Mistress of Torture Scales Summit Of CIA, An Event That Will Go Down In The Annals Of Feminism

At least, that's what the CIA propaganda campaign, aided and abetted by various media organs and stooges, would have us believe.

It's not every day that a CIA torturer is hailed as a feminist Icon.

Mistress of Torture Gina Haspel, Feminist Flag-Bearer? Really?

I don't think so. But that's one line of propaganda that was used to promote her as CIA Director to replace Michael "Death to Edward Snowden!" Pompeo, and is being echoed still after her successful promotion.

Oh, the quibbling and denials that would be hurled in reaction to "CIA torturer," if there was an actual political opposition in this country that was allowed to be heard in "official" forums, and in the "official" media. First of all, they refuse to call it torture. They prefer the Gestapo terminology, "enhanced interrogation techniques." Literally, that is the English translation from the Gestapo torture manual, and the CIA didn't just borrow the euphemism, they borrowed some of the "techniques" too. Sometimes "reporters" and "commentators" use the phrase "brutal interrogation techniques," I guess to show how daring and independent they are. Occasionally one is so bold as to say "torture," then quickly retreat back into the euphemisms.

When they stop using the euphemisms "law enforcement" and "intelligence agencies" for secret police, and "defense" for aggression, then I'll sit up and take notice.

The CIA quibblers and their enablers and protectors  would also seize on the technicality that the aforementioned CIA secret police officer, Gina Haspel, was merely in charge of a "black site" in Thailand, that is, a CIA torture center. She didn't do the dirty work with her own hands. For some reason, the CIA was squeamish about torturing people inside the U.S. Maybe they didn't want to rely solely on the permission slip written for them by Bush regime apparatchik John Yoo, a type of lawyer reminiscent of Third Reich lawyers who wrote the various genocidal Nazi laws and the legal "philosophy" that put an intellectual patina on Nazi ideology. Yoo has been rewarded for his Service To The Nation with a professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, Law School, an alleged bastion of liberalism. And by the way, "the" media has whitewashed most of the torture used. It was a lot more than waterboarding, as they are now presenting it, and the other "techniques" which they have tossed down the memory hole have been well documented.

Saying Haspel didn't torture anyone is like saying Adolf Hitler didn't kill any Jews. He didn't, actually. Not by his own hand, that we know of. Heinrich Himmler never tortured anyone either. In fact, the one time he ever witnessed people being executed, he vomited. Such a delicate soul.
The point is, it's completely disingenuous and dishonest for the CIA to deny Haspel's command responsibility for torture.

But no matter. As I expected, the U.S. Senate confirmed Haspel as the DCI, Director of Central Intelligence, chief of the CIA global Gestapo.

So the "glass ceiling" of secret police chief has finally yielded to a female. What a glad day.
Like the day a "black" man was elected president. You remember him. The guy who protected torturers, and imprisoned the only CIA officer who publicly denounced torture, John Kiriakou. The president who perfected the secret police total  surveillance state that the Bush regime began under the name "total information awareness." (A form of total population control.)

The "black" president who took Woodrow Wilson's Espionage Act and ran with it, going after all manner of whistleblowers and journalists. Oh, what a "historic" presidency that was! A real advance for "black people." (That's why blacks stopped being imprisoned in vastly disproportionate numbers, and police stopped murdering blacks. Oops, those things didn't happen. But blacks got richer under Obama. Oh wait, they got poorer. A LOT poorer, especially since his banker buddies scammed so many of them out of their homes with mortgage chicanery. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...)

Before the whole sorry saga of the campaign to elevate Mistress of Torture Haspel is permanently consigned to the memory hole by the power establishment, let's take a stroll down memory lane and review some of the criminal media complicity with the CIA and its Torture Mistress. Come with me now back to the day Trump announced the nomination of Haspel to replace the loathsome billionaire Koch brothers toady Pompeo, who was picked to replace Rex Tillerson, unceremoniously bumped from his seat as Secretary of State by Trump, who announced his firing on Twitter without telling Tillerson, in order to publicly humiliate him.

