U.S. Using Slave Labor on a Massive Scale: What, You Don’t Believe It? Read On...

It was on the top of page one of the Sunday New York Times May 25^th, so why the skepticism? No, the Times didn’t use words like “slave,” “slavery,” “slave labor,” but that is what it described. The Times is an inveterate user of euphemisms to sugar-coat the crimes of the system that it is in large part a mouthpiece for. So let’s take a look at the article. [1]

The headline reads, “Using Jailed Migrants As a Pool of Cheap Labor.” Very, very, very cheap, in fact. So cheap as to be no different from slavery. But you have to figure that out for yourself. Which is easy to do, if you just read the subhead: “Detainees Resist a U.S. Program That Puts Them to Work for $1 a Day or Less.” Note the sugar-coated euphemism for prisoner, “detainee.” A “detainee” is someone held for a brief time. But starting with its use as a euphemism for the permanent prisoners in the U.S. military gulag at Guantanamo Bay (on occupied Cuban territory) the word has been perverted in an Orwellian way so it no longer denotes a temporary holding of a person, but actual imprisonment. The U.S. government and propaganda system don’t want to admit they have untried and unconvicted prisoners, I guess, so they pretend their captivity is brief and temporary by misusing the word “detainee.” [2]

According to the Times, in county jails no money at all is paid. Instead the prisoners are “paid” with candy bars and soda. Like the way you would “pay” a donkey or an ox. But those are the lucky ones. Some prisoners in the awful county jails of the U.S. work “free,” says the article. So no qualification at all is necessary for the word, “slave.” A word the Times assiduously avoids.

There are tens of thousands of these slave laborers, captured non-citizens in the clutches of the U.S. government (and its partners in oppression, county jails which are run by local sheriffs’ departments, and private companies in the prison business) held every year in involuntary servitude. The Federal government pays the sheriffs and private prison corporations to “house” (imprison) the bulk of the “detainees” (prisoners). The Times says there were 60,000 slave laborers in this particular slave labor “program” last year.

Now. these aren’t convicts. Of course there’s also a massive system of slavery in American prisons for citizens. This story is about “illegal immigrants,” “civil detainees” the Times calls them, swept up in the massive Obama roundup that has been going on for five and a half years now (2 million captured and counting), who are awaiting adjudication of their fate by immigration courts. According to the Times, “roughly half” of those who appear in court “are ultimately permitted to stay” in the U.S. (But not all go to court. Some “agree” to be deported to get it over with, to escape their imprisonment and separation from their families who they cannot support while imprisoned.) And that statement by the times doesn’t strike me as accurate. Most immigration prisoners have no attorneys to represent them, for one thing. [3]

One case the article highlights was a chef, forced to cook for a dollar a day, who was in the U.S. legally but was imprisoned for 19 months as a slave anyway! Seems his work visa was canceled because of a “clerical error.” 19 months imprisoned as a slave laborer because of a clerical error. That’s the kind of story that Americans would cluck their tongues at if it happened in a “backward” country like India.

The cook, interestingly, is from Guatemala, a country turned into a fascist hellhole by the U.S. coup in 1954 ordered by Eisenhower, that destroyed democracy in that country and has been a terror state ever since. For Guatemalans, there is no freedom in the “Free World.” It’s the terrible economic and political conditions in their homelands, mainly Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador, that drive these immigrants to the U.S.

Both the U.S. Government and private “contractors” that now run prisons use immigrant slave labor. In some private prisons, the victims have organized resistance by refusing to work and by hunger strikes. Their corporate oppressors have responded by throwing them into solitary, which is not only a vicious punishment and attempt to break their spirits, but cuts them off from those outside trying to draw attention to the plight of the slaves. [4] (Democracy Now! reported this before the NY Times did. The Times rarely breaks news, by the way. Sometimes they refuse to report news for years and years, as in the case of 30,000 Argentines murdered by the military junta there.)

