Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Kellyanne Conway Thinks Trump Is Doomed

That's the conclusion I draw from her sudden abandonment of Trump less than 3 months before the presidential election.

The prominent political propagandist and reactionary operative gave only one week public notice of her impending departure from the Trump regime at the end of August.

Conway says the reason she's abruptly leaving is so she can spend more time with her family. That's what politicians always say when they don't want to give the real reason they're giving up a plum job.

Conway's husband, rich rightwing lawyer George Conway, is simultaneously quitting the anti-Trump group he's associated with, "The Lincoln Project." .(He apparently couldn't stomach slithering onto the Trump bandwagon, as his hyper-opportunist wife did.) Kellyanne, while more intelligent than Trump, is like him in that she's a fast-talking bullshit artist. Only she's better at it than he is, thanks to her superior intelligence, which she misuses in the service of evil. And has done her entire adult life. (And probably starting in childhood.)

Kellyanne claims she wants to do more mothering. There may be something to that, insofar as the Conways' 15-year-old daughter Claudia has repeatedly sent cries from the heart into the public space bemoaning her suffering under the oppressive rule of her parents. Her parents barred her from making political comments after she demonstrated that she isn't a reactionary clone of themselves. The fact that George quit his anti-Trump group may be taken as evidence of a parental strategy, although how much time can penning an occasional anti-Trump op-ed take? Presumably George isn't quitting his law practice. Perhaps Kellyanne finagled a deal with Hubby that she's leave the Trump tent if he'd give up his anti-Trump scribbling.

But keep in mind, there can be more than one motive or cause for an action. The "need" to better suppress and brainwash her daughter, and abandoning the sinking Trump ship (as she perceives it), can BOTH be reasons she's abruptly departing the Trump camp. Associating with a loser is not Kellyanne's way. She, again like Trump, has to be a "winner."

Kellyanne Conway is a lifelong reactionary political operative.The early part of her "career" was spent advising rightwing Republicans on how to trick women into voting for the GOP, a party that denies women the right to control their own bodies. She's also a shameless opportunist and a chronic liar. All in all, a loathsome creature who has harmed humanity by her existence.

  
   The Wicked Witch of the White House Went WHOOSH!


For a concise 4 minute synopsis of her "career," including how she latched onto Trump after denigrating him when she was working to try and secure the GOP presidential nomination for the fanatical rightist Ted Cruz, see "Who is Kellyanne Conway – Counselor to the President."

For her infuriating propaganda and gaslighting techniques, see "Kellyanne Conway's interview tricks, explained."

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

The Big Lie: Police Work Is "Dangerous" (It's Not)

In the U.S. the chances of being murdered if you are a cop is LESS than the chance of being murdered if you are a mere citizen. That is a fact. Policing is NOT a particularly hazardous occupation. Other jobs are MUCH more dangerous. Coal mining. Farming. Commercial fishing. Construction. Working in a meat packing plant. All are MUCH more physically dangerous than being a cop, in terms of serious injuries and deaths. (It is not so rare for people to be maimed for life in those other occupations.  It is exceedingly rare for police to suffer such misfortune.)

Cops spend most of their time sitting in their cars. Doing paperwork in their cop fortresses  is another major use of their time. Chasing "perps" down alleys, like on the repression- porn TV show "Cops," a vile propaganda program, is a minuscule percentage of what they do.

There are close to a million cops in the U.S., and yet only around 50 a year are currently killed by other people while on the job. That is half the average of 100 a year of several decades ago, when there were half as many cops. It was safe then, and now it's four times safer.

Yet cops, their fellow traveling reactionaries and white racist cheerleaders, and most of all the U.S. corporate oligarchy's propaganda system, constantly beat their breasts about how police "risk their lives for us." They raise this rhetorical wall of verbal garbage as a shield whenever there is attempt by mere citizens to criticize their outrageous, repressive behavior. (The corporate oligarchic propaganda system refers to itself as "the media," as if it's the one and only media there is, and is purely neutral and objective with no political character.) Very, very rarely, some police are in potentially dangerous (to themselves) situations. And yes, on rare occasions, one or two get killed. It would be like getting struck by lightning, except getting struck by lightning happens far more often than a cop getting killed occurs.

