Rambo Rampages In L.A.

In a case of life imitating (bad popular) art, cashiered Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) cop Chris Dorner seems to be closely following the script of the original Rambo movie, in which a disgruntled, alienated military veteran of Special Forces is beset by local police and pushed over the edge. He single-handedly takes on the police and military forces of the state, who hunt for him unsuccessfully as his survival and combat skills prove his pursuers to be no match for him.

Of course, in real life this is going to end with the execution or death in combat of “Rambo.” And this real-life Rambo is the aggressor, at least in physical terms. I'm pretty sure they're going to shoot Dorner on sight, or soon thereafter. (In the movie version, the police were the instigators, and Sylvester Stallone magically kills no one in the entire movie- just a couple of dogs sicced on him- even while shooting up the town with a hand-held machine gun in the climax after which he is allowed to walk away in the company of his Special Forces mentor, unarrested. The Magic of the Movies! And that is magical in at least two ways.) There's good reason to kill Dorner, from the LAPD's perspective: 1) revenge, and 2) to silence him. For even if his complaints are wrong and irrational, they're still going to resonate with that segment of the populate it is the job of the LAPD to repress. And except in the eyes of an increasingly punitive establishment, targets of repression aren't all “criminals.” The police in southern California have already embarked on a rampage of their own.

Or if you prefer an older cultural metaphor, there's the story of Frankenstein's Monster. Dorner, in his detailed complaint/rant posted online, flaunts his specialized military and police training in threatening the LAPD and basically trash-talking them that he'll kick their butts with his superior fighting skills. (I think they'll win, and soon.)

The establishment propaganda system (aka “the media”) has virtually blacked out the specific accusations Dorner makes in his screed that he claims is the provocation for his rampage, instead concentrating on portraying him as a scary menace- a monster. (Rather odd that “news” organizations would behave so unjournalistically. You'd think his motivations would be relevant to the story.) You wouldn't find greater conformity and discipline in Chinese media. Dorner claims he was fired unjustly for “lying” about seeing a sergeant kick a mentally ill prisoner. He made the mistake of “working within the system,” as the bosses and rulers always piously tell people to do, and filing a complaint about the sergeant. As usual with whistleblowers and people who naively take the charade of Official Reality seriously (actual reality is quite different) and “work within channels,” assuming the system is trustworthy and ethical, he was the one targeted and punished. (The father of the prisoner who was assaulted confirms Dorner's accusation, for what that's worth.) More broadly, Dorner says that the LAPD is just as brutal and corrupt as it was when its last major scandal, the Ramparts precinct routine brutality and frame-up system, was exposed. His manifesto provides various specific details, which the media is at pains to ignore.(1)

Proving his point, the LAPD and other southern Californian police immediately went on rampages of their own. Two LAPD cops fired 60 rounds without any warning whatsoever at a 71 year old Hispanic woman and her daughter who were delivering newspapers in their pickup truck. (Apparently their orders were to fire on sight at any pickups they saw, I guess.) The elder woman was shot twice in the back. Luckily these ill-trained curs are apparently poor shots. [“LAPD offers new truck to women to make up for shooting atthem,” msnNOW.com, 2/10/13.] But that was just a “tragic misinterpretation” (of what?) says Chief Charles “Charlie” Beck. (See? He's just a regular guy. He's “Charlie.”) I guess they interpreted “big black man” as “two Hispanic women.” Whatever. As long as they're not white, right?

And in a show of solidarity with their LAPD colleagues, the Torrance Police shot a man in a pickup truck. [See “Wantedfor Killing 3, Christopher Dorner’s Claims of Racism, CorruptionResonate with LAPD’s Critics,” Democracy Now, 2/11/13.] (2)

LAPD Charles Beck made a smarmy attempt to lure Dorner to surrender by promising to reinvestigate his brutality charge against the sergeant. Oh yeah, I'm sure Beck wants to change the verdict on that! He reminds me of someone holding out a piece of meat to a stray dog while hiding a club behind his back that he intends to smash the dog's skull with.

