Is Paul Manafort Banking on a Trump Pardon? He Better Be.

What he's doing makes no sense otherwise.

First, he went to trial in Federal court. U.S. Federal courts are like Chinese courts- both have a conviction rate around 98%. The laws, procedures, and court rules are constructed to virtually guarantee convictions. And the judges are mostly pro-prosecution; many actually ARE former prosecutors. I have yet to read of a judge with a background as a defense attorney, much less a Legal Aid lawyer, etc.

Second, Manafort is obviously "guilty" under U.S. law of the charges heaped on his head, "tax fraud" and "bank fraud."  U.S. law is very repressive. (Manafort faces possible life in prison on the current charges!) But applying U.S. law, Manafort is guilty. He apparently didn't report all his income to the tax authorities (the IRS, Internal Revenue Service), which is being labeled tax fraud, a crime. (The vast majority of incidents of unreported income are treated as civil matters in the U.S. and the IRS applies penalties and interest, so every criminal prosecution for tax evasion is in a sense selective prosecution.)

The bank fraud charge is another legal curve ball. A bank president hankered after an appointment in the Trump regime, so he approved a loan for Manafort over the objections of his underlings. In other words, he bribed Manafort with a dicey loan. Manafort's paperwork for the loan was inaccurate, but the application was really pro forma, since the bank president made the decision without regard to Manafort's creditworthiness. Yet the false paperwork is the basis for claiming that Manafort "defrauded" the bank- even though the head of the bank was well-aware of what was going on.

In the U.S., the rich are glorified by the media on a daily basis. Filthy rich billionaires like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and others are feted as figures of admiration. But in this trial, the government prosecutors used a common tactic, stoking class envy and resentment. Their opening gambit was harping on expensive clothes Manafort bought (the media in the U.S. had a great time ridiculing the items of clothing- since they are devoted to bringing down Trump, naturally they are hostile to Manafort). I find it hypocritical for a government that is the handmaiden of the super-rich to do an ideological somersault and play that populist, resent-the-rich card in court.

 In this case obviously Manafort was never going to be prosecuted if he hadn't been involved with Trump and thus provides a target for the special prosecutor, former FBI secret police chief Robert S. Mueller III, to use as a vector to get at Trump by forcing Manafort to "cooperate" in the Get Trump campaign of the secret police, most of the major media, and the Democratic Party. The FBI had long known about what Manafort was up to, having interrogated him and his former henchman Rick Gates, an admitted adulterer and crook who embezzled from Manafort (now turned states' evidence) in 2014. At that time the Department of "Justice" didn't see any reason to bring charges, even though they were questioning him about his work for the since-overthrown president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. Now however, Mueller is charging him for failing to register as an agent of a foreign power- that charge to be tried in an upcoming, separate trial. And of course the CIA and NSA knew all about his activities, as Manafort was advising the former president of Ukraine when he was in office, retroactively deemed a hostile act since the U.S. subsequently arranged the overthrow of that president. The FBI, DEA, CIA, and other agencies have free access to the NSA's massive databases. All Paul Manafort's telephone calls (the content, not just the metadata, as the mendacious U.S. media keeps lying), emails, websearches, bank transfers, and more are in the NSA's possession, and a search of "Paul Manafort" would instantly pull up all that data, (All your data is in the NSA's paws too.) [1]

So the government knew all about everything Manafort was doing that Mueller has suddenly decided is criminal and merits prosecution.

By the way, Manafort isn't the only person doing what he did. Other political hustlers "advise" foreign "leaders" and don't necessarily register. In Britain, Tony Blair has made millions as an image adviser to tyrants- but UK law isn't U.S. law. In the U.S., Israel has an entire cadre of agents of influence, in and out of the U.S. government, who don't register as their agents.

But the U.S. "justice" system has nothing to do with justice. It is political from start to finish.

Manafort's lawyers didn't call any defense witnesses. Their efforts in the trial were limited to cross-examining the government's witnesses, and making opening and closing arguments. In U.S. trials, prosecutors get to speak last to the jury before the jurors retire to deliberate on a verdict- yet another advantage for the government, as they're making the final impression and can rebut whatever the defense said without contradiction and make any and all manner of prejudicial assertions and slip in distorted or even false facts.

Manafort's defense team tried to blame everything on Rick Gates, the government's "star" witness. I rather doubt a conviction will be avoided. They'll be lucky to even get a hung jury (when the jurors can't agree on a unanimous verdict), in which case Manafort can and will be retried, unless he caves and offers Mueller something incriminating on Trump.

One defense "strategy" seems to be relying on a guilty verdict being overturned on appeal. Seems to me Manafort's lawyers are taking him for a ride, one very profitable for them. (Manafort had five very expensive lawyers in court for the trial.)




I can only guess that Manafort expects Trump to ultimately pardon him (after Manafort has been drained of hundreds of thousands of dollars by his lawyers). If that is what Manafort is counting on, he's a fool. He probably doesn't have any genuine information that could convict Trump of anything. Because it is obvious there was no conspiracy between Trump or anyone else and the Russians to hack computers or somehow fix the election. So Trump has no incentive to pardon Manafort.

 You handsome devil, you! (What, no $15,000 ostrich jacket?)

1]  "Manafort Asks Federal Judge in Virginia to Dismiss Fraud Case," Bloomberg, March 27, 2018. Manafort's lawyers filed a pre-trial motion, which Bloomberg News described thusly:


In his filing, Manafort [that is, Manafort's lawyers] refers to Justice Department interest in his activities that preceded his work as [Trump's] campaign chairman. In July 2014, he met with U.S. prosecutors and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents to discuss his offshore consulting activities, the filing said.

