti-Roe laws and regulations.

Now that the Republican Party has seized control of the majority of state governments, they have saddled women with scores of repressive laws designed to make obtaining abortions more onerous and to drive clinics out of business. Planned Parenthood, most of whose activities consists in providing vital gynecological and cancer screening for poor women (since the feckless state and Federal governments refuse to serve the needs of the people they reign over) is under fierce assault in primitive states such as Texas, including having its funding cut off.

The anti-abortion movement is buttressed by the backing of the GOP, the Catholic Church, fundamentalist Protestant ministries and organizations, right-wing democrats, and looked on with sympathy by the reactionary-dominated secret police and corporate media.

Publicly the establishment media either poses as a disinterested bystander in the losing struggle to defend abortion rights (while hiding and minimizing the viciousness of the assault) or openly acts as megaphones for anti-abortion propaganda in the case of “conservative” (i.e. openly reactionary) media mouthpieces. Politicians basically can be grouped into three camps: reactionaries who rabidly oppose abortion rights; jellyfish who are indifferent and basically float on the prevailing political tide (the corporate media obfuscate the nature of this type of pol by mislabeling them “moderates,” a meaningless term that implies reasonableness with the implication of unreasonableness by “extremes” to the “left” and right of the “moderates”); and a small group from areas with large constituencies who oppose state-enforced childbearing, typically tagged as “liberals,” which in U.S. political discourse has been turned into an epithet thanks to 30 years of intentional political propaganda by the corporate oligarchy's media.

A clear example of the establishment's support for anti-abortionists is the permissive attitude of the power structure towards the terrorism of the anti-abortionists. The terrorists are allowed free rein until they actually murder someone. Then only a single individual is ever imprisoned- the triggerman. Most of the time they aren't sentenced to death. The network of co-conspirators and supporters who aid and abet and harbor the murderers is never touched. They aren't prosecuted. They aren't hauled before Grand Juries (at least that I've ever seen reported) and forced to divulge what they know. They aren't infiltrated (that we know of, and we probably would by now). No conspiracy cases are brought.

In short, no attempt is made to quash the anti-abortion terrorist movement. (5) It's activities are largely ignored by both the corporate media and the police. Instead the people who do the screaming outside clinics is presented to us as a morally committed “pro-life” movement.

Speaking of incitement, the noxious demagogue Bill O'Reilly, one of the creatures in the Murdoch-Ailes stable of braying agit-propagandists, spent the week before Tiller's assassination instigating his murder by calling him a murderer. (Ever notice how fascists and reactionaries are constantly inverting reality, and also projecting onto others the traits and behavior of themselves they wish to disown?) (6)

The coddling of the terrorist arm of the anti-abortion movement isn't unique. Anti-abortion terrorists aren't the only U.S.-protected terrorists who are A-OK because the U.S. approves their cause- the “anti-Castro” CIA-mentored Cuban exile fascist terrorists based in Florida and parts of New Jersey are another notorious example.

Or take the KKK, out of favor lately, which was allowed to operate for decades and involved in the execution of several thousand blacks who were lynched or murdered in “vigilante” violence. (Since when are sheriffs, their deputies, and state and local government officials, who were all involved with Klan terrorism and were even members of the Klan, “vigilantes”? This is governmental action, state terrorism, hiding behind the hoods of the Klan, a convenient terrorist front organization.)

Seems that state sponsored or coddled terrorism, domestic terrorism, is a U.S. habit. And that's leaving aside U.S. sponsorship of state terrorism abroad in Indonesia (Suharto), the Phillippines (Marcos), Iran under the Shah, Nicaragua under Somoza, Pinochet in Chile, Guatemala since 1954, Argentina, El Salvador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru...the list can cause the eyes to glaze over. That's the trouble. It's so much to absorb, to learn about, that there's too much information to crack the wall of chauvinistic propaganda that most Americans have built into their brains. Let's stick to what happens within the citadel walls of the U.S. empire.

I wonder why the “alternative” media does not make these connections, highlight these obvious contradictions and blatant double-standards, and denounce the establishment for its de facto support of actual domestic terrorism? Making people aware of aspects of reality they are unconscious of is what we call consciousness-raising. And consciousness-raising is the first step in forcing real change in the benighted heartland of this evil empire.

If the alternative media actually wants to change things, it needs to engage in consciousness-raising in a systematic way. Not just try to “make a difference,” a namby-pamby pseudo-goal that bespeaks a craven fear of the power establishment. (“Don't worry, we don't really want to change anything. We just want to make a tiny mark of a palliative sort that no one will object to”- no one except fanatical reactionaries of course, those barking ideological junkyard guard-dogs of “free market” capitalism- i.e. anything-goes capitalism.)

Until there is a rekindling of militancy, the terrorists, their reactionary backers, and most of all the establishment power structure, will continue to inexorably squeeze abortion rights (and all our other basic human rights) until those rights are snuffed out entirely. The key element that is missing here is the outrage and militancy and commitment to fight that gained the advances in human rights in the first place. An attitude change on the part of activists and as broad a section of the public that can be aroused is step one. One has to get angry first.

1) I needn't say anything about the Holy Man's name- Bray. I'm sure he does what his name indicates. A novelist might pick that perfect name for such a character.

2) But maybe the FBI simply has its hands full trolling for angry, naïve, not too bright young men from Islamic backgrounds who they can groom and goad for a year until they inveigle them into “terrorist conspiracies” with FBI undercover agents and informers, create an FBI theater piece with a fake bomb and detonator as props, hand it to their pigeon, and arrest the angry young fool as a “jihadist terrorist” with a splashy announcement in the media. There go those intrepid G-Men again, protecting America from attack! I'm so grateful, aren't you? Interestingly, those little political theater productions are getting increasingly tepid reviews from the corporate media.

