Wednesday, December 20, 2017
How The Media Acted As Accomplices to the Sex Crimes of Harvey Weinstein (and of many others)
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Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Favorite Targets the BBC Loves To Bash
After several years of monitoring the British government's global propaganda arm, the BBC (British Broadcasting Government), what leaps out at me are the following objects of hate at the BBC:
-The Venezuelan government, headed by Nicolas Maduro
-The Colombian rebel movement FARC
-The defunct secret police agency the STASI of the defunct nation East Germany (they just bashed this one again September 14)
-The defunct Soviet Union
-Russia
-Vladimir Putin
Now by "bashing" I mean gratuitous stories that are slanted and grossly unbalanced.
For example, in attacking the Venezuelan govenment, they never give the government's viewpoint, nor that of the millions of Venezuelans who support it. You ONLY hear those Venezuelans attacking the regime, and the foreign governments trying to overthrow it (namely the U.S.). Even worse, while constantly portraying the Maduro government as violently repressive, they have completely hidden the facts that the so-called "protesters" are in fact violent thugs who set fires, attack motor vehicles, burn cliinics, murder policemen, and have burned alive dark-skinned poor people who the "protesters" presume are Chavistas, based on their pigmentation and economic class. But that's not bad enough for the smarmy and dishonest propagandists at the BBC. They cynically add in the people, including police, murdered by the thugs the BBC portrays as brave oppressed people fighting for democracy, with the street goons who get themselves killed while committing felonies in the streets, in one total, which they mislead listeners and viewers into believing are all victims of government violence. They talk about "protesters," then give a number of people killed to date, sneakily aggregating deaths on both sides without telling you.
NPR, a U.S.-government domestic propaganda network, is the same as the BBC in regards to how it "covers" Venezuela.
You don't have to be a supporter of the Maduro regime- I'm not- to see that this vulgar propaganda is merely a political operation to prepare public opinion in the U.S., UK, and wherever in the world people are stuck relying on the BBC for their "news," for the overthrow of the "evil" and "repressive" Venezuelan government, in the name of "restoring democracy."
Yeah, the U.S. and UK are so in love with democracy that both are shoveling armaments in the Saudi Arabian regime''s hungry maw as fast as they can. Saudi Arabia, one of the two most repressive countries on earth (North Korea is the other) is using those weapons to destroy Yemen. They are butchering its people, starving them with a naval blockade, and causing an uncontrolled cholera epidemic which has sickened over 600,000 Yemenis and killed several thousand already. All to try to put in power a so-called "president" who has so little indigenous support that like the South Vietnamese generals who ruled that ersatz country, are totally reliant on foreign military power to try and subjugate the populace. (One group, the Houthis, were able to put the fake Yemeni government to flight in Saudi Arabia.)
Western guff about "human rights" and "democracy," SOO cynically dishonest, has done much to discredit those essential concepts. Just as the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and going down the scale of degeneration, the likes of Pol Pot in Cambodia (or "Kampuchia" as it was styled when his psychopaths, the Khmer Rouge, ruled it) and Robert Mugabe in Ziimbabwe and others, have discredited and destroyed the very words "communism" and "socialism" with their cynical misappropriation of those terms for their own base power manias, so human rights and democracy are being delegitimzed by the scumbag imperialists of "the West."
The BBC (and the entirety of Western power-establishment media) has been so grossly twisted on the question of Ukraine, and Crimea, that it merits a separate essay. Just coincidentally, an example of deranged BBC distortion of reality occurs as I write this. According to the BBC, Russia is now holding military exercises "close to NATO's frontier." In other phrasing, they "report" breathlessly "Russian military operations near NATO's border- is it cause for alarm." That is to say, inside Russia on Russia's own border. It just so happens that NATO has pushed itself RIGHT UP TO THE RUSSIAN BORDER. So now if Russia stations its OWN MILITARY INSIDE ITS OWN BORDERS, that is deemed to be a "Threat" to NATO! Amazing.
I don't like Russia, and Putin is a sinister autocrat. But I don't throw objectivity and reason out the window because of it.
But then, I'm not a propagandist.
-The Venezuelan government, headed by Nicolas Maduro
-The Colombian rebel movement FARC
-The defunct secret police agency the STASI of the defunct nation East Germany (they just bashed this one again September 14)
-The defunct Soviet Union
-Russia
-Vladimir Putin
Now by "bashing" I mean gratuitous stories that are slanted and grossly unbalanced.
For example, in attacking the Venezuelan govenment, they never give the government's viewpoint, nor that of the millions of Venezuelans who support it. You ONLY hear those Venezuelans attacking the regime, and the foreign governments trying to overthrow it (namely the U.S.). Even worse, while constantly portraying the Maduro government as violently repressive, they have completely hidden the facts that the so-called "protesters" are in fact violent thugs who set fires, attack motor vehicles, burn cliinics, murder policemen, and have burned alive dark-skinned poor people who the "protesters" presume are Chavistas, based on their pigmentation and economic class. But that's not bad enough for the smarmy and dishonest propagandists at the BBC. They cynically add in the people, including police, murdered by the thugs the BBC portrays as brave oppressed people fighting for democracy, with the street goons who get themselves killed while committing felonies in the streets, in one total, which they mislead listeners and viewers into believing are all victims of government violence. They talk about "protesters," then give a number of people killed to date, sneakily aggregating deaths on both sides without telling you.
NPR, a U.S.-government domestic propaganda network, is the same as the BBC in regards to how it "covers" Venezuela.
You don't have to be a supporter of the Maduro regime- I'm not- to see that this vulgar propaganda is merely a political operation to prepare public opinion in the U.S., UK, and wherever in the world people are stuck relying on the BBC for their "news," for the overthrow of the "evil" and "repressive" Venezuelan government, in the name of "restoring democracy."
Yeah, the U.S. and UK are so in love with democracy that both are shoveling armaments in the Saudi Arabian regime''s hungry maw as fast as they can. Saudi Arabia, one of the two most repressive countries on earth (North Korea is the other) is using those weapons to destroy Yemen. They are butchering its people, starving them with a naval blockade, and causing an uncontrolled cholera epidemic which has sickened over 600,000 Yemenis and killed several thousand already. All to try to put in power a so-called "president" who has so little indigenous support that like the South Vietnamese generals who ruled that ersatz country, are totally reliant on foreign military power to try and subjugate the populace. (One group, the Houthis, were able to put the fake Yemeni government to flight in Saudi Arabia.)
Western guff about "human rights" and "democracy," SOO cynically dishonest, has done much to discredit those essential concepts. Just as the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and going down the scale of degeneration, the likes of Pol Pot in Cambodia (or "Kampuchia" as it was styled when his psychopaths, the Khmer Rouge, ruled it) and Robert Mugabe in Ziimbabwe and others, have discredited and destroyed the very words "communism" and "socialism" with their cynical misappropriation of those terms for their own base power manias, so human rights and democracy are being delegitimzed by the scumbag imperialists of "the West."
The BBC (and the entirety of Western power-establishment media) has been so grossly twisted on the question of Ukraine, and Crimea, that it merits a separate essay. Just coincidentally, an example of deranged BBC distortion of reality occurs as I write this. According to the BBC, Russia is now holding military exercises "close to NATO's frontier." In other phrasing, they "report" breathlessly "Russian military operations near NATO's border- is it cause for alarm." That is to say, inside Russia on Russia's own border. It just so happens that NATO has pushed itself RIGHT UP TO THE RUSSIAN BORDER. So now if Russia stations its OWN MILITARY INSIDE ITS OWN BORDERS, that is deemed to be a "Threat" to NATO! Amazing.
I don't like Russia, and Putin is a sinister autocrat. But I don't throw objectivity and reason out the window because of it.
But then, I'm not a propagandist.
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
Trump Threatens Nuclear Obliteration of North Korea If It Makes More Threats: NK Immediately Makes A Threat, Calling Trump's Bluff
President Bluster still hasn't gotten the hang of this presidency thing, it would seem.
Donald Trump took time out from his 17-day vacation at one of his golf resorts to threaten the nuclear obliteration of North Korea if they so much as make more threats against the U.S.- not if they actually attack the U.S.
"North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like, the world has never seen." And he said it twice, to make sure it's clear he was being deliberate and he meant it: "He has been very threatening beyond a normal state and as I said, they will be met with fire, fury, and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before." (Well maybe some other world has, eh?) [1]
So, did that fearsome warning of U.S. fire and brimstone stop the North Korean threats? Within an hour, NK responded with a threat to nuke Guam, a Pacific island and site of important U.S. military bases.
