Decoding U.S. Vocabulary

"Stability”- maintaining a status quo the U.S. favors, which usually comes down to backing repressive regimes.

“Instability”- a potential threat to some repressive regime the U.S. supports.
 
“Promoting stability”- installing or strengthening U.S. influence and dominance in a nation or region.
 
“Promoting instability”- a rival power attempting to increase its influence in a nation or region or trying to install a regime friendly to it.

BBC Rushes To Defend CIA Torturers- Again

The morally revolting things the BBC news does more than cancels out the interesting pieces they run. [1] 

They were at it again this morning. The occasion was the Senate “Intelligence Oversight” [sic] Committee finally getting up the backbone to release its own report on the CIA torture program. (Usually euphemized as “harsh interrogation program” allegedly to “protect us” from “terrorism.” There’s one way to get a scaredy-cat populace to endorse systematic government kidnapping and torture, in violation of treaty obligations and U.S. law.)

The BBC anchor said the report contained “details of harsh CIA interrogation” [hey BBC, can you pronounce “torture”?] during the “CIA’s campaign against Al-Qaeda.” At least, that was the excuse given. (Just keep in mind that it was secret police types who planted the explosives that blew up three (not two) buildings in lower Manhattan in 2001. [2]) (I didn’t catch the anchor’s name, but he’s a regular, a male with an African accent. There’s only one who hosts their overnight radio broadcast to the U.S.)

After this muddled intro, he brings on just ONE person- a “former CIA counterterrorism analyst.” (Rather like bringing on the axe-murderer’s lawyer to discuss the matter!) This man spouted such rhetoric as the “CIA’s sort of harsh methods,” (sort of harsh!) and “certain techniques” (unspecified) of the “enhanced interrogation program.”

The BBC man helpfully exclaimed that the report was old news, there wasn’t anything new about the [torture, the word they won’t say] in it. (In fact that was a flat lie, as the report DOES contain new details of the types and methods of torture.) The BBC creep also dismissed the whole thing as just “political.” “So what is the point of releasing this report? Is it political?” (Odd attitude for an alleged journalist! Who needs official records? Just keep everything secret! Is he angling for a job as CIA spokesman?) The CIA man happily agreed that the report is “a political football for those who have already made up their minds.” He also rebuked “the fecklessness of the Democratic Party who have tried to make the CIA a scapegoat.” “All of this was approved” by the White House, the lawyers [like John Yoo!], the CIA’s lawyers, he says. Well then no problem torturing people! Hey, your lawyers said it’s okay. (By the way, the Nazis had lawyers say the same thing about Hitler’s crimes. It means nothing.)

By the way, the report is 525 pages, but the BBC anchor already knows there’s nothing in it. No news here folks, move along!

Grotesque.

The BBC is acting as if it‘s a U.S. government propaganda agency. Oddly, even the U.S. government radio network NPR didn’t do that. The 12 noon (U.S. east coast time) NPR newscast called the report “scathing.”

Even secret police groupie and conduit for U.S. secret police propaganda Dina Temple-Raston, officially titled “NPR’s national security correspondent,” had to admit the report, even after CIA and Obama regime censorship, painted a pretty awful picture. Torture methods included days or weeks of sleep deprivation, and contrary to CIA lies, “Abu Ghraib-style” brutality, such as dragging their prisoners naked down hallways, Temple-Raston reports. But she made sure to end her brief news story with the CIA line that CIA says the report is all wrong. (The U.S. media has been parroting that CIA lie ad nauseam every time the story of the long-suppressed report has come up.)

Dina likes to imagine she's a secret agent. Exciting!

One thing the report asserts definitively is that NO plots were foiled by torture, Osama bin Laden WASN’T captured thanks to torture (a lie promoted by the movie Zero Dark Thirty, made with the help of illegally released “classified” info by the CIA and Obama White House), and in fact useful information was not obtained. The CIA of course contradicts all that- but they would, they’re the torturers. Oh, and they illegally broke into the computers of the Senate Committee staffers who were working on the report, a Federal felony (dozens in fact, the way the Federal government charges people) for which not only was no one prosecuted, but Eric “Due Process Means We Decide to Kill You” Holder, Jr., Obama’s Attorney General, refused to even investigate.

Obama and the CIA dug in their heels and resisted like mules the release of the report. Idiotically, the Senators let the CIA censor the report. And after months of Obama doing all he could to squelch the Senate report, his chief mouthpiece, Josh Earnest, had the nerve to say Obama very much wanted the report to be released.

Later the BBC World “Service” puts on “former” CIA dog Bob Baer, an arch reactionary who is one of the CIA’s public faces. Baer insists the only point of releasing the report is as a Democratic partisan attack on the Bush regime. Oh, and the details of torture “puts people’s lives at risk.” The old “sources and methods” mantra. Oh, and the Geneva Conventions are irrelevant because Al-Qaeda never signed them! (But the U.S. has, jackass. And anti-torture conventions too.) As for torturing innocent people, “that’s no different than the British police,” who arrest and release people. And he used “3,000” killed on 9/11 as justification. (Ironic, that, given the fact that most of them were killed because of the demolitions planted in advance by agents of the U.S. secret police deep state.)

Do they have Nazis on to discuss the Holocaust?

Hey, maybe next time there’s a U.S. torture scandal, ask a human rights lawyer! (This particular report, by Rebecca Kesby, did include a short description by a torture victim of what he suffered.)

NPR has a decent, succinct overview of the history of the development of the Senate "Intelligence" Committee torture report, which refutes the CIA’s and BBC’s bullshit, "Report Says CIA Misled Senate, White House On Interrogation Program," Dec. 9, 2014.

1] This is nothing new for the British government’s propaganda outfit. See for example “The BBC: Cover Up Central,” “Why Is The BBC Defending Chinese Computer Hacking?,” and “BBC, NPR Ignore Egyptian Seizure of Aljazeera Journalists.” for some absolutely breath-taking examples of egregious BBC propaganda that grossly distorts reality and covers the butts of some awful state criminals. (Which states might surprise you. In one case they hid Chinese computer hacking aimed at the U.S. Apparently their desire to suck up to the Chinese rulers so British capitalists could try to make a buck there outweighed even their slavish subservience to the U.S.A.!)

2] A thoroughly documented fact supported by over a thousand architects and engineers, plus demolitions experts. See for example “9/11: Explosive Evidence -- Experts Speak Out (Full)” and “9/11: Blueprint for Truth-The Architecture of Destruction-114min.”

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

U.S. corporate establishment propagandists have a host of ready-made, specious justifications for their suppression of important news. “The public isn't interested” is one. (Of course, that doesn't stop the propagandists from hammering away at things “the public” isn't interested in when they have a covert political or ideological agenda to promote. And the propagandists know how to make things “interesting,” that is, attention-grabbing. They also fill their airtime and pages with mountains of trivia which they think people are interested in.) “We already covered that,” is another excuse- meaning they once made a tiny, fleeting mention of an important fact or significant event.” “It's complicated,” implying it's too hard for us to cover, is another pathetic alibi they offer for themselves at public panels on “the media.” And then there's the “not newsworthy” line, an all-purpose contemptuous brush-off.

