Tough-On-Terrorism Tony Abbott Unleashes 800 Australian Police to Arrest Man With Sword

Well stop the presses. I kid you not. In raids by those 800 heavily-armed, militarized cops, with helicopters, 15 people were arrested- of whom ONE was actually charged, and others released already- and the evidence seized at 16 (or 25- the BBC aired different numbers) locations raided consisted of- a sword. A radioactive atomic bomb terrorist sword maybe, a sword like swords used by Islamic terrorists to behead people in those “gruesome” videos the media can't seem to get enough of. A sword! He had a sword! The guy they charged had a sword!! Do you know how much damage he could have done with that? Why, he could have KILLED someone! This is a NATIONAL EMERGENCY!! TERROR ALERT!! TERROR ALERT!!

Oh yeah, there were some online threats. The usual bluster. Better to nip these things in the bud. With 800 cops to break down doors and strip bare the abodes of “suspects.”

The cheap hysteria the rulers of “Western” countries keep ginning up over “terrorism” has descended into farce and burlesque with this overwrought spectacle.

Of course, regime's like Abbott's in Australia want to enforce a state of Western impunity in their exercise of power. They fear retaliation by Islamofascists for Western attacks on the so-called “Islamic State,” those demented nihilists in Iraq and Syria. Abbott has announced the dispatch of Australian military forces to the region, doing his usual thing of walking loyally in the U.S.' footsteps, as close behind as he can.

Taking a page from the regimes of Bush the Younger and Adolf Hitler, Abbott tried to inspire fear in Australian parliamentarians by saying they were targets of Islamofascist killers and instituting new “security” measures for the legislature. This is similar, if much milder, than the anthrax letters mailed to key U.S. senators to get them to drop their opposition to the PATRIOT ACT, which established the current extremely repressive U.S. police state, and Hitler's torching of the Reichstag (the German legislative building) which the Nazis blamed on Communists, using it as a pretext to imprison the Socialist and Communist legislators in concentration camps and “vote” Hitler dictatorial powers. The anthrax letters were mailed as part of the same Deep State conspiracy by the fascists embedded inside the secret police and military arms of the U.S. power structure that arranged demolition charges to be placed inside the three (not two) buildings demolished in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001. [1]

Oh, did I mention? There's some draconian “anti-terrorism” legislation coming up for a vote in the Australian parliament. Just a coincidence, I'm sure. (Let's imagine: Abbott to secret police bosses; What terrorist plots do you have on tap that we can smash in a splashy public way?) [2]

For more on Abbott's malign antics, see “America, the Ingrate Nation,” September 1, and “Tony Abbott Is An Insufferable Jackass,” August 18.


1] Specifically, Abbott said there were “reports” of legislators being targeted. That is, some secret policemen whispered this factoid. Great thing about secrecy- you can say anything you want, and people can't check to see if it's true. It only has to be possible, and people are forced to go along with you. Cushy deal, Gestapo-boys!

For the demolition of the three buildings on 9/11/01 (Sept. 11, 2001) in Manhattan, see for example “9/11: Explosive Evidence - Experts Speak Out (Free 1-hour version) AE911 Truth.org.” A 2-hour version with more details is “ARCHITECTS AND ENGINEERS FOR 911 TRUTH (full unreleased version).” Richard Gage, an architect leading a group of over 1,000 architects and structural engineers who say it is impossible for those plane crashes to have caused the suddenly collapse of the twin towers (and nothing hit the third building) has a long presentation with additional details, “9/11: Blueprint for Truth-The Architecture of Destruction-114min.” These are all on youtube.com (search “911 architects for truth” if these links malfunction). 

2] Just a footnote: the U.S. government's national radio propaganda network, NPR, made a passing reference to this legislation, sans any details about its content, referring to it as “controversial.” That's a euphemism for “repressive,” in this context.

Iran Making Major Concession on its Nuclear Program: Not “Newsworthy” To U.S. Media

See the story at propagandaanalysis.blogspot.com, the posting of September 4, 2014.

