Kerry's Kontradictions

U.S. Secretary of State John “Horseface” Kerry is bragging about the melange he assembled of “62 countries and organizations” in what passes for an anti-”Islamic State” front. The “Islamic State” (aka ISIL, aka ISIS, aka Daesh; I sure wish those Islamonazi nihilists would settle on a name already!) has been stopped from further advances in Iraq but not in Syria. Meanwhile it holds Yezidi and other women and girl captives as sex slaves. [1]

Kerry says over 1,000 airstrikes have left IS exposed.

But Kerry says it will take “years” to defeat IS.

You see any contradictions there? I do.

Maybe the U.S. should take its leash off the Kurds. The U.S. almost let the “Islamic State” take Kobani, Syria, on the Turkish border, a Kurdish city. And they are blocking the Kurds from selling their oil. Right now tankers carrying crude oil from the Kurdish region in Northern Iraq are stuck at sea because of U.S. threats against anyone daring to purchase the oil. (And since oil is traded in U.S. dollars, and the U.S. controls the world financial apparatus, it can seize anyone's dollars at will.)

And one of the most important enemies of IS and backers of the Iraqi government is Iran, which is persona non grata in the U.S. “coalition.”

Yeah, the U.S. is real serious about defeating IS. But at least it's more serious than it was about aiding the Syrian people's rebellion against the monstrous tyrant Assad.
                                                                 

“I just LOVE being important!”

1] "ISIS releases horrifying sex slave pamphlet, justifies child rape," RT, December 11, 2014;

"ISIS issues guidelines for sex slavery," CBS News, same day; 

UK female jihadists run ISIS sex-slave brothels," Al Arabiya, September 12, 2014; 

ISIS: Enslaving, having sex with 'unbelieving' women, girls is OK, CNN, December 12, 2014.

Why Diehards In Love With Bill Cosby's Image Who Refuse to Believe He's a Serial Rapist Don't Have a Leg to Stand On

We now know that many people for years had at least an inkling of Bill Cosby's criminal behavior of drugging and raping women.

Fifteen (and counting) women have now come forward and said he raped them.

Years ago, he settled a lawsuit in which 13 other victims were prepared to provide corroborating testimony for the victim suing him, in order to avoid going to trial.

One of his gofers has now said he passed hush money to some victims.

The diehards incurably in love with the longtime media IMAGE Cosby created (with help of major corporations of course, all for money) smear the victims by claiming they're after money. Only problem with that "theory" is that the allegations date from years ago, so statutes of limitations would preclude suing Cosby at this late date. Likewise criminal charges would be barred by statutes of limitations.

If the charges were false, the accusers would be exposing themselves to libel lawsuits by Cosby.

Finally, Cosby's own behavior is incredibly damning. He refuses to deny the charges. In fact, he literally refuses to utter a single word in response to them. During now at least two interviews, he has refused to answer a question about the matter at all. Would he not be loudly protesting his innocence if he was innocent?

Yes, he would.

People who fall in love with celebrities are idiots, at any rate. Serves them right to fall in love with a serial rapist. Hopefully they'll now be disillusioned. IT WAS ONLY AN ACT! HE'S A PERFORMER! A PROFESSIONAL ENTERTAINER! AND THE TV PROGRAMS WERE MAKE-BELIEVE! YOU IDIOTS!

Sheesh!

Serial Rapist Bill Cosby's Moral Fulminations Against the Black Underclass

Some years ago Cosby took it upon himself to embark on a hectoring tour to fulminate and condemn the black underclass for their immorality and bad attitudes. In light of what he himself is, that now looks particularly rich.

Of course the pathologies of the black underclass are really the result of systematic oppression and repression. Their psychological distortions arise from the environments of extreme stress they are born into and are trapped in. There has been a degeneration of the coherency of the black community over the last few generations. This is a complex phenomenon which I cannot adequately address here at the moment.