“The DOJ had thus already investigated Mr. Manafort’s tax filings for the time period covered by the indictment” and chose not to charge him, according to the filing. “The Special Counsel was obviously the driving force behind the decision to charge Mr. Manafort.”


 

Leslie Moonves, Suffering From MSS, Clearly Needs Help and Compassion, Not Condemnation

Leslie Moonves, the Big Boss of CBS Corporation, who gloated about helping elevate Donald Trump to the presidency ("it's bad for America but it's good for CBS," he said, meaning saturation "coverage" of Trump running for president was a ratings and profit bonanza for CBS, the good of the nation be damned) has been exposed as sexually attacking, attempting to rape, and wrecking the careers of six women in the Hollywood industry ecosystem. (No doubt there have been many more.)

But in the rush to heap opprobrium on Moonves, sight has been lost on a crucial fact: Women are not the only victims here. Moonves is also a victim. A victim of a dread disease.

You see, Leslie has Male Superiority Syndrome. This little understood malady affects men of all social strata and in all walks of life. It affects men in positions of great power and men with little power, but with power over some women or even over a single woman.

Just as brain tumors and Alzheimer's Disease can alter behavior, so too does MSS cause bizarre and anti-social behavioral changes in those it strikes, changes that can impact the lives of not only the sufferer, but of those around him.

Like drug addicts, those with MSS are misunderstood. MSS sufferers need help and compassion, not condemnation and rejection as pariahs.

But there is hope. Social scientists have learned much about this condition, and even now are racing for answers. Yet there is so much more to do. You can be part of the solution.

Won't you help us find a cure for this awful affliction? Please donate generously to FECUND, the Fund for Eliminating and Countering Unwanted Nasty Domination. Together we can someday stop men from harassing, assaulting, and raping women, and destroying their careers. When that day arrives, we will all be better off.

[This message has been sponsored by FECUND, dedicated to ending male domination of women.]

Won't you contribute to help Leslie Moonves?

 

"Les Moonves and CBS Face Allegations of Sexual Misconduct," 

New Yorker, August 6 & 13, 2018 issue.

How the Democrats Helped Create an Ultra-Reactionary Supreme Court- And Strip Women of Their Abortion Rights

It's long past time to call out the Democratic Party of the U.S. on one of its major con games. The one in which they claim to be the sole bulwark protecting America from a right-wing "takeover" of the Supreme Court. The one in which they claim that they are the guardians of abortion rights, rights in permanent peril from unnamed right wingers.

Before I continue, I want to bullet-point the critical facts you need to take away with you:

• Extreme reactionary Antonin Scalia was elevated to the Supreme Court by a Senate vote of 98-0. Those weren't 98 Republicans. Scalia was later one of five GOP apparatchiks on the high court who stole the 2000 presidential election for George Bush (Bush the Younger). [1]

• Democratic Senator Joe Biden (later  vice president in the regime of Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama) functioning as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was instrumental in putting known sex offender Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. Thomas, like Scalia, voted to steal the 2000 presidential election for the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers). [2]

• EVERY reactionary elevated to the top court, with its immense power, has gotten there with the support of Democratic Party senators. Even the ones who vote against confirming them soft-pedal how awful and evil the nominees are.

• In the last year of the presidency of Hit Man Obama, a vacancy opened up on the Supereme Court. In an unprecedented power grab, the Senate Majority Leader, Republican Mitch McConnell (a venal coal industry stooge from Kentucky) announced that Obama would not be allowed to fill that vacancy. And Democratic response was- some grumbling under their breath and acceptance. Obama himself didn't give any evidence of even caring! (Yet there are still morons who think he is a "progressive" who was somehow thwarted by forces beyond his control. Now imagine if the situation was reversed, and a Democratic-controlled Senate denied a GOP president the right to fill a Supreme Court vacancy! There would be DAILY howls of outrage, even calls for a military coup "to restore the Constitutional order." That's because the Republicans are like rabid wolverines and are serious about power. That's how, with a minority of the populace behind them, they have taken over the presidency, the Congress, the Judiciary, and two-thirds of the state legislatures and governorships. (They have long dominated and controlled the military and secret police apparatus.) They have used their control of state legislatures to draw districts that allow them to elect the majority of Representatives to the national House of Representatives with a minority of overall voters. The Democrats are mainly a party of grifters, unserious about power, just looking for profitable sinecures for themselves.

Okay, that last bulletpoint was a long one, but essential. Now on to the body of the essay, which will illustrate the utter cynicism of the Democrats in manipulating people who are duped into relying on them to protect the few hard-won rights we have.

Every election "cycle," which is to say, every two years [3], Democratic political hacks running for office send out tons of political junk mail to citizens, hoping to woo their votes. One of the perennial themes of this propaganda bombardment is how the Supreme Court hangs in the balance, and the need to protect the right to abortion, which was only granted to women by a divided Supreme Court in the Roe vs. Wade decision. That decision was made under pressure from the women's movement, and only granted a limited right, in the first trimester of pregnancy, after which the government was deemed to have an "interest" in interfering in personal and medical decisions and exerting control over people's bodies.