3) Before some nitpicker argues that I'm an idiot who doesn't understand the difference between the Federal Government and a state government like Kansas, and that Stewart is a Federal case and Roeder a state case, three points: Roeder committed a Federal crime too when he murdered Tiller, and could have been prosecuted under Federal law. (And still could be- the statute of limitations for many Federal crimes is ten years. And no, double jeopardy doesn't apply for charging someone for the same act in both state and Federal courts. The Supreme Court settled that issue years ago. And it happens. For example, after the acquittal on state charges of the Los Angeles cops who brutally beat Rodney King and were videoed doing it- the only reason they were charged- there was a major riot lasting several days, and the LAPD ran off the streets with their tails between their legs. This political situation forced the Federal government to then prosecute the cops, and they were convicted. Maybe women need to riot over this? Oops! Watch my mouth! The Federal Government will indict me for “incitement.” Not Roeder, not Bray, not any of the anti-abortion terrorists.) But don't expect the Obama regime to take any action. Obama doesn't give a rat's ass about abortion rights. He'd rather persecute whistleblowers and cut Social Security- and cozy up the GOP, if only they'd let him.

Secondly, most if not all states did what the Federal Government did, and used the 9/11/01 attacks as a golden opportunity to pass yet more repressive legislation, hopping on the “War on Terror”^TM bandwagon and eagerly following in Congress' footsteps with their very own “anti-terrorism” laws. Kansas no doubt has these. Thirdly, no American prison authorities anywhere are helpless to punish and control prisoners even for doing nothing, much less for instigating felonies while in custody.

The larger point of course is that some terrorism doesn't count as terrorism, some terrorists are allowed to operate, whereas other political tendencies (including violent ones) are prosecuted as “terrorism” even when they're wholly non-violent, or the “violence” consists of arson or even mere vandalism. Roeder and his comrades meet even the ostensible U.S. definition of terrorism, namely politically-motivated violence intended to affect people's or Government's behavior. The political motive is overt. And the goal here is stated quite openly- to permanently force the closing of abortion clinics by violence. Legally it would be a slam dunk for prosecutors. Law is not the reason these terrorists are allowed such leeway. Politics and ideology is.

4) As it gets harder and harder to press people's panic buttons by flashing an image of a burning World Trade Center tower in front of their faces for the ten zillionth time, there's always that surefire tactic of invoking “weapons of mass destruction” to make Al-Qaeda seem very very scary. Or should I say, “WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!!” By the way, the FBI just entrapped an American who was fighting the Assad regime in Syria for “using a weapon of mass destruction” there- a rocket propelled grenade. So hold on to your wallet when you hear that term.

And since Al-Qaeda is this diabolical global menace, it thus follows that it's very words must be suppressed, by force, including harsh imprisonment for unauthorized disseminators of those words, because all of us must be prevented from hearing what they think, be prevented from understanding them better (understanding is NOT the same as “condoning” “supporting” “sympathizing with” etc., much less siding with or joining, contrary to what the secret police, delegated to monitor us, believe) lest a few people exposed to those words agree with them and even attempt to join their cause. The U.S. insist on this. And their word is law, literally, enforced by a massive police state.

And it's not just Al-Qaeda's words that are dangerous to touch. So are the Taliban's. And Hamas'. Also Hezbollah's. And those of various Iranian state bodies. And of “associated forces” (whoever they are, and you won't know until you're indicted, arrested, and imprisoned for quoting the wrong one). Oh, and the FARC's. And whoever else the U.S. doesn't like today, and puts on the “terrorist” shitlist, even if they're secretly negotiating with them (Taliban) or will hail tomorrow (MEK, ANC, for two examples of ex-terrorist organizations, formerly the blackest of evil people, now given a clean bill of health by the U.S.). Or, for that matter, current puppet outfits like the PLO, who were “terrorists” until they were turned into stooges of the U.S. and Israel.

Of course you'll still be in prison anyway. So be careful who you quote or translate. Be very very careful! Why, they might even indict you for quoting yesterday someone they put on the list today.

“Can they do that?” They've made much bigger stretches than that, my friend, when they target someone.

5) While turning a benevolent blind eye to the thuggery and terrorism of the anti-abortion movement, the establishment has proven quite motivated to crush the Occupy Movement, the black militant movement, the Puerto Rican independence movement, and going farther back in time, the anarchist movement, the opposition to World War I, the socialist movement, the Industrial Workers of the World, the attempts to crush the labor organizing movement, the civil rights movement, the anti-slavery movement, and whatever other movements I left out. They seem to be able to squelch even sizable movements when they want to, much less terrorist gangs.

6) While Bill O'Reilly can freely incite murder, protesters considered leftists (aka “terrorists” in police and secret police lingo) are routinely arrested on spurious “incitement” charges. Incitement to violence, incitement to disorderly conduct, incitement to littering, anything will do, and does, as an excuse to break up political opposition through fraudulent arrests.

Of course, O'Reilly and his co-conspirators Murdoch and Ailes are “protected” by the First Amendment, unlike Occupy Movement demonstrators, or anti-G8 or anti-World Trade Organization or anti-NATO protesters. O'Reilly et al have First Amendment “rights.” Actually, that's wrong. They have First Amendment privileges. If it was a right, the protesters would have them too.