U.S. Super-Hypocrites In High Dudgeon Over Imprisonment of CIA Spy

A Pakistani CIA operative who ran a fake vaccination program in Abbottabad, Pakistan, to try and obtain DNA samples via needle pricks from the residents of Osama bin Laden’s compound there in order to confirm their identities prior to the SEAL assassination mission, has been sentenced to 33 years in prison by a Pakistani Tribal Court for treason for working for the CIA and not notifying Paki authorities.

This case bears comparison to three cases in which the shoe was on the other foot- Jonathan Pollard, the Cuban Five, and Bradley Manning. But first, let us review:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the verdict: “Lastly, on the conviction of Dr. Shakil Afridi in Pakistan, as I’ve said before, the United States does not believe there is any basis for holding Dr. Afridi. We regret both the fact that he was convicted and the severity of his sentence. His help, after all, was instrumental in taking down one of the world’s most notorious murderers. That was clearly in Pakistan’s interests as well as ours and the rest of the world. This action by Dr. Afridi to help bring about the end of the reign of terror designed and executed by bin Ladin was not in any way a betrayal of Pakistan. And we have made that very well known and we will continue to press it with the Government of Pakistan.” “"We are raising it, and we will continue to do so, because we think that his treatment is unjust and unwarranted. As I have said before, the United States does not believe there is any basis for holding Dr. Afridi. We regret both the fact that he was convicted and the severity of his sentence." [May 24^th.][My emphases.]¹

Actually every country on earth outlaws espionage and treason, including the U.S. That’s a “basis” right there.  It’s the basis on which Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. civilian Naval analyst, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 for passing classified information to Israel. His supporters argue, just as Clinton does in the Afridi case, that no harm was done to the country imprisoning him, and that it was a Good Deed, helping Israel “defend” itself. And Israel is a very close ally (supposedly- more like a doted on and spoiled brat dependent) to the U.S., very different from the U.S.-Paki relationship. To this day the Israelis and their U.S. fifth columnists have been unable to spring Pollard from prison, despite their strenuous efforts. And was it not in both the U.S.’s and Israel’s “interests” that U.S. information of a military nature be shared with Israel? (If you believe in Israeli regional hegemony, which the U.S. obviously does, the answer would seem to be yes.) And Pollard was not “betraying” the U.S. That is, he did not aid a U.S. enemy.

Clinton was reiterating what the U.S. position was all along since Afridi’s arrest. A day earlier State Dept. spokeswoman Victoria Nuland repeated the “no basis” line during the “Daily Press Briefing” (that’s the title on the State Dept. website): “Well, I think you know that Secretary Clinton spoke to this issue back in February when she was testifying. Secretary Panetta has spoken to our concerns with regard to this matter. Our views on it haven’t changed. We will – we continue to see no basis for Dr. Afridi to be held.” [My emphasis.]

Senator John McCain pronounced himself “outraged.”² Senator Carl Levin, chair of the Armed Services Committee, joined McCain in his high dudgeon. (McCain is the ranking Republican on the committee.) And Congress cut $33 million off Pakistan’s annual bribe money- one million for each year of Dr. Afridi ‘s sentence, they made sure to point out. (Oooh, pointed message, politicians!) This on top of earlier cuts. (Not that I think the U.S. should have given all those billions to build up the Paki military against India in the first place.) Meanwhile, on the same day Clinton spoke, “an American drone struck militant hide-outs, killing 7 to 10 people BELIEVED to have been militants,” according to the NY Times. [Emphasis mine, obviously.] For good measure, McCain and Levin threatened further cuts in “aid” to the Pak military if Afridi wasn’t sprung forthwith. [Levin-McCain statement at bottom of essay.]

The U.S. regards Dr. Afridi as a hero for doing what they deem to be a good deed. On the other hand, Private Bradley Manning is treated as a despicable traitor for doing the good deed of revealing to the public information everyone on earth is entitled to be aware of, including U.S. atrocities like the helicopter assassination of a Reuters crew in Iraq and the war crime shooting of a civilian who tried to put the victims in his van, in the process of which children in his van were wounded. Having the information that WikiLeaks obtains was clearly “in the interest of the rest of the world.” So who gets prosecuted for that? The chuckling war criminals in the helicopter? (The onboard video is on the Internet, so you can hear their chuckling for yourself.) No, Bradley Manning is prosecuted. That’s a LOT, LOT more “outrageous” than Pakistan prosecuting Dr. Afridi.

And speaking of assassinations, a number of members of the U.S. nomenklatura have publicly called for Julian Assange’s murder. We should not shy away from comparing the political culture of the U.S. to that of the Third Reich. It is similarly openly violent and murderous.

But I suppose Manning “harmed” the U.S. in that by revealing some of its crimes, he tarnishes the undeservedly favorable image the U.S. projects of itself via propaganda. (See, for example, the U.S. media on any day of the week.) That’s the same kind of “harm” that refugees reporting on Nazi atrocities did to Germany during World War II, or the “harm” that dissidents in places like China and in U.S. allies such as Egypt and Bahrain are imprisoned for. (“Insulting the reputation of the army” in Egypt, for example.)