After the North Korean threat to blow up Guam, U.S. Secretary of State Rex "Big Oil" Tillerson rushed forth to make reassuring noises. He reinterpreted and distorted what Trump had actually said to pretend all Trump said was that the U.S. could defend itself. He told Americans they could "sleep well at night," meaning no danger here. And the governor of Guam, a U.S. colony (the U.S. calls its colonies "territories," to pretend it isn't imperialist), advised his subjects that they were in no "immediate" danger. (Like, there's no chance they'll die in the next 15 minutes.) [2]
But Tillerson's clean-up efforts were immediately undercut by "Defense" Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis, a former general, who immediately made another nuclear threat and sternly instructed North Korea not to try anything and to stop what it's doing, because that could "lead to the end of the regime and the destruction of its people."
In fact, for weeks Trump's "national security team" has been using threatening language against North Korea. Given the paranoid and fanatical and ultimately insecure nature of the regime, this is completely counterproductive. And since an actual attack on North Korea would be catastrophic for U.S. client South Korea, and very risky for the U.S., and sure to turn most of the world's population against the U.S., and create extreme hostility from China, it seems that the only sensible route is to try to calm North Korea, and strive for a reasonable goal like a freeze in North Korea's nuclear weapons program rather than abolition, in return for a peace treaty to formally end the Korean war and dialing down of U.S. military activity on the peninsula.
But that would be "weak." The U.S. is positively neurotic about "weakness." The most powerful nation in human history is actually quite pathetic in this regard. Instead of being confident in its strength, it feels that making any concession to an adversary is a gross humiliation. (Lyndon Johnson once referred to Vietnam as a dwarf with a knife which it would be shameful to not crush. The rhetoric is telling.)
What tripped off Trump's latest intemperate fulmination? Apparently an "analysis" from the DIA ("Defense Intelligence" Agency- now there's an oxymoron) that was planted in the Washington Post claiming that North Korea now had miniaturized a nuclear bomb so it could be put on a missile as a warhead, thus enabling it to actually attack U.S. territory with a nuclear weapon.
A word is in order here about the DIA's reliability. It stinks. One example should suffice to prove that the DIA can never be trusted:
During Saddam Hussein's aggression against Iran in the 1980s during the Reagan regime, the U.S. sided with Iraq because Iran had been taken over by Ayatollah Khomeini and the mullahs after overthrowing the U.S.-installed tyrant the Shah. Hussein used poison gas against Iraqi Kurdish villages. The DIA put out a report claiming Iran did it- a pure, conscious lie. In other words, the DIA put out what purported to be an objective, scientific analysis that was pure disinformation serving a hidden U.S. political agenda. And of course, when later Saddam was converted into an enemy, the gassing of the Kurds was hammered over and over as part of the indictment of how evil he was. (The U.S., both government and media, are nothing if not supremely cynical.) Naturally, the fraudulent DIA report was never mentioned again.
And generally, secret police agencies like the DIA are composed of manipulative liars and cynical power mongers, fanatical nationalists and ideologues whose objectivity is, shall we say, somewhat impaired.
As for the current DIA claim that North Korea has already miniaturized atomic bombs, something it was supposedly several years away from doing: Could it be that this is more DIA disinformation, designed to cause trouble? It wouldn't be the first time the U.S. military worked to provoke war. Ever hear of the Tonkin Gulf incident? ("Hoax" would be a more accurate term.) And the DIA is an extremely reactionary organ of the U.S. military. The fanatical Islam-hater Michael Flynn, briefly Trump's "National Security" advisor and now a target for allegedly playing footsie with Russia, was made head of the DIA by Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama.
The Deep State, after all, considers itself the True Guardian of the National Interest. Presidents who don't go along with it are either manipulated to get in line, maneuvered around, painted into a corner, or neutralized. So who knows what byzantine plot the DIA may be up to?
Currently the U.S. Congress has been busily tying Trump's hands, forcing him to sign a law imposing additional punitive sanctions on Russia, barring him from firing the special counsel, grand inquisitor Robert Mueller III, and threatening to refuse to allow him to replace the Confederate racist Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III as Attorney General. And the Deep State secret police agencies FBI, CIA, and the NSA, a military agency, have been planting damaging "information" against Trump, his family, and his minions, almost daily, in the media.
We just don't know if the DIA report is accurate or not. But the DIA is not trustworthy, so we can't assume one way or the other at this point. [3]
It would be worse than ironic if a nuclear war resulted from the U.S.' own disinformation. But then, the U.S. blew up the Twin Towers plus number 7 World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and ever since has reacted to its own self-provocation with a global jihad against jihadism and the perfection of the world's most complete surveillance state ever.
Oooh, scary!
1] Trump later added a false boast via Twitter, his favorite communication medium, that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is "more powerful than ever." (He does epitomize the unhealthy American obsession with power.) Actually the U.S. nuclear arsenal at its peak numbered 30,000 weapons, consisting of 20,000 strategic weapons and 10,000 "tactical" or "battlefield" nukes, such as atomic land mines, atomic artillery shells, atomic bombs carried in backpacks. The U.S. arsenal has been reduced to around 4,000 strategic weapons- still enough to destroy the world. Typically the atomic bombs are around 300 kilotons each- a kiloton denoting an explosive force equal to a thousand tons of TNT. A megaton is a million tons of TNT- the U.S. used to have megaton-range bombs, but with more accurate delivery systems and multiple bombs per missile warhead and bomber, the greater power was superfluous.
For comparison, the atomic bombs that destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945, had estimated yields around 13 and 18 kilotons, respectively. The man who ordered those attacks on a defenseless, defeated nation, Harry S Truman (no period after the S, S wasn't a middle initial, S was the man's middle name, a fact that U.S. propagandists insist on obfuscating by putting an incorrect period where it doesn't belong) announced in part after obliterating Hiroshima, "If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth." How very Trumpian. Or Trump is Trumanesque.
2] Guam is the site of U.S. military bases that are key to U.S. dominance over the vast Pacific Ocean. Its native inhabitants, ignorant simpletons, join the U.S. military, their conquerors, in large numbers. At some point they were made U.S. citizens, like Puerto Ricans, another U.S. island conquest and colony. Puerto Ricans have been used as U.S. cannon fodder since World War I.
3] The DIA is the creation of Robert S. McNamara. McNamara, the notorious Vietnam War criminal and Secretary of "Defense" (War) during the regimes of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, was jealous of the CIA, and decided to create his own CIA inside the Pentagon, the DIA. (As if the U.S. needed yet another malign secret police organ.) McNamara was supposedly a real intellectual whiz, who headed Ford Motor Company prior to his government "service."
McNamara had experience as a war criminal long before the U.S. destruction of Vietnam, it turned out. We only learned this when McNamara spoke relatively candidly to documentarian Errol Morris. McNamara reminisced about his time as right hand man to general Curtis LeMay, the psychopathic mad bomber, during World War II. LeMay commanded a fleet of giant B-29 bombers (much larger planes than the famous B-17s) which he used to burn 67 Japanese cities to the ground prior to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (His predecessor resigned the position as he couldn't stomach the requirement to slaughter civilians on a mass scale.) McNamara's role was to calculate the most effective way to torch the cities and immolate their inhabitants.
McNamara relates a particularly damning episode when LeMay said to him that if the U.S. loses the war, he and McNamara would be tried as war criminals.
According to Noam Chomsky, on the day Japan surrendered, LeMay launched a final 1,000 bomber raid on Japan, a particularly vindictive act.
LeMay went on to head the U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command, the nuclear attack forces of the U.S. Air Force. He was an ardent advocate for nuking the Soviet Union, and later Vietnam. The fact that such psychopaths routinely rise to the top levels of U.S. power is quite revelatory about the nature of the U.S. system.
Donald Trump took time out from his 17-day vacation at one of his golf resorts to threaten the nuclear obliteration of North Korea if they so much as make more threats against the U.S.- not if they actually attack the U.S.
"North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like, the world has never seen." And he said it twice, to make sure it's clear he was being deliberate and he meant it: "He has been very threatening beyond a normal state and as I said, they will be met with fire, fury, and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before." (Well maybe some other world has, eh?) [1]
So, did that fearsome warning of U.S. fire and brimstone stop the North Korean threats? Within an hour, NK responded with a threat to nuke Guam, a Pacific island and site of important U.S. military bases.