Tony Abbott Is An Insufferable Jackass

Right-wing Australian Prime minister and demagogue Tony Abbott just put in in his unsolicited two cents on the Scottish secession vote, saying an independent Scotland won’t do “the world” any good. [1]

Well it’s not about doing the entire world any good, or ill, for that matter. It’s for the Scottish people. Whether or not it will do them any good or not, is for them to decide. And that is the only relevant question. Who asked YOU, Abbott? [BBC radio report 8/16/14 5 am.]

Speaking of doing the world good- how does the world benefit from your cancellation of the carbon tax, Anthony?

Abbott added that those for Scottish independence are not for “freedom” and “justice.” So it follows they must be for enslavement and injustice, presumably.

Speaking of freedom and justice, I would draw Mr. Abbott’s attention to the treatment of the native Australians, the aborigines, by his ilk, in particular by his party. It’s a horrific record of oppression, inhumanity, atrocities, and murder, that continues to this day. [2]

Here’s how Abbott is doing good for the world: His first act in office was repealing Australia’s carbon tax. Which means more global warming. Thanks, mate!

Abbott decided to meddle in an internal matter of the UK AFTER the Emperor, Barack Obama, opined the U.S. had a “deep interest” is having the United Kingdom keep Scotland.

Abbott put his puny finger on the referendum scale in an interview with the elite ruling class UK newspaper, the Times of London, owned by the Australian international propaganda czar Rupert Murdoch. Abbott was quoted thusly:

“What the Scots do is a matter for the Scots and not for a moment do I presume to tell Scottish voters which way they should vote.

“But as a friend of Britain, as an observer from afar, it’s hard to see how the world would be helped by an independent Scotland.

“I think that the people who would like to see the break-up of the United Kingdom are not the friends of justice, not the friends of freedom, and that the countries that would cheer at the prospect of the break-up with the United Kingdom are not the countries whose company one would like to keep.” [3]

I guess very literally that first sentence was true. He didn’t “for a moment” “presume to tell Scottish voters which way they should vote.” It took him MORE than just a moment to tell them how to vote.

What an asshole, talking out of both sides of his mouth simultaneously!

And notice his demonization of people pushing for the “wrong” vote. But what a smarmy way he does it. They’re “not the friends” of freedom and justice, a backhanded way of calling them the enemies of freedom and justice. And he puts them in the company of enemy countries, pariah states, again being smarmily indirect in his phrasing. Like he’s saying No Offense to those I’m smearing! He wants to slip his knife between their ribs without a political cost of causing a backlash which would drive the vote the “wrong” way. (And what he means by “Britain” is the UK government and ruling class.)

This business of smearing and hating people who vote “wrong” is typical of the attitude of bourgeois rulers towards what they call democracy. Voting is fine, as long as it comes out the way they want. This is an old attitude. Nixon was quite cynical in this regard. His top henchman in international crimes and atrocities, put it this way when the voters of Chile had the effrontery to elect Salvador Allende president: “I don’t see why we have to let a country go communist [sic- Allende was a democratic socialist] due to the irresponsibility of its own people.” Therefore IMPOSE FASCISM on the country. Nice.

Abbott also jumped into the U.S. bloc’s push to drive Russia out of Ukraine, immediately branding the accidental shooting down of a Malaysian airliner over a war zone in eastern Ukraine a crime. No doubt he’d be defending the shooters if they’d been working for the Kiev regime.

Australia has been a source of cannon fodder for both British imperialism and U.S. imperialism, sending troops into U.S. wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Right-wingers in its political establishment, and its secret police, helped the CIA overthrow the Whitlam government when prime minister Gough Whitlam “meddled” in U.S. secret police spy bases in Australia run by the NSA and CIA. (Whitlam actually acted as if Australia were a sovereign nation, and its prime minister had a right to know what was going on inside Australia. The nerve!)

Abbott is conforming sycophantically to the expected role of an Australian prime minister, behaving as a subaltern to his British and American masters. Give that dog a bone!

The vote is September 18th.

                                                                                

Ooh, Tony, you're so clever!