If a Bill Cosby, with all this career and social success, and the kudos and embrace of the white establishment, can't resist drugging and raping numerous women (over a dozen at least), what does he expect from people who have to deal with the despair of a dead-end existence without proper nurturance or social support?

Blaming the poor for their own problems has long been a tactic of the rich and the privileged. It blames the victims, and absolves both the social system and the privileged themselves (who benefit from the system and thus wish to preserve it unchanged) from responsibility for the poor. Thus freed of all obligation to those suffering under the socioeconomic structure, the well-off can eat their steaks and drink their fine wines with a free conscience, and guard every penny of their wealth.

Bill Cosby Finally Outed as Rapist, Jian Ghomeshi Exposed As Sexual Sadist, and I'm OD-ing on Schadenfreude

Serial rapist Bill Cosby has finally been exposed as a serial rapist. Like most rapists, he didn't do it just once. (Which raises an interesting question about Bill Clinton. We know he raped Juanita Broaddrick when he was state attorney general of Arkansas. How many other women has he raped? I suppose it's too much to ask for “the” media to look into that.) The “stories” of Cosby's rapes were apparently “out there” for years, but suppressed by the “mainstream media,” which loves to mock “the Internet” as untrustworthy trash (although these same corporations have websites and are attempting to corral the web- which, come to think of it, creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of making a lot of the Internet untrustworthy trash!), until the Internet itself made it impossible to suppress the matter any longer. The known rapes asserted by named victims who have spoken out span the years from 1969 through 2004- so far. As of November 19th, six women have spoken out publicly and by name and described Cosby's assaults on them. 

The media jabber about the matter reflexively refers to Cosby as “beloved.” It's this alleged universal love for Cosby that made “people” unwilling to accept/believe the victims' “stories” (crime accounts), we are told, despite the fact that Cosby paid off one of his victims years ago to make her civil suit go away. Which surely should have raised suspicions, at the least, and prompted questions. Sometimes the U.S. corporate propaganda system is remarkably incurious for an alleged “news” system. (It's a system which refers to itself as “the media,” as if it's the one and only media and not particular media controlled by particular interests. It is a very dangerous term to accept, as so many “progressives” unthinkingly do, as it fosters a false consciousness that accepts this particular propaganda system as just a neutral and “objective” seeker of facts and reliable purveyor of truth, indeed as the ultimate arbiter of reality. It should be properly labeled and called by its right name- the American corporate propaganda system.)

But as for Cosby being universally beloved: I for one have never “loved” Cosby. Indeed, I never even found him funny (that's a matter of taste, as humor is totally subjective), and his Big Daddy Teddy Bear shtick struck me as cloying, manipulative, and borderline precious, not endearing. To me he was not someone to glorify and lionize, as the propaganda system always did, but rather he was just some entertainment industry celebrity doing product endorsements, a typical careerist, as far as I could see, one whose various products (comedy and TV series) I only saw intermittently since I did not care for them. His first notable career milestone was the CIA glorification TV show “I Spy.” These kind of shows and movies that glamorize the secret police (and grossly misrepresent them too, obviously), are highly vulgar morally, and shameful in that they effectively aid and abet the massive crimes against humanity of the CIA and its ilk by providing a cover image for the criminals. (The James Bond propaganda business is a particularly egregious example of this glorification of state terrorists through total fiction and a glamorization of their violence. The progenitor of Bond, Ian Fleming, was actually a British secret police agent himself.)

This noxious stuff genuinely brainwashes people. The alibi that it's “just entertainment” and fictional is specious and obtuse. Obviously people's attitudes, impressions, and ideas about the world are greatly affected by the “entertainment” they are exposed to. In fact, the entertainment propaganda is far more impactful than the alleged non-fictional propaganda (“news”) since people watch and read so much more of it, AND mentally their intellectual guards are down while imbibing it into their brains. It might be okay if “the” media assiduously informed people of the truth in the “news” side of the propaganda industry. But of course they don't. After all, it's a propaganda industry.