On the other side of the ledger, U.S. police shoot dead over 1,000 people each and every year in the U.S. Now, presumably these aren't ALL homicides. Surely some of these killings must be justified. And yet, one has to wonder why in other "advanced" countries, like those in Europe, and Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the number of people shot or shot dead by police is such a tiny fraction of the U.S number.

Police, like all reactionaries, like to pretend they are being persecuted. In their case, criticism of their crimes is the "persecution." They expect praise for their criminal acts, or at least silence (and media cooperation in spreading lies about their conduct). Police in the U.S. are NOT persecuted. In a nation that has systematically attacked and destroyed the union movement for decades reducing organized labor to a shadow of what it once was, police unions are allowed grotesquely exaggerated political power. Even as teachers' unions are under systematic assault by state governments and billionaires and their hired propagandists pushing "charter schools" and vouchers, police unions are treated with the deference usually reserved for the Roman Catholic Pope.

Because of their role as oppressors of the "lower" (i.e. poorer) classes in the U.S., a growing percentage of the population, cops are hated by more and more people. On occasions when public outrage explodes over police atrocities, cops feel genuinely aggrieved and insulted. THEY are outraged that anyone is outraged at THEM instead of profusely THANKING them for murdering someone, for example. Then they and their reactionary defenders and media propagandist enablers start to bleat about how "dangerous" it is to be a cop, how they have to make "split second decisions" or be killed. This is BULLSHIT. Every time they cold-bloodedly murder someone, or brutally beat someone who rubbed them the wrong way (or who merely has the wrong skin pigmentation) or break into homes ot attack people protesting causes the cops despise, they trot out their alleged need to make "split-second decisions" and screech that the second-guessing is HANDCUFFING the police and ENDANGERING THEM by making them hesitant to become instantly violent like a Hell's Angel or a steroid-addled bodybuilder subject to sudden and unprovoked rages. (By the way, many cops ARE 'roided-up goons. And many are violent veterans of the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, where they developed a taste for shedding human blood. Or just developed a combat mentality, which they apply to their "police" work, "protecting the serving" the rich and the power structure created by and for the rich.)



Cops are NOT "law enforcers." They are social order enforcers. They are guardians of the existing power structure. This is the single most important thing to understand about the police. Everything they do makes perfect sense once you perceive this fundamental fact.

Since "blacks" are the U.S. equivalent of Indian Dalits, "untouchables," and occupy the bottom status rung in a deeply racist society, and "need" to be "kept in their place," a task in which violence has historically been a central tool, although not the only one, we should not be mystified by "why do they keep killing black people?" If it wasn't desired that they regularly commit such atrocities, the legal and political systems would not PROTECT THEM WHEN THEY DO IT. And the only times they are NOT protected is when there is unrest AND the unrest does not SUBSIDE quickly.

Chinese dictator and "communist" emperor Mao Zedong infamously wrote that "political power flows out of the barrel of a gun." It also sprays from the nozzle of a pepper spray can, a tear gas canister, and sparks off the tips of a taser's barbs. That is, power always ultimately rests on physical force. Without the ability to use physical force to enforce one's will when challenged, there is no power. There may be influence, but not power. Power is the ability to force others to do what you dictate, not do what you ban, or to punish for disobedience.

In the current two weeks and counting nationwide (indeed global) mass protests against the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on March 25, the bourgeois politicians and propagandists have been talking as if they are on the same side as those they oppress. They've been wringing their hands nonstop, Tugging at their chins and wondering how to "fix" the "problem of racism." Meanwhile, the whole time, their police have been violently assaulting the protesters, killing several, and shooting an eye out of at least three people, among other atrocities. But the only "violence" those in power perceive is window-breaking and "looting" by people they insist on tying to the protesters. So as soon as the heat dies down, expect things to be back to business as usual.

Killer cop Derek Chauvin was only indicted after a police station was burned down in Minneapolis. It was only after 8 days or so of national turbulence that Minnesota state Attorney General Keith Ellison, a phony "progressive," took over the case and indicted the other 3 murderers of George Floyd. He is already warning how "hard" it will be to obtain convictions.

Malcolm X once said, "The only thing power understands, IS power." Or in this case, pressure. Pressure from masses of people. Most importantly, most of the demonstrators have been "white." That is new in the Black Lives Matter movement. That is also decisive. Blacks in the U.S. are a small minority, so having allies in the rest of the population is essential.






Ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek "Crusher" Chauvin bravely putting his life on the line to "protect and serve." And ingrates have the nerve to protest! What is the world coming to?

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Wednesday, April 15, 2020

The BBC Lies About The Holocaust

Amazing lie pushed out all over the world this morning by the premier propaganda arm of the British Government, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Bergen-Belsen was a Nazi concentration camp liberated by British troops. According to the BBC this morning, an estimated 50,000 prisoners died there. (That would be from disease, starvation, and execution.) The BBC every half hour stated that "images of piles of bodies and starving inmates were the first evidence to reach the Wet of the horrors of the Holocaust."

No, they were NOT 'the first evidence to reach the West." Not by a long shot. The Allied armies in the West overran concentration camps in Germany in 1945, during the last weeks of the war. But information about what the Germans were doing was known as soon as the organized mass murder began.

In June 1941 Nazi Germany and its fascist allies Italy, Romania, and Hungary (plus Finland) invaded the Soviet Union. There were three extermination units, called Einsatzgruppen, one assigned to each of the invading German army groups. Their task was to follow in the wake of these armies and round up and execute Jews and Communist Party officials. In a few months they managed to murder hundreds of thousands of people. Of course word of this reached the Soviet authorities, who at that point were allied with Britain against Germany. (In December 1941 the U.S. joined the Soviets and British after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war on the U.S.) So this was no secret. [1]

All during the war there was a stream of intelligence report and testimony of refugees, escapees, and spies as to the Nazi extermination program in the camps. On a number of occasions in 1944, various Jewish representatives beseeched the U.S. government to bomb the railroad lines to Auschwitz to interrupt the shipment of Jews from all over Europe into this death camp. The U.S. Army Air Force always refused. [2]

It has been a common theme of Western propaganda that the Allies only found out about the Holocaust at nearly the end of the war. But the actual historical record refutes this completely. Of course the sort of propagandists who work for media companies don't give a damn about actual facts.

Is it really possible that the BBC is so abysmally ignorant of history, or has such a feckless research
research department, that they don't know this? No, it isn't.

This is a political lie to protect the reputations of Britain and the U.S. In a very real sense, these nations were accomplices to the Holocaust. Especially the U.S., which barred Jews fleeing the Nazis from entering the U.S. (At least Britain took in some Jewish children, only insisting that their parents stay behind to be persecuted and ultimately murdered by the Germans and their fascist fellow travelers.)

The BBC isn't the only "Western" "news" organization that lies about the Holocaust. A commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp, the most notorious of the archipelago of scores of Nazi concentration camps, was recently staged. This political ritual received major promotion in the U.S. corporate media system. A very key fact went completely unmentioned in the broadcast propaganda- namely which army liberated the camp! Of course it was the Red Army. Auschwitz was one of six mass exterminations camps set up to commit mass murder on an industrial scale. All six were set up on conquered Polish territory, apparently to keep them out of sight of the German populace. (The German people were okay with camps on German soil that only murdered thousands or tens of thousands of people.) It was the Red Army that overran Poland from the East, of course, in the drive to Berlin. By going on and on about the liberation while omitting the actual liberators, the clear impression was left that it was the U.S. that did the liberating. This is an example of lying by omission, a common tactic by U.S. establishment propaganda organs.

The BBC has a "history" program they call "Witness." Many of the episodes consist of rehasing anti-Soviet Cold War themes. While not factually incorrect for the most part, it is beating a dead horse. What purpose is served other than ideological indoctrination?

You'd think that now that the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore, has ceased to exist for almost thirty years, they could let it go. But no.

Another pet peeve of the BBC is the East German Stasi, or secret police. Since East Germany ceased to exist even before the Soviet Union expired, and in any event was a small and not very consequential country, one might wonder about the motive here too. Did the Stasi even kill a few hundred people throughout its existence? On the other hand, the BBC largely ignores the mass murdering death squad regimes created by its U.S. masters, like the one in Guatemala (250,000 murdered), Iran after they installed the Shah as dictator in 1953 (another 250,000), Chile (at least 3,000 plus more outside its borders), or Argentina, encouraged by the U.S., which murdered 30,000 defenseless citizens. And there are others. In fact, right now the Colombian regime is busy murdering political activists and labor organizers. Since the FARC's latest surrender, they have assassinated almost 1,000 people, including many candidates for office. Not a word of this on the BBC.
Naturally the BBC, reflecting the vile position of the government of which it is a part, supports every U.S. coup, including the one in Honduras engineered by Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the current ongoing one in Venezuela, just the latest coup attempt there, a criminal campaign that began under Bush the Younger, continued by Obama, and now Donald "Jackass" Trump is carrying the imperialist baton.