 It was March 13, 2018.  At 8 am East Coast time, the alternative program Democracy Now!, a self-styled "progressive" show, came on the air and announced Trump's choice as new CIA director, and that she ran a CIA "black site" in Thailand where kidnapped prisoners were tortured and interrogated in secret.

Democracy Now! may have been aghast, but the reaction of the establishment media was celebratory. And they were apparently briefed in advance by the CIA on what line to push, unless they all just coincidentally think exactly alike.

For example, one of the main local New York City "news" radio stations, WCBS, a cog in the CBS/Viacom media empire, at 8:59 am hailed as historic the first woman to head the CIA. No mention of that key part of her resume, overseeing a secret torture prison and ordering the destruction of videotapes of the interrogations, evidence of her crimes.

Later that day, the U.S. government-created national radio "public" propaganda network, NPR, on their  4 PM "news" show, the propaganda reader Laksmi Singh falsely asserted that Haspel will likely face "tough questioning" over black sites at confirmation. Which was obvious bullshit, as turned out to be the case.

The British government's propaganda arm, the BBC, predictably made itself a handmaiden to the CIA propaganda campaign. The BBC "News"Hour show, that afternoon, promoted the "advance for women" line. As they so often do, they hauled on a U.S. imperialist apparatchik to spew propaganda without being challenged. This creep, a former chair of the House "intelligence" committee, a Congressional body under the control of the secret police, pushed the CIA line, asserting that Haspel "broke the glass ceiling."  He insisted that "no law was broken" by kidnapping, torture, and murder of prisoners. The mealy-mouthed Gestapo cheerleader gushed, "Not a blemish on her record to any degree...Trust me on this," she'll be great, he insisted.

In the ensuing months, establishment propaganda coverage continued to push the CIA's ersatz "feminism" line, minimized the torture (reducing it to just waterboarding) while usually substituting the aforementioned euphemisms for "torture," rarely mentioning the destruction of evidence (and never the deaths of prisoners in CIA captivity), and mostly focusing on wondering whether Haspel would be confirmed, making a drama out of what was really a foregone conclusion given the reactionary, imperialist majority in the Senate, all the while pretending that the Senate "confirmation process" isn't just a show, or that there was any doubt about her confirmation. There was a small moment of semi-drama when the dying Senator John McCain (he has an incurable brain cancer) urged his colleagues to reject Haspel. McCain was shot down while bombing northern Vietnam and tortured in captivity, which taught him that torture was evil. Unfortunately that's the only lesson he learned, as he is going to his death still a fanatical believer in U.S. imperialism, aggression, militarism, and war against small and weak targets. A Trump aide counseled that McCain could be ignored since he would be "dead soon." This comment was duly leaked and then ginned up into a political soap opera pseudo-scandal for days on end by the establishment media and Democratic Party hacks, who demanded an apology or even firing of the offender.

But I actually don't think Haspel is any more egregious as a CIA head than predecessors like Pompeo, or Hayden, or Panetta, or Tenet (who delivered "faulty," i.e. mendacious, "intelligence" to prompt the invasion of Iraq in 2003), or Colby (who before he was DCI headed the Phoenix torture and mass murder program in Vietnam, which created over 50,000 corpses), or Helms, responsible for the CIA coup in Chile in 1973, or the fascist Allen Dulles, who organized the assassination of president Kennedy in 1963 (after he was out of office, but not out of power) and innumerable other crimes.

The CIA is responsible for millions of deaths, most of which they instigated by getting fascist militaries and secret police agencies to kill people whose names were mostly supplied BY the CIA. In Indonesia in 1965 they instigated the murder of a million "communists" by the military, and greased the skids for the awful dictator Suharto to take power as a U.S. client.(The horrible propagandist Fareed Zakaria, is to this day pushing the CIA disinformation story that what happened in Indonesia was an attempted "Communist coup" that was thwarted by the Indonesian military, an absurd story on its face given the million unarmed civilians who were murdered.) Under Allen Dulles, there were the fascist coups in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) which destroyed democracies in those nations and ultimately resulted in a quarter million state murders in each of those countries. These "operations" were done on the orders of president Eisenhower, who most of the American left only remembers fondly for a couple of throwaway sentences in his farewell address of January 17, 1961, where he says "we must guard against the undue influence, whether sought or unsought, of the military industrial complex." The complex that HE did so much to build up! And MOST of the speech was devoted to defending that complex, and denouncing the Communist Menace. He also uttered the standard guff about the U.S.' "peaceful" intentions and methods! But apparently leftists so crave "respectability" that they'll seize on an establishment icon, even the man who ordered the two most notorious coups in CIA and U.S. history, to "legitimize" their criticisms of an evil, anti-human power structure they think can be talked into reforming itself! Good luck with that! (Most leftists are fatally compromised by their compromises with the system and collaboration with it. Oh, and there's money too, if you trim your political sails.)