After the North Korean threat to blow up Guam, U.S. Secretary of State Rex "Big Oil" Tillerson rushed forth to make reassuring noises. He reinterpreted and distorted what Trump had actually said to pretend all Trump said was that the U.S. could defend itself. He told Americans they could "sleep well at night," meaning no danger here. And the governor of Guam, a U.S. colony (the U.S. calls its colonies "territories," to pretend it isn't imperialist), advised his subjects that they were in no "immediate" danger. (Like, there's no chance they'll die in the next 15 minutes.) [2]
But Tillerson's clean-up efforts were immediately undercut by "Defense" Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis, a former general, who immediately made another nuclear threat and sternly instructed North Korea not to try anything and to stop what it's doing, because that could "lead to the end of the regime and the destruction of its people."
In fact, for weeks Trump's "national security team" has been using threatening language against North Korea. Given the paranoid and fanatical and ultimately insecure nature of the regime, this is completely counterproductive. And since an actual attack on North Korea would be catastrophic for U.S. client South Korea, and very risky for the U.S., and sure to turn most of the world's population against the U.S., and create extreme hostility from China, it seems that the only sensible route is to try to calm North Korea, and strive for a reasonable goal like a freeze in North Korea's nuclear weapons program rather than abolition, in return for a peace treaty to formally end the Korean war and dialing down of U.S. military activity on the peninsula.
But that would be "weak." The U.S. is positively neurotic about "weakness." The most powerful nation in human history is actually quite pathetic in this regard. Instead of being confident in its strength, it feels that making any concession to an adversary is a gross humiliation. (Lyndon Johnson once referred to Vietnam as a dwarf with a knife which it would be shameful to not crush. The rhetoric is telling.)
What tripped off Trump's latest intemperate fulmination? Apparently an "analysis" from the DIA ("Defense Intelligence" Agency- now there's an oxymoron) that was planted in the Washington Post claiming that North Korea now had miniaturized a nuclear bomb so it could be put on a missile as a warhead, thus enabling it to actually attack U.S. territory with a nuclear weapon.
A word is in order here about the DIA's reliability. It stinks. One example should suffice to prove that the DIA can never be trusted:
During Saddam Hussein's aggression against Iran in the 1980s during the Reagan regime, the U.S. sided with Iraq because Iran had been taken over by Ayatollah Khomeini and the mullahs after overthrowing the U.S.-installed tyrant the Shah. Hussein used poison gas against Iraqi Kurdish villages. The DIA put out a report claiming Iran did it- a pure, conscious lie. In other words, the DIA put out what purported to be an objective, scientific analysis that was pure disinformation serving a hidden U.S. political agenda. And of course, when later Saddam was converted into an enemy, the gassing of the Kurds was hammered over and over as part of the indictment of how evil he was. (The U.S., both government and media, are nothing if not supremely cynical.) Naturally, the fraudulent DIA report was never mentioned again.
And generally, secret police agencies like the DIA are composed of manipulative liars and cynical power mongers, fanatical nationalists and ideologues whose objectivity is, shall we say, somewhat impaired.
As for the current DIA claim that North Korea has already miniaturized atomic bombs, something it was supposedly several years away from doing: Could it be that this is more DIA disinformation, designed to cause trouble? It wouldn't be the first time the U.S. military worked to provoke war. Ever hear of the Tonkin Gulf incident? ("Hoax" would be a more accurate term.) And the DIA is an extremely reactionary organ of the U.S. military. The fanatical Islam-hater Michael Flynn, briefly Trump's "National Security" advisor and now a target for allegedly playing footsie with Russia, was made head of the DIA by Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama.
The Deep State, after all, considers itself the True Guardian of the National Interest. Presidents who don't go along with it are either manipulated to get in line, maneuvered around, painted into a corner, or neutralized. So who knows what byzantine plot the DIA may be up to?
Currently the U.S. Congress has been busily tying Trump's hands, forcing him to sign a law imposing additional punitive sanctions on Russia, barring him from firing the special counsel, grand inquisitor Robert Mueller III, and threatening to refuse to allow him to replace the Confederate racist Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III as Attorney General. And the Deep State secret police agencies FBI, CIA, and the NSA, a military agency, have been planting damaging "information" against Trump, his family, and his minions, almost daily, in the media.
We just don't know if the DIA report is accurate or not. But the DIA is not trustworthy, so we can't assume one way or the other at this point. [3]
It would be worse than ironic if a nuclear war resulted from the U.S.' own disinformation. But then, the U.S. blew up the Twin Towers plus number 7 World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and ever since has reacted to its own self-provocation with a global jihad against jihadism and the perfection of the world's most complete surveillance state ever.
1] Trump later added a false boast via Twitter, his favorite communication medium, that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is "more powerful than ever." (He does epitomize the unhealthy American obsession with power.) Actually the U.S. nuclear arsenal at its peak numbered 30,000 weapons, consisting of 20,000 strategic weapons and 10,000 "tactical" or "battlefield" nukes, such as atomic land mines, atomic artillery shells, atomic bombs carried in backpacks. The U.S. arsenal has been reduced to around 4,000 strategic weapons- still enough to destroy the world. Typically the atomic bombs are around 300 kilotons each- a kiloton denoting an explosive force equal to a thousand tons of TNT. A megaton is a million tons of TNT- the U.S. used to have megaton-range bombs, but with more accurate delivery systems and multiple bombs per missile warhead and bomber, the greater power was superfluous.
For comparison, the atomic bombs that destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945, had estimated yields around 13 and 18 kilotons, respectively. The man who ordered those attacks on a defenseless, defeated nation, Harry S Truman (no period after the S, S wasn't a middle initial, S was the man's middle name, a fact that U.S. propagandists insist on obfuscating by putting an incorrect period where it doesn't belong) announced in part after obliterating Hiroshima, "If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth." How very Trumpian. Or Trump is Trumanesque.
2] Guam is the site of U.S. military bases that are key to U.S. dominance over the vast Pacific Ocean. Its native inhabitants, ignorant simpletons, join the U.S. military, their conquerors, in large numbers. At some point they were made U.S. citizens, like Puerto Ricans, another U.S. island conquest and colony. Puerto Ricans have been used as U.S. cannon fodder since World War I.
3] The DIA is the creation of Robert S. McNamara. McNamara, the notorious Vietnam War criminal and Secretary of "Defense" (War) during the regimes of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, was jealous of the CIA, and decided to create his own CIA inside the Pentagon, the DIA. (As if the U.S. needed yet another malign secret police organ.) McNamara was supposedly a real intellectual whiz, who headed Ford Motor Company prior to his government "service."
McNamara had experience as a war criminal long before the U.S. destruction of Vietnam, it turned out. We only learned this when McNamara spoke relatively candidly to documentarian Errol Morris. McNamara reminisced about his time as right hand man to general Curtis LeMay, the psychopathic mad bomber, during World War II. LeMay commanded a fleet of giant B-29 bombers (much larger planes than the famous B-17s) which he used to burn 67 Japanese cities to the ground prior to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (His predecessor resigned the position as he couldn't stomach the requirement to slaughter civilians on a mass scale.) McNamara's role was to calculate the most effective way to torch the cities and immolate their inhabitants.
McNamara relates a particularly damning episode when LeMay said to him that if the U.S. loses the war, he and McNamara would be tried as war criminals.
According to Noam Chomsky, on the day Japan surrendered, LeMay launched a final 1,000 bomber raid on Japan, a particularly vindictive act.
LeMay went on to head the U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command, the nuclear attack forces of the U.S. Air Force. He was an ardent advocate for nuking the Soviet Union, and later Vietnam. The fact that such psychopaths routinely rise to the top levels of U.S. power is quite revelatory about the nature of the U.S. system.
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Today's Attack Propaganda Against Trump Only Works On People With Amnesia
And those who are ignorant of basic legal concepts.
Today's attack mode: Donald Trump Jr,. an obnoxious character, son of the U.S. president, who is a chip off the old block, has been exposed by the U.S. secret police, using the New York Times as their megaphone, as having met with a Russian lawyer. The lawyer claimed to have dirt on Hillary Clinton- turned out she didn't.
Initially, moron Donald Jr. said the meeting was about adopting Russian children- an obvious, ludicrous lie. The Trumps seem adept at digging themselves in deeper and deeper in the political hole they're in.
So today we're being treated to the word "treason." Treason? The U.S. isn't at war with Russia. So there is no treason in an actual criminal law sense. The idea of "treason" is straight out of the McCarthy-Nixon-GOP playbook of 1947-1960, which the Democrats have latched onto as their strategy to try and topple Trump.
"Treason" having been so very loosely defined as being in cahoots with an enemy (Russia), what about the multimillion dollar donation to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for allowing Russian interests to buy uranium mines, approved by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? [1]
We're also getting "experts," from the secret police fraternity, no less, (like on NPR), saying this is a violation of campaign finance law, because information has value, and receiving such a "contribution" from a foreign source is illegal.