1] I might be wrong about Abbott’s squawking being “unsolicited.” Perhaps the British prime minister, the Tory David Cameron, privately solicited it. But they both obviously want us to think the remarks were unsolicited; that is, that Cameron didn’t put Abbott up to it. So be it, boys. If that’s what you want me to think, I’ll give you what you want. Not that a subimperialist dog like Abbott needs his masters to tell him when to bark. He can follow their cues like any well-trained dog.

My own position is that the Scots should have the right of self-determination, which they are exercising by the secession vote. It’s up to them to decide. I don’t know if it would be “better” or “worse” for them to become an independent nation. There will be advantages and disadvantages, which are unpredictable, and evaluating which outweighs the others will be subjective to a great deal, if indeed Scotland becomes independent.

The British ruling class obviously wants to hold onto the territory and population. But it’s not a “left” or “right” issue. George Galloway, who most observers would categorize as a leftist, opposes Scottish independence, for example. Nationalism and sentimentality are much greater factors than left or right ideologies are in terms of where people come down on the issue.

2] A good primer to get yourselves up to speed on the genocidal policies of the Anglo conquerors of Australia is the John Pilger documentary “Welcome to Australia” [1999]. More recently the aborigines got an “apology” from an Australian prime minister (not Abbott).

3] The greedy fascistic bastard billionaire Murdoch keeps all his “news”papers behind pay walls, so I got Tacky Tony’s remarks from the Guardian, “Tony Abbott tells Scotland a yes vote for independence is 'not in world's interest,'” August 16, 2014.

U.S. General Bites the Dust in Afghanistan

An Afghan army soldier, for reasons yet to be determined, opened fire inside the Afghan army's premiere
training center, just outside the capital of Kabul, killing a U.S. major general (2-star), wounding a German brigadier general (one-star) and 14 or more other soldiers, before being killed himself. Generally in these situation, it's a case of a (very badly!) disgruntled Afghan, or a Taliban sympathizer/infiltrator/recruit. Sometimes they really are Afghan army soldiers, sometimes enemies dressed in Afghan army uniforms. Score a big one for the Taliban (even if they didn't do it).

The Taliban hasn't been wasting any time showing that they intend to make mayhem in the country, not even waiting until the Americans leave. They have launched aggressive offensives and attacks, taking back territory, and striking inside the capital city. It's clear that the Afghan government has no chance without large amounts of foreign money, weapons, equipment, and backing for years to come, and even with that, the country will be riddled with constant terrorism and large swaths of territory effectively under the control of the Mafia-like Taliban, ruled by them through intimidation.

Hey, but you bloodied the Soviets' noses there, U.S.! You won!

So one set of ideological fanatics- the apparatchiks and managers of the U.S. imperial system- begat another set of ideological fanatics, or at least hugely empowered them- the Islamofascists.

Those Who Serve (The Ruling Class) At the Top Get Their Reward

The way ex-Presidents of the U.S. see it, they who served the class interests of multimillionaire and billionaire corporate bosses and parasitic speculators deserve to be multimillionaires themselves. They sacrificed by going into “public service,” having to scrape by on six figure salaries year after year and free taxpayer-paid-for health care (and not that crappy Medicaid or Medicare either), and guaranteed pensions, and paid-for staff they can (illegally) use for personal errands and reelection campaign work on the side. Why, maybe they could have made hundreds of millions in “the private sector”!

Let’s hear a couple of them telling us how rough they had it. Here’s Bill Clinton, the mass murderer of Haiti, Rwanda, Sudan, and Waco, Texas, on the hardship he endured:

"I never had any money until I got out of the White House, you know, but I've done reasonably well since then." He never had ANY money his WHOLE LIFE until AFTER he was president. All those years spent in homeless shelters...it must have been tough. His wife also claims they were “dead broke” after “serving the nation,” as the cliche goes, for 8 years in Washington. (I sure hope they didn’t have to go on welfare, after Clinton gutted it.) [1]

Here’s a bit of what Clinton means by “I’ve done reasonably well since then:” $65 million just in speaking fees from 2001 to 2009. (Now the total is over $100 million.) Then there’s book income and etc. Oh, plus there’s hundreds of millions he’s raised for his “foundation,” which also supports him in his various vague endeavors and pays for his staff of lackeys and bag carriers. (Free bodyguards for life courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. The Secret Service does that. And his pensions from being president and from being governor of Arkansas- pocket change for a guy like him these days, but maybe just enough to keep him from having to sleep on park benches if he falls on hard times again. His wife is pulling in big bucks too. Maybe she can give him an allowance, if he’ll stop sleeping around.)