Dr. Afridi, by the way, did great harm to legitimate vaccination programs and aid agencies in Pakistan. But the U.S. never gives a shit about anything except its power aims. (Except rhetorically. There’s that fabulous propaganda machine again.)

What about the case of the Cuban Five? These are five Cuban intelligence agents who infiltrated Cuban exile terrorist organizations in Florida so that Cuba could try and defend itself against further attacks. The U.S. snookered the Cubans into handing over intel they had gathered by pretending to be interested in better relations and in stopping the decades-long campaign of U.S.-sponsored terrorism against Cuba, which has included blowing a civilian airliner out of the sky in 1976 (by longtime CIA operatives Luis Posada Carriles, and Orlando Bosch, who live freely in the U.S.) bombing hotels (during which an Italian tourist was murdered in 1997, again by Posada, who boasted openly to a NY Times journalist about it) and thousands of other violent attacks. Under U.S. law, espionage consists of spying on the government, not on private organizations or individuals. But law doesn’t matter when a political lynching is in process. And given that the men were tried in Miami, a hotbed of Castro hatred, the verdict was a foregone conclusion. (You might think this cried out for a change of venue. That’s if you don’t understand how railroading defendants works. In political cases in the U.S., the courts and judges are every bit agents of the Government as in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or “Communist” China. See for example how hopeless it’s been to challenge indefinite imprisonment without trial for anyone branded a “terrorist,” for example. Or even to get the U.S. to release its Uighur prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, whom the government itself says aren’t really “terrorists.”

The U.S. pretends to be fighting “terrorism.” So if this were true, than Cuba fighting terrorism would be in the U.S.’s “interests” too, just as Clinton claims what the U.S. did in Pakistan was in Pakistan’s interests. (The U.S. just couldn’t trust the Pakis enough to let them know what was going down. And the U.S. is probably right about that.)

So Cuba was fighting terrorism and trying to defend itself. And not by assassinations or kidnappings or imprisonment without trial either. The U.S. response was to round up its operatives- Cuban citizens- and sentence them harshly- up to life “plus” 18 years. And since they’re political prisoners, the U.S. does its usual thing of treating them with gratuitous cruelty, denying them visitation rights. (It did this by denying their wives and relatives visas to enter the U.S., on the grounds that they’d be a “security risk.” Right, U.S. Sounds reasonable.

The Cuban Five certainly did no harm to the U.S., either. So by Clinton’s criteria, they should never have been prosecuted or imprisoned. But the U.S. is okay with terrorism against regimes it doesn’t like. (See also Nicaragua in the 1980s, for another of many examples.)³

In all of these cases, at least some of the defendants were sentenced more harshly than Dr. Afridi. (Manning of course hasn’t been sentenced or convicted yet, but he faces the death penalty and I expect he will get life. One of the Cuban Five has been released and is being held in effect prisoner in Miami “on parole,” giving the exile fanatics a chance to murder him. Nice touch, U.S.! And then you’ll pretend you aren’t responsible!)

Yes yes, Cuba is an oppressive country. So’s the U.S. And I don’t agree that blowing civilian airplanes out of the sky somehow strikes a blow for “freedom.” And guess what? The U.S. is about as repressive towards dissidents as Cuba. It’s just less honest about it. In Cuba they charge dissidents with political crimes. In the U.S. they frame up dissidents for “non-political” crimes. The U.S. Way of political persecution is much craftier, in that they reduce principled political opponents to common criminals.

Anyway, here’s another question: given that the CIA is responsible for the murder of millions of people in its history, has committed ghoulish atrocities, and is generally a force for evil and oppression, is it ever justified to cooperate with it? It’s hard to see how it could be. Certainly in this case the good from assassinating bin Laden was minimal. But the harm is legitimizing government assassinations of official enemies, openly, brazenly, and celebrating it! This is a lot worse than the Russians murdering  Alexander Litvinenko in London with polonium, or the endlessly harped upon Bulgarian KGB poisoned umbrella murder. (They stabbed someone in the leg with an umbrella that injected a poison pellet, also in London.) At least other governments assassinating people try to be sneaky about it and deny it. To commit state murders openly, and going a step further, boast of it and celebrate, is obviously a big step farther down into barbarism. The SEALs could have easily taken bin Laden alive (had that been their instructions), since contrary to the first lies from the mouths of Obama regime officials, he was unarmed, and they took his corpse with them to dump into the ocean. The idea that we shouldn’t care if the government murders people we don’t like is brain dead and immoral. The government doesn’t like LOTS of people. And the U.S. government has killed many, many non- “terrorists” in its “War On Terror.”®*And political dissidents too, inside and outside the U.S. The FBI already brands environmental activists “terrorists.” They and other U.S. police departments have a bad habit of branding “left wing” dissidents and activists as “terrorists.” “Terrorist” in fact started replacing “communist” as the preferred epithet and justification for persecuting dissidents back in the 1970s, because the fiasco of the Vietnam war greatly weakened the ability of invoking “communism” to stir up hatred.

So if imprisoning “terrorists” on the whim of faceless police state bureaucrats is OK, and if allowing them to murder “terrorists” is also kosher, then obviously what‘s next up on the agenda is murdering more protesters than has already been usual in the U.S.