Well then, if "information" equals an illegal donation, what about that dodgy dossier compiled by BRITISH CITIZEN and former MI6 secret policeman Christopher Steele? He offered it to Trump's GOP rivals and to the Clinton campaign, and finally the U.S. secret police in the person of James "Mr. Upright" Comey, then-FBI Director, briefed Trump about it. Or for that matter, the numerous foreign contributions received by Bill Clinton back when, and the donors fled overseas to avoid investigators? No mention of THAT of course.
The hypocrisy and double-standards are breathtaking. As is the total obsession of U.S. media blatherers with every new arrow they can fire at Trump. (While barely covering the viciousness of his domestic policies. No surprise there. The entire power structure is fundamentally reactionary and thus objectively enemies of the overwhelming majority of the American population.) These propagandists and political hacks are apparently unaware that they are in a bubble, and that most people most probably could care less about all this nitpicking. Every day, a new molehill is blown up into a mountain by the propaganda system. Amazing.
I certainly agree that Trump is a rotten choice for president. But EVERY U.S. president has been rotten, only some more than others, because the U.S. has always been an evil empire. There are principled ways to oppose Trump. Unsurprisingly, the ruling elites and their minions have chosen an unprincipled way. True to their character.
One more point. One of the day's big propaganda talking points is that Donald Jr. should have immediately ran to the FBI and reported the approach to him! This is how far into a police state mentality the "liberals" of the media and Democratic Party are dragging us! It's thoroughly despicable. They are empowering the most evil part of the power structure more than ever, namely the secret police agencies, primarily the FBI, CIA, and NSA. They are treated as demigods now, and they are some of the most vile and malicious organs on the earth.
1] The New York Times has amnesia for its own reporting. But you don't have to. See "Donations to the Clinton Foundation, and a Russian Uranium Takeover," April 23, 2015, and "Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal," April 23, 2015.
Today's attack mode: Donald Trump Jr,. an obnoxious character, son of the U.S. president, who is a chip off the old block, has been exposed by the U.S. secret police, using the New York Times as their megaphone, as having met with a Russian lawyer. The lawyer claimed to have dirt on Hillary Clinton- turned out she didn't.
Initially, moron Donald Jr. said the meeting was about adopting Russian children- an obvious, ludicrous lie. The Trumps seem adept at digging themselves in deeper and deeper in the political hole they're in.
So today we're being treated to the word "treason." Treason? The U.S. isn't at war with Russia. So there is no treason in an actual criminal law sense. The idea of "treason" is straight out of the McCarthy-Nixon-GOP playbook of 1947-1960, which the Democrats have latched onto as their strategy to try and topple Trump.
"Treason" having been so very loosely defined as being in cahoots with an enemy (Russia), what about the multimillion dollar donation to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for allowing Russian interests to buy uranium mines, approved by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? [1]
We're also getting "experts," from the secret police fraternity, no less, (like on NPR), saying this is a violation of campaign finance law, because information has value, and receiving such a "contribution" from a foreign source is illegal.
Well then, if "information" equals an illegal donation, what about that dodgy dossier compiled by BRITISH CITIZEN and former MI6 secret policeman Christopher Steele? He offered it to Trump's GOP rivals and to the Clinton campaign, and finally the U.S. secret police in the person of James "Mr. Upright" Comey, then-FBI Director, briefed Trump about it. Or for that matter, the numerous foreign contributions received by Bill Clinton back when, and the donors fled overseas to avoid investigators? No mention of THAT of course.
The hypocrisy and double-standards are breathtaking. As is the total obsession of U.S. media blatherers with every new arrow they can fire at Trump. (While barely covering the viciousness of his domestic policies. No surprise there. The entire power structure is fundamentally reactionary and thus objectively enemies of the overwhelming majority of the American population.) These propagandists and political hacks are apparently unaware that they are in a bubble, and that most people most probably could care less about all this nitpicking. Every day, a new molehill is blown up into a mountain by the propaganda system. Amazing.
I certainly agree that Trump is a rotten choice for president. But EVERY U.S. president has been rotten, only some more than others, because the U.S. has always been an evil empire. There are principled ways to oppose Trump. Unsurprisingly, the ruling elites and their minions have chosen an unprincipled way. True to their character.
One more point. One of the day's big propaganda talking points is that Donald Jr. should have immediately ran to the FBI and reported the approach to him! This is how far into a police state mentality the "liberals" of the media and Democratic Party are dragging us! It's thoroughly despicable. They are empowering the most evil part of the power structure more than ever, namely the secret police agencies, primarily the FBI, CIA, and NSA. They are treated as demigods now, and they are some of the most vile and malicious organs on the earth.
1] The New York Times has amnesia for its own reporting. But you don't have to. See "Donations to the Clinton Foundation, and a Russian Uranium Takeover," April 23, 2015, and "Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal," April 23, 2015.
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
BBC Finally Forced To Mention Saudi Arabian Support For Terrorism
The UK-based Henry Jackson Society issued a report about Saudi Arabia's guilt as a wellspring of Sunni jihadi Islamofascist (my word) terrorism. This got a few sentences in the headline news of the British government's propaganda agency, the BBC "World Service" in English this morning. The Saudis utterly false, vehement denial was prominently reported. Also mentioned was the Society report scoring the Saudis for hypocrisy for blaming the Qataris for "supporting terrorism." (A mention dropped in later versions, which moved the Saudi lies to the top.)
By 4:30 AM EST the item was reduced to a single sentence: "Saudi Arabia has rejected accusations by a London think tank that it is the source of extremism in the UK." Back to backing the Saudis after just a couple of hours. Then repetition of Saudi attacks on Qatar, including playing a Saudi ruler's rant that Qater must "stop supporting terrorism, stop spreading hate." Unbelievable. Bastards living in a glass mansion hypocritically hurling boulders at Qatar. And the BBC has already forgotten the Jackson Society report in only a couple of hours. What does "BBC" stand for? Bullshit Broadcasting Corporation?
The BBC has been assiduous in its avoiding of any mention of Saudi culpability in the spread of Islamofascist Wahhabi-Salafist terrorism. Nor does it mention the fact that Saudi Arabia caused the current cholera epidemic and famine in Yemen, by bombing critical infrastructure, including power, water, and hospitals, and with a naval blockade that has cut off food imports on which Yemen depends. So what accounts for this lapse? It's the fact that a "respected" (BBC's word) right-wing think tank has spoken. Right-wingers are politically and ideologically dominant in "the West." Thus they get special privileges, including the privilege of being heard.
The Jackson Society also called for the release of a suppressed UK government report on Saudi backing for terrorism- another matter the BBC has tread extremely lightly over, to say the least.
The Henry Jackson Society is named after a dead U.S. Senator, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who was known as "the Senator from Boeing," because he promoted the interests of that military arms manufacturer. (Boeing's other main business is commercial aircraft manufacture.) Boeing is headquartered in the state of Washington, on the west coast of the continental U.S. (Not to be confused with the city of Washington, D.C., i.e. District of Columbia, the capital of the U.S., on the east coast.) A Democrat and a rabid militarist, Jackson was one of the two Senators from the state of Washington. (Another note to non-Americans, and to ignorant Americans: as per the U.S. Constitution, every U.S. state has two U.S. Senators, regardless of population. There are currently 50 states, thus 100 Senators. This is highly anti-democratic. The 20 or so least populous U.S. states have the same population as the state of California, yet have 40 Senators to California's 2. What an ideal democracy! One reason for the utterly reactionary nature of the U.S. political system is the fact that all these rural, reactionary states dominate the U.S. Senate.)
By 4:30 AM EST the item was reduced to a single sentence: "Saudi Arabia has rejected accusations by a London think tank that it is the source of extremism in the UK." Back to backing the Saudis after just a couple of hours. Then repetition of Saudi attacks on Qatar, including playing a Saudi ruler's rant that Qater must "stop supporting terrorism, stop spreading hate." Unbelievable. Bastards living in a glass mansion hypocritically hurling boulders at Qatar. And the BBC has already forgotten the Jackson Society report in only a couple of hours. What does "BBC" stand for? Bullshit Broadcasting Corporation?
The BBC has been assiduous in its avoiding of any mention of Saudi culpability in the spread of Islamofascist Wahhabi-Salafist terrorism. Nor does it mention the fact that Saudi Arabia caused the current cholera epidemic and famine in Yemen, by bombing critical infrastructure, including power, water, and hospitals, and with a naval blockade that has cut off food imports on which Yemen depends. So what accounts for this lapse? It's the fact that a "respected" (BBC's word) right-wing think tank has spoken. Right-wingers are politically and ideologically dominant in "the West." Thus they get special privileges, including the privilege of being heard.