George W. Bush is another guy who sacrificed big time for us to be our (elected by stealing elections) president. Discussing his post-presidential plans, Bush described his urgent priority to “replenish the ol’ coffers.” With a reported net worth of a paltry $6.5 to $20 million* by the time he was done saving the nation from terrorists, Bush barely had two nickels to rub together. Fortunately the gentlemen who are the audiences on the corporate oligarchy rubber chicken circuit (more like a filet mignon circuit) have big hearts and are willing to cough up six figure “honoraria” to hear Bush stumble his way through his banal, canned speeches. As of Spring 2011, Bush managed to add a little something to his coffers; $15 million from speeches, plus his book deal, plus whatever secret Bush family schemes hidden in the background with the Saudis and rich Texans and whoever else. It’s not much, but at least it keeps the wolf from the door.

You must understand, presidents are forced to pay zero rent to live in the White House. They only get a six figure salary, and free health care for themselves and their families, and all-expenses-paid travel and lodgings, and paid-for staff. It gets mighty expensive living for free, so one can see how Bush’s coffers were drained by his eight years of sacrifice for us. YOU try living an all-expenses-paid existence some time! It’s harder than it sounds! (Well, maybe it isn’t, but don’t think about that. You’re not supposed to think about such things. Just drink the propaganda Kool-Aid.)

In a heartwarming development, Bush and Clinton have taken to doing speeches (for money, of course) together, sort of a politicians-cashing-in-together duet novelty act. Apparently their shared sacrifice created a bond, like men who have been in combat together. We should all be inspired by their example.

*U.S. financial disclosure forms required by law mandate very broad ranges only, to avoid, I don’t know, embarrassing our rich overlords? Violating their privacy? (They sure have no respect for OUR privacy.)

1] Hillary did manage to eke out a living after laying down her heavy burden of being “First Lady,” a “job” with no actual identifiable duties, running for president herself, and being Secretary of State in the regime of Barack “I’m Pretty Good At Killing” Obama, scraping together $5 million in “speaking fees” and a book “advance” (non-refundable to the publisher, a special privilege political poohbahs get, unlike ordinary writers who have to pay back whatever part of their advances they don’t earn back in royalties from sales) of $14 million. It was calculated that Simon & Schuster would need to sell the book for $70 a pop to recoup that. Obviously it’s really a bribe or payoff of some kind, for past or future favors. I’m talking about this year’s book deal. She had another book deal with S & S in 2000 for an $8 million advance. Hopefully that alleviated her dead brokeness.

S & S is owned by media conglomerate CBS, which is controlled by billionaire Sumner Wellstone, who also controls Viacom, another media goliath.

But then, why should poohbahs have to pay back their advances like ordinary writers? It’s not as if they actually write “their” books, anyway. [“Hillary Clinton: ‘We Came Out Of The White House Dead Broke.’” Of course, Diane Sawyer, who asked Hillary C. about this, is one to talk. Just once, I’d like to hear someone ask these multimillion-dollar-a-year TV teleprompter/script-reading propagandists about their incomes.]

  

Two smug bastards who know the

score. Be the manager of a global

system of exploitation enforced by

violence, cash in big afterwards for
services rendered.

Do UFO’s Exist?

A UFO is an Unidentified Flying Object. And they definitely exist. That is, pilots and people on the ground have often seen flying objects (or what appear to be objects, like blobs of light) in the sky. Pilots and others at times have reported these objects to change from a seemingly stationary state to moving at a very high rate of speed.

Now, most people automatically equate “UFO” with “flying saucer,” that is, an alien space ship. While it is undeniable that UFO’s exist, we can’t say that space craft from somewhere other than the earth have been here. But nor can we say definitely they have not. Here’s why:

Our star is called the “sun” (in English). Nine planets orbit it. Biological entities (life forms) exist on at least one of those planets.