Even the U.S. media admits that bin Laden was operationally neutered by the time the U.S., got around to slaughtering him. The gain in assassinating bin Laden was a symbolic political victory for the U.S. and especially for Obama personally, who planned to use it to help reelect his sorry blood-soaked ass.

Obama just okayed drone murders of strangers spotted on the ground whose identities aren’t known. So now they’re explicitly killing people without even knowing who they’re killing, if they “look like terrorists” to the CIA secret police cutthroats. These are called “signature drone strikes” in U.S. Imperialist- aka “national security”- jargon. This is after they’ve killed hundreds of civilians, which they lie through their teeth about and deny.

Killing civilians and lying about it is now an established  U.S. and NATO pattern. In Afghanistan, to mention one example, French helicopters murdered some shepherd boys and insisted they were Taliban fighters. In Libya, NATO adamantly denies, against overwhelming evidence, even after an extensive NY Times report, that they bombed and killed any innocent civilians. It’s scummy, stupid, and immoral, and self-defeating to not apologize and pay reparations. But like I said, stupid. Or maybe they’re just cheapskates who don’t want to pay compensation. Meanwhile, they squeezed close to 2.7 BILLION dollars out of Qaddafi for blowing up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. (That’s a cool ten million dollars per victim. And the U.S. media likes to squeal about “exorbitant” jury awards in the U.S.! Oh well, the examples of hypocrisy are endless once you start deconstructing American bullshit.) That’s $2.64 billion more than the U.S. paid for deliberately shooting down an Iranian civilian airliner taking pilgrims to Mecca, in 1988. [Iran Air Flight 655.] If you feel like having your blood boil over U.S. criminality and lying, read the article in the Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute by a retired USMC Lt. Colonel, about this “incident.” As of this writing it’s still at http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1993-08/vincennes-case-study.  Download a copy in case it disappears.⁴

By the way, dead Afghans are worth a few hundred bucks a pop to the U.S., when it’s willing to admit women and children it killed were NOT “Taliban militants.”

At a billion dollars a head, the rate charged the Qaddafi regime for blowing up Pam Am 103, the U.S. couldn’t pay the tab for the millions it’s killed starting from its unholy birth in genocide if it lasted a thousand years. Which, like the Thousand Year Reich, it won’t.

11)      To be sure, the “trial” of Afridi was a travesty. But so are political trials in the U.S. And military “tribunals” in Guantanamo Bay. And the persecution of Private Bradley Manning. A Paki pooh-bah on BBC May 2^th defended the tribal “court” sham by saying the territory is under British law from the 19^th century. Inexplicably, the BBC woman interviewing him didn’t point out that Pakistan is an independent nation not bound to keep British law. (Israel keeps some British colonial law too- law from when Britain controlled Palestine. This law is used to imprison Palestinians without charges or trial under “administrative detention.” The Jewish Israelis figured that this tool previously used to suppress them would come in handy for oppressing Palestinians.)

22) McCain said “All of us are outraged at the imprisonment and sentence of some 33 years, virtually a death sentence, to the doctor in Pakistan who was instrumental — not on purpose, but was instrumental and completely innocent of any wrongdoing.”

But of course McCain is perpetually outraged. Rage is his normal emotional state. This is well-known by other politicians and the media, which keep it secret. He has screamed vile sputtering abuse at his wife in front of “journalists” who refuse to report it. (Guess “character” is only important when they want it to be, like when they’re engaging in character assassination.) McCain bellowed words like “fucking cunt” at her in front of others, which I bet was deeply humiliating for her. What an ingrate the “war hero” is. He married her wealth. That greased the skids for his political career. He should at least be grateful, the rabid militarist dog. Why are women so attracted to beastly louts instead of to nice guys? It’s an enduring mystery. Is it biologically encoded, on the theory that the beastly ones have a survival advantage? Assuming their mates survive their violent dispositions. Maybe it’s time for women to become conscious human beings and transcend the dictates of DNA.

However, the non-perpetually outraged U.S. pols were outraged too. Like “liberal” Democratic Senator Carl Levin. With McCain, Levin called the sentence "shocking and outrageous" and called Afridi’s actions "courageous, heroic and patriotic." (The U.S. defines patriotism for all people on this planet as loyalty and service to the U.S. There’s no such thing as patriotism for other countries. That’s “nationalism.” Cf. the U.S. media.) "Afridi's actions were completely consistent with the multiple, legally-binding resolutions passed over many years by the United Nations Security Council, which required member states to assist in bringing Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network to justice," Levin and McCain indignantly sputtered in a joint statement. "Afridi set an example that we wish others in Pakistan had followed long ago. He should be praised and rewarded for his actions, not punished and slandered."

Well, what are UN resolutions for if not to be broken? Just ask Israel. And international law? You mean like against torture?  Or assassinations? Or war crimes? Or like the Geneva Conventions, explicitly abrogated since the Bush regime? (Don’t ask.)