The U.S. government and media love to carry on and on about how oppressive adversary countries are. And those countries certainly are in some cases (but not others, like Venezuela and Ecuador, which are demonized because of the social and economic policies adopted by popular leaders there). But the U.S. is actually a very repressive country itself. Quick Quiz: what nation has the world’s largest prisoner population? Why, it’s the Land of Freedom, the USA. The closest competitor is CHINA, with over FOUR TIMES the population of the U.S. Well, that’s one objective measure of oppressiveness. Four percent of the world’s population, with 25% of the world’s prisoners. Amazing. And one out of nine of state prisoners are doing life, a third of those without the possibility of parole. (Most prisoners are prisoners of one of the 50 states, not Federal prisoners, which number roughly 10% of total inmates.) The U.S. has thousands of prisoners doing life for non-violent “offenses,” typically “drugs” (outlawed inebriants).

The U.S. is a country where people have been sentenced to life in prison for, among other trivial crimes: shoplifting a pair of socks; shoplifting a t-shirt; stealing a slice of pizza. (All three cases, and numerous similar ones, occurred in “liberal” California under that state’s draconian “three strikes” law, mandating a sentence of life for a third criminal conviction. Under that law, the most common “crime” resulting in a life sentence has been marijuana possession. What, the U.S. is a repressive country? What kind of anti-American propaganda is that? And California isn’t the only state with such a law. In many states, words considered “hate speech” or “terroristic threats” can land one in jail for a decade, for example.)

Actually there are many ways in which, viewed objectively, the U.S. is one of the most repressive countries on earth. The massive size of the prison population. The percentage of the adult population imprisoned. The draconian penalties under its laws- and many of the laws themselves being unjust. Selective prosecution of the “lower” classes and of political dissidents. Massive surveillance of the population. Total lack of personal privacy. Institutionalized use of torture, not just by the CIA and military, but of civil prisoners, including solitary confinement for years and even decades. Routine use of police perjury and fabricated evidence to convict people of crimes. Murder of journalists, both overseas and inside the U.S. (Danny Casolaro, Michael Hastings, and possibly Gary Webb, to name some killed stateside.)

But not to worry. After quadrupling its prison population in the last few decades, part of the media (including the NY Times) are informing us that the “trend” of “increasing incarceration” is reversing, or about to reverse, or is set to reverse, or is being “rethought.” I feel better already. Of course, the millions of people branded felons can barely get a job, are legally barred from many professions, cannot vote in many states, cannot live in public housing (so they can’t rejoin their families in many cases), cannot get public benefits like food stamps, or student loans, and on and on with a lengthy list of lifetime punishments. Whatever. They can always curl up into big balls and just die, I guess.

Maybe this awful system of power is what needs to die.

1] The online version is “Using Jailed Migrants as a Pool of Cheap Labor,” posted a day earlier, May 24, and is mostly the same as the print version.

2] Other sugar-coating euphemisms in this vein are “detention facility” for prison, “corrections” for punishment, and of course the notorious “enhanced interrogation techniques” for torture, sometimes rendered with a whiff of disapproval as “harsh interrogation techniques,” a term that still shields the torturers from the proper moral opprobrium that is due.

[3] Just to be clear, the word “court” is a bit misleading. These are not independent judicial forums. The “judges” are actually administrators. You can guess which side usually wins. Hell, in actual Federal courts, the government wins over 90 of cases it tries. Similarly in state courts, prosecutors win at a similar rate. The “courts” are actually part of the Department of “Justice.” That is, the prosecutors and the “judges” are part of the same organization.

The so-called Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) is an office of the United States Department of “Justice” and is responsible for adjudicating immigration cases. EOIR oversees immigration “courts” in the United States through the Office of the Chief Immigration “Judge,” a “Justice” Department employee. Additionally, the Board of Immigration Appeals, which hears appeals from immigration “courts,” is part of EOIR. The establishment then pretends that this gigantic sham constitutes a fair and impartial judicial process. In fact it’s just an administrative process by the prosecutorial arm of the U.S. Government, the Do”J.”

The chief function of EOIR is to conduct removal proceedings, which are administrative proceedings to determine the “removability” (euphemism for deportation) of individuals in the United States. Removal proceedings are conducted in immigration “courts.” As of 2008, there were fifty-two immigration “courts” throughout the U.S.