The sun is one star in a galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy. There are billions of stars in this galaxy. Many of those stars also have planets orbiting them. A number of those planets have been identified by astronomers. So in the Milky Way, there must be billions of planets. (A billion is a thousand millions, by the way.)

The Milky Way, in turn, is only one of BILLIONS of GALAXIES. Each of those galaxies has billions of stars.

So in the universe there are billions TIMES billions of planets! You’ve got nine zeros for a billion. Multiply by billions is adding nine more zeros. So it’s a number with eighteen zeros- very huge, beyond everyday comprehension.) Maybe like, a number similar to all the grains of sand on all the beaches in the world?

Is it at all plausible that of all these planets, the only one on which life exists is THIS one?? I rather doubt it. That is, if one accepts a scientific explanation for the existence of life, a chemical, molecular, biological explanation.

If one is religious, which is to say, a mystic with a dogma, most of which posit the existence of supernatural, omnipotent beings that “made” the entire universe, and were apparently too lazy to create life on more than one of their planets, then one can argue, based on nothing but pure fantasy (aka “belief” or “faith”) that life exists only on earth. (I’m using “life” to refer to earthly organisms. Presumably the imaginary supernatural beings, the “gods,” are also alive.)

Rationally, it seems certain that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

The universe is currently dated at 13.8 billion years old. The earth is about 4.54 billion years- only about a third as old as the universe itself. The earliest possible date for life on earth is about 3.5 billion years ago.

There are older stars and planets in the universe than ours. Much older.

We have to assume that life has existed millions of years, and probably billions of years, earlier than on earth, somewhere in the universe.

Our species, which thinks itself so smart and “advanced,” is 160,000 years old, depending on how you define and date it. (That’s for “modern” homo sapiens. “Archaic” homo sapiens goes back about 300,000 years.)

It seems there must be some species of life out there very far ahead of us. Beyond our comprehension, in fact.

So is it possible that some of them are traveling through space in vehicles? Definitely.

Have any of them been to earth? We can’t rule it out definitively, it would seem.

So it’s possible that aliens (real aliens, not humans from another country) have been to earth.

HAVE they been? I cannot say.

The stories of “UFO abductees” have always struck me as implausible, for at least two reasons- the stories are always about the same, and there seems to be an obsession with our sex organs on the part of the aliens.

Maybe these are alien perverts? You know, like people who have sex with animals? Beings into some kind of extraterrestrial interspecies kinkiness? Maybe they got bored performing sex acts on other species on their own planets so they set off in search of new thrills? And these perverts from another planet don't seem very considerate of their kidnapped molestees. Do they even ask, when it's over, "Was it good for you too?"

But seriously, I suppose one explanation could be that the sexual examination part was most traumatic to the “abductees” and so that stuck most vividly in their minds. We do call our sex organs our “private parts.” We have a hard time accepting as natural and being comfortable with our sexuality. This seems due to the pathological (unhealthy and unnatural) nature of the societies and cultures we have evolved, our so-called “civilizations.” (I like Gandhi’s quip, when asked what he thought of Western civilization: “I think it would be a good idea.” One could say the same of Indian civilization too.)

Note to future abductees: next time, take a cellphone pic of the aliens. And ask for their phone number.

Bad History: The Myth that the Versailles Treaty Caused Nazism and World War II

One of the pernicious myths of “history” as created by ideologues called historians is that the blame for the rise of Hitler and the ensuing Second World War is down to the “unjust” and “harsh and punitive” Treaty of Versailles. That is to say, when dealing with obvious criminal psychotics like the Germans, if you are only NICER to them, they’ll leave you alone.

But who made Germany attack an invade France in 1890? Who made the Germans ravage and lay waste to France from 1914-1918? They won the previous war with France, and got what they wanted. Wasn’t that “fair” and “generous” enough for them? No, they went on and did it again in 1914, on the pretext of some Austrian aristocrat getting bumped off by a Serb nationalist! (“Grand Duke Ferdinand,” was the puffed-up title of the imperialist parasite who bit the dust.)