You might recall (you should, at any rate, for there are certain crimes against humanity that must not be forgotten) that it was Levin who concocted and made part of the so-called “National Defense Authorization Bill” (“defense” is what the U.S. calls its aggression and intimidation all around the planet) a section that “legalizes” locking up “terrorists” indefinitely without the nitpicking nicety of having to charge them with a crime or put them on trial- the kind of “technicalities” by which the guilty routinely beat the rap, in the Dirty Harry fascist wetdream version of reality. And of course a “terrorist” is whoever they say is one, by their perfect Alice in Wonderland logic. And since the entire planet constitutes the “battlefield” in the “global war on terror,” doesn’t matter where they grab you. Could be from in front of your fireplace at home.

The fact that we have come to this pass was totally foreseeable at the beginning of this slippery slope, when the Bush regime seized the hapless Jose Padilla in Chicago and fraudulently claimed he was part of a “dirty bomb” plot to detonate radioactive material in a city. I could see at the time that it was pure bullshit. But they needed to put on a Big Show of “fighting terrorism,” for which they needed victims to play the part of the Evil Ones, and to distract attention from the fact that the secret police agencies permitted the 9/11 airliner kamikaze attacks to occur. (That’s another story.)

After years of being held incommunicado in the Marine brig/torture center at Quantico, he was finally charged with “terrorism” for – get this- trying to aid Muslims in Bosnia who were being murdered by Serbs and Croats. What business that is of the U.S., or how that constitutes a crime under U.S. law, or why that’s terrorism, the U.S. media didn’t bother to explain. They merely confirmed that Padilla was a “terrorist,” and threw the “dirty bomb” “plot” down the memory hole.

33)      Wikipedia has some pretty good basic information on the Cubana terror bombing at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubana_Flight_455 and elsewhere.

Other airliners shot down with very different consequences from the Lockerbie bombing include Israel’s (them again!) deliberate shootdown of a Libyan (irony! and did that goad Qaddafi to do the same?) airliner over the Sinai desert in 1973, and Korean Air 007 (not a coincidental flight number, but U.S. “intel” being cute) over highly sensitive Soviet military installations. [In brief, the plane of the U.S.-satrapy Korea was deliberately sent hundreds of miles off course in order to cause Soviet air defense radars to be switched on, enabling the U.S. to spy on those radar emissions and concoct countermeasures in order to perfect the ability to launch a nuclear attack against Soviet missiles. The Reagan regime pursued an aggressive policy of developing a first strike capability against the Soviet Union, which included placing nuclear armed missiles in Europe which could reach the Kremlin ten minutes after launch, decapitating the Soviet Command structure. Having the Soviet shoot down the hapless civilian jet was a propaganda bonus for the U.S. Richard Nixon had been booked on the flight but was warned off.]

Edward Herman has a pretty good examination of the U.S. media’s glaring double standard when dealing with airliners shot out of the sky, which reveals its propagandistic nature. "The New York Times on the Libya-Pan Am 103 Case: A Study in Propaganda Service," Global Research, 9/22/07.

See also "GOP & KAL-007: 'The Key Is to Lie First'" by Robert Parry at Consortium News.

4) The U.S. eventually paid parsimonious compensation, grudgingly, to the victims it murdered when shooting down the Iranian Airbus- only after Iran sued in the International Court of Justice. The payment occurred eight years after the shootdown, in 1996.  The payment of compensation was explicitly characterized as being on an "ex gratia" basis, and the U.S. denied having any responsibility or liability for the crime. 

The U.S. agreed to a measly $300,000 per wage-earning victim, $150,000 per non-wage-earner, for a total of $61.8 million.

For the outrageous statements by Reagan, Bush, et al about the murders, see Shooting Down Iran Air Flight 655 [IR655]. By the way, the Captain of the USS VIncennes, who entered Iranian territorial waters to attack Iranian patrol boats and ordered the airliner shot down at the same time, was feted by the U.S. media and public upon his return and given a medal for his brave feat. A medal for an alleged "accident" or "mistake"? Sounds like premeditated murder by all involved.

*”War On Terror” is a registered trademark of U.S. Imperialism. Or should be.

A note on nomenclature. In CIA lingo, an agent is NOT a CIA employee. It’s a person outside the CIA that the CIA uses. An officer is an employee of the CIA, a secret policeman, who controls the agents. Agents can be foreign or U.S. citizens. Only U.S. citizens can join the CIA. The media ignorantly refers to CIA officers as “agents.” They are not.

On the other hand, FBI secret policemen are “agents,” formally “special agents” in the propaganda title Hoover came up with for his minions. He was a great branding and image manager, not just an architect of a secret police force with great media and political power. The people the FBI uses as tools are called “informants.” (I.e. informers and agents provocateur.)

The U.S. media deliberately hides the fact that these are secret police agencies by referring to the FBI as a “law enforcement” agency, and the CIA as an “intelligence” agency and its secret policemen as “spies.” An important euphemism for repression is “security.” This term is even used when referring to the repressive apparatus of, for example, the Assad regime in Syria.