Iran is redesigning its nearly-completed heavy-water Arak reactor to reduce by 80% the amount of plutonium it can produce. This will delay the start of operations by three years. (The U.S., which is waging economic warfare against Iran, which it forces foreign nations and companies to participate in, isn't paying for the expensive alterations of course- Iran is.) Iran claims the purpose of the reactor is to produce medical isotopes. (Yeah, that sounds fishy. Spend billions of dollars to produce something that could be purchased abroad for probably tens of thousands of dollars a year? For “national pride”? Maybe for insurance, to be able to make nuclear weapons the next time the U.S. instigates some nation to attack Iran, as it did when it got the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to invade Iran. Or to be able to deter Israel and/or the U.S. from attacking Iran, which Israel constantly threatens to do, and which commits assassinations and sabotage inside Iran.)

But the 80% reduction in plutonium-production capacity isn't good enough for the U.S. and its fellow travelers; they want a near-zero plutonium-production capacity. (Plutonium can be used to make atomic weapons, as can enriched uranium.)

The reactor is open for inspection and verification by international experts from the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN organization dominated by the U.S., especially under its current boss, a Japanese stooge very obedient to U.S. orders. Iran also posted a video on a government website about the reconfiguration.

Given all the hysteria over the so-far-imaginary Iran “nuclear threat,” a media propaganda campaign that has assiduously promoted the Israeli-created lie that “Iran has threatened to blow Israel off the face of the earth” and that ignores repeated findings by the U.S. “intelligence community” that Iran DOESN'T HAVE a nuclear weapons program, but a uranium-enrichment one (which produces concentrated forms of uranium that can be used as reactor fuel for energy production or, with further enrichment, as material for atomic bombs), one would think that the story of a major reconfiguration of the Arak reactor, whose dismantlement the U.S. has demanded (Israel prefers the U.S. bomb it), and a reduction in its projected plutonium output to only one-fifth it was previously, not to say a three year delay in the reactor coming online, would at least be worthy of being reported by U.S. media. But for the most part, no. It hasn't been mentioned on any New York City radio stations, for example. (NYC being the “media capital of America.”) Nor on the U.S. government's domestic propaganda network, NPR. (Nor, for that matter, on the BBC, the British government's main propaganda arm, at least not on its “world service,” the stuff it broadcasts abroad.)

The common establishment propaganda response to someone pointing out such glaring omissions is to sneer “conspiracy theorist,” by which they mean “crackpot.” But facts are not disproven by mere ridicule. And this isn't a conspiracy. It is lock-step political and ideological discipline imposed by the managers of the corporate media. Why would such obviously relevant and significant news, related to an issue this media has made such a big deal about over a period of years, be in effect suppressed?

Some establishment “media critics” promote the alibi that “the” media in such cases is just being “lazy,” or “careless,” or “failing to do its job.” At best such idiotic and implausible explanations are naive. There may be more venal or sinister explanations for why such “critics” invent these ridiculous excuses for the corporate propaganda system's obvious suppressions and blackouts of important information. How could all these different corporations all be lazy? All be careless? All “fail to do their job”? (I should say, “virtually all,” as there are a handful of exceptions, speaking generally. McClatchy's Washington bureau has consistently reported damning information about the U.S. government, for example, that the rest of the corporate media refuses to tell anyone about.) These pet critics ignore the obvious political and ideological motives and agendas that easily explain the “oversights” and “lapses.”

In this case, since the policy of the U.S. corporate oligarchic establishment, including its government and media, has been to present Iran as a devil country starting in 1979 with the overthrow of the dictator the U.S. installed in the CIA coup of 1953, the “Shah,” (“King”), showing Iran making large concessions simply won't do. That doesn't make Iran look “bad.” Likewise, Israel is determined that the U.S. should wage war on Iran, and large swaths of the U.S. media are in thrall to Israel (as is the U.S. government).

Against Euphemism II

“Authority”- Power systems and those in those systems who wield power.

“Underprivileged”- The American poor. Shitty schools go with that. (That really IS a “disadvantage.” A crippling one, in fact.) Term applied to domestic “racial minorities” on the bottom rungs of the U.S. socio-economic ladder.

“Disadvantaged”- Oppressed and repressed U.S. domestic “racial minorities” on the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder.

“Free Enterprise”- Laissez-faire U.S. capitalism overlaid with a patina of sham regulation.

“Security:” Power and domination. As in “national security,” (the power of the nation-state),
“U.S. security,” “Israel's security,” etc.

“Pro-Israeli”- Pro brutal repression of the Palestinians. Anti-Palestinian.

"Reform"- Making something worse. As in “reforming Social Security,” or “reforming teachers' tenure,” or “reforming public workers' pensions.”

"Strengthening"- Making more brutally repressive. In the context of the military, wasting even more money on, increasing the militarization of U.S. society.

“Bring to justice-” Take revenge on. For example, after the “Islamic State” executed a captured American freelance journalist in retaliation for U.S. bombing attacks on them in Iraq, the U.S. Attorney General, Eric “Due Process Means We Kill You If We Feel Like It” Holder, Jr., angrily vowed that the perpetrators would be “brought to justice one way or another.” Meaning; capture and execute, or just execute. Likewise, the assassination by military commandos of Osama bin Laden was described by government officials from Obama on down as having “brought [him] to justice.”

“A challenge” or “challenges”- Problems.

“Police tactics”- police violence, brutality, and repression. Example: “On Staten Island, Thousands Protest Police Tactics,” (New York Times headline, Sunday, August 24, 2014, page 17). They were protesting the “tactic” of choking to death Eric Garner, on the street, for the “crime” of selling single cigarettes without giving the government its cut (“tax”). Basically what the poor have to do to survive in America is defined as criminal, including begging.

See also: “Against Euphemism.”

Bill Keller, Accessory to Murder

[This is an essay from June, 2011, from one of my other blogs, taboo-truths.blogspot.com]

U.S. Establishment apparatchiks will never stop lying about the 1963 coup that murdered then-U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Since the Warren Commission was convincingly refuted almost as soon as it came out as a pathetic pack of transparent lies, and since then voluminous evidence has dribbled out proving the CIA (with help from the FBI, U.S. military, and Dallas PD, and complicity of the corporate media) carried out the assassination, you'd think the smart thing to do would be to avoid talking about it and waiting for people to just die off. Instead they engage in a chronic campaign of disinformation and ridicule to create a false historical record, a la in George Orwell's 1984. Not only are the absurd lies of the Warren Commission treated as gospel- without examining them of course- but people who challenge it or merely repeat inconvenient facts are ridiculed as kooks, nuts, and "conspiracy theorists."

Bill Keller, a particularly loathsome example of a bourgeois propagandist, has just [2011] been replaced without explanation as chief editor of the New York Times, an organ that fancies itself as the combined Tass and Pravda of the U.S. ruling class. His new job there is akin to what the mass murderer Abraham M. Rosenthal, one of his notorious predecessors, did after he stepped down from that post, namely to act as a sort of chief ideologue at the Times.