The Jackson Society also called for the release of a suppressed UK government report on Saudi backing for terrorism- another matter the BBC has tread extremely lightly over, to say the least.
The Henry Jackson Society is named after a dead U.S. Senator, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who was known as "the Senator from Boeing," because he promoted the interests of that military arms manufacturer. (Boeing's other main business is commercial aircraft manufacture.) Boeing is headquartered in the state of Washington, on the west coast of the continental U.S. (Not to be confused with the city of Washington, D.C., i.e. District of Columbia, the capital of the U.S., on the east coast.) A Democrat and a rabid militarist, Jackson was one of the two Senators from the state of Washington. (Another note to non-Americans, and to ignorant Americans: as per the U.S. Constitution, every U.S. state has two U.S. Senators, regardless of population. There are currently 50 states, thus 100 Senators. This is highly anti-democratic. The 20 or so least populous U.S. states have the same population as the state of California, yet have 40 Senators to California's 2. What an ideal democracy! One reason for the utterly reactionary nature of the U.S. political system is the fact that all these rural, reactionary states dominate the U.S. Senate.)
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
Remembering Manuel Noriega (And Forgetting the 4,000 Panamanians Murdered by the U.S. Military Invasion)
Manuel Noriega dies, U.S. media lies. (BBC and others too.)
Sickening "coverage" by U.S. and other media on the death of former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. The U.S. invaded Panama on the orders of then-president George H.W. Bush (Bush the Elder) on the pretext of executing an arrest warrant for a head of state, Noriega. 26,000 U.S. troops were used for this purpose. The U.S. devastated poor neighborhoods in Panama, and an estimated 4,000 Panamanians were murdered by the U.S. and their bodies dumped into mass graves. This crime has been totally effaced from history.
The British propaganda network the BBC did the same thing, lavishing much time on Noriega and his fate, with not a single word on the number of Panamanians who paid with their lives for this act of wanton U.S. aggression. Ditto in the U.S. broadcast media.
Pretty despicable when you think about it.
The reason the U.S. overthrew Noriega, and this too was totally ignored and indeed lied about, was that he had refused an order from Admiral John Poindexter to step up Panama's cooperation with the U.S. terrorist aggression against Nicaragua. He was duly threatened with consequences for his defiance, which then followed.
Also covered up was the assassination of Noriega's predecessor, Omar Torrijos, who had the interests of the Panamanian people at heart. The closest anyone came to even mentioning this was Christopher Dickey, a career journalist, who on BBC called Torrijos plane crash "slightly suspicious." No, it was a definite hit. This is confirmed by former NSA operative John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, who explained that those who refused to sell out to U.S. "interests," like Torrijos did, are inevitably removed from power, violently if necessary, and that that is what happened to Torrijos.
Once again Western media exposes itself as nothing but a system of mendacious propaganda. It is NOT legitimate journalism.
Sickening "coverage" by U.S. and other media on the death of former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. The U.S. invaded Panama on the orders of then-president George H.W. Bush (Bush the Elder) on the pretext of executing an arrest warrant for a head of state, Noriega. 26,000 U.S. troops were used for this purpose. The U.S. devastated poor neighborhoods in Panama, and an estimated 4,000 Panamanians were murdered by the U.S. and their bodies dumped into mass graves. This crime has been totally effaced from history.
The British propaganda network the BBC did the same thing, lavishing much time on Noriega and his fate, with not a single word on the number of Panamanians who paid with their lives for this act of wanton U.S. aggression. Ditto in the U.S. broadcast media.
Pretty despicable when you think about it.
The reason the U.S. overthrew Noriega, and this too was totally ignored and indeed lied about, was that he had refused an order from Admiral John Poindexter to step up Panama's cooperation with the U.S. terrorist aggression against Nicaragua. He was duly threatened with consequences for his defiance, which then followed.
Also covered up was the assassination of Noriega's predecessor, Omar Torrijos, who had the interests of the Panamanian people at heart. The closest anyone came to even mentioning this was Christopher Dickey, a career journalist, who on BBC called Torrijos plane crash "slightly suspicious." No, it was a definite hit. This is confirmed by former NSA operative John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, who explained that those who refused to sell out to U.S. "interests," like Torrijos did, are inevitably removed from power, violently if necessary, and that that is what happened to Torrijos.
Once again Western media exposes itself as nothing but a system of mendacious propaganda. It is NOT legitimate journalism.
Friday, January 20, 2017
No Honeymoon For President Trump
The current change in U.S. regime has certainly been different from the pattern of most of the last century or so. The usual practice is for the power structure to be at least outwardly respectful to the new Leader, and formally deferential. Media fawn over the new chief executive of the U.S. Government. The honeymoon can last for years in the case of an arch-reactionary like Reagan. Nixon had a second honeymoon in 1972 when he ran for reelection, when except for the Washington Post, the Watergate burglary was virtually ignored by the media- to the disgruntlement of Senator George McGovern, the Democratic candidate for president that election year.
The New York Times spent the first year of Jimmy Carter's presidency putting his smiling visage on their front pages almost daily, in a strenuous effort to repair the damage to the public esteem for the presidency in the wake of Nixon's forced resignation and his hand-picked successor Gerald Ford's pardoning of Nixon to protect him from criminal charges. But by the last year of Carter's rule, the Times was smitten by Reagan, and did its best to sabotage Carter's reelection, such as by putting a photo of him on the front page running a marathon and looking exhausted, and describing him as panting and weak. The media also ginned up a fake "rabbit attack" on Carter to make him look ridiculous.
With Trump, the media assault has been unrelenting. It began after he won the Republican nomination, when it apparently dawned on the media czars and their minions that Trump would be dangerously destabilizing an unpredictable with presidential power. (Until then they had made him the center of mostly benign media attention for months.) The assault increased in intensity and virulence after he "won" the presdiential election November 8, with fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, by winning in the Electoral College, that extremely peculiar U.S. version of electoral "democracy." A shabby piece of libel, an alleged "dossier" or "report," cooked-up by a former British secret policeman from MI6 (Christopher Steele, currently in hiding) who was hired by Republican primary opponents of Trump to come up with derogatory information about Trump, and then peddled by the Brit to the Democratic camp, was used by the so-called "intelligence community" and U.S. media to smear Trump as a pervert who had hired Russian prostitutes to piss on a hotel bed in Moscow in which one of the Clintons had slept, and the Russian secret police covertly videoed the whole thing and are now using it or are going to use it to blackmail or control Trump. That such a cheap spy-novel fantasy is taken seriously shows the desperation of part of the U.S. power elite, including the main secret police agencies, to hobble Trump.
And when Trump refuses to buckle, and instead denounces the "intelligence" agencies for this tawdry behavior, he is attacked by the commentariat for "attacking" "his own" intelligence agencies and "siding with Putin," and admonished by "experts" (various secret policemen, secret police veterans, and members of the established nomenklatura) that he'll have to learn to "work with" the CIA, FBI, et al, and sit at their knees to learn from them.
Now, Trump is awful, for sure, and his cabinet appointments are the worst in modern history, worse even than the egregious ones of Reagan. But this tawdry propaganda campaign throws into stark relief the unethical nature of the power establishment. It also proves once again that the Deep State agencies, in particular the CIA, FBI, and NSA, truly are states within a state that care first and foremost about their own power and prerogatives. Their loyalty to the state as a whole, to the U.S. government, and certainly to the president, to whom they are nominally pledged to serve, is far less important to them than their own self-aggrandizing schemes. After all, the CIA arranged the assassination of the president in 1963, with the FBI as a full participant in aiding and abetting the crime by helping cover it up. And the entire U.S. media played along, and still do to this day by maintaining the absurd fictional account of the assassination by the Warren Commission. (By the way, Gerald Ford, the guy who pardoned Nixon, was one of the Commissioners and functioned as FBI spy on the Commission.)
It's unfortunate that "alternative" media and public figures have so lost perspective and are so incapable of objectivity that they are playing right along with every propaganda assault on Trump. Between Trump's distortions of reality, and the distortions of reality being fostered by the elements of the power establishment desperate to undercut Trump on foreign policy mainly, (they seem not too troubled by what he threatens to do domestically), people will be disoriented without a lodestar of objective truth to turn to.