[4] While the slaves aren’t doing so well, the corporations and their shareholders are holding up ok. The stock of “Corrections [sic] Corporation of America” has risen in from $3 a share to $30 over the past decade, a tenfold increase, or a 900% rise. Investing in repression is a smart investment!

A Myth Stronger Than Arithmetic: The “Stolen” 1960 Election

There’s a myth about the U.S. presidential election of 1960: that Kennedy won the 1960 presidential election by “stealing” Illinois. (Specifically that the Richard Daley Democratic political machine, which controlled Chicago, the most populous city in Illinois, cheated.)

People as varied as the reactionary numbskull playwright David Mamet, to disillusioned former CIA officer John Stockwell, believe this myth: Mamet out of ideological fanaticism, and Stockwell I assume out of carelessness. [1]

But this myth is ludicrously easy to refute, namely with simple arithmetic.

People hear this myth so often, it probably never occurs to them to check the most obvious fact on which it must rest- that if Illinois' electoral votes were given to Nixon instead of to Kennedy, Nixon would have won. But simple arithmetic shows this isn’t so. All one has to do is perform a mathematical exercise that a first grader could perform: subtract Illinois’ electoral votes from Kennedy’s original total and add it to Nixon’s, and see which number is larger. The larger number is the winner.

So let’s do what the U.S. media has apparently lacked the resources to do in 54 years.

You can confirm these numbers yourselves very easily online. Kennedy’s electoral college total was 303. Nixon’s was 219. Illinois had 27 electoral votes that year, all of them going to Kennedy. Now concentrate, here comes the tricky part: 303 MINUS 27 EQUALS 276. So if Kennedy had “really” lost Illinois, he would have had 276 electoral college votes. Now ADD 27 to Nixon’s 219, and you get 246.

Now here’s the really hard part. 276 is a BIGGER NUMBER than 246. Since the person with the BIGGER NUMBER has MORE VOTES, that person WINS. So Kennedy with 276 STILL BEATS Nixon with 246.

David Mamet, Richard Nixon’s skeleton, all you right-wing conspiracy theorists, and corporate media parrots who uncritically repeat rightwing political agitprop: go back to first grade and retake elementary arithmetic.

The people who started this myth must have either been extremely cynical, or kindergarten drop-outs.

It probably never occurs to people that mythmakers would be so brazen as to fabricate such an obviously fictive claim. Who would have the nerve? But reactionaries follow the Hitler-Stalin method: nothing is too brazen; in fact, the more whopping the lie, the better, because small lies meet with more skepticism than big ones. People assume that a whopping lie must be true, because no one would dare try to pull such a thing. [2] Also, most people could never see how completely unscrupulous Nixon was- thanks to the U.S. corporate propaganda system consistently covering for him, even after the Watergate burglary, or rather the one Watergate burglary (it wasn't the first one the “Plumbers” committed against the practically unguarded Democratic National Committee offices- not even an alarm? or did the CIA-trained burglars, including JFK assassin E. Howard Hunt, disarm an alarm?)

And Nixon, true to his utterly cynical nature, actually put it about for years afterwards that he didn’t challenge the election results for the good of the country! Chutzpah, forevermore thy name is Richard Milhous Nixon. And notice how his slimy move served a dual political function. He deflects right-wingers who might be angry at him for “caving in,” and he presents himself to everyone else as noble, high-minded, self-sacrificing for the good of the nation, a man so loyal he let himself be cheated out of the presidency to serve the higher purpose of protecting the stability and perceived legitimacy of the political power structure! Nixon, one of the most selfish men who ever lived! A man who spent his life playing every angle for self-advancement and self-aggrandizement. The cynicism is supremely ironic.

Meanwhile, the Zombie Myth of the Stolen 1960 Presidency will never die, it seems. The U.$. media is assiduous about heaping ridicule on true conspiracy accounts, such as the assassinations of the Kennedys and King, and the 9/11 attacks, but this one gets a pass, as do most right-wing conspiracy theories. None Dare Call It Bias and Hypocrisy.

1] Not too many years ago, the idiot reactionary Mamet was given space in the Village Voice (an allegedly “alternative” weekly paper) to spout this impossible conspiracy theory. I sent the Voice a letter pointing out the math, but the “leftist” paper didn’t run it, nor did they run a correction so their readers wouldn’t be disinformed by the falsehood.