Keller, in his first post-editor screed in the Times Sunday Magazine, (a major platform at that rag), once again repeats the tired trope that anyone who doesn't drink the Kool-Aid and dutifully repeat the Establishment line on the JFK hit is a nutty conspiracy theorist. [6/5/11] (Conspiracies apparently are in the same category as unicorns and UFOs, namely mere superstitions, purely imaginary. Apparently the only conspiracies that exist are those imputed to people persecuted by the U.S. legal system- drug sellers, political dissidents, arms dealers who fall out of favor with the U.S., ex-U.S. allies now considered "terrorists," and assorted and sundry criminals. U.S. conspiracy laws are so broad and vague that prosecutors can use them in virtually any situation- even against single defendants, as long as they assert the existence of "unindicted co-conspirators," unindicted conveniently freeing the prosecutors of having to prove anything against those individuals. But a conspiracy by the U.S. rulers? You must be insane to think any such thing is even possible!)

He starts his column- placed right in the front of the rag- with an excerpt from someone who made the mistake of trying to reason with him about the FACTS of the JFK hit. This person's reward is to be used as an example of human irrationality and borderline mental illness.

Keller, and other Times hack propagandists, lately keep linking belief in JFK "conspiracies" with 9/11 delusions and "birthers," white racists whose need to reject the legitimacy of a (half) "black" President leads them to insist that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Never bothering to refute, they throw into one category obviously false and irrational beliefs (like "birther" nonsense- but the media, including the Times, was happy to give Donald Trump obsessive and big coverage pushing that crap- and speculating that Trump might run for President, when he obviously wasn't going to- the same media that blacks out legitimate opposition candidates like Ralph Nader, who actually DO run for President and DON'T spout nonsense). So they can discredit truth by lumping it in with crackpotism, without having to engage the facts, without having to have an honest debate. Meanwhile they pose as sober and responsible arbiters of what is real and what isn't.

Nothing better proves the essentially propagandistic nature of the Times and all its ruling class media ilk, and the fanaticism that motivates them, then the treatment of the JFK assassination/coup.

One-Sided 'Rights'

We in “the West” often hear this propaganda message: “Israelis [meaning Israeli Jews] have the right to live in peace and security.” But Palestinians don't, obviously. All Hamas and similar groups are doing is saying, If we can't live in peace and security, than neither can you. But other than provoking self-induced hysteria in Israeli Jews, the Palestinians actually have virtually NO capacity to inflict more than inconvenience on their oppressors.

But then, if you regard Palestinians as subhumans, “animals,” “beasts,” as most Israelis do these days, there is no contradiction to insisting on human rights and dignity for Israeli Jews only and not for Palestinians. The circle is squared.

Dead Palestinian Human Beings Don't Count Unless They're "Important"

The western establishment media (like BBC, NPR, and all the U.S. commercial broadcast media) have been reporting Israel's "victory" (by their and Israel's lights) in killing three more Hamas leaders. Unmentioned are nine other Palestinians butchered with U.S. -supplied aerial bombs, including seven members of a single family. (Wiping out whole families has been a favorite Israeli tactic in its latest assault on the Gaza concentration camp.)

With maximum cynicism, Binyamin Netanyahu almost daily claims that Israel does all it can to avoid "civilian" casualties (yet somehow 80% of the dead, by the UN's reckoning, have been non-combatants- and the death toll is over 2,000 now including almost 500 children; another 1,000 or so kids have been maimed for life), while out of the other side of his mouth blaming Hamas for the Palestinian deaths, even saying on U.S. television (to Wolf Blitzer on CNN, who happens to be Jewish) that Hamas WANTS Israel to kill Palestinian children. No one in the U.S. establishment media takes exception to this depraved nonsense. In fact, many parrot the Israeli "talking points" (a euphemism for propaganda).

The four young boys deliberately murdered on a beach by an Israeli gunboat, in full view of international journalists in a hotel fronting the beach (the Israelis waited until the journalists who had been kicking around a football with the boys left the beach) is simply never mentioned, for obvious reasons. Instead we are daily fed a diet of Israeli propaganda.

Then there was the sinister way the Israeli drove Palestinians into UN refuges, telling them their homes and neighborhoods would be bombed. Turns out this was just a way to kill more of them, as Israel bombed at least 7 UN centers. One UN center was bombed after the UN gave the Israelis its location 17 times. Another was bombed after Israel was reminded of its location 33 times. UN personnel have also been killed in the bombardment. Meanwhile, Israel and its various media and political agents are accusing the UN of anti-Semitism. (The best defense is a good offense, see? Don't even deny anything, don't explain, don't defend, just attack the "accuser," in this case anyone who raises an objection or speaks the truth.)

From Obama on down, the U.S. political establishment predictably acted as loyal puppets to Israel and repeated the Israeli line that Israel "has the right to defend itself." "Defend itself" meaning destroying 40,000 homes, bombing hospitals, bombing homes for the disabled, bombing UN targets, etc. At first Israel kept blaring the lines that Hamas was "firing rockets" from the thousands of bombed targets. Or maybe "storing" rockets in 40,000 homes, and in the power plant, and in the water purification sites (8 water workers were killed by the Israelis trying to restore potable water to the populace), and Hamas was using all those civilians Israel was bombing as "human shields." After while, they didn't even bother saying those things. The U.S. media fell in line, repeating all those sick alibis for a murderous attack on a captive population.

Obama did find one thing "barbaric." That was the alleged capture of an Israeli soldier, a lieutenant who was part of the invasion force. Capturing an enemy invader is "barbaric," to Obama, if it's an Israeli soldier. Bizarre. Turns out the "capture" was an Israeli hoax, just as "looking for three kidnapped teenagers" for two weeks, when the Israeli knew all along they were killed on the day they were seized, was a hoax. The lieutenant had been killed in combat.

Well, I guess having the blood of thousands of Palestinians on their fingertips is small beer for the U.S. government and media. After all, they have the deaths of millions on their hands already, in places like Vietnam, and Laos, and Cambodia, and Indonesia, and Guatemala, and Argentina, and Chile, and El Salvador, and Nicaragua- the list unfortunately goes on too long to list without jading the reader.

Against Euphemism

Here’s a handy translation guide for people who have the misfortune to be exposed to U.S. media and government propaganda. Some of these noxious obfuscations of reality have spread to other nations, whose rulers and elites find them useful for their misrule. (Perhaps dishonest people think alike at times. Certainly people with the same or similar class and/or political interests do.)

“Leader:” Boss, either of a corporation or country. Also “world leaders” for country political bosses. (On the other hand, heads of labor unions are usually “labor bosses.” That’s virtually the only time the word “boss” appears in U.$. media, to refer to union officials. As if THEY dominate and control workers. You’d think the workers all worked for the unions, not for the REAL bosses.)

“Leadership:” Power or domination, as in “American leadership,” or “corporate leadership.”

“The international system:” U.S. world domination.

“Responsible stakeholder” in “the international system:” A nation that bows to U.S. aims and wishes and conforms to U.S. policies. So for example, for Russia and China to behave as “responsible stakeholders” in U.S. policy towards Iran, they have to go along with U.S. punitive sanctions and the U.S. drive to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. Another example: Russia has to meekly submit to the expansion of NATO to its very borders.

U.S. “intervention:” invasions or bombings by the U.S.

“Assertive [U.S.] foreign policy:” U.S. aggression, bullying, intimidation.

“Isolationism:” Wondering if maybe the U.S. shouldn’t be so aggressive and imperialist, but not couched in such “anti-American” terms of course.

“Anti-Americanism:” Any criticism of the U.S. that is not on pragmatic but pro-imperialist grounds, but instead has a moral basis.