Naturally the BBC, reflecting the vile position of the government of which it is a part, supports every U.S. coup, including the one in Honduras engineered by Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the current ongoing one in Venezuela, just the latest coup attempt there, a criminal campaign that began under Bush the Younger, continued by Obama, and now Donald "Jackass" Trump is carrying the imperialist baton.

Another thing the BBC is loathe to mention is the UK's support for Saudi Arabia's murderous assault on Yemen, which has caused mass starvation and a cholera epidemic in that country. For good measure, the Saudis are bombing the hospitals there, just as Russia and the Assad regime have systematically attacks the health clinics in territory the regime wants to take over. THAT the BBC reports. (As it should, of course.)

When you see such one-sided "coverage," such a clear double standard, and such obsessive trashing of defunct regimes, that's a tipoff that you are witnessing propaganda.

 
Tony Hall, 16th Director-General of the BBC. According the BBC website, "The Director-General is the Chief Executive Officer of the BBC, its Editor-in-Chief. The DG is the editorial, operational and creative leader of the BBC, with responsibility for a global workforce running services across television, radio and online."

But "Tony" is much MORE than that! He is also "The Right Honourable, The Lord Hall of Birkenhead Life Peerage, CBE," don't you know!

The British ruling class leaves nothing to chance. All key power positions are held by their own kind.

Ridiculous hat, by the way.

1]  Einsatzgruppen at Wikipedia

2]  A few examples of the absurdity of the BBC's lie: "The Polish government-in-exile in London first reported crimes in the Auschwitz complex to the western public in 1941.[1] Information about tortures inside this camp was published in the same year in New York in a government report from occupied Poland titled The Polish White Book[1] The Auschwitz camp was also noted in The Black Book of Poland a 750-page report published in 1942 in New York by the Ministry of Information of the Polish government-in-exile, describing atrocities committed by Germany in occupied Poland in twenty-two months between the invasion of Poland in September 1939, and the end of June 1941. Both were printed in New York by The Greystone Press and G.P. Putnam's Sons[1][2]

"In 1942, Lieutenant Jan Karski reported to the Polish, British and U.S. governments on the situation in occupied Poland, especially the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto and the general systematic extermination of the Poles and Jews nationally. He did not know about the murder by gas, repeating the common belief at the time that deported Jews were being exterminated with electricity.[3] Karski met with the Polish government-in-exile, including the Prime Minister, Władysław Sikorski, as well as with members of political parties such as the Socialist Party, National Party, Labor Party, People's Party, Jewish Labour Bund and Zionist Party. He also spoke to Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary, and included a detailed statement on what he had seen in Warsaw and in Bełżec. In 1943 in London he met the author and journalist Arthur Koestler. He then traveled to the United States and reported to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR reacted to Karski's report by inquiring jokingly into animal rights abuses (specifically, horses). His report was a major source of information for the Allies.[4]  "Auschwitz Bombing Debate," Wikipedia,

For the historical context in the broader framework of anti-Semitism, see "Foundations of Holocaust: Roosevelt's decision to not bomb Auschwitz," Jerusalem Post, February 28, 2013.

As to not bombing the rail lines, to be fair, given the inaccuracy of high-level bombing in those days, the ease and speed with which rail tracks can be repaired, there was good reason not to target rail lines. As to bombing the camp itself, there were prisoners of war there. However air raids were carried out against some of the factories in the sprawling complex, where slave laborers were often worked to death. See "The United States and the Holocaust: Why Auschwitz Was Not Bombed," Holocaust Encyclopedia of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.