And speaking of torture, the CIA has been torturing people since its inception, and training fascists around the world in torture. One of the reasons the CIA scientist Frank Olson was murdered by the CIA was his disillusionment with the agency after he discovered it ran a torture/murder center in West Germany, with "ex"-Nazis, to interrogate defectors from the Soviet bloc who were suspected of being enemy agents. [1] JFK created the so-called "Alliance of Progress," to counter the revolutionary influence of Fidel Castro and Cuba in Latin America. One of its branches was the diabolically misnamed "Office of Public Safety," which sent CIA torture tutors to train fascist secret policemen and military interrogators. One of these monsters was a guy named Dan Mitrione, sent down to Uruguay to do his evil work. According to former CIA officer John Stockwell, Mitrione would have a homeless person kidnapped to demonstrate torture techniques on for his "students," after which the victim would be murdered. Human life to these monsters has no more value than an insect's. But on the all too rare occasions when one of them gets what's coming to them, oh the HOWLS of outrage, and the bathetic beating of breasts in melodramatic media-ready grief! Mitrione was captured and ultimately put to death by the Tupumaro guerrilla group, a rare instance of justice in the U.S. empire. Mitrione is regarded as a heroic martyr by the CIA. (Reminds me of how the Nazis took the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the number two man in the S.S., a much more important cog in a machinery of evil than Mitrione was.)

So Gina Haspel will have to commit some much more major crimes to really make her bones. Torturing a few Muslim "terrorists" is small change in the annals of CIA crimes against humanity.

Does Secret Police Chief + Vagina = Feminism?

1]  There are a number of documentaries about the Frank Olson case. See for example "CIA Documentary - Biological Weapons & Experimentation on Humans (Frank Olson)."

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.

"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.

Obama tries to intimidate Putin in Stare-Down. Hangzhou, China, September 2016.

Clinton Victory "Historic"- For Those With No Knowledge of History

And for those who feign no knowledge of history. They're the ones brainwashing the ones who apparently have no actual knowledge.

That is, propagandists (aka "journalists") manipulate the masses. As usual.

What's the big "historic" event? A female is set to be nominated for president of the U.S. by one of the two oligarchic parties here.

Hillary Clinton won decisively in Democratic primaries in California and New Jersey June 7, trouncing Senator "Bernie" Sanders. (She also won in two insignificant states with small populations and thus few delegates.) She had already declared the winner of the Democratic nomination for president the day before by the AP and NBC, based on their calculation of her "superdelegate" (unelected party apparatchiks and officials) count of about 550. (These convention delegates aren't chosen by voters and are a Party elite.) Thus Clinton started the "race" with a huge head start over Sanders as almost all the superdelegates were in her bag before the first primary or caucus. (That's the best way to win a race. Start with a big head start.)

Her wins in the primaries of June 7th actually changed nothing, except to increase her lead. Sanders' position was already virtually hopeless, at least in terms of achieving the Democratic Party nomination for president. (His other game is to wield some influence on  the party's platform and policies. At the same time he seems to have a hard time letting go of the quixotic idea that Clinton's over half a thousand superdelegates could desert her and vote for him at the convention. The Clintons have a machine, the Party is wired.)

That didn't stop Clinton, her personal propaganda machine, and the bourgeois media in general (and not just in the U.S.!) from showering the world with the glad tidings that "history" had just been made.