“Anti-communism:” Frequently used as code for fascism. So when the U.S. “supports anti-communism in El Salvador,” for example, it is supporting fascist death squadders.

“Western democracy:” Bourgeois class dictatorship with more than one political party in which carefully controlled elections are staged that are designed to make meaningful change or challenge to the existing order impossible.

“Human rights abuses:” Torture and murder by government agents. Government atrocities against the people they rule. Lumped together with other forms of repression, oppression, and state surveillance. By this mechanism, mass torture and murder in the U.S. empire gets minimized, while at the same time Soviet harassment and persecution of dissidents was implicitly equated with torture and murder by the use of the same phrase, “human rights abuses.” The term is still rampant today. Its vagueness acts as a thick fog obscuring the crimes of state criminals. Like many catch-all terms, it muddies instead of clarifies, obscures rather than identifies, and as a mushy generality it narcotizes moral outrage. It is designed to neuter moral condemnation so as to make “advocates” for “human rights” respectable guests in the foyers of the chambers of power- which is as far as its spokespeople ever get. (Unless they’re totally phony sellouts like Samantha Powers.)

“Enhanced interrogation techniques:” U.S. torture.

“Intelligence agency:” Secret police organization. (In Western parlance, “secret police” is only used to refer to the secret police of enemy/adversary states.)

“Law enforcement and intelligence agencies:” Secret police. “Law enforcement” also refers to regular police, who are not law enforcers in any neutral sense, but enforcers of the existing social order. They selectively enforce SOME laws, and also make false arrests under cover of “law,” bringing false charges to suppress/repress low social status people and political activists who are acting outside establishment-approved boundaries.

“Security service:” See “intelligence agency.”

“Homeland Security:” Domestic repression.

“Corrections:” Imprisonment.

“Correctional Facility:” Prison or jail.

“Detention Facility:” Prison or jail. Less euphemistic than “correctional facility.”

“Housing unit” in a “correction facility:” Cell.

“Detainee:” Prisoner.

“Counterterrorism:” U.S. and other state terrorism and repression.

“Special Forces:” U.S. military death squads.

“Defense:” Military, offense, war.

“Justice:” Imprisonment, execution, or assassination.

“Core American values:” the mendacious and false grand rhetoric of U.S. imperialism. U.S. propaganda, in short, designed to con the world’s population, including Americans.

“Border security:” Hunting down poor would-be immigrants, including murdering alleged rock-throwers in Mexico shot by U.S. Border Patrol agents. Also systematic harassment and seizure of electronic devices of dissidents when attempting to enter the U.S., including U.S. citizens.

“Issue:” Problem. As in “there are issues to overcome,” or “imprisoning people without trial comes with its own set of issues.”

“Spin:” Distortion. This is a term used by American establishment propagandists to refer to politicians’ feeding them versions of events that put the politician or regime in a more favorable or less negative light than the actual facts might. It could also apply to what these so-called “journalists” do too, but of course they don’t apply it to themselves. “Spin” is rather like special pleading. Trial lawyers do something similar in court, especially in opening and closing statements, where they put forth a story that omits, downplays, glosses over, or explains away facts harmful to their case, and that highlights, exaggerates, or invents facts that are favorable.

Obama’s “Secure Communities” Program: A repression program designed to spread fear and insecurity in immigrant communities targeted for deportation. (This one’s Orwellian.)

“Conservative:” Reactionary.

“Ultraconservative:” Fascist.

“Liberal:” This one has various meanings. In the mouths of “conservatives,” it means “devil.” Also a label used for hand-wringing sugar-coated reactionary type who sheds crocodile tears for victims of the system they defend. Can also denote a well-meaning would-be reformer who ultimately sells out or provides the system with humane cover. Useful for preventing people from becoming militant or taking action instead of relying on bourgeois politicians to rescue them.

“Mistakes,” or the even harsher “Blunders,” in reference to U.S. foreign policy actions and policies: CRIMES.

“Troubled:” Meaning something is horribly wrong. For example, when referring to some American police department with a record of chronic brutality and regular murders of (mostly black or Hispanic) people, the New York Times inevitably uses the adjective “troubled,” a particularly noxious euphemism to employ in such cases. Or a thoroughly corrupt or inept government agency will be called “troubled.” Like something is bothering them, or they have problems not of their own making. They mean well, they just can’t seem to get it together. So the Federal Mineral Management Agency, a body as corrupt as any on earth, whose employees partied and slept with corporate people they were supposed to be regulating (but didn’t regulate at all) is “troubled,” not “extremely corrupt” or “(literally) in bed with those it was supposed to regulate.” Rarely, if an organization completely breaks down, it will be called “dysfunctional,” like it’s just functioning badly.

“Disadvantaged:” Poor and usually oppressed.

“Inequality:” Grotesque accumulation of massive wealth by a tiny minority of people accompanied by erosion of economic

“Bias:” Racism.

“The most fortunate among us:” The rich.

And we mustn’t forget the number one culprits who purvey this brainwashing propaganda, who have their own euphemism, “The mainstream media:” The corporate oligarchy’s propaganda system.*I9

BONUS EPITHET. This one’s not a euphemism, but necessary to know: “Conspiracy theorist:” Someone who exposes the crimes of the U.S. state, particularly of the fascistic, criminal deep state.

See also "Against Euphemism II."

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.

Egyptian Military Dictatorship Convicts Journalists in “Court” of the Absurd

A so-called “court” in Egypt handed down utterly predictable and preordained guilty verdicts of “terrorism” against three Al-Jazeera journalists who have been imprisoned for six months already in one of Egypt’s hellhole jails. The “evidence” consisted of the journalists’ family photos and old news videos of horses and such. (I’m not making that up.) According to foreign journalist witnesses, literally no evidence supporting the baseless accusation was presented, leading them to pronounce themselves “shocked” by the guilty verdict. The sentences were a minimum of seven years. The three are an Egyptian, a Canadian, and an Australian. The Australian, Peter Greste, had been in Egypt for a week on temporary duty when he was seized. The Australian formerly worked for the BBC. For good measure, other Al-Jazeera journalists were “convicted” “in absentia” and “sentenced.” [1]

Their actual “crime” was reporting on Muslim Brotherhood protest rallies.

The “verdict” should have surprised no one. After all, in two recent mass “trials,” close to 2,000 people were “convicted” in a few minutes, and hundreds “sentenced” (condemned) to death, for alleged rioting and for the death of a single policeman.

Thus has Egypt under its newest military dictator, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, sunk lower than ever. Lower even than under his predecessors Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak. Thus does an authoritarian system degenerate into more and more grotesque forms of oppressiveness and detachment from reality. Lurid assertions and false consciousness replace acknowledgment of actual facts. [2]

Sisi’s pathetic, cruel farce doesn’t even rise to the level of a show trial. In Stalin’s show trials, the “defendants” read out “confessions” after they’d been tortured into submission. In Nazi political trials, “evidence” was also presented to “prove” the charges. In Sisi’s Egypt, there is no longer even a simulacrum of anything resembling an actual judicial process. There is not even a crude imitation of a trial, just a nonsensical burlesque called a “trial.”