In the years since, the organized reactionaries of the U.S., including the Republican Party (GOP), rightwing religious zealots, the Catholic Church bosses, and assorted rightwing media and political cadres, have relentlessly attacked abortion. The terrorist arm of this novement has assassinated doctors and clinic workers with bombs and guns, committed thousands of arson and other attacks on abortion clinics, blockaded clinics and much else. The legal offensive has been even more devastating, with states controlled by the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) virtually eliminating abortion clinics by various legislative encumbrances that in effect persecute the clinics. Some states have functionally outlawed abortion drugs, which in early pregnancy are the cheapest and easiest way to terminate a pregnancy. (By the way, these same creeps who care so much about "unborn children" are the same ones who deport children fleeing gang and state violence south of the U.S. border back to their deaths, who destroy water containers left in the desert for them, who rip children and infants away from their refugee parents and separate them by thousands of miles. They have historically supported the murder of children by fascist death squads in the U.S. empire, and bombing cities and villages in Vietnam, Korea, and elsewhere that kill large numbers of children, babies, and mothers. So I have a sneaking suspicion that reverence for the sanctity of life isn't their actual motive.)
There IS no abortion provider in almost every town in the U.S. Over 90% of U.S. counties have no abortion facility. Abortion has been stigmatized and isolated, banished from the body of the medical profession. The cowardly medical schools don't even teach their students how to perform abortions,

And what has the Democratic Party been doing all the while the assault on abortion rights has continued unabated for 44 years?

Every election they yell at their voters that the right to abortion is under assault and therefore you must vote for them. And that's pretty much it.

And they ensure that the Supreme Court has a hard rightwing majority, They do this to have a scare tactic to run in elections on, and they do this because they too are fundamentally reactionaries. They serve the corporate oligarchy, which of course wants a reactionary judiciary. They believe in state power over citizens- as the repressive legislation pushed into law by their presidents Truman, Clinton, and Obama proves. Obama gave the government the power to indefinitely imprison U.S. citizens in military gulags without charges or legal representation, by government fiat. The government need only label the victims "terrorists." That is now law because of Obama.

Let's dispose of another myth. The repeated, false assertion that the court is divided into a "liberal" wing and a "conservative" one. The actual division is conservative and reactionary. The conservatives ("liberal") mostly try to preserve the status quo, which is the definition of conservatism. The reactionaries want to change the status quo to make it more repressive, and to decrease the influence of the population and give the rich and large corporations ever more power. This is a program of radical change, NOT "conservatism."

1]  In a bit of ironically poetic justice, the Democratic candidate who along with his party let the GOP steal the 2000 election, Albert Gore, was one of the Senators who voted to put Scalia on the Supreme Court.

2]  Biden made sure Thomas, an arch-reactionary black man who is an enemy of African-Americans in many ways, including his attacks on affirmative action, made it through the confirmation process by stifling witnesses who would have buttressed Anita Hill's testimony about Thomas' vulgar sexual harassment of his underlings, and more critically Biden privately assured his Democratic Senate colleagues not to believe Hill. The story of  Biden's treachery is told in the book "Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas," by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson. The authors were reporters at the Wall Street Journal at the time the book was written. Mayer went on to be a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine, where she is today. Abramson became the very first female to ascend to the top editor post at the oh-so-august New York Times.

Abramson's tenure as top editor was short. She accidentally discovered that the publisher and chairman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., whose family has long owned the paper and its other properties and who inherited his job from his Daddy, was chiseling her on her pay, paying her less than her male predecessors. Sulzberger was miffed when Abramson confronted him about this, proceeded to fire her, and then engaged in a campaign of character assassination against her.

So "liberal" of him!

This sexist asshole also hired the scandalous former BBC boss Mark Thompson. After notorious pedophile and BBC star Jimmy Savile died, the BBC had an expose ready to air. That was killed, and in its place a tribute to Savile was aired. Thompson claimed to know nothing about any of this, despite being in charge. Sulzberger thinks this guy is worth paying millions for.
The result so far has been a discrimination suit against Thompson for the toxic environment he's helped create (or perpetuate) at the NY Times. Two black female employees allege in their lawsuit that Thompson introduced an "environment rife with discrimination based on age, race and gender." It further links his behavior to similar actions by him during his BBC tenure. ["New York Times chief executive accused of discrimination," BBC News, 29 April, 2016.]


3]  In the U.S., one chamber of the national legislature, the "House of Representatives" of the U.S. Congress, stands for election every two years. There are 435 Congressional districts, thus 435 representatives covering all the 50 states. Congressional districts are proportioned roughly by population.

The other chamber of Congress, the U.S. Senate, has 100 Senators, two Senator for each state. This gives grossly disproportional weight and power to sparsely populated states hard rightwing states, and greatly weakens the political weight of populous states. So California has two Senators, and the 20 least populous states, whose total population equals that of California, have 40 Senators. So arch-reactionary states like Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, the two Dakotas, Iowa, Arkansas, Louisiana, and so on, are a powerful structural and institutional factor in making the U.S. a rightwing nation, even though only a minority of the population is rightwing in this putative "democracy."

Senators are elected for six year terms. Every two years, one third of the Senate stands for reelection.
U.S. presidents serve 4 year terms. The years that aren't presidential election years are called "off-year elections."

The terms of Congresspeople and presidents is set out in the Constitution. The Republicans passed a Constitutional amendment in the 1950's limiting the president to two elected terms. This was done in reaction to the fact that the Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president four times in a row starting in 1932. Ironically, Republican Dwight David Eisenhower, elected in 1952 and 1956, may well have won a third term if not for this amendment.

The Sham "Suspense" Over Trump's Second Supreme Court Nominee

U.S. corporate propaganda systems (aka "the media," as if it's the one and only media) and politicians are pretending there is something to wonder about which awful, fanatically reactionary ideologue in a judicial robe president Trump will nominate to replace the "swing vote" Justice Anthony Kennedy who announced his retirement from the high court. But it doesn't matter, since Trump long ago announced that ALL his Supreme Court picks will come from a list of career reactionaries approved  by a cabal of conspirators called "The Federalist Society." They are all the same!

Trump has repeatedly announced that when he packs the high court with reactionaries, Roe vs. Wade, the 1974 Supreme Court decision that decreed that women had a limited right to abort pregnancies, would be "automatically" overturned.