Does appeasing aggressive psychopaths placate them? I think the evidence of concession after concession handed to Hitler disproves that. And the Germans only paid a small fraction of the reparations they agreed to pay for the destruction they wreaked when they signed the Treaty.

Remember that in World War I Germany invaded neutral Belgium, to carry out the Schlieffen plan, a grand flanking maneuver aimed at annihilating the French army. While in Belgium, they busied themselves committing atrocities, murdering civilians, and committing cultural genocide But the Germans were “provoked,” you see. The Belgian army had the effrontery to resist the invasion of their country. What arrogance! Why, the Germans HAD to kill Belgian civilians and burn a historic library down, destroying irreplaceable manuscripts, to teach the Belgians a lesson. The lesson being, don’t resist invasions by psychopaths.

The fact that British propagandists during the war invented fake atrocity stories has for years been trotted out by U.S. (and other) “historians” to discredit the FACT that Germany committed REAL atrocities in Belgium- not to mention the crime of aggression by invading a neutral country in the first place. This is mendacity disguised as history. People who do that should be called propagandists, NOT historians. When you deliberately falsify history to advance a covert political and ideological agenda, that makes you a propagandist, not a historian. Unfortunately, most well-known “historians” seem to fall into this camp to some degree. This creates a huge burden on people who want an accurate understanding of the world. You have to read so much, and study for years, just to find out more or less what really happened. Needless to say, the average person does not do this and is thus an easy mark for the professional brainwashers to dupe. And professional brainwashers are what propagandists really are.

And what about the Holocaust? Did the Treaty of Versailles cause the Holocaust? I guess the “historians” should say yes- although few seem to have the nerve to do so. But if the Treaty “caused” the rise of Hitler, and "caused" the Second World War, then it must follow that it is to blame for all of Hitler’s works, including the Holocaust. Now you truly enter the arena of ludicrousness.

But it has been in the interest of Zionists to lay the blame for the Holocaust on historical anti-Semitism (obviously appropriately, but that isn’t sufficient explanation by itself), and the Zionists have dibs on Holocaust-causation. And there’s the uncomfortable fact that the “Western democracies” barely lifted a finger to save Jews, and in fact blocked their escape from the Nazis’ clutches for the most part.

Now what was the motive for the distortion of history claiming Versailles as causative for World War II? It is to exonerate Germany, because Germany after World War II was part of the U.S.-bossed anti-Soviet bloc in Western Europe. The former German enemy had to have a heavy coating of ideological make-up applied to make it attractive to Western publics who had been put through two major, costly wars by Germany. (The Soviet Union, on the other hand, NEVER invaded Western Europe, NEVER declared war on the U.S. or bombed its ships at anchor as Japan did- another rehabilitated foe turned subaltern nation to the U.S. The Soviet Union was invaded by two dozen western nations right after the Bolshevik revolution, in a failed attempt to reverse that revolution. And of course Germany invaded in 1941 and caused horrendous carnage and wreckage. But the Soviet Union was the Bad Guy.)

The end of the Cold War has changed nothing, since now Russia is still viewed as an adversary- apparently because it won’t let itself to be so reduced in power that its influence ends at its own national boundaries. For this it is faulted for “behaving like the Soviet Union” and “restarting the Cold War” or “acting like the Cold War never ended.” (Hey, Western imperialist propagandists, would you like me to lend you a mirror?)

In fact, to accept the Versailles Treaty as leading to World War II, because it embittered fanatical German nationalists like Hitler, is to imply Germany had a legitimate grievance to start World War II.

Well then, given that Germany suffered far worse destruction in World War II (its cities weren’t systematically bombed into rubble in the First World War, nor was it occupied), plus Germany was shrunk in size, permanently lost Prussia (the heartland of its militarism), Danzig, and more, and the truncated remainder was divided into two, logically Germany had an even BIGGER grievance after World War II than after WW I. So they should have armed themselves with nuclear weapons and started World War III!