2] Hitler explicitly stated that a big lie was better than a small one because the average person wouldn’t imagine that anyone would be so brazen as to tell such an obvious untruth, whereas they are more suspicious of small lies because these are the kind they’re familiar with (and that they themselves tell). But he didn’t mean HE lied. He said JEWS used this technique to evade responsibility for losing World War I for Germany. You see, the Jews were guilty of blaming the German General Staff. Ironically, Hitler’s example of the Big Lie technique was itself a big lie.

From James Murphy's translation of Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”):

“But it remained for the Jews, with their unqualified capacity for falsehood, and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall precisely to the man who alone had shown a superhuman will and energy in his effort to prevent the catastrophe which he had foreseen and to save the nation from that hour of complete overthrow and shame. By placing responsibility for the loss of the world war on the shoulders of Ludendorff they took away the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland to Justice.

“All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.”

—Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X.

The Awfulness of the Olympics

Corrupt scam run for years by a fascist. Rampant bribery and insider dealing. Cynical multibillion dollar business that exploits naïve young athletes who are “paid” in “glory” and “dreams.”

Citizens forced to involuntarily subsidize the cynical, manipulative spectacle to the tune of billions of dollars for the benefit of the Olympics business and politicians who get to preen on “the world stage” for a few days.

Ever since Hitler used them for political propaganda, politicians everywhere, from heads of state down to mayors vying to be “host” cities, have seen the Olympics as a chance to polish their own images. Politicians leech billions from their subjects for the politicians' vanity projects, “hosting” the Olympics. (The politicians and media propagandists prefer the word “prestige” to vanity.) “Hosting” means bribing the Olympics' poohbahs individually, and politicians spending billions on stadia and gussying up their towns, to provide venues for this business that provides entertainment for two weeks or so once every two years.

An event that is explicitly nationalistic, promotes nationalism and competition between nations. The spectators' role is to cheer for “their” nation's athletes, not for athletes per se, athleticism, or individual sports.

In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, thousands of poor people are being forced from their homes and permanently relocated miles away, far from their former jobs and transportation, to make way for the Olympics. Ripped from their communities, they are more human tumbling tumbleweeds blown hither and yon by an inhuman power system.

German Government Reaffirms Status as BootlickingToady to U.S.

The regime of Chancellor Angela Merkel has barred Edward Snowden from coming to Germany to testify before a Parliamentary committee. This despite the fact that Snowden revealed not just massive spying on German citizens by the NSA, with the help of the German secret police, but deliberate targeting of Merkel's own cellphone, starting before she became Chancellor.

Her regime apparatchiks informed the committee in writing that allowing Snowden in to testify would "run counter to the political interests of the Federal Republic" and "put a grave and permanent strain" on US-German relations. Unlike tapping their Chancellor's phone, apparently. Which speaks volumes about Germany's relationship to the U.S., and the hollowness of German “democracy,” since a parliamentary committee can be stymied in its work in this high-handed fashion.

Merkel has been summoned to the capital of the Empire, Washington, D.C., to “confer” about forcing Russia to abandon Ukraine, and to get Europe to agree to a trade deal to the U.S.' liking. (The U.S. has the upper hand in such negotiations not only because of its superior power, but because it knows exactly what the other side in the negotiations are thinking, strategizing, and the minimums they'll accept, thanks to the NSA tapping and bugging all European governments' and pan-European institutions' computers, phones, and offices, which we also know now thanks to Edward Snowden.) Apparently they don't trust phones so they need to speak in person. And notice who goes to see who. The subservient one is summoned into the presence of the superior one.

The U.S. has even refused to agree to stop spying on allies like Germany, as Germany has asked.

To add insult to injury, it only took a mere U.S. Assistant Secretary of State to bar Germany's pick for Ukrainian leader from even entering the puppet government (the boxer Vitali Klitschko), as we know from the infamous “Fuck the EU” phone call between the imperious Victoria Nuland and the U.S. ambassador in Ukraine, the smarmy Geoffrey Pyatt. [See “U.S. Enlisted UN Stooges in Ukraine Subversion.”]