What the U.S. corporate media REFUSES to report is the ultra-reactionary nature of the so-called "Federalist Society." As always with reactionary organizations, "the" media disguises their actual political nature and presents them as legitimate and respectable. ("The" media does the same with criminal state arms like the CIA, FBI, NSA, U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, the murderous Immigration and Customs Enforcement, et al.)

Meanwhile, politicians, mainly Democrats, but also one or two "moderate" Republican Senators claim they're going to "protect" Roe v. Wade by... oh, I don't know, it's so vague what they say. They'll urge Trump to appoint someone who won't overturn it. (That's a joke. They're pretending to be divorced from reality when they say that.) Or they'll closely question the nominee about it. (All nominees these days refuse to answer such questions during their confirmation hearings. And the Senators know it.)

The phoniness of these political hacks is unbearable.

Here's Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell, speaking July 1st on the NBC Sunday morning political propaganda show "Meet The Press:"

"Well, we, well I would love President Trump to pick somebody in the mainstream of American views who are going to hold up years, and years and years of precedent. The one great thing about our nation is an independent judiciary. In times of intense political debate, the fact that we have that independent judiciary that will uphold the law is key to what is so great about our country. We're a 51/49 Senate. And if he wants to throw an extreme conservative who basically says, "I'm not going to follow precedent -- "

What mealy-mouthed gibberish.

While we're demystifying ruling class rubbish, let's dispose of a myth. The repeated, false assertion that the court is divided into a "liberal" wing and a "conservative" one. The actual division is conservative and reactionary. The conservatives ("liberal") mostly try to preserve the status quo, which is the definition of conservatism. The reactionaries want to change the status quo to make it more repressive, and to decrease the influence of the population and give the rich and large corporations ever more power. This is a program of radical change, NOT "conservatism."

Israel Eradicates Another Arab Village- U.S. Media Aids and Abets the Crime By Blacking it Out

And not just U.S. media either.

Continuing a tradition dating back to 1948, the self-proclaimed "Jewish homeland" has violently depopulated and bulldozed yet another Arab village, Khan al-Ahmar. The Bedouin villagers had the misfortune to be living in a "strategic location." That is, it was situated until today between two Jewish-only "settlements" (colonies) in the West Bank (which is called "Judea and Samaria," by Jewish imperialist zealots, using the language of religious fanatic cism) and was thus in the way of the ongoing Israeli project of colonization of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, a project begun in 1948 and pursued relentlessly ever since. [1] Israeli soldiers assaulted the residents for refusing to leave, injuring 35, four of whom were hospitalized.

Israel's judiciary has ruled the existence of the village "illegal." (Under Israeli law, Arabs functionally have no rights, and in fact are unlawful squatters in "the land of the Jews.") As in every repressive state, including the U.S., Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and many others, much repression in Israel is carried out under color of law. Thus Arabs are never permitted to build houses. So their "illegal" homes are routinely bulldozed.  In 2003 American humanitarian activist Rachel Corrie was murdered by the Israelis while protesting a home demolition, assassinated by a bulldozer river who undoubtedly was acting on instructions. Other foreign activists and Palestinians protesting home demolitions have been maimed and killed over the years.

Israeli general Moshe Dayan once boasted of how 450 Arab villages were wiped off the map during and after the 1948 creation of the state of Israel. We can take him as an authoritative source on that, as he was part of it.

At the same time that "law" is used as an instrument of repression, as in the case of depopulating "the land of Israel" of non-Jews, the laws of the repressive state are themselves transgressed with impunity by the government to carry out yet more repression. Only the oppressed and the average citizen is bound by law, not those in power, who use law as a weapon. [This is true all over the world. See for example the Trump-Sessions regime's current war on refugees fleeing violent U.S.-created Central American hellholes, a violation of refugee law, or U.S. government policies of torture and assassinations.]

The U.S. government has invariably backed Israel's crimes, with very few exceptions. The U.S. media has been a reliable arm of Israeli propaganda efforts over the years,

If you call this obviously racist state, which separates groups by law, and which wipes out Arab villages to make way for Jewish only towns, an apartheid state, which it is, Israel's propaganda chorus in "the West" smears you as "anti-Semitic." In the U.S., virtually the entire establishment media is part of this chorus. U.S. politicians and government officials sycophantically bray the Israeli propaganda line of the day. We just saw that again after Israeli snipers spent two months murdering and maiming thousands of protesters along their fortified border with Gaza, the world's largest prison camp, holding almost two million souls, half of them under the age of 18. Medics, journalists,
children, even a disabled man in a wheelchair (crippled as a result of earlier Israeli violence) were all shot dead by Israeli snipers "in self-defense," according to Israeli propaganda, propaganda amplified by U.S. media, politicians, and government. Hamas was officially blamed for Israel's massacre, by Trump regime apparatchiks like his hand-picked UN ambassador, the horrid GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) career politicial Nikki Haley, who has distinguished herself in that post by her hate-filled demagoguery aimed at Palestinians and at the UN and its various bodies. Not to be outdone in slavish devotion to Israel's "defense," leading Democratic Party politicians like U.S. Senator Charles "Wall Street's Valet" Schumer denounced Hamas and exonerated Israel for its mayhem.

The two political parties that form a cartel an monopolize political power in the U.S. try to outdo each other in hysterical fealty to Israel and endorsement of its every crime. We see that each time Israel launches one of its periodic wars on Gaza, which it calls "mowing the lawn," destroying the laboriously-created infrastructure of Gaza- the power plant, the waterworks, greenhouses, shops, factories, hospitals, apartment buildings. Now there is no potable water in Gaza, literally. This concentration camp for almost two million people will soon be the site of pandemics and mass die-offs. That seems to be Israel's mass murderous plan for the Palestinians, which will get the usual full-throated approval from U.S. politicians and a complicity U.S. media.