Instead of becoming foot soldiers in one side of an intra-ruling class power struggle, progressives should chart an independent course, a principled course, and ultimately the actually pragmatic course of declaring a pox on both houses of the power elite and devise ways to take advantage of their conflict. Playing them off against each other, for example, not legitimizing the slanders of the anti-Trump faction. Heaven knows, there is plenty of legitimate information about Trump to use against him, without trying to paint him as a Putin puppet who engaged in a lurid defilement ritual involving urination.
The New York Times spent the first year of Jimmy Carter's presidency putting his smiling visage on their front pages almost daily, in a strenuous effort to repair the damage to the public esteem for the presidency in the wake of Nixon's forced resignation and his hand-picked successor Gerald Ford's pardoning of Nixon to protect him from criminal charges. But by the last year of Carter's rule, the Times was smitten by Reagan, and did its best to sabotage Carter's reelection, such as by putting a photo of him on the front page running a marathon and looking exhausted, and describing him as panting and weak. The media also ginned up a fake "rabbit attack" on Carter to make him look ridiculous.
With Trump, the media assault has been unrelenting. It began after he won the Republican nomination, when it apparently dawned on the media czars and their minions that Trump would be dangerously destabilizing an unpredictable with presidential power. (Until then they had made him the center of mostly benign media attention for months.) The assault increased in intensity and virulence after he "won" the presdiential election November 8, with fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, by winning in the Electoral College, that extremely peculiar U.S. version of electoral "democracy." A shabby piece of libel, an alleged "dossier" or "report," cooked-up by a former British secret policeman from MI6 (Christopher Steele, currently in hiding) who was hired by Republican primary opponents of Trump to come up with derogatory information about Trump, and then peddled by the Brit to the Democratic camp, was used by the so-called "intelligence community" and U.S. media to smear Trump as a pervert who had hired Russian prostitutes to piss on a hotel bed in Moscow in which one of the Clintons had slept, and the Russian secret police covertly videoed the whole thing and are now using it or are going to use it to blackmail or control Trump. That such a cheap spy-novel fantasy is taken seriously shows the desperation of part of the U.S. power elite, including the main secret police agencies, to hobble Trump.
And when Trump refuses to buckle, and instead denounces the "intelligence" agencies for this tawdry behavior, he is attacked by the commentariat for "attacking" "his own" intelligence agencies and "siding with Putin," and admonished by "experts" (various secret policemen, secret police veterans, and members of the established nomenklatura) that he'll have to learn to "work with" the CIA, FBI, et al, and sit at their knees to learn from them.
Now, Trump is awful, for sure, and his cabinet appointments are the worst in modern history, worse even than the egregious ones of Reagan. But this tawdry propaganda campaign throws into stark relief the unethical nature of the power establishment. It also proves once again that the Deep State agencies, in particular the CIA, FBI, and NSA, truly are states within a state that care first and foremost about their own power and prerogatives. Their loyalty to the state as a whole, to the U.S. government, and certainly to the president, to whom they are nominally pledged to serve, is far less important to them than their own self-aggrandizing schemes. After all, the CIA arranged the assassination of the president in 1963, with the FBI as a full participant in aiding and abetting the crime by helping cover it up. And the entire U.S. media played along, and still do to this day by maintaining the absurd fictional account of the assassination by the Warren Commission. (By the way, Gerald Ford, the guy who pardoned Nixon, was one of the Commissioners and functioned as FBI spy on the Commission.)
It's unfortunate that "alternative" media and public figures have so lost perspective and are so incapable of objectivity that they are playing right along with every propaganda assault on Trump. Between Trump's distortions of reality, and the distortions of reality being fostered by the elements of the power establishment desperate to undercut Trump on foreign policy mainly, (they seem not too troubled by what he threatens to do domestically), people will be disoriented without a lodestar of objective truth to turn to.
Instead of becoming foot soldiers in one side of an intra-ruling class power struggle, progressives should chart an independent course, a principled course, and ultimately the actually pragmatic course of declaring a pox on both houses of the power elite and devise ways to take advantage of their conflict. Playing them off against each other, for example, not legitimizing the slanders of the anti-Trump faction. Heaven knows, there is plenty of legitimate information about Trump to use against him, without trying to paint him as a Putin puppet who engaged in a lurid defilement ritual involving urination.
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Trump, Imitating U.S. "Intelligence" Agency Method, Claims Secret Knowledge Refuting Russian "Election Hacking" Charges
Oh, the irony!
One of the long-standing modus operandi of U.S. secret police agencies (euphemistically referred to as "intelligence" or "law enforcement" outfits) is the claim to secret information, which means if you knew what they know, you'd see that their propaganda and ideological assertions were true! Of course, they can't tell you what the alleged information is, because it's "classified," that is, "secret," and revealing it would risk exposing their "sources and methods," and even RISK PEOPLE'S LIVES!, but you should just trust these righteously upstanding, loyal and True-Blue Patriots. (The same "patriots" who daily urinate on the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, systematically violating the alleged "rights" of Americans they don't like, as they have done since their inception. Of course their have to break U.S. law by persecuting people whose beliefs or activities they don't like, to "protect our freedoms." How's that for an Orwellian mind-bender!)
This tawdry, dishonest trick of bluffing was analyzed decades ago in a book co-authored by a former CIA officer and a former State Department official, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. [1]
Well, it turns out that others can play the same mystique of intelligence game.
Namely Donald Trump.
Starting months ago with anonymous secret policemen whispering in the ears of their media enablers, there has been a propaganda campaign (and the propaganda could be partially or wholly true, keep in mind- propaganda sometimes is) tarring Russia for allegedly sneaking into email accounts of Democratic Party apparatchiks, including that of John Podesta, a sort of eminense grise behind the Clintons. These communications then surfaced on WikiLeaks, the hated information-exposing operation headed by Julian Assange. (The U.S. government has had WikiLeaks and Assange under siege for over five years now, trying mightily to destroy the organization. The first WikiLeaks "crime" that sparked U.S. outrage was the online publication of "classified" U.S. State Department cables and military reports and, most notoriously, the infamous collateral murder video showing the murderers' eyes view from a U.S. Army helicopter in Iraq murdering journalists and civilians on the ground in Baghdad, and attempting to murder children in a van. U.S. Army Specialist Chelsea- formerly Bradley- Manning was persecuted for sending this data to WikiLeaks.) [2]
The emails from Podesta and Democratic National Committee apparatchiks revealed a concerted campaign to destroy the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton rival Senator Bernie Sanders, including various nasty subterfuges. Pulling up this rock also gave a general view of the smarmy interior of the Democratic Party, usually kept carefully hidden from public view. (If they'd wanted to, the establishment media could have revealed the truth about the Democratic Party decades ago, but the two-party political cartel of the Democrats and the Republican Party, aka the GOP- Gang Of Plunderers, is a key pillar of corporate oligarchy, and "the" media is fundamentally the mouthpiece of that oligarchic power structure. The two-party political cartel and the corporate media are pillars of the power structure and are fundamentally allied, no matter their conflicts and disagreements which lie on a more superficial level.)
We also got to see the text of the Secret Speech that Hillary Clinton was paid a cool quarter million dollars to read to a Goldman Sachs audience, those wizards of financial chicanery, which confirmed what should have already been obvious- that the Clintons are handmaidens of the top echelons of U.S. capital, and Clinton's campaign rhetoric to the contrary was just the standard Democratic Party mendacity. (Her rhetoric was pulled to the "left" by the competition from Sanders for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.)
By and by, government officials were forced to reveal their faces to sell the "Russia Hacking Sacred U.S. Democracy" story. So first we got James "Pinocchio" Clapper, he of the false Senate Intelligence Commitee testimony, Obama's "Director of National Intelligence," pointing the finger at Russia. Then came the CIA, an agency of professional liars and deceivers, avowing that Russia Was Guilty. The FBI hedged a bit, apparently to allow it to wiggle out later if the whole thing was exposed as false.
Finally Obama demanded conclusionary reports from the CIA and FBI by the time he finally exits the White House on January 20. Congresspeople of both parties waxed wroth at the Russian "interference" in "our election" and "subversion of our democracy." Obama then imposed sanctions on Russia as punishment, expelling 35 Russian diplomats and closing two Russian facilities in the U.S., announcing more attacks on Russian assets, and threatening unspecified covert acts of retaliation. (Putin cleverly parried Obama's hostile attack by refusing to retaliate in kind, even inviting the children of U.S. diplomats in Russia to attend Kremlin Christmas and New Year's celebrations! Stuffed, Obama!)