Some shadowy local poohbahs have put up $1 million for a “reward” for Dorner's capture, announced by Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa. Man, they must be desperate to offer that kind of money for info. Not that they're really going to pay it all out. (A little known secret- those fat rewards the FBI or State Department, for example, offer, aren't actually paid, at least not in full. And how is some Afghani or Pakistani going to sue to get it? Hell, if their identity becomes known, they're dead meat.)

By obfuscating the content of his “rambling manifesto,” “the” media erase Dorner's reasons, which I'm not implying is justified, for killing two of his victims, the daughter and paramour of the police captain who had the job of defending him in the set-up departmental proceeding that resulted in his firing, as well as one cop he's killed so far. (“Rambling” is the adjective of choice for the corporate propaganda system when it wants to discredit something without actually revealing its contents. See also the treatment of the Unabomber manifesto, a lengthy and tightly-reasoned treatise with which I disagree, among other examples. “Conspiracy theory” is another handy term of disparagement and dismissal for unwanted ideas.) They also hide the broader motivation for his one-man literal war on the LAPD. To be sure, he's obviously not behaving rationally or reasonably. And perhaps he had the misguided idea (a trope of the branch of the propaganda system that is called entertainment as opposed to news and is supposed to be understood as fictional, although its effect on people's sense of the world is probably greater than that of the news component of the propaganda system) that a violent rampage would get attention for his would-be expose of the LAPD. Of course the opposite is the case. Although feats of violence do grab media attention, it doesn't follow that the propagandists devote more than the most superficial attention to the stated grievances of the violence-performer. Dorner has guaranteed that the system will work mightily to bury his “grievances,” the opposite of his stated intent.

The same thing happened with the Unabomber and the nasty Alabama vet Jimmy Lee Dykes, who just murdered a school bus driver and kidnapped a 5 year old boy as a hostage to try and force “the authorities” to let him get his gripes into “the” media. (Which “the” media could have offered to do to try and end the standoff.) In Dykes case we were told that negotiations weren't working. Does that mean that Dykes realized they weren't going to give him media access? If they had done so perhaps the situation would be been resolved peacefully, or perhaps not. We'll never know. (3)

The interest of those in power to not allow violent desperadoes to communicate with the public is partly legitimate and partly questionable, if not illegitimate. The legitimate aspect would be to not encourage other semi- (or fully) deranged malcontents from “seizing the stage” of the public arena by committing acts of violence in order to gain a platform for their idiosyncratic (whether valid, demented, or some combination, as the case may be) obsessions. A not so savory motive is to not allow ideas critical of the system that may be partly valid to gain currency with the public. Another hidden motive is the personal and institutional inclination of the armed organizations of state power to simply crush such defiant troublemakers in a very definitive and public way. This they rationalize as “making an example of” the miscreant, to discourage copycats. The flaw in this rationalization is obvious- people so far gone in alienation, frustration and rage that they would do such extreme things in the first place are not deterred. In fact, there is evidence of the opposite effect; after the massive publicity over the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre of 27 people in Newtown, Connecticut, there were several copycat mass killing events.

Dorner states that commanders in the Rodney King affair have subsequently risen higher in the LAPD hierarchy. That racism is routine and overt. (His "fellow" cops didn't even have the good grace or respect to spare him from hearing them use the epithet "nigger.") That the LAPD is worse than ever. (It is certainly fundamentally the same as it has been for decades.)

It may not be true that when reform is impossible, revolution is inevitable. But occasional eruptions of suppressed rage surely are.

1) Thank god for the Internet, which is chipping away at the hegemony of the establishment's media over mass consciousness. It's easy to see why they simultaneously hate and fear the Internet and work to control and coopt it. The Internet of course makes Dorner's statement available to most people, enabling them to bypass the media “gatekeepers” of the power structure. [As of this writing the manifesto is available at eurweb.com, “Readthe (Full) Christopher Dorner Manifesto.” A Murdoch TV news video on this page paints Dorner as a monster.]

2) Historically southern California is a center of hard right wing politics. San Diego in particular is a totally militarized city. Major naval and Marine bases and training grounds are located throughout southern California, and many of the residents of those counties are white reactionaries from the Deep South or their descendants. Orange, San Diego, and Riverside Counties for example have long been the bases of some of the most reactionary members of the U.S. House of Representatives, as have parts of Los Angeles County. (Which also has its “liberal” areas.)