The Sisi dictatorship can’t even be bothered to fabricate fake evidence, coach lying witnesses, or torture false confessions out of their victims. They just accuse and convict. And in a demonstration of just how complicit and supine a privately-owned media can be to state power, the Egyptian media has screamed abuse at the victims and taken their “guilt” as established fact since their arrests in December 2013. This is good enough to make the victims appear guilty for internal Egyptian purposes. Confident of continued U.S. backing for the permanent Egyptian military state, Sisi apparently has concluded that he can contemptuously dismiss international opinion. And he’s right, unfortunately. For one thing, Israel wants a military dictatorship in Egypt that will continue the policy of avoiding conflict with Israel and helping Israel oppress the Palestinians by maintaining the blockade of the Gaza Strip (which borders Egypt on the west of the Strip) to maintain the territory as the world’s largest open-air concentration camp, imprisoning over a million human beings. (Yes, Palestinians are actually human beings, not subhuman “terrorists,” as the American public has been brainwashed into feeling.) That alone would be enough to induce the U.S. to support the Sisi regime, since the U.S. is Israel’s bitch, but it is not the only U.S. “interest” driving the U.S. to back successive Egyptian military dictatorships since Sadat’s rapproachement with Israel. [3]

Because of American establishment hatred of Al-Jazeera, most of the U.S. media has covered the “verdict” very superficially or not at all. Remember, U.S. cable networks refuse to allow Al-Jazeera television to BUY access to American homes, the U.S. military has repeatedly bombed Al-Jazeera offices in Afghanistan and Iraq, murdered Al-Jazeera journalists, taken Al-Jazeera workers captive (one was held for six years in the U.S. military gulag/torture center at Guantanamo Bay on U.S.-occupied Cuban territory, where his captors tried to force him to agree to be a spy inside Al-Jazeera for them), and the U.S. government has repeatedly threatened Al-Jazeera. Al-J has been demonized as “terrorist propaganda” for refusing to be a parrot of the U.S. government and military and to act as cheerleaders for the U.S. aggression in Iraq, as the “loyal” American media did.

And still does to this day. Now the U.S. media, whitewashing history, pretends that the U.S. invaded Iraq out of altruism, not after whipping up hysteria with false claims of “weapons of mass destruction” aimed at the U.S., imminent danger of nuclear, chemical, or biological attack on the American people by terrorists armed with such weaponry. Just yesterday, on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” one of the Sunday morning political propaganda shows that the political elite uses for self-brainwashing, the program ended with a breathtakingly mendacious Iraq segment by Martha Raddatz, who recycled old, discredited U.S. military propaganda claiming that “Iraqis pulled down this statue of Saddam Hussein,” a U.S. military stunt thoroughly debunked, yet Raddatz ignores the facts. Even more egregiously, Raddatz erases the U.S. siege and destruction of Fallujah, substituting a fairy tale of U.S. military humanitarian care and service for the people there! Unbelievably cynical, shameless, immoral, unethical, and a textbook example of how American establishment “journalism” is propaganda.

1] In a bad sign for the Australian journalist in Sisi’s clutches, it was the “opposition” party (the bourgeois party currently out of power) in Australia, not the government, that strongly denounced the “verdict.” (Typical of “western democracies,” Australia has “legitimate” establishment parties that play a game of musical chairs called “elections” in which they compete to sit in the seats of power. But the system can never be voted out of power or changed. That is called “freedom of choice.”) The Australian Foreign Minister issued a mushy, weak, mealy-mouthed statement with the usual bromides about journalistic freedom and blah blah. Tellingly, the statement indicates that until now, the Australian government hadn’t lifted a finger to help their citizen in captivity.

“...we will now initiate contact at the highest levels in the new Egyptian government to see whether we can gain some kind of intervention from the new government and find out whether intervention is indeed possible at this stage.” (My emphasis.) They’re just NOW initiating contact with Sisi over this?? Amazing.*

Australia has an ugly history of abandoning Australian journalists. When the horrible Indonesian military dictatorship of Suharto invaded East Timor back in the 1970s, after getting the green light to do so from U.S. president (and Warren Commissioner cover-up conspirator) Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger in person (the two visited Suharto in Jakarta just before the invasion), among the ultimately hundreds of thousands of East Timorese slaughtered by the Indonesian army was an Australian TV crew, who were murdered by the Indonesians to block their reporting on the crimes of the Indonesians. The Australian government at the time, headed by Malcolm Frasier, helpfully looked the other way, ignoring the overwhelming evidence of the blatant murders of Australian citizens. Oh yes, and U.S. weapons and munitions were used, in violation of U.S. law, in this act of aggression, and in the years of brutal occupation and mass murder that followed. So what? Israel does it all the time. And so do the various terror regimes armed by the U.S., which use U.S. weapons to murder their own citizens, whereas U.S. law requires they be used only in defense from foreign aggression. American law in this case is just for show. Such laws are in fact acts of propaganda, and nothing more. The other main use of U.S. law is to oppress people.

2] Sisi, the latest military dictator, is a former field marshal and head of the Egyptian military. Trained, mentored, and groomed for years in American military “schools,” as is typical of military tyrants and criminals in U.S.-backed regimes, he has long ties with the U.S. military hierarchy. “Officially,” Sisi is a “president,” since he doffed his uniform for a business suit (the uniform of political bosses these days) and staged an “election” (uncontested) in which he “won” 97%. He’s no more a “democratically elected president” than these farcical “trials” he stages are actual trials or these “courts” are really courts. They’re Theaters of the Absurd, political demonstrations of raw power designed to terrorize people into submission to an utterly oppressive reign.

The only reason for a six month delay between “arrest” and “conviction” was so the Egyptian propaganda system (a privately-owned media that has behaved exactly as a military-controlled media would) could firmly brainwash the Egyptian populace in the idea that the journalists are guilty of “terrorism” merely by repeating the lie over and over, repetition being a standard propaganda technique. Thus the dictatorship would in fact have put itself in a bind if it had ultimately acquitted the journalists, since it had already worked so assiduously to create the “fact” of their “guilt.”

Yet another journalist was released after a year in prison with his arm permanently disabled thanks to the brutality and deliberate medical neglect of Sisi’s goons. The same goons who were Mubarak’s goons. The same goons who subject female protesters to “virginity tests,” manual rapes by male military “doctors” while other goons stand around and mock the victims.

Egypt! It’s a great tourist destination! Come see the pyramids! So much local color. Here, take a brochure.

3] In a serendipitous coincidence, after I wrote this this morning, the U.S. government radio propaganda network NPR put on Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the remorseless, brutal promoter of Israeli expansionism, to propagandize at length on the danger of Islamic extremists getting nuclear weapons, etc. The NPR propagandist Steve Inskeep, co-host of NPR’s morning “news” program “Morning Edition,” performed the usual dutiful fawning, as is customary and required for US "journalists" to do with Israeli power personages if they want to keep their jobs, and sat at the feet of the Great One as he spewed his hawkish agitprop. Netanyahu was also on U.S. TV yesterday, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” one of the self-brainwashing shows of the U.S. political elite, where he attacked the vote of the American Presbyterian Church to sell stock in three criminal U.S. corporations that supply the means of Israeli repression: Caterpillar, Motorola “Solutions” (to the “problem” of political opposition) and Hewlett-Packard. Caterpillar is probably the most notorious of the three. It provides the armored bulldozers that the Israelis have used to demolish tens of thousands of Palestinian homes, and uproot thousands of Palestinian orchard trees. Oh, and one was used to murder American Rachel Corrie. Netanyahu sickeningly couched his mendacious propaganda in terms of morality.