Trump has adamantly refused to conform to this campaign, despite daily brickbats hurled at him by numerous branches of the media (including the "comedy" show "Saturday Night Live" on NBC, which portrayed Trump as a "Manchurian Candidate" of Putin [3]).
Then Trump played the "I know things you don't know" card, the card the secret police habitually play. Trump said he knew “things that other people don’t know” that would be revealed “on Tuesday or Wednesday.” (Don't hold your breath.)
A few salient points about the bad faith and fraudulence of this entire "Russia Tried To Damage Our Democracy" propaganda campaign, which U.S. media mostly refuse to breathe a word about:
-Clinton got 2.9 million more votes than Trump. She "lost" because of the idiotic, archaic Electoral College, a political straitjacket that the Democrats refuse to blame, much less reform or abolish, even though the same thing happened to them in 2000. They prefer to be slaves to the dead hand of the past, apparently. Thus do U.S. "Founding Fathers," in their graves for two centuries, impose their will on the present. Sick. [4]
-Clinton led Trump in polls by 14% until FBI secret police chief James Comey reignited the issue of her private server State Department emails just before the election, causing her lead to vanish.
-We have the right to the information provided by WikiLeaks, allegedly via Russia. (Assange denies it came from Russia.)
-The feckless, cowardly Democrats habitually scapegoat others for their losses, instead of making an honest accounting and taking positive, constructive action. In 2000 Ralph Nader was their designated scapegoat. Today it's Russia. They are cowardly punks who never challenge GOP election stealing, in 2000, 2004 (Ohio stolen), and this year, with massive voter disenfranchisement and invalidation of valid ballots. (See Greg Palast's work.)
-Finally, and most importantly, just how hypocritical can the U.S. get with all this screeching about "foreign interference"? No nation on earth has done more interfering in other countries than the U.S.! From massive CIA intervention in European politics after World War II (funding politicians, parties, newspapers, paying gangsters to beat up leftists, etc.) to COMPLETELY DESTROYING DEMOCRACIES in places like Iran (1953) Guatemala (1954) Brazil (1965) Chile (1973), and various other military coups. The U.S. INVADED the Dominican Republic in 1965 when it didn't like who won an election there.
So now U.S. elites are screeching about Russia letting the American public in on some Democratic Party poohbahs' dirty secrets? BOO-HOO! Get over it.
1] The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, 1974. But nothing changed, the populace remains ignorant and willfully naive, and the same old tricks of mass manipulation work. With the cooperation of a venal media, of course, without which the secret police couldn't get over with their shit.
Marchetti was a CIA officer and assistant to the CIA deputy director, Marks a former Foreign Service Officer.
2] "Collateral Murder" videos on youtube.com. You must watch this if you never have yet.
3] Posted on youtube.com by "Saturday Night Live" [NBC]. "Donald Trump Christmas Cold Open - SNL," published December 18, 2016. The SNL opening skit was crude and obvious, apparently to make sure that even the politically unsophisticated would get the message. I found it funny anyway, and grossly distorted. But then, satire is based on exaggeration. "Rex Tillerson" (Trump's designated Secretary of State who just resigned as head of ExxonMobil) also appeared in the skit.
A "Manchurian Candidate," which comes from a novel by that name, refers to a programmed assassin whose mind is under external control. That's beyond being a stooge, beyond being a puppet. It's being a hypnotized zombie.
4] The Democrats won't even back the movement among states to agree to give their Electoral College votes to whoever wins the "popular" vote. The plan is that when states with a total number of Electoral Votes equalling a majority of Electoral College votes (270 or more ) agree to join, the plan becomes effective. So far state legislatures controlling around 160 Electoral College votes have passed the necessary legislation.
For details on the Electoral College, and how the U.S. has historically been anti-democratic, see "In the Self-Proclaimed 'World's Greatest Democracy,' the Candidate With the Most Votes Just Lost," November 14, 2016.
One of the long-standing modus operandi of U.S. secret police agencies (euphemistically referred to as "intelligence" or "law enforcement" outfits) is the claim to secret information, which means if you knew what they know, you'd see that their propaganda and ideological assertions were true! Of course, they can't tell you what the alleged information is, because it's "classified," that is, "secret," and revealing it would risk exposing their "sources and methods," and even RISK PEOPLE'S LIVES!, but you should just trust these righteously upstanding, loyal and True-Blue Patriots. (The same "patriots" who daily urinate on the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, systematically violating the alleged "rights" of Americans they don't like, as they have done since their inception. Of course their have to break U.S. law by persecuting people whose beliefs or activities they don't like, to "protect our freedoms." How's that for an Orwellian mind-bender!)
This tawdry, dishonest trick of bluffing was analyzed decades ago in a book co-authored by a former CIA officer and a former State Department official, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. [1]
Well, it turns out that others can play the same mystique of intelligence game.
Namely Donald Trump.
Starting months ago with anonymous secret policemen whispering in the ears of their media enablers, there has been a propaganda campaign (and the propaganda could be partially or wholly true, keep in mind- propaganda sometimes is) tarring Russia for allegedly sneaking into email accounts of Democratic Party apparatchiks, including that of John Podesta, a sort of eminense grise behind the Clintons. These communications then surfaced on WikiLeaks, the hated information-exposing operation headed by Julian Assange. (The U.S. government has had WikiLeaks and Assange under siege for over five years now, trying mightily to destroy the organization. The first WikiLeaks "crime" that sparked U.S. outrage was the online publication of "classified" U.S. State Department cables and military reports and, most notoriously, the infamous collateral murder video showing the murderers' eyes view from a U.S. Army helicopter in Iraq murdering journalists and civilians on the ground in Baghdad, and attempting to murder children in a van. U.S. Army Specialist Chelsea- formerly Bradley- Manning was persecuted for sending this data to WikiLeaks.) [2]
The emails from Podesta and Democratic National Committee apparatchiks revealed a concerted campaign to destroy the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton rival Senator Bernie Sanders, including various nasty subterfuges. Pulling up this rock also gave a general view of the smarmy interior of the Democratic Party, usually kept carefully hidden from public view. (If they'd wanted to, the establishment media could have revealed the truth about the Democratic Party decades ago, but the two-party political cartel of the Democrats and the Republican Party, aka the GOP- Gang Of Plunderers, is a key pillar of corporate oligarchy, and "the" media is fundamentally the mouthpiece of that oligarchic power structure. The two-party political cartel and the corporate media are pillars of the power structure and are fundamentally allied, no matter their conflicts and disagreements which lie on a more superficial level.)
We also got to see the text of the Secret Speech that Hillary Clinton was paid a cool quarter million dollars to read to a Goldman Sachs audience, those wizards of financial chicanery, which confirmed what should have already been obvious- that the Clintons are handmaidens of the top echelons of U.S. capital, and Clinton's campaign rhetoric to the contrary was just the standard Democratic Party mendacity. (Her rhetoric was pulled to the "left" by the competition from Sanders for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.)
By and by, government officials were forced to reveal their faces to sell the "Russia Hacking Sacred U.S. Democracy" story. So first we got James "Pinocchio" Clapper, he of the false Senate Intelligence Commitee testimony, Obama's "Director of National Intelligence," pointing the finger at Russia. Then came the CIA, an agency of professional liars and deceivers, avowing that Russia Was Guilty. The FBI hedged a bit, apparently to allow it to wiggle out later if the whole thing was exposed as false.
Finally Obama demanded conclusionary reports from the CIA and FBI by the time he finally exits the White House on January 20. Congresspeople of both parties waxed wroth at the Russian "interference" in "our election" and "subversion of our democracy." Obama then imposed sanctions on Russia as punishment, expelling 35 Russian diplomats and closing two Russian facilities in the U.S., announcing more attacks on Russian assets, and threatening unspecified covert acts of retaliation. (Putin cleverly parried Obama's hostile attack by refusing to retaliate in kind, even inviting the children of U.S. diplomats in Russia to attend Kremlin Christmas and New Year's celebrations! Stuffed, Obama!)
Trump has adamantly refused to conform to this campaign, despite daily brickbats hurled at him by numerous branches of the media (including the "comedy" show "Saturday Night Live" on NBC, which portrayed Trump as a "Manchurian Candidate" of Putin [3]).
Then Trump played the "I know things you don't know" card, the card the secret police habitually play. Trump said he knew “things that other people don’t know” that would be revealed “on Tuesday or Wednesday.” (Don't hold your breath.)