Of course the FBI very selectively enforces laws (as well as framing up political dissidents under the guise of law enforcement) and the CIA (and FBI) spies- and conducts political surveillance. Yet the U.S. media has no trouble referring to the erstwhile East German secret police, Stasi, as “secret police,” while describing their former domestic surveillance (political spying) operations. What the Stasi did was no different from what the FBI and CIA do here. And the U.S. media has never reported any assassinations by the Stasi, whereas both the FBI and CIA have murdered Americans inside the U.S. (Including the President of the United States in 1963, his brother four and a half years later, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. after he refused the FBI blackmail order that he kill himself, among many other victims.)

Statement by Senators McCain and Levin on Sentencing of Pakistani Doctor who Assisted in Bin Laden Search

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Carl Levin (D-MI) today released the following statement on the news that Dr. Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who assisted the United States in the search for Osama bin Laden, has been sentenced to 33 years in prison for the crime of treason:

“It is shocking and outrageous that Dr. Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who assisted the United States in the search for Osama bin Laden, has been sentenced to 33 years in prison for the crime of treason. What Dr. Afridi did is the furthest thing from treason. It was a courageous, heroic, and patriotic act, which helped to locate the most wanted terrorist in the world – a mass murderer who had the blood of many innocent Pakistanis on his hands.

“Dr. Afridi’s actions were completely consistent with the multiple, legally-binding resolutions passed over many years by the United Nations Security Council, which required member-states to assist in bringing Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network to justice. Dr. Afridi set an example that we wish others in Pakistan had followed long ago. He should be praised and rewarded for his actions, not punished and slandered.

“We call upon the Pakistani government to pardon and release Dr. Afridi immediately. At a time when the United States and Pakistan need more than ever to work constructively together, Dr. Afridi’s continuing imprisonment and treatment as a criminal will only do further harm to U.S.-Pakistani relations, including diminishing Congress’s willingness to provide financial assistance to Pakistan.”

Jasonzenith.blogspot.com

propagandaanalysis.blogspot.com

ABSURD LIES BY THE U.S. POWER ELITE

Actually there are lots of them. Big ones, small ones, in-between ones.

Remember “Yellow Rain”? How about the “Pope Plot,” wherein we were told that a Turkish fascist was an agent of the Bulgarian KGB?

Those lies served their purposes and are now forgotten.

Other lies are “forever.”

Like, Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, assassinated President John F. Kennedy.

They’ll never come clean on that one. They’d have to admit too much. Admit to a coup. Admit this is no democracy. Admit the treasonous behavior of the entire “national security” establishment and corporate media. Admit they’re like a banana republic.

There are lies that are politically and ideologically fundamental, mythological lies that are part of the bedrock of this socio-economic-political system.

Like, the U.S. is founded on freedom and democracy.

Huh? Actually it’s founded on slavery and genocide. And women couldn’t even vote until 1920. And most blacks basically couldn’t vote until the 1960s- and paid a price in blood even then.  And everyone is forced to choose between two parties that both represent corporate oligarchy. And unlike in Europe, where there’s proportional representation, for all the rest of us there is ZERO REPRESENTATION in government AT ALL LEVELS.

But this essay is to focus on one casual lie in particular, the kind of commonplace mendacity that we are fed daily by the power structure’s media.

This lie was uttered by War Secretary Leon Panetta, commenting after the most recent assassinations of Iranian nuclear physicists in the spring of 2012. He said this:

     "I can tell you one thing: the [United States] was not involved in that kind of effort. That’s not what the                           United States does." (Emphasis added.)              

What, the U.S. doesn’t assassinate people? Sure you do. And you BRAG about it! Every time you use a drone to assassinate people, a boast is issued to the media.

And your “Special Ops” soldiers routinely assassinate people. Osama bin Laden is only the most prominent example.

What an absurd lie.

Of course Panetta, in both his former job as head of the CIA and now as War Minister, has overseen and oversees organized assassination programs. These have been going on for years, and are continually expanding under the reign of Obama.

In fact, Panetta and the Obama regime is happy to boast of assassinations. More and more frequently they are planting stories in the media hailing their latest “success” in bumping of some alleged jihadist. So there is no “controversy” here, no phony denials, no coy evasions. They openly brag about their drone hit jobs. And of course about the SEAL execution of bin Laden, which is part of Obama’s re-election platform, openly commented upon by the media.

And whether one supports or opposes these assassinations is not relevant. It doesn’t matter whether one believes that U.S. assassinations are right or wrong, good or bad, moral or immoral, legal or illegal, justified or unjustified, pragmatic or counterproductive. The issue here a blatant, Orwellian level of mendacity, a bald-face lie right in our faces that nobody notices is a lie or mentions. The public is expected to engage in what Orwell called Doublethink, believing two mutually exclusive things at the same time.

The corporate media scribes dutifully transcribe and transmit the “message,” the preposterous, whopping, obvious lie.

And no one is supposed to notice the contradiction.

Such amazing Doublethink requires an Olympics-level of mental gymnastics. Apparently the political rulers and their corporate propaganda system enablers are confident that Americans possess that ability.

It would seem them are mostly right.

I suppose this comes down to the innate conformity of most people. They seem unwilling to think an independent thought.

Not that seeing this obvious, absurd lie requires a whole lot of thought.