1]  Or we could date the project of colonization to the birth of the Zionist movement itself around the beginning of the 20th century. 1948 is the year the UN, dominated by the U.S. and with Soviet concurrence, decided to give most of the land of Palestine to the minority Jewish population. The Jewish "settlers" then waged a terror campaign against defenseless Palestinian inhabitants, driving out hundreds of thousands illegally, and illegally barring their return as required under international law. The Palestinians' insistence on their right of return is painted as an unreasonable demand, when it is in fact their due under international law. At the same time, Israel, its Western backers, and the propagandists pretend that they are the lawful ones, and the Palestinians nothing but international terrorists.

Then Israeli propagandists invented a story as to why hundreds of thousands of Palestinians all up and fled their homes simultaneously. The legend they invented was that a Muslim Imam broadcast an order to the Palestinians to leave, to make way for invading Arab armies. The Palestinians, being obedient sheep, all heeded this fictive radio message. Western media stooges of Israel dutifully repeated this mythological tale for years. Years later, researchers examined recordings of radio broadcasts from that time and found that no such broadcast existed. Of course, Western media has never retracted the disinformation they repeated for years, issued no corrections to "the record." That is typical Western media behavior. [In what seems odd for privately owned, allegedly independent media. Western media often functions just like state-controlled media in places like China and Russia. Witness the frenetic war propaganda in "the" media leading up to the U.S.-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003. There were even purges of media personalities who didn't jump on the pro-war bandwagon, such as of Phil Donahue and others at MSNBC.]

The Holocaust is frequently invoked as justification for the dispossession, immiseration of, and violence against Palestinians. But the Germans are the culprits in the Holocaust. So if justice demanded a homeland for Jews- Jews unsatisfied with their current homelands all over the world, that is- then the State of Israel should have been carved out of Bavaria, heartland of the Nazi movement.

As for the rationalization that Jews- and here we must pause to note the ironic fact that both Zionists and Nazis agree that all Jews belong to a single entity, "the Jewish people," and their bonds to and loyalty to this group supersedes any and all other ties, a super-conspiratorial idea that is clearly false, and indeed, while there are Jews of numerous stripes, including atheists, "the Jewish people" as an entity is as fictive as "the white race," for example. Both things, and other such "races" and "peoples" exist only as delusions in the minds of various chauvinists- but as for the rationalization that "Jews," ALL Jews, need a "homeland" to which to retreat at some future moment of peril when no other place on earth is safe for Jews, this is such an absurdity that it cannot bear the most cursory analysis- which is why the propagandists who promulgate it make sure that such cursory analysis never occurs. Because how could Israel survive if the entire world wanted to kill Jews? Israel is powerful because of Western and ESPECIALLY U.S. backing! If the U.S. wasn't a safe haven for Jews- and today Jews are prominent, powerful, and rich far beyond their numbers in the U.S.- Israel would not be a refuge but a concentration camp for Jews.

But propaganda is successful because the propagandists can monopolize the media systems that target the populations they wish to indoctrinate and brainwash. That is certainly the case in the U.S., where the establishment media is almost uniformly, and relentlessly, Zionist.

U.S. Media Propagandists Rush to Take Advantage of Murder of 5 Newspaper Staffers in Annapolis, MD

In a naked pitch for public sympathy, major "news" media all over the U.S. have made the murder of five employees at an obscure local newspaper the top national story of the day for several days running.

A vicious jackass, angry over accurate reporting of his conviction for stalking a women, attacked the offices of the Capital Gazette paper in Annapolis, Maryland, and shot to death five workers and wounded six others.

U.S. establishment media of all stripes immediately went into "national grief" mode.

Let's put this in perspective.

Every day, people are murdered in the U.S. Thousands are murdered every year.

They are auto mechanics, secretaries, cashiers, air conditioner repairmen, trash collectors, accountants, construction workers, computer technicians, taxi drivers, dietitians, librarians, cooks, bank tellers... do you see where I'm going with this?

What's so special about the particular occupation, "newspaper employee"?

The establishment media feels itself under heavy assault in the Age of Trump, and feels the need to generate public sympathy for itself. Hence the saturation coverage.

The two New York City tabloid rags made it their front page story- as if it had happened in their offices.

The government-established radio propaganda network NPR (National Public Radio) waxed hysterical, with this verbiage: "the deadly shooting an attack on free speech," and it's "courageous" of the reporters at the Capital Gazette to cover the story of their colleagues deaths.

Huh? Why wouldn't they cover it? And given that the killer was immediately arrested at the scene, and denied bail, what's so damn "courageous" about reporting it? Weird assertion.

Meanwhile, the U.S. media barely makes a peep about the ongoing slaughter of journalists in Mexico, for example. Or the persecution of journalists in Turkey, who are regularly jailed on bogus "terrorism" and "coup conspiracy" charges by the autocrat who rules there, Erdogan. There are innumerable other examples of U.S. "journalists" indifference to the murder and oppression of journalists.

How about all the times the U.S. bombed the offices of Al-Jazeera? Nary a word in U.S. establishment media.

WikiLeaks and Julian Assange are demonized by U.S. media and subjected to a relentless campaign by the U.S. government aimed at their destruction. WikiLeaks makes information available to the public. That is journalism!

Hey, here's another one. The U.S. government murdered U.S. journalist Michael Hastings. The attitude of the U.S. media towards that one was "good riddance."

So I find this cynical opportunism by U.S. establishment propagandists to generate sympathy for themselves disgusting. They spent 365 days cheerleading for corporate oligarchic capitalism and aiding and abetting the crimes of the U.S. state, domestic and foreign, with their lies and coverups.