You'd think they could at least wait until she actually gets elected president. (That seems to be something that "the" media is trying to effectuate, as U.S. elites are increasingly anxious at the prospect of one Donald John Trump becoming chief executive of U.S. imperialism. So the media is trying to head off that outcome by "going negative" on Trump and positive on Clinton. Excepting of course the GOP bullhorns of Rupert Murdoch, for now at least.)

So let's put this in perspective. What we see is this:

Hillary Clinton Campaign Declares She Made "History"- and the Propaganda System Agrees.

And what literally happened is this:

A person with a vagina is to be the chosen candidate for president from one of the two ruling U.S. parties instead of a person with a penis.

That has never happened before.

To which a person capable of logical thought would say:

So what?

What matters are the person's ideology, values, character, class interests, and political loyalties and commitments. And past history.

Hillary Clinton is nothing new under the sun in U.S. politics. Just as Barack Obama was nothing new. Both are completely committed to the existing power structure of the U.S., an economic system dominated by corporate oligarchy, a system of bourgeois class dictatorship, and imperialism that relentlessly seeks world domination, never ceasing for a second to increase its power globally. Clinton and the international assassin Kissinger share a very public, mutual admiration.

The pigmentation and genitalia of such agents of the system can hardly be very important.

But they are certainly made to seem important. And that has important uses politically and ideologically for the existing power system.

Blacks and women, who are mostly without power in the U.S. and considered inferior (although this is no longer overtly acknowledged) in general are alienated or skeptical of the system, and suffer more from it than white males. (Yes, these are sweeping generalizations with plenty of individual exceptions.) So having a black or female as the top symbol of the system gives them a sense of identification with it, renewing their loyalty to it and faith in its legitimacy and benigness.

Secondly, it draws them into the system as aspirants to power. Clinton explicitly hit this point in her victory speech after her primary wins, saying this proves there is nothing women can't do, there's no "limit" to how high they can rise. (Assuming you're willing to be evil and murderous, as Clinton is. She's an accomplice in protecting the murderous coup regime in Honduras, and shamelessly boasts of her role doing this in her last book.) [1]

By the way, one reason for the white male rage we see in America now (men that Trump, who projects as an angry white powerful male, appeals to) is their sense that they are not an overclass anymore. Now they have to be "equal" to women and blacks, not superior. The idiots lack any class consciousness as well as human consciousness.

As far as the World Historic Signicance of all this, if Clinton does become president, she'll be trailing Cleopatra VII by a mere 2,068 years as a female ruler. (And Cleopatra was a historical laggard compared to the pharaoh Hatshepsut, who came to power around 1473 BCE- 3,490 years ahead of Clinton, assuming she arrives at the White House next January. In fact, there were thirteen female pharaohs of Egypt.)

For that matter, Clinton is lagging behind numerous other female rulers throughout history.

Like Indira Gandhi of India in  1966. 51 years before Clinton will be sworn in as president in January 2017, if she wins. Or Margaret Thatcher of Britain in 1979, Queen Victoria in 1837,  Elizabeth I in 1558, Mary Tudor in 1553. (People the British media apparently never heard of, as they too jumped on the "historic" Clinton victory bandwagon.)  [2]

But maybe "history" is different from history.

Or maybe what they're all saying is that something only counts when the U.S. does it.

Obama's election was similarly hailed with hysterical hosannas as "historic." As if a brown-skinned man had never ruled before. (That too is very old hat, also going back thousands of years.)
Maybe what's "historic" is the part that always goes unmentioned. The U.S. is SO racist and SO sexist that it's a VERY BIG DEAL if the U.S. can finally vote for a black for a female in the twenty-first century.

Actually that's not very impressive.

I'll tell you one thing the U.S. is a leader in:

Chauvinism.

1]  Clinton, in her victory pep rally speech to her supporters, also shouted out a line that hit a populist note: "If we stand together we will rise together because we are stronger together." Yeah, we're all in this together! And she's just one of the gals. (Only one with a multi-billion dollar foundation funded by foreigners buying favors. But hey, play your cards right, and maybe one day you too can get paid a quarter million a pop to give speeches to finance capitalists.)