The Green Party leader, Simone Peter, had this to say of Merkel: "Merkel is displaying cowardice towards our ally America. We owe the Americans nothing in this respect. The government must at least make a serious effort to safely bring Snowden to Germany and let him give evidence here. But Merkel doesn't want that."

Merkel will do as she's told about Ukraine. A Good German, she is an authoritarian who obeys superiors. And the U.S. president is clearly her superior. The only opposing force is the economic interests of German business that is invested in Russia, trades with Russia, buys fuel supplies from Russia. That puts her in a squeeze between opposing forces.

The mystery is why the German people chose to be ruled by this dull matron. There is a Green Party, and a Left Party, whose members in parliament were miffed by the blocking of Snowden from appearing to help parliament do its job. They were overruled by the government, a coalition of the right-wing “Christian Democratic” party (Merkel's party) and the fake-liberal “Social Democrats.”

Of course, Snowden can still testify from Russia by remote video connection, for example. That will enable the NSA to record the testimony in real time. Another victory for America! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Annals of Newspeak

In George Orwell's famous classic of totalitarianism, 1984, the ruling dictatorship had its own vocabulary, called Newspeak, which basically meant inverting words to mean the opposite of their previous meanings. For example, Slavery is Freedom.

Barack Obama and his minions have shown themselves to be assiduous disciples of the principle of Newspeak; to invert the meanings of words. Examples are legion: here are two recent ones I happened to notice.

In Ukraine, a violent mob overthrew the elected government, and the U.S. installed replacement “leaders.” These people Obama refers to as “democratic leaders.” Unelected, yet somehow “democratic.” Capitalists better no longer sneer at Bolshevik misuse of the word “democratic.” [1]

Another recent example is Obama's secret police henchman John Brennan. Obama wanted Brennan to replace Democratic Party apparatchik Leon Panetta as CIA head a few years back, but Brennan's involvement in CIA torture programs scuttled that back then. So Brennan was brought to Obama's side to run Obama's drone assassination program for him. So beloved by Obama is Brennan, that Obama last year once again moved to install Brennan at the top of the CIA, and this time he succeeded.

Brennan, as you'd expect of a career secret police type like him, can barely open his mouth without lying. But he has a habitual phrase whenever he utters a real howler. It's “Nothing could be further from the truth.” So during his Senate confirmation hearings for CIA Director, in denying that the drone death program ever harmed a hair on an innocent person's head, he used the phrase. [2]

Now that he was caught spying on Senate Intelligence Committee staffers and stealing documents off their CIA-provided computers, he once again denies what is proven fact with the phrase “Nothing could be further from the truth."

You can be guaranteed that if John Brennan says of something that “Nothing could be further from the truth,” it's true. It's like a tell by a poker player, a dead giveaway.

1] See “Obama Dictates Terms to Russia To Keep Its Naval Base in Crimea.”

2] See “Jeremy Scahill: Assassinations of U.S. Citizens Largely Ignored at Brennan CIA Hearing,” democracynow.org, February 8^th, 2013.

Guide To Ukraine “Crisis” Vocabulary

First, “crisis.” That means, the U.S. isn't getting its way 100%.

“Ukraine.” Can mean the actual country. Often it means the satraps the U.S. installed in power in Kiev. As in “Ukraine asked for Western help against the Russian invasion [sic],” or, “the American government supports Ukraine.”

“International law.” The rules the U.S. insists on imposing, which boil down to, the U.S. does whatever it wants, and other nations do what the U.S. wants. If the U.S. does it, it's legal. So arranging the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government by a neo-Nazi led mob and installing people in power handpicked by the U.S. State Department is perfectly legal, whereas Russia protecting its naval base in the Crimea and letting people vote in a referendum to choose to secede from western Ukraine or not is “a violation of international law.” And of the Ukrainian Constitution, too, which apparently has a provision allowing for neo-Nazi hoodlums to overthrow the government and its replacement by U.S.-approved puppets.

“The international community.” All the lackey and stooge nations that line up behind the U.S.

“The rights of all the Ukrainian people.” The U.S. decrees there shall be no partition and the entirely of Ukraine shall henceforth be in the U.S. domain. Self-determination for the populace of eastern Ukraine is not allowed. Controlled elections next year will ratify U.S. and neo-Nazi dominance of Ukraine.