Most people are passive sheep who allow their minds to be fucked daily. Their brains float in a sea of media-created lies and distortions.

taboo-truths.blogspot.com

Avoiding The “D” Word: Depression

Spain currently has an unemployment rate of about 25%- the same figure cited for U.S. unemployment during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Greece's is 21%. In both nations, unemployment among young adults is over 50%. (In fact, Greece has been in “recession” for 3 years now. And here's a euphemism you'll like, from the business pages and mouths of “economists,” those combination soothsayers-cheerleaders: “negative growth.” That means a shrinking economy. They won't even say the word “shrink”!) To add injury to injury, Spain now has a whopping sales tax of 18%, with more increases in the works.

Portugal has 15% unemployment in the second year of economic shrinkage there. They've gutted labor laws to allow employers to fire freely- so there goes that excuse for “structural unemployment,” the old “rigid labor markets” dodge. And for good measure, rent control was abolished, thus striking a blow for what capitalist ideology calls “Freedom,” in this case the Freedom to Gouge for landlords. Ah, Freedom! Breathe in its sweet air!

Ireland also has 15% unemployment, nicely book-ended numerically by a 15% cut in middle class wages. And of course social safety net programs have been savagely slashed, as in all these cases. To top it off, Ireland now has an exorbitant 23% sales tax, on top of numerous onerous taxes on everything else. Why? Because a traitorous regime took on the private debt of some stupid bankers and made it a public obligation. That is, they yoked the Irish people like some dumb oxen to pay off the burden. This nightmare has been going on since 2008 and no end is in sight (although specious promises of an end are periodically made by the rulers, but like a rainbow it always stays ahead off in the distance).

Given the very high unemployment rates in these countries, why aren't we reading and hearing about depressions in these countries in the capitalist media?

Well, that's easy. Obviously because they want to put the best face on things. In other words, we're in the realm of propaganda, not journalism. It's not “objective” to hide reality.

Burmese Military Junta Gaining Upper Hand

You gotta hand it to those sinister beasts whose fangs are sunk deep into Burma, the SLORC, that horrible military junta ruling Burma. (Or “Myanmar,” as these tyrants would have it, in a faux-“anti-Imperialist” gesture.) The UN’s envoy is already calling for the lifting of sanctions. Why? Because they FINALLY let the long-suffering Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the Burmese democracy 

movement and a beacon of hope for the Burmese people, out of house arrest and allowed her party to run for a tiny fraction of the seats in “parliament.” Thus she is virtually totally powerless.  They still won’t let her assume the presidency, which she won fair and square in elections over 20 years ago.

Aung San Suu Kyi is being used as a stooge and a beard for the junta. In desperate economic straits, the junta needed to con the international community, and found in Aung San Suu Kyi the perfect foil. With her face fronting for Burma, the junta can still rule the country, pretend to have instituted democracy, and break the sanctions regime.

Now the regime is setting up the Burmese people for disillusionment with Aung San Suu Kyi when she can’t magically deliver reforms she has no power to institute.

Furthermore, she just caved in to the junta’s demand that to assume the meaningless parliamentary seats her party won, they have to take an oath swearing to “defend the Constitution,” the document written by the military that “legalizes” their continuing unchallengeable rule and that Aung San Suu Kyi is committed to rewriting. So as soon as they tries to tamper with it, they’ll said she “violated her oath of office” and can remove her or, better still, leave her in place but remove her party members from parliament. 

4/30/12 noon NPR reporter Anthony Kuhn on the  dispute  over the oath of office required by  the Burmese military junta of Aung San Suu Kyi’s parliamentarians, to “defend the Constitution.” The Constitution needs to be amended, and she intended to do so. So she caved on the oath, and Kuhn sniffs that it is petty “bickering over the wording of the oath.”

No, she’s being set up. As soon as she tries to reform the Constitution, she’ll be guilty of “violating her oath of office,” Kuhn.

Professional Panglossians Confounded Again

A headline at the top of the Business Day section of the New York Times (Saturday, April 28, 2012, p. B1), “Economic Growth Slows Unexpectedly to 2.2%,” reminded me of a thought I have had often over the years. Namely, the role, attitude, and ideological perspective of “economists” in capitalist societies. 

As usual, the professional panglossians, aka “economists,” looked at the U.S. economy through rose-colored glasses and put an optimistic spin on things. As usual, they overestimated how well the “recovery” is going. (To be fair, since the close brush with economic death of the housing market crash and near-collapse of the finance-capital sector house of cards, a few voices of realism or pessimism are now allowed to be heard from, as splashes of cold water to keep overexuberance in check.)

“Economists” are no mere technicians. They are also ideologues. In addition to their function as numbers-crunchers (a sort of glorified clerk job) their role is to act as  boosters of the capitalist economic system. Capitalist economics is called simply “economics.” (Similar to how the corporate oligarchy’s  media is referred to as “the media.”) This of course has the effect making what it actually is invisible, and presenting it as some kind of value-free, neutral, objective “science,” which it most certainly is not. 

Most of the people called “economists” are ideological cheerleaders, professional shills for capitalism. 

On the other side are Marxists who see every recession as the Final Crisis of Capitalism. But the public never hears from them, because they’re barred from the media. (So what is this “free speech” we hear so much about?) Of course, such views have to be excluded, to maintain the illusion that capitalist economics is simply “economics,” and that the current economic setup is merely natural reality, not a man-made construct. 