They are accomplices to the murders of millions of people killed as a result of U.S. aggression and U.S. coups that install and support fascist death squad regimes. They want me to feel sorry for them because five people employed by some newspaper no one outside of Annapolis has ever heard of got killed?

Please.

Trump Adopts Tent Concentration Camp Idea From His Hero, Fascist Racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Trump wants to imprison tens of thousands of refugees fleeing the three Central American hellholes the U.S. deliberately created by its policies going back decades, at least since the 1954 CIA coup in Guatemala that destroyed democracy in that country, ordered by Eisenhower. His plan now is to create tent concentration camps on military bases. This replicates the tent concentration camp the notorious sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona created to imprison "illegal" immigrants.

The Obama regime let Arpaio get away out outrageous civil and human rights violations for years, finally forced to act very late. If Obama had been a moral human being and acted in a timely fashion, Arpaio could have been stopped and punished earlier. As it is, Arpaio defied a Federal court order and was ultimately convicted of contempt of court. Trump rescued him with a presidential pardon, which erases the conviction. (A commutation is a reduction in sentence.)

The other two nations whose helpless citizens are fleeing to escape death are Honduras, victim of an Obama-regime coup about which Hillary Clinton bragged of her role in. She was Secretary of Stte and instrumental in using U.S. coercion to force other nations to recognize the illegitimate coup regime, which went on to run a death squad government. Then there's El Salvador, scene of a savage fascist war against the poor and leftist insurgents, with first Jimmy Carter and then Ronald Reagan throwing the weight of the U.S. behind the death squaders, as usual.

Trump Tries To Evade Responsibility for His Cruel Treatment of Refugees With Despicable Lies

Trump may have sunk to a new low of brazen, vulgar, disgusting lying with his defensive attack on Democrats for his own vicious policy of tearing children away from their parents- parents who are would-be immigrants either seeking political asylum (meaning they are refugees, NOT "illegal immigrants" as the U.S. media- and BBC too- has it, or "criminals" as Grand Inquisitor Attorney General of the U.S. and head of the "Justice" Department Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and his boss, president Donald J. "Jackass" Trump, have it) or are forced to try and sneak across the Mexican U.S. border to save their own lives to survive economically inside a ruthless empire.

Trump displaced responsibility for his own acts onto Democrats, an act of demagogic dishonesty and evasion that rivals the "stab in the back" propaganda of World War I German generals, Nazis, and other "nationalists" which blamed "politicians" "defeatists" and "Jews" for Germany's defeat in that war. In fact, the top Field Marshall, Hindenberg, told the government to sue for peace after the U.S. entered the war and Germany was facing imminent military defeat.

Here is what Trump said a few days ago:

 "The Democrats forced that law [sic] on the country! I hate it, I hate to see separation of parents and children!" [1] Trump pretends he is being forced to do something by "law," and further that it is "the Democrats" law. A double lie. Since this cruel tactic of turning migrant children and babies into de facto orphans held in prisons (not "shelters," another lie by the Trump regime, since they are imprisoned there and cannot leave, and their parents are kept in the dark as to their whereabouts) is something that was never done before, it is spurious in the extreme to pretend it is required by law.

He is also lying when he pretends to "hate it." He wouldn't be DOING it if he "hated" it!! Someone get a fire extinguisher to put out the blazing inferno on that guy's pants!

Apparently pleased with the additional outrage he provoked by his original libelous, demagogue smear, he kept it up in the following days, repeating his canard: "The Democrats have to change their law." Now there's a mind-twisting act of displacement of responsibility. Trump is acting as if HE is outraged by what HE is doing, and it is the Democratic Party doing it!!

Like all demagogues, Trump's irrationality has emotional logic for those attracted to him. The hate object, the scapegoat, is blamed for one's own sins. Since Trump is always blameless in all things, and his opponents guilty of all that is wrong in the world, it follows that the policy of Trump and Sessions and ICE to rip children away from their parents as a "deterrent" to "illegal" border crossing is the fault of the Democratic Party.

No matter that there is no basis in fact for his smears. Like Ronald Reagan, he knows that "facts are stupid things" is an effective operating principle for demagogues. Especially when "the" media is muted or silent in rebuttal. His target audience, the racists, xenophobes, nationalists, reactionaries, will hear him and not the feeble response. ("The" media, that is, the corporate propaganda system, hasn't broadcast LOUD Democratic rebuttals that I have heard.)

Trump has conditioned his followers not to believe news reports that contradict his outrageous lies. Such facts are "fake news," as he has repeatedly insisted. (A standard propaganda technique is to repeat and repeat a lie, to get people to believe it. All demagogues do it.)

Adolf Hitler was a believer in the Big Lie. He thought big lies were actually MORE credible than small ones, because the average person tells small lies all the time but not big ones, and assumes that since he or she wouldn't tell a big one, neither would the demagogue. On the other hand, since they themselves tell small ones, small lies are paradoxically less credible than big ones.
Trump however tells all sizes. Medium-sized ones too, for that matter.

Trump's minions, as well as various stone-hearted sadists who are Border Patrol and ICE agents, are carrying out the cruelty with vigor. (Ward Churchill's phrase "little Eichmanns" comes to mind.) Agents snicker at crying children ("All we need is a conductor," one snidely sneered in the presence of distraught young children) and the more openly thuggish GOP politicians are similarly callous. Michael Grimm, who once threatened to throw a reporter off a balcony for asking him a question he didn't like, and who went to prison for tax evasion, which doesn't stop him for running right now for his former seat in the U.S. House representing the reactionary New York City borough of Staten Island, and he's ahead of his primary opponent, said crying babies in U.S. prison camps is no different from babies crying at day care centers after being dropped off by their mothers. [Except, it seems needless to point out, it is only for the day, and the mothers know where their children are, and the children aren't prisoners, and the parents aren't prisoners, and oh what's the point of applying reason to the arguments of these cruel creeps!]