“The territorial integrity of Ukraine.” No self-determination by the people of eastern Ukraine shall be allowed. A secession referendum is intolerable to the U.S. bloc, aka “the West.”

“Legitimate government.” The government of the U.S' choosing. See Obama statement of March 6th.

“Democratic leaders.” See “legitimate government.”

.

“Democracy.” A regime obedient to U.S. wishes. This is what that word always means.

North Korean Regime Whipsaws South Korea- Again

Just a day or two after abruptly pulling the rug out from under South Korea on the latest “agreement” to allow cross-border family visits, the North Korean cult-government has cut sharply in the reverse direction again, offering “talks” on a variety of issues with the South. Like a dumb dog, the South Korean regime is falling for the latest mind-fucking teaser bait on offer.

At the same time, the North says the South (and U.S.) should be less hostile! (Umm, do they have any mirrors in North Korean?)

The BBC reports that this latest feint by the North has raised hopes in the South of better relations. (Feb. 11, 2014.)

Hope springs eternal in some quarters, apparently. Or some suckers are infinitely foolable, like Charlie Brown in the Peanuts cartoons, always being duped by Lucy and trying to kick the football she holds (which she always, without fail, pulls away at the last minute and Charlie ends up on his back).

North Korea's Latest Cruel Ruses

The pathological regime reneged after only one day on allowing family visits between the two Koreas. Yet another example of how they treat the people they rule like cockroaches.

And the psychopaths reneged in one day on an agreement to allow a visit to imprisoned U.S.-Korean missionary Kenneth Bay. They were supposedly going to free him from an 8 yr hard labor sentence.

Yet idiots keep trying to help the regime. Bay was running tour groups for the country.

The North Korean regime's beef this time was a single B-52 involved in military exercises with the South. Well if South Korean military exercises bother the regime so much, they might consider ceasing their military attacks on the South, like its sinking of a South Korean naval ship and the shelling of a South Korean island, both recent acts of unprovoked aggression.

Ok, from the North Korean regime's perspective, there was provocation- the South looked at them wrong, or forgot to say "how are you today?" or some demented crap. It's long past time to stop trying to appease these psychopaths. Just tell them- build all the nuclear weapons you like. Ever use them on our allies, and we'll blow you off the face of the earth, China be Damned. And if China doesn't like that, then let China jerk N.K.'s leash. N.K. is China's client, so N.K.'s misbehavior is China's responsibility. Oh, and if the U.S. sees the psychoregime building missiles that can reach any U.S. territory, preemptively blow them up.

Too bad Israel doesn't have a beef with North Korea- we know what would happen then! (See: Iraq, Iran.) Israel calls the tune on U.S. foreign policy where Israel is concerned. (Check out youtube.com videos with John Mersheimer and Stephen Walt for details explanations of what I mean.)

 

Assad Brings Polio Back to Syria

Children are being paralyzed by the polio virus, which thanks to the regime of dictator Bashir al-Assad

has returned to Syria. Assad's Alawite oligarchy, (Assad himself inherited the dictatorship from his exsanguinous dad, Hafez) has been waging a war of extermination against the civilian population of the country it misrules in areas where rebels have driven out Assad's gunmen. This war of extermination includes use of starvation, poison gases, and bombing and shelling of schools, markets, and wherever else groups of civilians of any ages might congregate and thus be killed in numbers.

From the beginning of the civil war over two years ago, the Assad regime has targeted health care workers suspected of aiding the wounded in rebel areas, and medical facilities have been special targets. The regime just murdered a doctor, after torturing him for 8 months first. With their special signature cruelty, Assad's minions led the doctor and his family to believe he was about to be released just before murdering him. Then, in their usual smarmy and hyper-cynical fashion, insisted he'd committed suicide. Pushing such obvious lies in the world's face is one way they show their contempt for morality and the opinion of humanity. Indeed, like the Nazis (a number of whom were harbored in Syria after World War II), the Assadites draw psychological strength from their openly reveling in their own immorality and criminality. This is characteristic of devils. They glory in their evil.