Prior to Cosby's rapes becoming general public knowledge, there were already known incidents in which Cosby bullied people, (hardly unusual for a Big Deal entertainment industry figure- people with power tend to abuse it), and I remember one incident in which he put a chokehold on a man while at work.

Now Cosby is behaving in his most arrogant manner, refusing literally to speak one word on the matter. When Scott Simon, on the U.S. government, corporate-funded radio propaganda network NPR, interviewed Cosby, he very apologetically asked for Cosby's comment on the matter (Simon wouldn't even say the word “rape.”) Simon had to narrate that Cosby was shaking his head in non-response. Cosby wouldn't even say “no comment” or “I'm not going to talk about that.”

So Bill Cosby is a selfish creep and felon who drugged women to rape them. He even used his rape M.O. (modus operandi, meaning his criminal method of operation) in his comedy. (Ha-ha.) [1]

Of course a Big Deal celebrity like Cosby could have gotten laid without having to resort to rape. Obviously he preferred to rape women. He enjoyed rendering them helpless and violating them. Probably if he'd had consent, he couldn't have gotten an erection.

At my age, I might have to drug myself just to get it up!

Then there's the case of Jian Ghomeshi, a Canadian celebrity and certified Cool Dude (in Canada, anyway) who got his sexual kicks out of luring women to his lairs (or into stairwells or other convenient spots where he could enjoy some privacy with his prey) and suddenly choking, biting, slapping, and pummeling them with his fists, without so much as a “Pardon me, Ma'am, while I pleasure myself by abusing your flesh.” His victims uniformly describe being stunned into physical and mental paralysis by the abrupt shift of Ghomeshi, without any warning, from seemingly normal, charming, and pleasant enough guy into violently angry sadist physically attacking them. He used his fame and charm as bait to lure his victims, obviously. Ghomeshi was a media “star,” a Hip Cat who led a band, “wrote” books, and was a radio “personality” until his criminal sexual proclivities caught up with him. Now he's a fired radio personality who's under police investigation. (In case you're wondering about his name, he's the son of Iranian immigrants to Canada.)

Eclectic or opportunistic in his choice of victims, depending on how you look at it, some of those who experienced his violent ministrations included a CBC producer, an author, an actress, and a fan he latched onto at one of his book signings.

This Ghomeshi guy, one of those types who hungers for fame, first got people to pay attention to him in a band called Moxy Früvous, which I surmise is an ultrahip name for a band. Turns out he was assaulting women back then in the 1990s too. He managed to worm his way up the media hierarchy into prominence inside the Canadian government propaganda system, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, or CBC, with his very own shows, Play, a TV show, and the very With-It, Superhip radio show “Q.” (Man, I'm just too out-of-it and stuck in Squaresville to know what Q is supposed to reference.)

I've had the misfortune to hear Q a few times, because it's imported into some U.S. media markets via “public” radio stations. I had no idea who this “Jian Ghomeshi” guy was, but he came off as a slick, smug hipster, good at glib patter. His show combined pop cultural chatter with reactionary politics, which I chalked up to the reactionary regime of Canadian prime minister Harper. I figured CBC and the jackass I was hearing on the radio were just enthusiastically toeing the party line. Every show I happened to hear had some Russia-bashing segment near the beginning, revolving around either Ukraine (Russia the Bad Guys, the Big Lie of western media these days) or scoring points on Russia over examples of harassment and repression (none of which were anything that doesn't happen routinely in both Canada and the U.S.)

That's all I knew about this jackal until he was exposed as a predator and I read up on him online.

Here's the gist of how the air got let out of Ghomeshi's balloon.

A freelance reporter had collected stories from some of Ghomeshi's victims and took what he had to the Toronto Star newspaper. In preparing to break the story, the paper contacted Ghomeshi for comment. Ghomeshi had a lawyer tell the paper the accusations were crap.