Saturday, February 8, 2020

Media Indignation Over Trump Staff Firings Shows Breathtaking Hypocrisy

President Trump has canned some personnel who contributed to his impeachment. He could hardly have done otherwise. The individuals are the imperialist zealot Lt. Colonel Vindman, who is being described in U.S. corporate propagamda as "the top Ukraine expert" (during his impeachment hearing testimony in the House of Representatives he revealed himself as a militaristic, anti-Russian zealot, as indeed most of the Democrats' "star" witnesses were), dismissed from his job at the National Security Council, which is a White House agency; his twin brother, another officer, and Gordon Sondland, the guy who gave a million bucks to Trump's inauguration shindig so he could play diplomat. (Trump made him ambassador to the European Union, then unmade him as ambassador.) Sondland testified to the House Intelligence Committee, run by the Democrats' Torquemada, Adam Schiff, that "everyone knew" Trump had a quid pro quo out on Ukraine- do an investigation, or just announce one, into the infamous Hunter Biden appointment to the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma, a no-show job for which he was paid $50,000 a month for five years, and for which he had zero qualifications (nice work if you can get it, and you can get it if your Daddy's the vice president of the U.S.A. at the time). Actually he had just one all-important qualification, being the son of vice president Joseph Biden.

In return for announcing an investigation, Trump would release a bunch of weapons to the Kiev regime to use to kill Ukrainians in the eastern part of the country who seceded after the U.S. coup overthrew the government. (This is translated in U.S. propaganda as "fighting a Russian invasion.")
 And the new Ukrainian president, professional comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, wanted a White House meeting with Trump. (Which he got, and no investigation was ever announced or conducted.)

But under questioning by Republican Congressmen, Sondland admitted that he merely "presumed" this, and the only thing Trump ever said to him was "no quid pro quo." Of course Trump was probably lying.

U.S. media is portraying these guys who lost their jobs as a grave injustice, they're "being punished for telling the truth." Whatever. But here's the hypocrisy, indeed the blatant, cynical double standard.

Do you remember- you probably don't- when Bush II fired a bunch of U.S. Attorneys for refusing to bring bogus election fraud charges against Democrats? You may not recall it because it's one of those things that "the" media has consigned to oblivion, thrown down their Orwellian memory hole, where inconvenient facts are disposed of. Now that Bush the Younger has been rehabilitated (illegal war? institutionalized torture? That's so yesterday!) all is forgiven. (And virtually mo one in America ever cared about a million dead Iraqis anyway.)

Several U.S.Attorneys were told to "investigate" election fraud by Democrats. (The irony is rich, as the GOP has been systematically stealing elections for over twenty years now, most infamously the presidential election of 2000, which they brazenly did right out in the open, ultimately by 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court doing the deed. But the Democrats, craven cowards that they are, feckless and dishonest, prefer to blame for Gore's loss- get this- Ralph Nader!) For example, then GOP Senator and loathsome reactionary "Pete" Domenici of Arizona referred a "case" to the U.S. Attorney for that state for "investigation." When that U.S. Attorney reported back to Domenici that there was no basis to bring charges, Domenici was mightily displeased, and let the U.S. Attorney know it. Subsequently Bush fired a group of U.S. Attorneys who failed to bring bogus criminal charges of election fraud against Democrats.

"The" media did report this at the time- rather, some of the media did- but there was no outrage. Not like the outrage over every thing that Trump does, even when justified.

Look, Trump is a loathsome creature, but he'd have to be a masochist not to fire these internal enemies. He may be totally out of his depth as president, but his aggressiveness prevents him from being rendered impotent. Thus the paradox of a man who doesn't understand power on the national and international level, who is a bumbler and incompetent, still can survive. Indeed, odds are he will be reelected, unfortunately.



Friday, January 10, 2020

Pompeo's Hitlerian Demands On Iran

In the wake of the brazen U.S. assassination of Iran's leading general, Qassem Soleimani, a hero of the Iraq-Iran war and head of the so-called Qods Force, by a missile strike from a drone attack on an international airport located in a sovereign nation and putative U.S. ally (the client state of Iraq, conquered and subjugated on the orders of U.S. emperor George W. Bush in 2003), now is a good time to review the outstanding U.S. demands against Iran. [U.S. media are spelling it Qassem, the BBC and Wikipedia, have Qasem.]