As part of the criminal way the Assad regime wages its war of extermination against anyone who dares question the Alawite oligarchy's right to rule Syria in perpetuity and without a peep of protest, as I said, medical services in areas it has lost control of are targeted for destruction, and medicine, like food, is cut off. Thus two enemies of humanity are effectively in league: the polio virus, and the Assad regime.

Both need and deserve to be extirpated from the face of the earth.

P.S. The UN just issued yet another report on Syria, this one on the torture, maiming, and sexual crimes

against children there, mostly by the regime, but some crimes committed by the rebels too. Not to worry: the UN diplomats and bureaucrats are still well fed and sleeping in comfortable beds. I'm sure this report will prompt some renewed hand-wringing and crocodile tears shed by the political bosses of the world.

Why Do the American Bourgeoisie Feel the Need to Ape the British Aristocracy?

I mean, if they really need to feel inferior to somebody, I can think of plenty of people they are inferior to- but not to English toffs.

I had this thought after reading the following in an article about David Samson, the mega-fixer lawyer at the top echelon of the State of New Jersey's ruling class, boss of a powerful law firm that arranges state contracts for its clients, and who was placed at the head of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey by Republican Governor Chris Christie (to whom Samson is a key henchman). Samson has now been dragged into the news (and into daylight from the shadows where his ilk usually operate) by vengeful closing of the traffic lanes from Fort Lee, NJ onto the George Washington bridge for four days in early September to punish the Democratic mayor of that town for failing to endorse Christie for reelection last year. Here's the passage that prompted the thought, about Samson's wife:

“Mr. Samson’s wife, Joanna Dunn Samson, is a former deputy commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. They have a condominium not far from his firm’s main office, in West Orange, N.J., and a larger weekend home in Litchfield County, in Connecticut, where Ms. Samson has ridden horses with a local fox hunting club.” [1]

Fox hunting! Now where does that come from? It's hardly an indigenous American custom.

You see this a lot if you check out the “Style” section of the New York Times, for example (which is sort of a house organ for the American bourgeoisie, among its other functions), fox hunting, obsession with “royalty” and “titles,” antiquing, concern with one's “lineage,” and generally aping the mannerisms and folkways of the British upper classes, especially “royalty.”

In addition to an inferiority complex, perhaps they envy the English elite for not having to affect a common man, faux populism, All Men Are Created Equal facade.

Or maybe we should see it as merely an amusing affectation, a way of establishing one's social supremacy, hunting foxes on horseback. I would also observe that such British-centric affectations seems to be a phenomenon on the East Coast of the U.S., where old money traces itself back to the English landed gentry who founded the United States. Do you think there's foxhunting in Los Angeles, or Chicago? No, there are no foxes, but if there were, would they dress up in those funny costumes and hunt them? I doubt it.

Speaking of Anglo inferiority complexes, here's one that was simultaneously an inferiority AND superiority complex- the relationship to “the Jews.” I think the Anglo elite- indeed the elites of many European nations besides- felt threatened by “Jews” because they feared what they perceived to be their intelligence (valuing intellectual accomplishment is indeed common among Jews) and skill at making money. (Not a canard, and certainly not a put-down. Who doesn't wish they were good at amassing wealth? Of course the truth here is a matter of percentages- we could say a greater percentage of Jews are financially successful, or intellectually accomplished, than other groups. I think that is true, and something that Jewish people take pride in among themselves, but regard as anti-Semitic if a gentile says it. Certainly anti-Semites resent and hate Jews for it- but why should the envy of loathsome bigots prevent the rest of us from being able to acknowledge an aspect of reality, and try to explain and understand it? It depends on the spirit and intent of the observation whether it is anti-Semitic or not.)

1] “As Inquiry Widens, Port Authority Chief May Lose His Low Profile,” New York Times, January 15, 2014. Notice that this gratuitous fact- of interest to a certain social set- was tossed into an article about a political scandal to which it would seem to be irrelevant. And they give the wife's middle name, which is a family name, another marker of social connections for those in the know. In terms of useful information, there are details of Samson's dirty deals and power-connections over the years, which provides a case study in the institutionalized corruption of the U.S. socio-economic political system.