Go-Go-Ghomeshi, clever fellow that he thinks he is, then tried to head the brewing scandal off at the pass. He went to CBC management and showed them videos of Himself beating up women and explained to them that it was all quite innocent, consensual, sadomasochistic sex “play,” the sort of stuff a groovy unconventional swinger like Himself engages in and that's no big deal, even if a bit kinky for stuffy straight-arrow types. He figured showing them the videos would put the matter to rest.

But then the strangest thing happened- and how could Jian-dude have seen this one coming? Far from being reassured, the CBC brass found the videos of his violent attacks disturbing and fired him. Typical killjoy squares.

Poor misunderstood Jian The G then had no choice but to sue the CBC for $55 million (Canadian, presumably), on grounds of wrongful termination and defamation.

As Smooth JG has patiently explained on Facebook, (before going into hiding), he had “done nothing wrong,” merely engaged in “adventurous forms of sex that included role-play, dominance and submission.” With consent of the lucky gals He designated as subs, of course. [2]

Yeah, I guess you could say it was an “adventure” for his victims, if you add the word “harrowing.”

Ghomeshi spun the problem as some kind of judgmental, puritanical violation of his sacred sexual privacy.

After about 9 victims fingered him, people apparently had a hard time buying his story. Even the “crisis management” firm he hired, Navigator, (there's a straight-to-the-point name), dumped him.

It turns out that now people in Canadian media and music circles are nodding knowingly at one another- they knew (or suspected) it all along.

That's typical in cases of celebrity criminality. The signs, even specific knowledge, are there for years before the pot finally boils over and the celebrity is cooked (sometimes). Until his comeback. (Isn't it always a male?)

So I suppose CBC will need a replacement Russian-bashing Hep Cat now. [3] 

Man, if a Cat as Cool and Hip as ME chokes and beats women, it must be cool and hip! Dig?

There goes two people I didn't particularly like, down for the count (or there careers are, anyway). 

Anybody got an antidote for a schadenfreude overdose?

1] See “Here's the 1969 Bill Cosby Routine About Wanting to Drug Women's Drinks,” Village Voice, Nov. 17, 2014.

2] “CBC fires Jian Ghomeshi over sex allegations,” Toronto Star, October 26, 2014.

3] If you feel the need to delve into the details of Ghomeshi's twists and turns and how it's all unfolded, the Toronto Star has run a series on the case. You can go there and search “Ghomeshi.” For details of some of Ghomeshi's attacks on women, see “Jian Ghomeshi: 8 women accuse former CBC host of violence, sexual abuse or harassment,” October 29, 2014.

The Huffington Post ran a useful overview, “Ask A Canadian: Explaining The Jian Ghomeshi Scandal To Americans,” November 1, 2014.

Schadenfreude is a German word meaning taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. [Literally "harm-joy."] I'm being tongue-in-cheek as I'm not actually enjoying the public exposure of the malfeasance of these characters- and it's too soon to say they've gotten their comeuppance, which still won't give me pleasure. And anyone who reads my essays knows that the misfortunes of most people pains and outrages me. No pleasure there. I wish I could take pleasure when some asshole suffers a fall of their own making. What I feel is aggravation that they were put on pedestals in the first place, and protected.

The worst recent case is Jimmy Savile, the very industrious British pedophile and BBC star. A much more grotesque case than these two, and one in which major British institutions are implicated. He was effectively aided and abetted in his crimes by the BBC, which quashed an expose of him, a hospital, and the police, for many years. Only after he was DEAD did these gutless accomplices get up the nerve to stop covering for him.

Interestingly, like Cosby, Savile styled himself as a comedian, although he wasn't funny at all, which apparently didn't prevent many from thinking otherwise. That may have been from the power of suggestion. If something is put on TV as “funny,” with a laugh track added, the average sheeplike humanoid is likely to believe it so, both by the conformist, herdlike nature of the species, and by conditioning. “Laughter is infectious” has been proven literally true by the study of the effect of adding laugh tracks to programming.