The thing is, taking the irrational grievances of fanatical German nationalists at face value is like taking their stated grievances against Jews as having “caused” the Holocaust. I don’t hear those historians who blame World War II on Versailles (because German fascists used it to rile people up) blaming the Jews for the Holocaust. But by the same logic, they could. The point is, Versailles was just an excuse, used as agitprop by the Nazis, the same way they used anti-Semitic propaganda as agitprop. Quite simply, the Germans (many or most of them) were pathological people with burning imperialist ambitions combined with a virulent sense of “racial” superiority. They dehumanized most of the rest of humanity and had no compunction about slaughtering and enslaving most everybody else on the planet. Versailles had NOTHING to do with it. If there had been NO Versailles Treaty, Hitler would STILL have risen to power, and STILL have started World War Two in Europe. It’s idiotic to argue otherwise if one has read deeply about Germany between the wars (as I have). Who could seriously believe that the Versailles Treaty made Germany invade Russia yet again, killing twenty million of the people there, with the intention to ultimately annihilated fully THREE QUARTERS of the “subhuman” Slavs and make slaves of the rest, working on giant German plantations? Russia didn’t impose the Versailles conditions on Germany. Germany defeated Russia in World War I, and imposed onerous peace terms on it! So by the logic of “Versailles made Germany do it,” the Soviet Union should have invaded Germany in World War II, not the other way around. After all, Germany imposed an unfair peace treaty on Russia. Whereas the Versailles Treaty was fair, and should have been enforced. Hitler should not have been allowed to break it by increasing the size of the German army and by remilitarizing the Rhineland in violation of the Treaty. [1]

No, the fault lay in the pathological German character. Thankfully that character has changed to a large degree, mainly in the younger generations.

1] World War I started in 1914. Russia was defeated in 1917. The U.S. then entered the war, because New York bankers fretted about getting their war loans to Britain and France repaid if Germany won. With fresh U.S. troops on the Western front, Germany sued for peace in fall 1918. The slimy and cowardly German general staff, headed by Field Marshals von Hindenberg (who appointed Hitler chancellor in 1933, opening the door to Nazi dictatordship) and von Ludendorff (who participated in the 1923 coup attempt by Hitler to overthrow the Weimar Republic government, for which he was not prosecuted for treason and subversion, not imprisoned or shot- as Hitler should have been) pulled the weaselly and cunning move of making civilians take the rap for the defeat, claiming the military was never really defeated and promulgating the “stab in the back” canard, that traitors at home (in a dictatorship- remember Germany was a monarchy headed by the Kaiser, or “king,”) made Germany surrender. The Nazis heaped a lot of the blame for the “betrayal” and “treason” on “the Jews.” In World War II this was a big factor in the Allies insistence on unconditional surrender, and occupation, so the Germans wouldn’t once again pretend that they weren’t actually defeated.

Governor Vetoes Gun Control Bill Because “Hey, I’m Running for President as a Republican!”

New Jersey Governor Chris “Bully-Boy” Christie quite predictably vetoed a state gun control bill that would have limited magazine capacities. Because of some blah-blah-blah bullshit excuse he offered. The real reason is in the facetious quote in the title.

“Catastrophic Decline In Human Rights in Egypt” says Amnesty International

Maybe the new boss isn’t the same as the old boss. Maybe he’s worse. That seems to be the judgment of Amnesty International. (The quote above is from the BBC.)

Amnesty International calculates that the number of people rounded up and imprisoned in political repression since the military coup one year ago, led by new dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, overthrew Mohamed Morsi (the first democratically elected president in all the thousands of years of Egypt’s existence) is at least 16,000, of whom a minimum of 80 have died in prison.

Human rights in Egypt are now said to be as bad as during the worst of the Mubarak reign.

Not a problem for the U.S. and Israel. Both governments are secretly relieved to be rid of Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi. Indeed, Egyptian democracy is regarded by those governments as a threat. Because Israel isn’t popular with the Egyptian masses, and the Egyptian people have no reason to aid the repression of the Palestinians imprisoned in the Gaza open air concentration camp. So democracy in Egypt poses a threat to the Egyptian-Israeli de facto alliance, an alliance underwritten by billions of dollars in military equipment given to the Egyptian military every year by the U.S.