A few salient points about the bad faith and fraudulence of this entire "Russia Tried To Damage Our Democracy" propaganda campaign, which U.S. media mostly refuse to breathe a word about:
-Clinton got 2.9 million more votes than Trump. She "lost" because of the idiotic, archaic Electoral College, a political straitjacket that the Democrats refuse to blame, much less reform or abolish, even though the same thing happened to them in 2000. They prefer to be slaves to the dead hand of the past, apparently. Thus do U.S. "Founding Fathers," in their graves for two centuries, impose their will on the present. Sick. [4]
-Clinton led Trump in polls by 14% until FBI secret police chief James Comey reignited the issue of her private server State Department emails just before the election, causing her lead to vanish.
-We have the right to the information provided by WikiLeaks, allegedly via Russia. (Assange denies it came from Russia.)
-The feckless, cowardly Democrats habitually scapegoat others for their losses, instead of making an honest accounting and taking positive, constructive action. In 2000 Ralph Nader was their designated scapegoat. Today it's Russia. They are cowardly punks who never challenge GOP election stealing, in 2000, 2004 (Ohio stolen), and this year, with massive voter disenfranchisement and invalidation of valid ballots. (See Greg Palast's work.)
-Finally, and most importantly, just how hypocritical can the U.S. get with all this screeching about "foreign interference"? No nation on earth has done more interfering in other countries than the U.S.! From massive CIA intervention in European politics after World War II (funding politicians, parties, newspapers, paying gangsters to beat up leftists, etc.) to COMPLETELY DESTROYING DEMOCRACIES in places like Iran (1953) Guatemala (1954) Brazil (1965) Chile (1973), and various other military coups. The U.S. INVADED the Dominican Republic in 1965 when it didn't like who won an election there.
So now U.S. elites are screeching about Russia letting the American public in on some Democratic Party poohbahs' dirty secrets? BOO-HOO! Get over it.
"I got special secret information stored right in here! I'll gladly tell you about it tomorrow if you'll give me a headline today."
1] The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, 1974. But nothing changed, the populace remains ignorant and willfully naive, and the same old tricks of mass manipulation work. With the cooperation of a venal media, of course, without which the secret police couldn't get over with their shit.
Marchetti was a CIA officer and assistant to the CIA deputy director, Marks a former Foreign Service Officer.
2] "Collateral Murder" videos on youtube.com. You must watch this if you never have yet.
3] Posted on youtube.com by "Saturday Night Live" [NBC]. "Donald Trump Christmas Cold Open - SNL," published December 18, 2016. The SNL opening skit was crude and obvious, apparently to make sure that even the politically unsophisticated would get the message. I found it funny anyway, and grossly distorted. But then, satire is based on exaggeration. "Rex Tillerson" (Trump's designated Secretary of State who just resigned as head of ExxonMobil) also appeared in the skit.
A "Manchurian Candidate," which comes from a novel by that name, refers to a programmed assassin whose mind is under external control. That's beyond being a stooge, beyond being a puppet. It's being a hypnotized zombie.
4] The Democrats won't even back the movement among states to agree to give their Electoral College votes to whoever wins the "popular" vote. The plan is that when states with a total number of Electoral Votes equalling a majority of Electoral College votes (270 or more ) agree to join, the plan becomes effective. So far state legislatures controlling around 160 Electoral College votes have passed the necessary legislation.
For details on the Electoral College, and how the U.S. has historically been anti-democratic, see "In the Self-Proclaimed 'World's Greatest Democracy,' the Candidate With the Most Votes Just Lost," November 14, 2016.
American Propagandist: The Unbearable Sanctimony of Barack Hussein Obama
And hypocrisy, too.
On December 29, 2016, Obama delivered a verbal tongue-lashing to Russia over what the U.S. government and media claim is proven fact- that Russia "stole" emails from Democratic Party apparatchiks and funneled them to WikiLeaks. (This in turn prompted an establishment conspiracy theory claiming that WikiLeaks and its leader Julian Assange are Russian agents, conveniently ignoring the fact that WikiLeaks is set up for receiving anonymous uploads of data. But then, these are the same people who claim Edward Snowden is a "traitor" and "Russian agent" who "fled to Russia," ignoring the fact that they trapped Snowden in Moscow's airport, where he sat for six weeks, by canceling his passport while he was in transit to Latin America. Dishonestly ignoring facts in order to promulgate lies- euphemistically called "false narratives," is habitual behavior with most of the U.S. political/media elite.)
Obama said on the 29th, in announcing his initial punishment of Russia: "“The United States and friends and allies around the world must work together to oppose Russia’s efforts to undermine established international norms of behavior."
Apparently, using computer malware to sabotage Iran's centrifuges, and having your NSA spy on the personal communications of heads of state of allied nations, and engaging in economic espionage against foreign corporations, and spying on the communications of European parliamentarians en masse, and trying to steal every phone call, email, text message, Internet search, fax and everything in the whole world, is within "established international norms of behavior."
But ferreting out emails from one of the two U.S. political cartel parties, and sharing it with the world, (something that U.S. officials also do anonymously, in "leaks," actually plants, in the media), THAT is outside "established international norms of behavior."
The "norms" that the U.S. dictates, which boil down to: The U.S. Can Do Whatever It Wants, And The Rest Of You Have To Do What The U.S. Says.
Gall, nerve, chutzpah, brass- call it that. Imperialist arrogance is more to the point, however.
The only question about Obama is- to what degree is he self-brainwashed with his own guff, which makes him a hypocrite, versus his awareness of how cynical he's being. Where does Obama fall onthe hypocrisy-cynicism spectrum? Ultimately it's a minor question.
If Russia indeed revealed that useful information about the inner machinations of the venal Democratic Party and its sleazy con artists, and Hillary Clinton's "secret" speech to Goldman Sachs, more power to them. We the people who inhabit this planet, are entitled to that information. Our rulers are NOT entitled to deceive us, as they endeavor to do every single day. A side effect of the conflict between rival national regimes with an insatiable hunger for power is that occasionally things are revealed as they battle each other for tactical and strategic advantage. That's all to the good. Don't look a gifthorse in the mouth just because it's Russian.
Long Live WikiLeaks and freedom of information.
On December 29, 2016, Obama delivered a verbal tongue-lashing to Russia over what the U.S. government and media claim is proven fact- that Russia "stole" emails from Democratic Party apparatchiks and funneled them to WikiLeaks. (This in turn prompted an establishment conspiracy theory claiming that WikiLeaks and its leader Julian Assange are Russian agents, conveniently ignoring the fact that WikiLeaks is set up for receiving anonymous uploads of data. But then, these are the same people who claim Edward Snowden is a "traitor" and "Russian agent" who "fled to Russia," ignoring the fact that they trapped Snowden in Moscow's airport, where he sat for six weeks, by canceling his passport while he was in transit to Latin America. Dishonestly ignoring facts in order to promulgate lies- euphemistically called "false narratives," is habitual behavior with most of the U.S. political/media elite.)
Obama said on the 29th, in announcing his initial punishment of Russia: "“The United States and friends and allies around the world must work together to oppose Russia’s efforts to undermine established international norms of behavior."
Apparently, using computer malware to sabotage Iran's centrifuges, and having your NSA spy on the personal communications of heads of state of allied nations, and engaging in economic espionage against foreign corporations, and spying on the communications of European parliamentarians en masse, and trying to steal every phone call, email, text message, Internet search, fax and everything in the whole world, is within "established international norms of behavior."
But ferreting out emails from one of the two U.S. political cartel parties, and sharing it with the world, (something that U.S. officials also do anonymously, in "leaks," actually plants, in the media), THAT is outside "established international norms of behavior."
The "norms" that the U.S. dictates, which boil down to: The U.S. Can Do Whatever It Wants, And The Rest Of You Have To Do What The U.S. Says.
Gall, nerve, chutzpah, brass- call it that. Imperialist arrogance is more to the point, however.
The only question about Obama is- to what degree is he self-brainwashed with his own guff, which makes him a hypocrite, versus his awareness of how cynical he's being. Where does Obama fall onthe hypocrisy-cynicism spectrum? Ultimately it's a minor question.
If Russia indeed revealed that useful information about the inner machinations of the venal Democratic Party and its sleazy con artists, and Hillary Clinton's "secret" speech to Goldman Sachs, more power to them. We the people who inhabit this planet, are entitled to that information. Our rulers are NOT entitled to deceive us, as they endeavor to do every single day. A side effect of the conflict between rival national regimes with an insatiable hunger for power is that occasionally things are revealed as they battle each other for tactical and strategic advantage. That's all to the good. Don't look a gifthorse in the mouth just because it's Russian.
Long Live WikiLeaks and freedom of information.
Obama tries to intimidate Putin in Stare-Down. Hangzhou, China, September 2016.
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