Trump's handpicked Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has a list of 12 outstanding demands against Iran. These are preconditions to the U.S. deigning to even TALK to Iran about the U.S. ceasing its relentless economic warfare against that country. This warfare is euphemistically called "economic sanctions." In fact they are total warfare, barring Iran from the international banking system (a system controlled by the U.S.- with the rest of the world's nations supinely acceding to this financial hegemony by the U.S.), and including the publicly stated goal of preventing Iran from selling ANY oil whatsoever outside its borders. Again, the other 200 or so allegedly sovereign nations of the world, including large, powerful ones like China, have all knuckled under to U.S. diktat and ceased buying oil from Iran, at least openly. If this isn't global domination, I don't know what is.

Under the "principle" that it is criminal to go against U.S. foreign policy, the U.S. government ordered Canada to arrest a top executive of China's premiere high tech company, Huawei, for violating U.S. anti-Iran sanctions- i.e. not participating in the U.S. economic war on Iran.  Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer and the daughter of the company boss, was tracked by the U.S. global secret police surveillance system as she flew to Canada, where she was held at the airport, her luggage "searched" for 3 hours without explanation, and then was arrested on a U.S. extradition "request." (Really an order. Canada is a virtual satrapy of the U.S.) Her alleged "crime" is violating U.S. sanctions against Iran. You see, if the U.S. decides to wage economic warfare against another country, it demands that all the other nations in the world participate in that war. In other words, the U.S. dictates foreign policy for all other nations. And lacking political or moral integrity, those nations make themselves U.S. lackeys and obey. Because they refuse to resist U.S. power, even though collectively they obviously could do so. (Even in some cases individually, as China could.)

Oh, and the U.S. applies its laws not just within its own borders, but over the entire planet earth. That's how Meng Wanzhou could be "guilty" of breaking U.S. law while OUTSIDE the U.S.

Meng has been held in Canada for over a year as Canada is the rope in a tug of war between China and the U.S. Canada allowed her out of jail but confined to Canada after China retaliated against Canada by jailing a couple of Canadian citizens. (Labeled "hostages" by the U.S. propaganda system.)

I should mention so as not to be misunderstood: I am NOT a supporter of the Iranian theocracy. As a lifelong atheist, democrat, and pro-human rights person, I have no truck with that regime. But contrary to its self-deluding propaganda, the U.S. is the opposite of a paragon of virtue. It is one of history's most aggressive empires which has committed innumerable atrocities and crimes against humanity through its history, starting with its foundational principles, genocide and slavery.  Moreover this is not about taking sides. As always, I strive for the objectivity that is sorely lacking in most public commentary, most people's minds, and certainly in propaganda.

I call these demands "Hitlerian" because of their extremism, and because the target of the demands would find them virtually impossible to accept. Hitler made such demands with a deliberate goal of having an excuse for war when his demands were rejected. Trump claims not to want war with Iran, but he has surrounded himself with a coterie of imperialist fanatics who DO want war with Iran, such as the recently-cashiered John Bolton. It's been reported that Trump ordered the assassination of Soleimani

Here now are the Trump-Pompeo Demands On Iran. To call them "sweeping" is a gross understatement. Notice that eleven of the twelve begin with the words "Iran must." "Must" is a demand word.



In perpetuity! I guess that means until the end of time.

I'll just note in passing that the U.S. has thousands of nuclear weapons, and Israel has hundreds. Also even the CIA concluded that Iran was NOT trying to build nuclear weapons. However I believe they wanted to have the option to create them if they felt it necessary at some future point. Otherwise it makes no sense to incur the huge expense of money and energy to building underground facilities deep under mountains to prevent Israel from blowing them up (as Israel blew up atomic reactors in Iraq and Syria) with thousands of centrifuges, just to enrich uranium which it could easily purchase from Russia, for example.

By the way, Iran only ever enriched to 20%. allowed under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). For bomb-making purposes, uranium has to be enriched to 90% or more. Under the agreement Iran on one side and the Obama regime, Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and China on the other, Iran turned over virtually all its enriched uranium, mothballed its centrifuges used for enrichment, and agreed to intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Trump tore up the agreement and reimposed sanctions, with the avowed aimed of strangling the Iranian economy to force Iran to make a new deal with Trump. (Imperialist thugs like John Bolton and perhaps Michael Pompeo also wanted the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the regime in response to this foreign attack on their country and their lives. It's a strategy the U.S. is also using against Venezuela, making people's lives miserable to destabilize an unwanted government, has used against Cuba since 1959, that Nixon used against Chile from 1970-73 when he ordered CIA director Richard Helms to "make the economy scream," and in other places at other times.)