It's rather a shame that the U.S. doesn't use its immense power for the benefit of humanity. Of course, it acquired that power in the first place by being an enemy of humanity. But were it to be a leader in improving the level of global civilization, that would be a way for atoning for how it acquired its power. But its elites show no inclination to do any such thing. They are utterly lacking in moral and existential clarity, so they won't be doing that.

Homeless Man Murdered By New York City Government Was in Rigor Mortis

I’ve written earlier about this case. See “New York City Government Kills Man For Sleeping In Stairwell” to get up to speed. In brief, a homeless, mentally ill man was arrested for sleeping in a stairwell and thrown in jail to await trial (!) and since the solitary confinement cell he was dumped in was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (over 38 degrees Celsius) he died in the cell with nobody noticing.

Now to turns out that the victim was already in rigor mortis when his corpse was noticed in its cell. Rigor mortis generally doesn’t start to set in until several hours after death, taking 12-24 hours to set in fully, then reversing after 72 hours. (Rigor mortis is the condition in which the corpse becomes extremely stiff.) That means he may have been dead for longer before his demise was discovered than previously asserted by “the authorities” (the people in power).

Still not a peep from the local media- and not just the establishment media but, shamefully, the “alternative” media too [1]- about the culpability of police for arresting a helpless, destitute, mentally ill homeless man for the “crime” of sleeping in a stairwell of a public housing project (warehouse for poor people) instead of moving him along or taking him to a homeless shelter. Still not a peep about the even more culpable judge who set BAIL for the man, at $2,500, which was the same as setting no bail, meaning the judge effectively sentenced the man to an indeterminate jail time until the case would be resolved (which unless the man immediately pled guilty could drag on for months- there have been people imprisoned at Rikers Island, the city’s main jail complex, for years awaiting resolution of their cases). So the judge imposed a punishment on a defendant (whose crime was sleeping in a stairwell, officially “disorderly conduct,” a catch-all the police use to arrest people for anything they don’t like- absurdly, here sleep is “disorderly”) before any conviction. Imprisoned for sleeping where sleeping isn’t allowed. Well, that’ll teach the mentally ill to shape up and act right! Get a job and rent an exorbitantly expensive apartment, you bum!

The unrealism of the tacit demands placed on people, even mentally ill people, in the brutal, dog-eat-dog, winner-take-all economic system of the U.S., is matched by the cruelty revealed in this case. The cruelty is not an accidental byproduct, or an endless series of “lapses.” Nor it is merely an inevitable result of “human nature,” “man’s inhumanity to man,” the classic fallback alibi of cruel systems, in cluding the American one. Cruelty is in fact part of the structure of the social/political/economic structure. A ruthless economic system needs a callous and cruel enforcement system, which it has in spades. In a normal human society, sleeping wouldn’t be a crime just because someone is homeless and mentally ill. Police wouldn’t arrest people for such a “crime.” And a judge that threw a man in jail for such a “crime” would be removed from the bench.

In the U.S., none of this is even seen as unusual, much less wrong. The only issue here is why the man was allowed to die in his cell, and nobody noticed. Only the jail guards are subject to rebuke, for dereliction of duty. They allowed a public relations problem for their masters to arise.

Particular cases like this, which are NOT aberrations but rather ubiquitous and continuous, put the lie to U.S. propaganda that America is the “freest nation in the world.” This permanent propaganda campaign, a founding edifice of the U.S. ideological system going all the way back to the rebellion against the British crown, has been so effective that not only do most Americans believe it, but apparently people all over the world believe it. The facts belie it.

And even some people who should know better believe it. For example, Noam Chomsky, about as scathing a critic of U.S. imperialism (although he doesn’t use the word “imperialism,” generally) as there is, over the years has repeatedly asserted in speeches that the U.S. is “the freest country in the world.” It’s an assertion he makes without offering evidence- assertion without evidence being a practice he excoriates others for, ironically. (The speeches are on youtube.com.)

1] And the most prominent dissident American media organ, the television and Internet broadcaster Democracy Now! (democracynow.org), which does much excellent and vital work, is based in New York City. It reported the death in the same narrow framework as the ruling class media did.