Lest someone draw an incorrect inference about my own views, I do not see socialism per se as the answer. For one thing, “Lord” Acton was on to an important truth when he said that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Having government own all economic enterprises fails on that ground alone. Also it is grossly inefficient. And markets do provide necessary signals about demand and prices. Just look at the Soviet Union, which manufactured shoddy goods no one wanted based on quotas issued by bureaucrats in Moscow. Or Cuba, where shops run by unmotivated government employees have no interest in customer service. At least under capitalism, while there is indeed rotten customer service, and shoddy and dangerous products, there’s a possibility because of market pressures for satisfying consumer demands. Of course, the scandal of untested medical devices maiming people [see Consumer Reports  May 2012, e.g.] and dangerous drugs allowed on the market shows that U.S. capitalism at least is UNDERREGULATED. (Try telling that to the Republican OR Democratic Parties.) More example sof underregulation: repeated BP oil installation “accidents” (in Alaska, Texas, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caucasus) and Massey coal’s chronic criminal conduct over years, virtually unchecked by sham government “oversight.” Corporations like BP and Massey should be designated as RICO entities and disbanded. (Massey was bought out at a premium price by another coal company AFTER its last lethal mine disaster. Guess they figured that they wouldn’t have to bear much of a burden, like Dow Chemical figured when it bought the murderous Union Carbide corporation of Bhopal infamy. But then “Dioxin Dow” is no more scrupulous than UC, so what the hell, they must have figured.)

What is really needed is serious regulation, not sham regulation as mostly exists in the U.S. This in turn somehow requires that the power of capital to control government be greatly limited. There is no prospect of this happening under the current U.S. political system.

Taboo-truths.blogspot.com

Jasonzenith.blogspot.com

U.$. Media Lies, Big and Small

NPR 4/23/12 6:38 am: Quill Lawrence, NPR’s man in Kabul, Afghanistan, being incestuously interviewed by the NPR morning anchor, repeats for the umpteenth time the lie that “Korans that were accidentally burned” in the big U.S. prison in Kabul. The lie that the burnings were “accidental” or “inadvertent” (the other adjective NPR hacks routinely parrot every single time the incident is mentioned) is now thoroughly embedded in the pseudo-reality and pseudo-history created by the U.S. propaganda system.

The Korans weren’t accidentally mixed in with other garbage. They were taken off the shelves, searched, and a decision was made to burn them. Stealth was employed to hide the burning from the Afghans. (You have to go to Aljazeera to find this out. The Iman at the prison told Aljazeera- on camera- that the day before the burnings, the U.S. military told him to take the next day off. Afghan workers asked the U.S. personnel where the truck was going, and were told the books were being taken to “storage.” Of course the truck was then driven to the burn pit. Afghan workers in the vicinity saw the activity and came over to help, upon which they saw the Korans burning and grabbed them from the flames.*

Stupid, bone-headed, callous, insensitive, counterproductive, whatever you want to call it, the burnings weren’t “inadvertent” or “accidental.” They were deliberate and intentional. The people burning them knew what they were burning. They didn't think they were empty egg cartons or something.

What NPR and the rest of the U.S. propaganda system has never answered is who gave the order. Funny how the details are all swept under the rug. What is so much worse that they’re hiding?

I would be surprised if the order came from general rank level, but it’s possible. It seems that the camp commander probably had foreknowledge at least.

What the incident shows to me is how disconnected the top U.S. military and political bosses are from their subordinates. The rhetoric  that constantly flows from the mouths of the top generals and bureaucrats, the tired old “winning hearts and minds” shtick we were fed during the criminal Vietnam war, during which the worst atrocities were routinely committed by the U.S. military, the country was devastated with poisons, 6 million tons of bombs were dropped-  three times the tonnage dropped in World War II in a far larger geographical area, according to official U.S. Air Force figures-  and millions of Vietnamese were killed, including huge numbers of defenseless noncombatants. The bosses spewing this gush, like the disgusting Leon Panetta, lifelong political apparatchik, a made member of the nomenklatura, who started out as a hack Democratic party pol, then went on to power appointments, like CIA director and now Secretary of “Defense” (he loves assassinating people, by the way), either are too obtuse to notice or feign not to notice the glaring contradiction between their avowed strategy and tactics and the reality of the mindset, attitudes, and behavior of their troops.  Apparently the message about the need for “cultural sensitivity” and understanding the Afghans and winning their hearts and minds somehow never filtered down to the ground.

I don’t think the Koran burners were clueless. They knew enough to try and deceive the Afghans and hide what they were going to do from them. (In order to claim it was “accidental” and “inadvertent,” the U.S. media needs to black out the facts that Aljazeera reported. Damn that Aljazeera!) But unless you pretend that the U.S. soldiers didn’t know they were burning Korans, it’s still nonsensical to use those lying adjectives, even based on what the U.S. media is willing to let us know. (Thank God their monopoly on information is breaking down!)