In a last ditch attempt to quash the Presbyterians’ divestment vote, American Zionist agents offered the Presbyterians a meeting with Netanyahu in return for canceling the vote. How’s that for arrogance? Like meeting with Netanyahu to be browbeaten by him and subjected to his agitprop is such a great privilege, a gift, a huge favor! Come, sell out your moral and humanitarian principles for the privilege of being allowed in Netanyahu’s presence. I’m sure the Israelites and their American fifth columnists don’t have the slightest inkling of what a crass insult that was. (The Presbyterians may not have been quite as clueless. The New York Times quoted one of their officials gently saying the “offer” probably had the reverse effect of what the Israelites intended. Gee, I wonder why.)

* Here’s the full statement of Australian FM JULIE BISHOP:

“Peter Greste is a well-respected Australian journalist. He was in Egypt to report on the political situation. He was not there to support the Muslim Brotherhood. We respect the outcome of the recent elections in Egypt, and we will now initiate contact at the highest levels in the new Egyptian government to see whether we can gain some kind of intervention from the new government and find out whether intervention is indeed possible at this stage. I have spoken at length with Peter Greste’s parents. They are considering their legal options, including appeal options. We do not know how long an appeal process would take. But in the meantime, we will provide whatever consular assistance we can to Mr. Greste and, of course, to his family.

“We understand that Egypt has been through some very difficult times and there has been a great deal of turmoil in Egypt, but this kind of verdict does nothing to support Egypt’s claim to be on a transition to democracy, and the Australian government urges the new government of Egypt to reflect on what message is being sent to the world about the situation in Egypt. Freedom and freedom of the press is fundamental to a democracy. And we are deeply concerned that this verdict is part of a broader attempt to muzzle the media freedom that upholds democracies around the world.”

Obama’s Chief Mouthpiece Tiptoes Out of White House

For some reason, the Obama regime wants the minimum amount of attention paid to the leave-taking of White House “press secretary” Jay Carney. This loathsome liar, who has shown a talent for parrying and evading questions on numerous Obama regime crimes such as the massive NSA Total Surveillance State and assassinations, will now go to his lushly-remunerated reward in “the private sector.” He tiptoed away from his podium for the last time on Friday afternoon, the time period traditionally chosen for the least possible media attention, and for even more camouflage, he did it on the same day Eric Shinseki quit under a cloud, namely a noisy scandal of veterans being put on long waiting list for appointments at Veterans’ Administration hospitals (Shinseki headed the VA), with accusations of some dying as a result of the delays. Of course the Shinseki matter is the “big” story of the day, so Carney could sneak away almost unnoticed.

As an example of the propaganda nature of U.S. "news" media, Carney came to the White House from Time magazine, where he posed as a journalist.

Why Carney cashing in should be a sensitive matter that the Obama regime feels a need to divert attention from is a mystery to me. Perhaps eventually we will learn why. Meanwhile his underling, another frat boy type named “Josh Earnest,” steps into Carney’s shoes.

As the job of all White House press secretaries is to lie and hide the truth, expect more of the same from “Josh.”

The government’s propaganda radio network, NPR, made the fatuous observation that Carney brought an alleged perspective from “the other side” since he was a “journalist” for 20 years. The ease with which “journalists” so often easily transition into government propagandists (not an unusual phenomenon, contrary to NPR fatuities) is quite natural, given that most of those called “journalist” in America are in fact nothing other than propagandists.

Carney’s alleged reason was the usual stale white lie- “to spend more time with my family.” Carney was a Time magazine propagandist for 21 years. Anyone who’s ever read that mendacious rag can infer from that Carney’s level of intellectual integrity. (Time magazine once pegged the death toll under the notorious Phoenix Program, the CIA’s mass torture and assassination operation in Vietnam, at 500. This was well after the actual number was established at around 50,000. Even the puppet “South” Vietnamese “government” said it was 48,000. Just once example of the despicable nature of that rag.)

Carney was infamous for defending the persecution of whistle-blowers and journalists by the Obama regime, the NSA surveillance, the drone assassination program, and much else. He even defended the Obama regime policy of not allowing the press to take photos of tame events, instead having the White House’s own photographers take pictures and post them. This occasioned much impotent grumbling by the corporate media hacks.

The New York Times ran a long puff piece on Carney to mark his departure, which they alleged had been in the works since April. They ran a photo of Obama hugging Carney, and encomiums to how wonderful and talented Carney is from Obama and from Obama regime poohbahs David Plouffe and David Axelrod, two awful operatives who helped engineer Obama’s seizure of power (excuse me, “election,” which involved systematic and convoluted manipulations on a vast scale) and who advise him in office. Well, there’s your "objective journalism" from the NY Times. In a glaring journalistic oversight however, they failed to get a quote testifying to his wonderfulness from his mother.

Ironically, the Times ran a separate article the same day on the Obama regime targeting of journalists to try and force them to name their confidential sources in criminal investigations of leaks. (Of course, every single day the Times runs articles based on unnamed “government officials” whose illegal “leaking” [planting] of "classified information" is authorized by the regime.) If the government had its way, we would only know what they want us to know. I believe all classification laws must be abolished. That is the only way to force the secret state into the light of day and put the brakes on the awful accumulation and abuse of power by the U.S. government. This would also prevent treasonous outrages like the planting of nanothermite explosives that demolished three buildings in lower Manhattan on September 11th, 2001. [See "ARCHITECTS AND ENGINEERS FOR 911 TRUTH (full unreleased version)."]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good or Bad? It All Depends What Word You Choose

Propagandists (often called “journalists,” “pundits,” “commentators,” even “historians,”) have a wonderful smorgasbord of adjectives to use as tools or weapons to promote or degrade people, movements, nations, ideas, whatever, depending on the ideological and political ends being pursued.

Notice how the choice of the adjectives and nouns below depends crucially on the judgment of the person pasting the word onto the target:

Childlike – Childish

Hard-charging – Overbearing

Ambitious- Pushy

Outspoken - Shrill

Feisty - Obnoxious

Bold - Reckless

Cautious - Indecisive

Passionate- Obsessed

Committed – Stubborn

And of course there is the differential standards applied to one’s own killers vs. the enemy’s:

Heroic, Brave, Courageous - Murderous, Vicious, Bloodthirsty

Effective or Precision Weapon, Surgical Strike- Lethal, Deadly

Defense - Aggression. In the eye of the beholder, apparently.

There are differential nouns too:

Security services/ intelligence agencies/law enforcement/ - Secret police

And here's a verb/noun combination and the equivalent applied to enemies:

Defending freedom - Imperialism.

I guess the U.S. subversion and coup in Ukraine was "defending freedom."

 Famously, the shrill and obnoxious Ed Koch was labeled “feisty,” making a virtue of his awful personality. Koch loved to torture people psychologically, and was infamously indifferent to the opinions of others. (A fact that his slogan “How’m I doin’?” was intended to disguise.) Bella Abzug, of course, was “shrill” and “pushy.” (Koch was one in a string of right-wing mayors of New York City stretching back to the late 1970s, and Bella Abzug was a Congresswoman from the same city, famously paired with former CIA undercover agent Gloria Steinem as the bourgeois-approved face of feminism along with Betty Friedan.)