Trump's Grand Inquisitor, the unreconstructed Confederate racist and arch-reactionary Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, continually spews execrable lies and dishonest statements. His parents named him after the arch-traitor Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, a fact "the" media hides by referring to him ONLY as "Jeff," as if his name is Jeffrey. And Beauregard is honor of Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard, who kicked off the U.S. Civil War or War Between the States by ordering the attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina. (However, it is claimed that after the war, he advocated for Black civil rights and Black suffrage. But Sessions hates black suffrage and has prosecuted blacks for registering blacks to vote when he was a U.S. Attorney for Alabama and Alabama state attorney general at different times. His victims were acquitted after enduring a legal ordeal, which still had the desired chilling effect on other blacks who might be so bold as to become politically active in Alabama.)

And twin Trump harridans Kellyanne Conway, an indefatigable spewer of bullshit as a television spokeswoman for Trump, and Kirstjen Nielsen, head of the Department of "Homeland Security," which includes ICE and its Border Patrol, have been relentless in their lying, seeming to try and outdo their boss Trump in mendacity. (Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and flattering the boss is a condition of employment by Trump.) Both inhabit alternate universes from the one we are actually living in. You can do a search for their despicable statements on the scandal of the ripping of children from their parents. I'm not going to reprint all their grotesques crap here.

After weeks of media coverage (actually the "alternative" media started it, and the "mainstream" media tardily picked it up, while still misrepresenting things, watering down the cruel treatment, pretending it is only affecting "illegal immigrants" when in fact asylum seekers, who are NOT "illegal" but are being treated as such by the outlaw Trump regime, which cloaks its crimes against humanity in "law," standing reality on its head, are also having their children forcibly taken or taken by subterfuge.

The best ongoing coverage I'm aware of has been by democracynow.org.

With polls safely showing a two-thirds majority of the public disgusted by the "policy," Democratic politicians have duly noted the direction of the political winds and have gotten involved. To be fair, some did so sooner than others. Democracynow.org has interviews with some. [However 55% of Republicans approve of the vicious "separation" policy, falsely claimed by Trump and his henchmen and women to be required by law, while all but officially announcing the fact that the goal is "deterrence," i.e. make Hispanics fleeing violence stop coming to the U.S. Come here and we'll take your children away from you is the "message" they want to "send."]

Congressman Frank Palone described one example of how the  Immigration and Customs Enforcement (which goes by the chillingly apt acronym ICE) and its thuggish arm, the "Border Patrol,"   "separates" children from their parents. The governments' goons snuck into a cell at 3 AM and snatched a child from her father while they slept. Many similar stories have been aired in the past few weeks. There are other such stories. (This one came via WNYC radio in New York City.)
But contrary to the squeals of outrage, cruelty is nothing new as a U.S. practice. It is as old as the nation itself. Furthermore, it cannot be otherwise, as the U.S. is an empire. And empires are based on force, violence, coercion. And the U.S. is an empire founded on the twin pillars of genocide and slavery.

That all sounds like rhetoric to most Americans. The facts proving it fill numerous books, so I cannot prove the case in a short essay. Nor should I have to, given the massive amount of documentation that is openly available. People who don't know these very obvious truths by now are either willfully ignorant, hopelessly brainwashed, and/or fanatical nationalists.

1]  "The Democrats forced that law upon our nation. I hate it. I hate to see separation of parents and children. The Democrats can come to us as they actually are in all fairness, we are talking to them, and they can change the whole border security. We need a wall. We need border security. We've got to get rid of catch and release." Trump to reporters at the White House, June 15, 2018. Yes, the fractured syntax is accurate. From CNN and other sources.

Detention center? What detention center? This is just a nice cozy shelter for kids!

Oh stop being such a little crybaby! 

(Republican advice for little brats who come here uninvited.)

Does Secret Police Chief + Vagina = Feminism?

It does if you are a secret policewoman named Gina Haspel.

At least that's one of the cynical propaganda themes that was used to push through her nomination as head of the CIA, the U.S. global Gestapo. (Official title: Director of Central Intelligence, or DCI.)

Haspel was up to her eyeballs in the CIA torture program unleashed after a cabal of the Bush-Cheney regime, Saudi Arabia, and elements of the U.S. secret police apparatus (CIA, FBI, and NSA) with co-conspirators NYC mayor Rudolph Giuliani and insatiably greedy billionaire Larry Silverstein blew up three buildings at the World Trade Center site on September 11, 2001. But that's another and rather long story.

Haspel was basically the number two CIA person in the torture program, under the fascist fanatic Jose Rodriguez. (If you've ever heard this rabid humanoid rant, you'd see why "fascist fanatic" is the correct description.) She oversaw the destruction of evidence, namely videos of the actual torturing of prisoners. And she ran the CIA torture center in Thailand. (All this is no doubt just the tip of the iceberg of her criminal career.)

In her confirmation hearings, she refused to condemn torture (which would have been hypocritical, absent a true rehabilitation), but promised not to "break the law." Which is completely disingenuous, since the CIA's position is that the torture was legal. So she actually promised NOTHING.

But that's good enough for the imperialist U.S. Senate, which duly confirmed her. The U.S. Congress has always been an accomplice in U.S. crimes. Some "liberal" fakers posture and pose and spout empty rhetoric, but are content to allow the crimes to go on. They could actually make real trouble if they chose to. Senator Ron Wyden is a good example of one of these fakers. He plays along with the "classification" game. A Congressman has immunity for anything he says on the floor of the House or Senate. He could read into the record various "secrets." But he doesn't want to lose his precious classification "clearance." So he's in on the "secret" crimes (no secret to the victims, who are barred by the U.S. media from informing us) but his lips are sealed.