Even though Iran is entitled under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation 
                                       Treaty to enrich uranium to the 20% level, as I mentioned.


Meaning U.S. spies will gain access to every single military base, command and control center, etc. 
Just as they did during the UN inspection regime inside Iraq after the first Gulf War of 1991. 
We know this from a leading member of that team, former U.S. Marine Major Scott Ritter.



Iran isn't allowed to have missiles. Just its enemies can: Israel, Saudi Arabia, 
and the U.S.A. That's reasonable. Why wouldn't Iran agree to THAT?


Including all enemy spies. Because some of those prisoners certainly are. Meanwhile the U.S. will continue to imprison
 Iranians for violating U.S. sanctions on Iran, "espionage," and whatever, and keep those now in prison locked up.



Because anyone who resists Israeli oppression is a "terrorist." Iran must surrender the region to Israeli hegemony. And of course the U.S. is free to continue aiding Israel in every possible way, as an accomplice to the oppression of the Palestinians and the periodic destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure. And the U.S. can support any actual terrorists it likes, such as the anti-Iranian MEK. And Israel can keep assassinating Iran's nuclear scientists, if it so chooses.



That actually would be a good thing. Those militias have in the past few months slaughtered hundreds of protesters against the corrupt and venal Iraqi "government," and wounded thousands. They have also "disappeared" some, U.S.-death-squad style.
Now if only the U.S. would respect Iraq's sovereignty. After murdering Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and eight others right in the Baghdad, Iraq, airport, the Iraqi legislature voted to kick out the thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq, and Trump himself responded with contempt. There's also a couple of hundred other nations whose sovereignty the U.S. regularly tramples.



The Houthi tribesmen overthrew the very weak "government" of Yemen starting in 2014. The Saudis decided this internal Yemeni power struggle was their business, and picked the overthrown president as their choice to rule Yemen. So for years, to place their chosen puppet back in his seat,w the U.S. and Saudi Arabia (and the UAE until very recently) have waged a relentless war against Yemen, committing war crimes on a daily basis, bombing mosques, hospitals, schools, apartment blocks, and so on, instituting a naval blockade, causing a massive cholera epidemic, and a famine. The Obama regime participated in this criminal enterprise, not only selling all the bombs and missiles used to attack Yemen- the Saudis and Emiratis already owned the U.S.-made warplanes they needed, and the U.S. trains their pilots- but even providing targeting information and having U.S. Air Force aerial tankers refuel the Saudis planes on their attack missions. Obama sold tens of billions of arms to the Saudis, and Trump tried to outdo Obama in evil with more arms sales. "Great" Britain, with a hunger for blood money, has also sold significant quantities of weapons to the Saudi "royals" for their war on Yemen.

Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world. Thus we see the ubiquitous pattern of the U.S. waging class warfare on a global scale against the world's poor.

 Yemeni enemy of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia gets what he has coming.

The UN has determined that a Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes from hunger or disease 
caused by the Saudi-U.S.-UK-UAE war on Yemen. They probably deserve it.
They might grow up to be "terrorists."

By bombing this schoolbus, the valiant Saudi allies of the U.S. took out 40 terrorist school children, along with eleven adults (who by definition were terrorists because U.S. bombs killed them). The Saudis couldn't have done it without the U.S. Thank you, Obama Trump U.S. Congress!

Multiply this by one million or so, and you have the history of the U.S. Now do you understand why it is undeniable that the U.S. Government is a criminal enterprise? It is only because your mind is marinated in a sea of propaganda that you don't see it, feel it, know it.

Now let's return to those oh-so-reasonable and justified demands that Pompeo-Trump have pending against Iran:

This demand is actually morally sound. Iran is helping the vile Assad dictatorship crush the rebellion of the Syrian people by wholesale slaughter, systematic bombing of medical facilities, torture and atrocities on a massive scale. Of course it isn't morality that motivates this demand, nor concern for the Syrian people, but motives needn't be pure for an action or demand to be a good thing.