We just saw the fired NY Times executive editor Jill Abramson smeared in the media as “pushy,” a derogatory word never applied to her predecessor male pigs like A.M. Rosenthal (a total prick), Howell Raines (by all accounts an overbearing martinet) or Bill Keller. They were “demanding” and had “high standards,” perhaps, but weren’t “pushy” or “difficult” or “hard to get along with.” (Male sexists have a hard time getting along with female superiors, is the real problem.) Arthur Ochs “Pinch” Sulzberger, Jr, who inherited the paper from his Daddy, couldn’t stand the fact that Abramson criticized some of the paper’s cover-ups, and expected not to be cheated on her compensation. Turns out they’ve been cheating her in her last 3 jobs there- as Washington bureau chief, another editorial post, and finally executive (top) editor. Sulzberger paid her less than men in the same jobs, and then had the brass to lie about it publicly.

See "The facts show it: female CEOs are more likely than men to be fired," the guardian, 17 May 2014.

Jeffrey Toobin Is A Loathsome Liar

Jeffrey Toobin is a guy with a law degree, who occupied a perch at two important fonts of U.S. establishment propaganda: CNN, where under the guise of “legal analyst” he pushes establishment political lines, and writing in the elite haute bourgeous magazine The New Yorker since 1992. He has been part of the pack of attack dogs savaging the whistle blowers Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, and Wikileaks leader Julian Assange. In short, he is a cog in the system of power in America whose role is to guide the thoughts of susceptible minds into the proper channels. [1]

In a New Yorker article about the prosecution of female jail guards in Baltimore who were seduced by gang member inmates and smuggled drugs to them, Toobin falsely links George Jackson, (who was murdered by California prison bosses in 1971) to this prison gang. After painting Jackson as a misogynist, using an alleged quote from Jackson's 1970 book Soledad Brother, Toobin writes, and this is an entire paragraph:

“In 1970, Jackson was charged with murdering a prison guard, allegedly in retaliation for the deaths of several inmates. [Notice, a guard is “murdered,” but inmates the guards kill aren't murdered, they just “die.” In fact, guards shot down inmates in the exercise yard from guard towers in deliberate assassinations of “radical” inmates. Toobin can't even bother to say how many inmates were murdered, just “several.”] The following year, while awaiting trial, he pulled a smuggled gun from beneath a wig and took several guards hostage. In the chaos that followed two inmates and three guards died in Jackson's cell block, and Jackson was killed in the prison yard.” [2]

That's all Toobin has to say about that. I was flabbergasted to read this, since it was a surprise to see this long ago discredited piece of California state propaganda pop up years later as fact. It is tantamount to Toobin repeating the New York State lie that the Attica inmates who rebelled murdered and castrated the guards they had taken prisoner (the guards were shot dead by New York State Police and National Guardsmen who stormed the prison, and were not castrated). What happened then was the story was immediately exposed as preposterous. The gun the state claimed Jackson hid under a wig was way too large to be hidden on top of someone's head under a wig. When this was pointed out, the state came up with a different, smaller gun, and said that was the gun. Still impossible, absurd, as was the very idea that Jackson, closely supervised when transported from his cell to other parts of the prison, could have somehow obtained a gun, and a wig, and worn the wig without the guards noticing, with a gun “hidden” under it. What became quite clear in short order was that Jackson had been assassinated, although apparently it didn't go so smoothly. A committed revolutionary, Jackson had survived numerous previous attempts on his life. This all occurred in the context of the war on the Black Panther Party, which made Jackson a member in prison based on his writings and renown. The wig and gun story was just a pathetic cover story that fell apart as soon as it was touched.

The vaunted, renowned, storied, stuff-of-legend New Yorker “fact-checking department” seems to do fact-checking more like you'd expect at the Soviet-era Pravda. Not reliable or trustworthy, and elevating ideology over truth, intellectual and moral integrity, and honesty.

Smug and well-fed in his highly paid, comfortably conformist role, Toobin takes satisfaction in the imprisonment and suffering of heroes like Manning, and ardently hopes for the same for Ed Snowden. “Liberal” defender of the total surveillance state, Toobin thinks NSA surveillance of everything and everyone is no big deal.

1] You can experience a sample of this loathsome toad in action, “debating” with Glenn Greenwald and James Risen, “Glenn Greenwald on Piers Morgan On XKEYSCORE Greenwald OWNS Toobin AGAIN!”

2] “Letter From Baltimore,” “This Is My Jail: Where gang members and their female guards set the rules.” The New Yorker, 4/14/14.

NSA-Exposé Journalists Swept Up By Billionaire's Broom Like So Much Dust

Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire founder of eBay, helped the U.S. government finance the coup in Ukraine, it turns out. This is the same guy who snookered Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras (both involved in the exposés of NSA crimes by whistleblower Edward Snowden), Jeremy Scahill (a thorn in the side of the U.S. government for his constant coverage of U.S. drone and other atrocities against civilians) and other dissident journalists into going to work for a website he's funding. [1]

A guy working hand in glove with U.S. imperialism to subvert and overthrow a foreign government and replace it with one hand-picked by the U.S. doesn't sound like someone I'd want anywhere near the documents Snowden managed to liberate from the NSA. Yet now he's lured into his embrace those very journalists who now possess the documents- the Guardian newspaper of Britain having been forced to destroy their copies by the British government and secret police. [2]

And Omidyar is no novice at subversion. He also helped fund a program that infiltrated the Indian parliament with paid legislative assistants, a program India shut down. [3]

Perhaps the worst crime Omidyar has committed was funding a Peruvian state terrorist, one Hernando De Soto. Omidyar gave $5 million to De Soto's propaganda and indoctrination center in Peru three years ago. De Soto was a close adviser to and “drug czar” for Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimoro, and closely interfaced with the death squad elements of the Fujimoro regime. Another key figure was secret police chieftain Vladimiro Montesinos, a regular lecturer at the notorious “School of the Americas” (since renamed due to bad PR) at Fort Benning, GA. Montesinos was misleadingly referred to as a “spymaster” in the U.S. media, which was infatuated with the Fujimoro terror regime, especially the New York Times, from which much of the rest of the U.S. corporate propaganda system takes its cues. One of Montesinos' numerous atrocities was the time his “security forces” kidnapped some “leftist” students and professors, cut up their bodies, and strewed the chunks of human meat along a beach, I suppose as a “warning” to others to not think wrong thoughts. All this was presented- omitting the gory details- in the U.$. media as heroically fighting the Maoist “terrorist” Shining Path. [The Omidyar Network website still has a boast on it about giving $5 million to the state terrorist De Soto. Hey, why not? It's all about liberty and empowering people. And the Vietnam War was a noble cause...]

After Fujimoro eventually fell, and after a long interlude was imprisoned, his daughter ran for president partly on a platform of springing her dictator dad from prison. De Soto was heavily involved in her campaign. This was 2011, the same year Omidyar gave him the $5 mil. Just a coincidence, I'm sure. Could it be that Omidyar favored a return to the neo-fascist economics promoted by De Soto and his “think tank”? If not, what other possibility is there?