The "feminist" argument for Haspel is particularly cynical, a bit of rhetorical/ideological jui jitsu. Of course a person who works for an organization that is dedicated to oppressing the world's poor, who are majority female, cannot be a feminist. Unless by "feminist" you mean "self-interested woman careerist promoting her own interests."

Oh Happy Day! At last the glass ceiling at the CIA is broken! 

Another milestone in the march to Women's Equality!

 

Donald Trump Is the Most Honest U.S. President, Because He Says What He Thinks, Mostly

Witness his tweets. Is there any doubt they are true expressions of what he actually thinks at the the moment he writes them?

Yes, Trump does lie a lot. So do ALL U.S. presidents! "The" media counts every falsehood from Trump as a lie, but that is not accurate. He actually believes a lot of the false things he says. So those aren't lies. You want to see presidents who lied a lot, look at Johnson, Nixon, Obama, the Bushes. And their lies were even more evil than Trump's. Trump's lies are blatant and ludicrous. Those of the aforementioned were calculated as part of plots to commit evil. Trump tells stupid lies, then sometimes denies he told them, or brags about how he lied! [1]

Now, when I say Trump is the most honest president, some points must be made. I do NOT mean he never lies. And I don't mean he is completely honest. There is no such thing as complete honesty anyway. For one thing, most of our own minds are unconscious. We aren't even honest with ourselves! What I mean is, much of the guff he spews is what he's actually thinking while he's spewing it. Other than not cursing, my bet is there's little self-censorship going on when he tweets. (Note the chronic moaning of his would-be handlers, which "the" media feeds us, about how they can't control his tweeting.)

For those who recoiled in disgust at the title of this essay, understand this: Honesty isn't a virtue, per se. That's a very important point to keep in mind. Adolf Hitler was honest about what he thought about Jews. Saying that is emphatically NOT to give Hitler a compliment! It is merely a statement of fact. Ditto calling Trump (relatively) honest.

His tweets are not those of a master manipulator. A cheap bully whose instincts are purely tactical, is what they show us. His fulminations obviously represent his feelings of the moment. It's hard to see much calculation in them, contrary to the conspiracy-mongering of his many media foes as they "analyze" the tweets for hidden meanings and subtle strategies that aren't there. (In fact, the Blatherariat is constantly overthinking Trump's impulsive and improvisational acts. They're doing it right now, trying to divine a "strategy" in his dealings with North Korea. There IS no strategy. He just grabs opponents by the psyche an yanks them around, like someone grabbing your sleeves and tugging to move you in a simple direction.)

Whether what he says is true or false, there is no question that Trump is FAR more honest than most if not all of his predecessors. In fact, Obama, the Bushes, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon,  Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, FDR, and down the line, were manipulative liars, and clearly flat-out con artists in the cases of Obama and Clinton. Trump too is a con man and a liar, but SO obvious about it that he's like a burlesque act of a con man. The fact that he gets over with many people is a testament to the credulity and stupidity of those people. He shouldn't be able to fool anybody.

Trump often ends up exposing himself by blurting out his true thoughts and motives. For example, when he told a TV interviewer that he fired Comey as FBI secret police chief because of the "Russian collusion" investigation.

Even when Trump says true things, the media nomenklatura and the Democratic Party's political elite claim they're false. And what clearly discombobulates them is when he violates the taboo against contradicting U.S. imperialist ideology. Like when he said in response to an interviewer who wanted him to denounce a foreign despot that the U.S. has done some bad things. (You're never supposed to admit that, even though it is glaringly obvious.) Or just now, in the wake of his meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, that U.S. war games with South Korea are "very provocative." This set off the Blaterariat and the Dems. And as if a memo was sent to every talking head, they all also objected to the term "war games," insisting they are merely "military exercises." In fact, they include practice nuclear attacks on North Korea, "decapitation" strikes aimed to exterminating the North Korean rulership, and invading the North. Obama conducted such "exercises," and Trump has allowed them too. He actually said it was a waste to send bombers all the way from Guam for these practice runs at annihilating North Korea.

Now, let us use another Nazi analogy to clearly illustrate an existential truth about the morality of lying. Say I was living in Nazi-occupied Europe, and I had hidden some Jews on my property. The Gestapo (or their indigenous police collaborators) knocks on the door and asks if I know the whereabouts of any Jews. Of course I LIE. Here, lying is a GOOD thing. In fact, in this instance, lying is a moral imperative! (Off the top of my head, I cannot think of any positive lies by Trump.)

"Honesty is the Best Policy" is a simplistic bromide fed to children by adults to make them easier to control. (And fed by adults to other adults to gain advantage over the target person.) To dictate to another person, "honesty is the best policy," is to attempt to exercise power and control over that person, pure and simple. Knowing what they really think, and what they have done, while one does not reciprocate, is an exercise in interpersonal domination.

Politicians and secret police types are well aware of this, which is why they themselves always strive NOT to be honest. They want to thwart others having a potential advantage over themselves.

So, I will conclude by saying that unlike U.S. media natterers, I like to go past the superficial events of the moment, the existential ephemera of passing events, and delve into the underlying structures of reality. The daily soap opera drama "the" media and political hacks focus on is like the sea spray from breaking waves, a constant yet ephemeral phenomenon, the obsessive and breathless daily scrutiny of which tells us nothing about the tides, the deep currents, and all the other underlying structural aspects of the oceans themselves.

1]  It must be noted that some of Trump's lies and falsehoods are extremely malign and cause tremendous harm to people- such as his demagogic attacks on immigrants. Hispanic immigrants, that is.

And of course he lied about his intentions regarding taxes, and then shamelessly lied about the actual tax law he and his GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) fellow travelers enacted.