This one sure is ironic. When the Taliban fanatics ruled Afghanistan, they murdered a group of Iranian diplomats. The Taliban were only in power at all thanks to the U.S.-Pakistani-Saudi buildup of the most medieval, reactionary forces in Afghanistan to bleed the Soviets. The Soviets were lured into invading by President Jimmy Carter's sinister righthand man, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Pole with a tremendous lifelong hatred of Russians. Years later Brzezinski made a slip and boasted to a French newspaper about how he suckered the Soviets into invading. Just a few months before the 1979 invasion, Brzezinski, the head of the U.S. National Security Council, which coordinates the operations of the U.S. military, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the CIA and other "intelligence agencies," had nothing more important to do than to fly into Afghanistan, a desolate backwater. Hmmm!  [1]

When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Iran actually helped the U.S. cause. Then emperor George W. Bush fabricated an "Axis of Evil" in an infamous speech, pretending that Iran, Iraq (then still ruled by Saddam Hussein, who invaded Iran with U.S. connivance, used chemical weapons against Iranian troops, caused hundreds of thousands of Iranian casualties and war invalids, and hated by Iran), and North Korea (sic!) were in a World War II-style alliance like the fascist Axis powers Nazi Germany, Italy, and Imperial Japan. Crude and mendacious propaganda, it put Iran on notice that it was an Official Enemy of the U.S.

Now that the U.S. has embedded itself in Afghanistan, and wages constant attacks on Iran, it wouldn't surprise me if Iran's attitude towards the Taliban has changed. But if the U.S. wants to look for nations to blame for propping up the Taliban, I'd suggest they start with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

But the U.S., under whatever president, is apparently too dishonest, too greedy, and  too morally cowardly, to do that.


 Presumably including domestic ops inside Iran. Hey, I have a suggestion: end the operations of U.S. "Special Forces" inside the scores of countries they currently operate in!


This one reeks to high heaven with the stench of hypocrisy. 

Israel regularly bombs Iranian targets inside Syria with impunity. It has assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists inside Iran. Saudi Arabia treats Iran as the Devil Incarnate. The U.S. of course has been effectively at war with Iran since the 1979 overthrow of the U.S.-imposed dictator the "Shah" (King). The Iranian "threat" consists of its growing influence in the region, which the U.S. and its partners find objectionable.

It's interesting that the demand here is for Iran to end its "threats" against shipping, NOT attacks against shipping. Previously the U.S. made a big stink about the simultaneous attacks on both a Norwegian and a Japanese oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, which the U.S. government and corporate media parrots shrilly blamed on Iran. It has been definitively proven that Iran DIDN'T commit those attacks, which were probably U.S. operations. [2]
Finally cyber attacks. I have no idea what specifically Pompeo is referring to, if anything.  He and Trump- indeed U.S. apparatchiks and politicians generally- often spout baseless rhetoric. Certainly Iran's cyber capabilities are a tiny fraction of the U.S.' And it must be exasperatingly galling for the U.S. to make such a charge, given the relentless U.S. cyber attacks on Iran, including the unleashing of the Stuxnet malware (and others) which targeted Iran's nuclear centrifuges for destruction. (Obama was really proud of that one.)

Again, as usual in the demented world of U.S. political ideology, reality is stood on its head. This is not a defense of Iran. It is looking at the objective facts, nothing more.

Pompeo is a political creation of the greedy, thieving, reactionary billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David. (One of them just died. Hopefully the other one will follow him to the grave soon.) They got Pompeo elected to the U.S. Congress from Kansas, the Kochs' base. Pompeo is a former army officer and rabid, violent imperialist who went on television to call for the execution of Edward Snowden, whose "crime" was revealing the fact that the NSA conducts a program of total surveillance over the entire U.S. population. See "Pompeo wants to execute Snowden." 

1]  For Brzezinski's malign role in creating today's Afghanistan, see "The Brzezinski Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur (1998)," in which he incriminates himself, English translation on the website of the University of Arizona. For the full article from which it was drawn from International Politics, see "Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Retrospect." Also see "Brzezinski Vision to Lure Soviets into ‘Afghan Trap’ Is Orlando’s Nightmare," June 17, 2016.

Ice water ran in the veins of the late "Dr." Brzezinski. He sneers that the fate of the Afghan people has no more weight than the death of a fly compared to the great benefit of weakening the Soviet Union. Of course the Afghans didn't get a vote on that. So much for U.S. devotion to "democracy" and "human rights."

Graphics used in this essay by RT network.