The LAPD has long been a fascistic and racist organization with an emphasis on brutality and secret police methods. (The Glass House Tapes, a book of interviews with a black infiltrator used by the LAPD and FBI who came in from the cold, is a good primer on the Stasi methods of the LAPD.) The Godfather of the contemporary LAPD, Chief William H. Parker, who took over in 1950, was an extreme right-wing ideologue. Most of his successors have been of like mind, such as the notorious Parker protege Daryl Gates. They ran the LAPD on a military occupation model. Gates expanded the tentacles of the LAPD political secret police unit, the so-called Public Disorder and Intelligence Division, to beyond the U.S.' national boundaries. A lawsuit by progressive movements victimized by LAPD political persecution ended up in an out of court settlement and some chump change. Naturally the infiltration and surveillance (and worse) never changed. Gates also ramped up violence against blacks and Hispanics. [The Coalition Against Police Abuse was one of two dozen plaintiffs in the suit.]

The later “reformist” chiefs who came after Gates and the Rodney King beating scandal (which was only unusual in that it was captured in a recording which got wide attention, although the police thugs were still acquitted in a trial by Simi Valley white racists, and only the riots that followed forced the Federal government to bring Federal charges on which some of the culprits were duly convicted) have actually not changed anything. This species of “reform” is properly understood as a PR exercise.

3) Here are some other thoughts on the Alabama situation. I'm putting them in a footnote because I'd hate to be accused of “rambling.” Next thing you know they'll be kicking down my door. The police claim to have slipped a surveillance camera into Dykes' underground “bunker, which was a tiny room dug about 8 feet underground. “The media” are notably incurious about the details. We can speculate that with lenses the diameter of pinheads now available, they either hid a camera and wireless transmitter in the toy they passed to the child or in some other object- although there's a question if the transmission would have been picked up above ground- or snaked a fiber optic cable with a lens at the end into the bunker, perhaps down the plastic pipe that came up from the bunker like a periscope. Making a reverse periscope, you could say.

Assuming there really was a camera, and that's not just a cover story for the police, who decided to take a risk with the child's life and burst in, guns blazing, based on something other than Dykes holding a gun, which the police claim they saw through their camera, leading them to fear for the boy's life, their attack seems reasonable. Of course, maybe Dykes was holding a gun because he realized the police were stalling him, refusing his demand to air his crazed grievances, and he anticipated an assault. Still, the boy was obviously in danger from the moment of his capture. And the police can claim “all's well that ends well” since the child was rescued physically unharmed. Whether it was reasonable to refuse to try to appease his captor by saying: “Ok, we'll hook you up with the media and you can air your grievances. But then you have to free the child. No games, no double-crosses.” But maybe they did. We can only guess, since the police and FBI are so secretive and “the” media acts as their lapdogs. It seems instead they did that ploy straight out of the training manual, trading food to buy time or for concessions by the hostage-taker. Same as they offer people they arrest a soda and burger if they'll confess to a crime that will lock them up for twenty years. And they probably find it galling to have to offer that much to get what they want.

In addition to being opaque, the story of the raid has details that don't add up. We were told that a flash bang grenade was thrown into the room, which causes a blinding light and loud noise. This would have temporarily blinded Dykes. Yet supposedly Dykes fired at the cops, who rushed down the stairs into the bunker. If he did fire at them (or not, the media's stories vary) in such a tiny room it's surprising he'd miss, even if blinded, with the police descending the staircase. Perhaps he got off a shot, or perhaps not. I suspect the plan was to shoot him on sight, gun or no gun. Which I suppose is safest from the point of view of the raiders. And of course Dykes put himself in the situation through his own vicious, violent acts.