So on the one hand, the bourgeoisie promote “free market economics,” and on the other, people who have a dissenting view get chopped up and scattered on a beach, to terrorize everyone else who might have a complaint about the system and social reality. This is the essence of totalitarianism. No deviation from approved thought allowed. Without apparent irony, De Soto's propaganda and indoctrination outfit which Omidyar funded is called the “Institute for Liberty and Democracy.” This from a guy who participated in a coup and was a key member of a terrorist regime. [4]

Doesn't lead one to believe that Omidyar's politics or ideology are progressive, pro-civil libertarian or pro-human rights, now does it?

This Omidyar character obviously isn't interested in weakening U.S. power or subverting the American establishment. So why would he hire all the journalists who are precisely those making the most trouble for the U.S. rulers and government? The answers can only be sinister.

Obviously he now has them under his control, as He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune. He can steer their coverage, misdirect them, and manipulate them. With the tech expertise at his disposal, he can help the NSA find out what documents Snowden took, something the NSA desperately wants to find out. He can find out how many copies exist and where they are. Software bombs could be planted in the data to destroy it. There are numerous possibilities for malevolent mischief here. Just getting details on Greenwald's movements and habits will be valuable for U.S. attacks on him, burglary attempts, malign plots, and so on.

By hiring them away, Omidyar has severed these journalists' connections with reputable, more trustworthy organizations. Greenwald had formerly been working with the Guardian of Britain, for example.

One telling giveaway that Omidyar is up to no good, and NOT trying to increase exposure of U.S. malfeasance and criminality, are the hosannas in the corporate media that Omidyar's move was greeted with. No attacks or negativity- very odd, given who he was hiring, people who are treated as enemies by the establishment, and whom he was allegedly going to bankroll handsomely to continue to reveal things the establishment doesn't want revealed.

I was dubious from the very start, when this venture was first announced by a totally-suckered Glenn Greenwald, a person who has done very important work as a journalist and has provided a public voice against U.S. lawlessness and the total police state it is perfecting. It didn't make sense to me that the billionaire founder of eBay, a man with nothing to indicate an interest in social justice, would suddenly come out of nowhere and dangle a quarter of a billion dollars in front of the noses of Greenwald and company and claim he wanted to fund radical (in establishment eyes) journalism. [5] Journalism that was the subject of hysterical denunciations by that establishment, including threats of criminal prosecutions against Greenwald. (Laura Poitras had been subjected to years of heavy harassment by the U.S., including scores of airport searches of her sensitive journalistic material.[6]) I figured there had to be a catch. But since the arrangement was presented as a black box to the public, without any explanation of how this had come about, of what had transpired between the obviously very crafty and manipulative billionaire Omidyar and the targets he lured into his money web, a specific analysis wasn't possible.

But now with the revelations of his participation in the U.S. coup in Ukraine, his obviously close and cooperative ties with U.S. imperialism are revealed- thus making it glaringly obvious that he can't possibly be interested in exposing U.S. government secrets. At a minimum, he will be giving the sinister U.S. police state a heads up on coming articles by Greenwald et al, in order that the U.S. government and commentariat can prepare preemptive responses or strategies for dealing with the stories when they are published. Moreover, with intel about stories in the works, the U.S. could possibly cut off, intimidate- or worse- sources and witnesses for such stories. (The idea that the journalists will refuse to tell Omidyar anything at all about what they're working on is ludicrous, and should be dismissed out of hand. By and by, a manipulator like Omidyar will insinuate his way further into their activities. Plus, having the IP addresses of the computers and other devices they use to communicate with him has enabled the NSA to plant its spyware remotely on those devices already.)

Omidyar, like all billionaires, is insatiably greedy. So greedy that he has to extort money from the world's poorest people by loansharking operations euphemistically called “micro-lending.” [7]

Omidyar's other anti-social crimes include a covert assault on public schools and teachers' unions. He showed his talent for deception and tricking his targets in that case too by luring teachers into his web of intrigue. [8]

Omidyar's company, eBay, the source of his billions, conspired with other tech companies in a massive, illegal scheme to depress the wages of tech employees, in violation of antitrust law. [9]

The initial response to all this, from Greenwald, has been disappointing and inadequate. He labeled the criticism “dumb.” He also said he knew nothing about the activities of the nefarious Omidyar Network, the vehicle through which Omidyar conducts his malign activities. “Ask them,” he said, passing the buck and acting as if it's none of his concern, I'm afraid that doesn't cut it. If a drug lord, say, was funding theintercept.org, the news site sugardaddy Pierre funded for him, Greenwald couldn't brush aside the questions so cavalierly. I certainly want to see Greenwald and the others continue to do their important work, but I fear they have walked right into a trap which they don't understand.

1] “Pierre Omidyar Pierre Omidyar co-funded Ukraine revolution groups with US government, documents show,” PandoDaily, Feb. 28, 2014.

2] We have unimpeachable smoking-gun evidence of the U.S. pulling the strings of its Ukrainian puppets from the notorious phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine, the veteran of subversion ops Geoffrey Pyatt. The two are heard plotting, and picking and choosing the new Ukrainian government-to-be once the violent mob attack on the seat of government in Kiev, with fascists at its core and backed by the U.S., succeeded in overthrowing the elected regime. See “U.S.Enlisted UN Stooges in Ukraine Subversion,”

3] See “The Extraordinary The Extraordinary Pierre Omidyar.” Adventures in Journalism, nsfwcorp, Nov. 15, 2013.

4] Ibid.

5] Of course the figure of a quarter billion dollars is ludicrous, and is a dead giveaway that Omidyar is running a con. Unfortunately the journalists who were the marks in Omidyar's con were too bedazzled by the number to smell a rat. Since they are all under heavy psychological and other pressure from the enraged superpower, it must have seen like a lifeline from heaven when Omidyar suddenly appeared as a saviour, descending like an angel from the capitalist clouds above. I wonder which U.S. government psychological warfare specialists Omidyar conspired with to concoct this perfectly manipulative scheme aimed at the precise mental vulnerabilities of their targets- relief from unrelenting pressure, financial support, protection, freedom to pursue stories. A Fairy Godfather story indeed!

6] For some of Poitras' travails at the hands of the vindictive and repressive U.S., see “Long Before Helping Expose NSA Spying, Journalist Laura Poitras Faced Harassment from U.S. Agents,” democracy now!, 6/17/13, and “Detained in the U.S.: Filmmaker Laura Poitras Held, Questioned Some 40 Times at U.S. Airports,” democracy now!, 4/20/12.

7] Micro-lending sounds like a good idea. But as in all things, the devil is in the details. The details of micro-lending as it actually exists are very ugly. For one thing, hundreds of Indians have been driven to suicide by it- some at the direct instigation of the lenders. Victims of natural disasters have been coerced into handing over their relief aid, as happened in Bangladesh.

The ugliness of Omidyar's “philanthropic” micro-lending operations are detailed at “The Extraordinary Pierre Omidyar.” op cit.

8] Ibid.

9] See “The Techtopus: How Silicon Valley’s most celebrated CEOs conspired to drive down 100,000 tech engineers’ wages,” PandoDaily.com, Jan. 23, 2014, and “Revealed: Apple and Google’s wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees,” PandoDaily.com, March 22, 2014.

The simpering billionaire Pierre Omidyar. Isn't he groovy? (By the way, the Nature Conservancy is this bourgeois outfit that buys up land so rich people will have nice places to hike in. Who could object to that?)