Or maybe a lot of people just have a lousy sense of humor.

Cuba Shames Itself In UN, Votes Against Referring North Korean Tyranny To World Court For Human Rights Crimes

Gee, just when Cuba distinguished itself by sending more doctors to west African to treat Ebola patients than any other country, Cuba had to go and do this.

The UN General Assembly* voted 119 to 19, (55 chickenshit nations abstained) to refer the loathsome North Korea cult regime to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, after a UN investigation (years late) found grounds for prosecution of NK's rulers for murder, torture, and starving people.

Cuba was one of the 19 voting to protect the North Korean cult tyranny. Why Cuba wants to be identified with a pariah state is truly baffling. It only plays into the hands of U.S. propagandists, who portray Cuba as a pariah.

This was the “reasoning” Cuba offered for its vote: the measure seeking prosecution is a "tool to sanction and condemn developing countries."

Oh get off it!

The (now Raul) Castro regime should really avoid doing things that make it harder for decent people to defend it.


*The General Assembly is where most of the member nations sit and has virtually no power, as opposed to the Security Council, with 15 member nations, five of them permanent (the U.S. UK, Russia, China, and France, any one of which can veto any measure the SC votes for) and 10 rotating ones chosen by behind the scenes politicking. The Security Council can impose obligations on all UN members, such as forcing them to participate in economic sanctions against target nations (like Iran currently, and Iraq between 1990 and 2003).

Five Reactionary GOP Apparatchiks on U.S. Supreme Court Sharpening Knives For Another Attack on Obamacare

What Republicans in Congress have been unable to do, Republicans on the Supreme Court are doing. They are carving chunks out of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. They already hacked out a key slab of the law by ruling that states didn't have to take more Federal funds to expand Medicaid to more poor people (a long-existing government health insurance program).

Now they're preparing to block the Federal subsidies for low-income people that Obama's law forces to buy health insurance. The GOP operatives in robes on the high court have accepted an appeal of a case that lower courts already found meritless. It's obviously their intention to reverse the lower courts that have unanimously rejected the frivolous challenge to the law and void yet another key part of the law. This will force poor people who don't qualify for Medicaid or can't get it in their reactionary GOP-controlled states and who don't have employer health insurance to either impoverish themselves further to pay a fine to the IRS, a cute whip Obama installed in his law to force compliance. The fine escalates over the years and becomes quite onerous.

There are 9 judges, called “Justices,” on the U.S. Supreme Court, the highest Federal government court which can also overrule the judicial systems of the 50 individual states, as indeed can the two levels of the Federal judiciary below it, the District Courts, of which there are 94, each with several judges, and the next higher level, the Appeals Courts, of which there are 12, against with several judges apiece. The District Courts are organized in Circuits, with an Appeals Court for each Circuit. (There are also separate specialized Federal courts to hear certain kinds of civil cases. There is also a fake “court,” the so-called FISA court, for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which consists of a few right-wing judges personally selected by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who has been a reactionary starting with Warren Burger, Earl Warren's successor, in 1969. This “court” until recently actually sat in a windowless room inside the Department of “Justice,” not even in an actual court building. Its job is to rubber-stamp warrant requests from U.S. secret police agencies for surreptitious burglaries, wiretaps, bugs, etc. It has approved over 40,000 such warrants and rejected 11 in its history, since 1978 when it was established. The 11 had paperwork mistakes.)

The Supreme Court refuses to even hear about 90% of appeals directed to it. The lucky 10% are granted “certiorari,” a Latin word which they use as part of their arcane legal jargon. It takes 4 “Justices” to grant certiorari, that is, to agree to hear an appeal. The Justices only work 8 months out of the year, by the way, for which they are paid fat six-figure salaries and all kinds of lush benefits most American workers can only dream of.

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.