One big underlying problem is there is no mental health care system in the U.S. There are therapists and psychiatrists who have to act as entrepreneurs and hustle for clients. Private insurers won't pay for therapy, except short term, just for drugs. Dykes as a vet presumably could have gotten care at the V.A., perhaps, but someone would have had to convince him he had a problem within himself and needed help. What to do with a radically alienated and hostile person like Dykes? We're already been through the horrors of involuntary confinement, and mass lobotomies. The actress Francis Farmer was forcibly lobotomized in the 1950s basically for cursing at a judge, then used for raping in confinement. There are innumerable other horror stories, about which many books have been written, so I needn't say more.

A dog eat dog society does not encourage creating a social support network that would try to reach out to troubles individuals in a sympathetic way and draw them in. Also there needs to be laws to permit the confiscation of guns from people like Dykes, who'd frightened some of his neighbors for years and killed one of their dogs. There were “warning signs,” in other words, but there is no system for detecting and responding to such signs. Someone has to commit a serious felony for anything to happen, and then they're either imprisoned or killed. It's an all-or-none response system.

Kiriakou and Novak: The Connection

No, not Kim Novak. Robert Novak. Remember him? The frothing mad dog right wing "commentator" with a regular TV perch on the McLaughlin Group* (for a long time a GE-sponsored show- GE was the SOLE sponsor, the same corporation that brought us Ronald Reagan) and a permanent newspaper column which he used to commit a blatant criminal act- to wit, a violation of the Agent Identities Protection Act. He's the guy who named for all the world to hear the identity of an undercover CIA operations officer by the name of Valerie Plame.

Well, you know what happened to Novak! Openly flouting a Federal criminal law like that!

Nothing. That's what happened.

John Kiriakou, former CIA officer, gave a reporter a lead on someone to talk to in an email. He named a CIA officer in that email, that was seen by nobody but the reporter, and the name was never published.

So Kiriakou had to cut a plea deal and is off to the Federal slammer for the next 30 months. He leaves behind a wife, 5 young children, and close to a million bucks in legal debts. (Pointless since there's no defense these days in Federal courts in "national security" cases- see the interview with Kiriakou for details at democracynow.org for January 30, 2013.)

My point? Well, it's not one I haven't made before. Just another example of the political nature of the U.S. legal (aka "Justice"-sic!) system. How tiresome I've become.

There seems to be a pattern. Right wingers have impunity or near-impunity. James O'Keefe, the video slanderer, caught red-handed in a U.S. Senator's office trying to wiretap the phones- not even a charge! Bill O'Reilly, inciting the assassination of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller- not even scolded by anyone in the bourgeois media! (Contrsat with jihadist propagandists subject to U.S. assassination. And that fellow in Boston who completely on his own translated Al-Qaeda tracts sentenced to 17 years for that and nothing more.) Anti-abortion terrorists can get away with anything short of outright murder. The FBI doesn't consider them terrorists- anti-war activists and Occupy movement people are "terrorists" to the FBI. And so on and on and on. (Did I mention that pretenses to the contrary, the U.S. is a right-wing country and has been one for almost the entirety of its history? Contrary to the delusory ravings of reactionaries about  the "Liberal Establishment." If only there were such a thing! Maybe they mean the Philharmonic and art museums. They seem to resent high culture.)

Novak blew Plame's cover to carry out the Bush regime's revenge against her husband, Joseph Wilson, who had the efffontery to point out the falsity of the regime's claims about yellowcake uranium from Niger going to Iraq under Saddam Hussein, a key fabrication used to drum up the hysterical war fever necessary for the U.S. aggression to be carried out. (Remember Bush-Powell-Rice saying things like "we can't wait for the proof in the form of a mushroom cloud"? They meant over a U.S. city. Those terrorists just blew up the Twin Towers! And Saddam Hussein is connected to Al-Qaeda! [Not really.] Ultimately one of VP Cheney's henchmen, I. Lewis "scooter" Libby, was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to Federal agents. (This is why you should NEVER, EVER talk to Federal agents. That's how they got Martha Stewart and Tonya Harding too- lying to Federal agents. They can lie to you, of course. But you're facing 5 years in prison per lie if you lie to them.Why would you agree to compete on such an uneven playing field? Plus the Government is the referee!)