Every time another “incident” comes to light- pissing on corpses, posing with body parts, whatever- Panetta and the chorus of top officials and generals gasp that they’re “shocked, shocked” at such behavior, which “don’t reflect our values” “don’t reflect American values” as Panetta avers after every single “incident.” (And obviously the incidents that become public knowledge are just the tip of the iceberg. Soldiers don’t take photos of every single questionable thing they do, don’t post the photos they do take online every single time they take photos, the posted photos are not publicized every single time they’re posted, for example. Far, far from it.)

In sum, calling the Koran attempted incinerations “accidental” is an example of a small lie with a definite political and ideological purpose. The purpose seems to be to say “We meant no harm.” Which is besides the point, really. It caused great offense, and could reasonably have been predicted to cause great offense, and it occurred in the context of a foreign troop presence unappreciated (at the least!) by most Afghans that is over a decade old, and that follows many, many other “incidents,” like bombing wedding parties, killing innocent civilians, raiding people’s homes, etc.

Other official/media lies are larger. Sometimes there are entire campaigns of lies, a propaganda fabrication, an ideological confection, sinisterly designed with political-ideological goals in mind.

Some lies vanish without a trace after they’ve served their purpose- the bogus propaganda campaigns “Yellow Rain” and “Pope Plot” (both political theater produced by the CIA). “Yellow Rain” portrayed bee excrement as Commie biological warfare. “Pope Plot” pretended that a Turkish fascist terrorist from the notorious Grey Wolves was a KGB-Bulgarian assassin. You never hear a mention of either media show these days. But there were no retractions of the “Pope Plot,” and only some media “corrected” the “error” of “Yellow Rain.” (Not the fascistic Wall Street Journal, which in its self-appointed role as Ideological Commissar viciously attacked scientists like Matthew Meselson for not toeing the CIA’s line and blowing the fabrication up with honest science. This same rag of course likes to condemn enforced ideological conformity in socialist regimes past and present. Hypocritical or cynical? You make the call.)

By the way, the media propagandists aren’t naïve or dupes. They aren’t such naïfs as to be fooled by the secret police. They are willing, conscious stooges. Just like in any country where the secret police use the media for propaganda operations. The naïve ones are the media “critics” who portray the media accomplices as dupes- or pretend to think they are.

Then there are lies about specific events that must be desperately reinforced over and over. The pesky truths about the CIA assassinations of the Kennedys and King just won’t stay buried, so for example the Warren Commission fraud must be reasserted over and over, while anyone refusing to genuflect before that hoary pack of absurd lies is ridiculed, ridicule being the only recourse when the facts are against the propagandists. Honest discussing, debate, search for truth- fuggettaboutit! The propagandists evidently know they’d lose.

Ridiculing one’s opponent is  an example of an ad hominen argument, that being Latin for “to the man.” Instead of arguing one’s case on the merits, one attacks one’s opponents personally to discredit the opponents, instead of refuting their arguments with facts and logic. It’s a technique often resorted to by people who don’t have a good case to make. The crudest form of an ad hominen attack is ridicule, which is what the corporate propaganda system has been reduced to when it comes to protecting the CIA in the JFK assassination. (Shamefully, The Nation magazine is one of the worst offenders in this regard, as they recently demonstrated just a couple of months ago. Such behavior as accomplices in a never-ending cover-up of state murder raises the gravest questions about the bona fides of The Nation.)

Other, bigger, permanent lies are cornerstones of the propaganda and official mythology edifice, key to the ideological indoctrination of the populace- such as portraying the U.S. as World’s Freest Country, U.S. as Spreader of Democracy Around The World, like some Johnny Appleseed of Liberty. Which ignores actual fact and history- the history of U.S.-instigated coups, numerous military dictatorships backed up and kept in power by the U.S., U.S. providing lists of victims for the death squads of those countries to torture and “eliminate,” and on and on. The U.S. has destroyed democracy in many more countries than it could plausibly claim credit for reinstalling (not creating) it in- if by “democracy” we mean bourgeois class dictatorships that stage elections. Let’s see, after World War Two, there was Germany, Italy, and Japan. Any others? Hmm… (Japan was effectively a one-party dictatorship from after the major war until recent years.  In Italy the CIA secretly funded the “Christian Democrats” to keep them dominant. It also manipulated German politics and funded right-wing media there. In France the CIA was very active to make sure the politics came out the “right” way. In Spain and Portugal fascist dictatorships were left in place for decades until their own people finally managed to free themselves, no thanks to the U.S., the Big Defender of Freedom And Democracy.)

*We can see once again why the U.S. elites hate Aljazeera so much. Aljazeera complicates their efforts to deceive people and manipulate events. Aljazeera is committing the worst crime in the eyes of the U.S. power-elite- it is interfering with U.S. POWER.

No wonder the U.S. military kept bombing Aljazeera, murdering their journalists. No wonder they kidnapped an Aljazeera employee and kept him in Guantanamo Bay for years, where they pumped him for information about Aljazeera they could use for malign effect and tried to force him to be their mole inside Aljazeera or else rot for life in their military dungeon.

Oh yeah, the U.S. really stands for human rights.

You’all who believe that, have I got a fabulous deal for you! I own a bridge in Brooklyn I need to sell quick!