Libby, like Kiriakou, was sentenced to 30 months, but unlike Kiriakou didn't have to do a day in jail since Bush immediately commuted the prison term. Kind of like how his father pardoned all the Iran-contra criminals to immunize them. Guess protecting right-wing conspirators runs in the family.

The Agent Identities Protection Act was passed as an attack on the righteous publications Counterspy and Covert Action Information Bulletin, which exposed CIA crimes against humanity and tried to enable victims of the CIA in other countries to protect themselves by being able to identify CIA officers pretending to be diplomats in foreign countries. (Adversary "intelligence services" of course know exactly who the CIA officers are.) The law criminalized publishing their names. Apparently private emails constitute "publishing" these days.

*The McLaughlin group had as its ringmaster a reactionary from National Review, one John McLaughlin, a former Jesuit, and a crew of 3 other Beltway reactionaries and one sane person, the world-weary Jack Germond who made rational comments, and consisted of a lot of yelling, yelling which illuminated the mentality of the Empire's political elite, for those interested in studying such things. These days Patrick Buchanan and the billionaire Zionist fanatic Mortimer Zuckerman are on the panel, and Eleanor Clift has to hold up the "liberal" (i.e. non-deranged) side of the arguments. Before he died, Novak was a regular, along with the loathsome and smug reactionary Morton Kondracke. McLaughlin is still the "host."

The U.S. Courts Giveth, The U.S. Courts Taketh Away

Or, Three Strikes And Their Bullshit About “Guaranteed Rights” Is Out.

Of course, by this point in history, there are countless thousands, if not millions, of such strikes. But here are three contemporary cases, the latter two occurring just within the last few weeks:

Strike One: U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo Bay permanent prisoners have habeas corpus rights. In practice, every such appeal brought by the prisoners' lawyers under this putative dispensation is quashed by the D.C. circuit Appeals Court and the Supreme Court refuses further review.

Strike Two: A Federal District Court judge issued a permanent injunction against Obama's Law, the one that he claimed to be against, which gives the President the power to brand American citizens “arrested” (seized by the state without charges) anywhere on earth, including inside the U.S., as “terrorists,” and throw them into the U.S.' military gulag without recourse, for as long as “hostilities” last- i.e. until they decide to declare “victory” in the eternal “war on terror.” (Recall that Bush the Younger wanted to call it the War On Evil, but the political branding experts must have figured that would make it too obvious that this state of “emergency” repression was intended to be permanent.)

Well, Obama, who claimed to oppose the law he signed, and promised not to use it (a totally hollow promise, and also hardly binding on him, let alone on his successors, and besides the point in any event, which is about outrageous state power to oppress us) appealed this decision, and the Federal judiciary obligingly threw out the injunction on the appellate level.

Strike Three: Federal judge Shira Scheindlin issued an injunction against the outrageous practice of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) of arresting guests and residents of apartment buildings for no reason at all. (Black ones, of course. What did you think?) Then she canceled it so as not to unduly burden the NYPD by making them stop it (such a complex and expensive process!) and in anticipation that the appeals court would throw it out in an event.

One thing I should note: the courts are constantly cruelly teasing lawyers and plaintiffs who try to fight state repression through the state's own legal system by giving temporary or minor “victories” to them and then pulling the rug out from under them, not enforcing their own rulings, or ignoring the reality on the ground which makes the tiny concessions of no real import and that do not change the power relationship between the government and the populace it rules.

See? I Was Right About Obama Trying To Bluff Karzai

Obama's pathetically transparent attempt at bluffing Afghan "President" Hamid Karzai has been effectively confirmed by the Wall Street Journal. ["Military Hasn't Pursued Afghan 'Zero Option'" 1/18/13, p. A11.]
The article states that the Obama regime never asked the U.S. military for a scenario of a zero U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan after 2014. It did ask for plans for options with various troop levels after 2014 staying on. So obviously Obama never had any intention of actually withdrawing all troops.

He did get Karzai to sort of kind of agree to immunize U.S. troops for their crimes under Afghan law, somewhat. It's all rather vague. (Isn't it always when dealing with con men hustlers in their bazaar stalls?)

Master Negotiator Obama Tries To Bluff Karzai

Ace poker player Barack Obama (the man who gets fleeced almost every time he has to negotiate with American politicians) made a ploy to bluff Hamid Karzai, the wily Con-Man-In-Chief of Afghanistan. Obama had one or more of his minions plant in the press the notion that Obama may leave no U.S. troops in Afghanistan at all after 2014 (the "withdrawal" date for U.S. forces) if Karzai doesn't soften his negotiating position.

Naturally, Karzai wasn't fazed. This is a man who's spent much of his life in the cutthroat environs of Afghan society. Obama is a man with a record of caving in and making hollow veto threats. The idea that Karzai would be snookered for one second by Obama's bluff is laughable, and pathetic. Obama is like a tourist in the casbah, haggling with a bazaar merchant over some trinket. He thinks he's getting a good price but the merchant has played him for a sap.

Obama's well out of his depth dealing with the likes of Karzai. Karzai has gotten away with running a gigantic scam on the U.S. for over a decade, and calling it a "government." The truth is, the U.S. doesn't dare let its Afghan client-crooks fall. The Democrats don't want to face GOP screams of "WHO LOST AFGHANISTAN?" (That crap started with "who lost China?" in 1949. Most recently we had a mini-example of it in "Who lost Ambassador Stephens?" in Libya.) The Wall Street Journal is already doing it on today's editorial page!

 At issue is immunity for U.S. troops to commit war crimes. That was the sticking point in Iraq, which prompted Obama to pull out the U.S. troops there. Obviously it's intolerable that U.S. troops not have license to commit crimes where they're stationed, since it is their habitual behavior to commit them. (See Okinawa, for example.) And in Iraq, the U.S. military blessed those crimes, even the most notorious ones, like the Ramadi massacre by U.S. Marines storming homes at night and slaughtering the residents because they'd hit a mine.  (That's a tactic the Nazis used in World War II, slaughtering civilians in retaliation for attacks by underground guerrillas.) The Marine Corps exonerated the murderers in that one. Or the helicopter slaughter by chuckling U.S. flying butchers in Baghdad, who killed Reuters journalists and snickered cynically over the children they shot in a van that stopped to offer aid to the victims. (A double war crime.) The upshot of that is Bradley Manning is being prosecuted and will be sentenced to life in prison for leaking the video evidence of the war crime to WikiLeaks. This "aids the enemy." That's true. When the world gets informed of U.S. atrocities, it does provide grist for enemies' propaganda mills. Hence the war against truth by the U.S. government. (Note to Idiots who support Obama: this vileness is what you back, and what you rabidly demand that progressives vote for like sheep. Not me.)

The U.S. is also miffed that their Afghan "partners" apparently intend to free the various Afghan prisoners the U.S. is hoarding at the Bagram Air Force base prison. Maybe they should stuff them into Gitmo, if they're so valuable. Since Gitmo is down to 166 prisoners (86 "cleared for release"- yet the U.S. still won't release them!) from 750 or so, there must be plenty of spare cages there. Since they're never going to close it anyway. Not until "the war on terror" ends. And if "the war on drugs" is any guide, that means not for decades, or maybe until people wise up and overthrow this evil system.

Not that I'm a fan of Islamofascism. But an oppressive Imperialist power that has effectively rescinded 500 years of progress in human rights and thrown us back into pre-Magna Carta days is actually the more dangerous enemy. Al-Qaeda didn't strip 300 million Americans of rights, the U.S. government did. Al-Qaeda isn't "rendering" innocent people all over the world and torturing them, the U.S. and its lackey nations are. Al-Qaeda isn't spending trillions of dollars on an exorbitantly expensive military and secret police apparatus while sharpening the knives to slash spending for human needs, the U.S. is. So I submit to you that the U.S. government is much the greater enemy of the American people, even counting 2,800 deaths over a decade ago in an attention-getting act. (One facilitated by the FBI and CIA watching carefully and letting it proceed.)

The Newtown Massacre, and Political Agendas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is what we could call selective compassion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just not in a good way.

"The Horror, The Horror..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Day, Another Mass Shooting In America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ho-hum. So boring.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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