2]  The British government propaganda network BBC had it as Clinton's supporters "waved American flags as they celebrated an historic occasion," for example. The British "news"papers also seemed to be suffering from historical amnesia, invoking the "H" word, including the liberal Guardian. The Murdoch-owned Times of London labeled it "a historic night;" it was "Hillary Clinton's historic moment" in the rightwing Telegraph's headline, and the Mirror...nothing! Weird. Lots of lurid, half-baked crap of the type one sees in U.S. supermarket tabloids, however.

There's a slew of articles about the numerous women rulers throughout history and in various regions at Powerful Women Rulers Everyone Should Know.

The paid propaganda and the "news" propaganda are in agreement- this is "Historic!!"

 The Empress is Ready To Meet Her Destiny!

Hillary Clinton Campaign Declares She Made "History"- Propaganda System Agrees

U.S. Brazenly Announces Its Coup Plans for Venezuela

The New York Times has for years been the favorite bulletin board for high U.S. government officials to post anonymous messages. Their missives to the world at large are often granted page one placement. These messages, converted into "news" stories by the NY Times, are always intended to advance a political agenda, manipulate what people think, and often are disinformation (that is, lies).

A revealing example of this phenomenon appeared a few days ago under this headline:

"Nicolás Maduro Tightens Hold on Venezuela as U.S. Fears Further Tumult." [1]

Now the first thing that needs to be said, indeed stressed, is the absurdity of the word "Fears." The U.S. doesn't fear tumult in an enemy state. The U.S. seeks to CREATE tumult in enemy states! That is one of the "tools" in its "toolbox" for destabilizing hated leftist regimes. So the editors are being smarmily disingenuous before the reader even gets to the article.

Now let's move on to the body of the article. (It was co-written by Mark Landler, one of the more dodgy NY Times "reporters.") Here's the first three paragraphs:

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela threatened Saturday to seize idle factories in his country using a new emergency decree, moves that followed warnings by United States officials that economic chaos in the country had turned even his allies against him.

“An idle plant is a plant the people will take,” local news outlets quoted Mr. Maduro as saying at a rally. “We will take all the actions necessary to activate production, which is being paralyzed by the bourgeoisie.”

The threats came a day after Mr. Maduro said he would extend a state of emergency for another 60 days, a measure he said was aimed at reviving the country’s collapsing economy. The government said the move would extend presidential powers, though it was vague on specifics.

Notice the Bad Guy makes "threats," the Good Guys "warn."

The next paragraph describes in three sentences dire economic conditions in Venezuela. Then we get some ersatz hand-wringing from U.S. secret police bosses:

The United States fears that Venezuela could face a major eruption of street violence in the coming months, according to senior American intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in discussing the government’s latest intelligence assessment.

While Mr. Maduro has so far held off a recall vote against him, the American officials said that they believed his grip on power was weakening by the day, and that he could be removed from power, either in a palace coup by members of his party or by the Venezuelan military.

While the military’s high command appears unlikely to act against the government right now, these officials said, its midlevel officers are more restive. One American official said intelligence officials were worried about some kind of change, but were not aware of any active plots. [My emphases, obviously.]

The CIA (presumably) is "worried" Madura might be overthrown? Is that sarcasm? Eager to see "some kind of change" (oh so coy; just say "Maduro overthrown") is the obvious truth! What kind of "newspaper" prints whopping lies without pointing out their falsehood? Certainly when the Times quotes Putin or Ayatollah Khamenei they make sure to contradict what they're saying.

After some more description of economic problems in Venezuela (with nary a mention of their causes, such as the plunge in oil prices over the past couple of years) we come to the last paragraph:

                 The officials acknowledged that the United States had limited influence in
                 Venezuela, where the government has blamed American meddling for the 
                 instability.

"Meddling" meaning subversion. By the way, there are some "secrets" the NY Times doesn't report- what the U.S. has been up to in Venezuela since Hugo Chavez ascended to power. You'll have to go elsewhere to learn about that. To the NY Times, those are just some wild and baseless accusations being flung about by a leftie government to cover up for its own failings. (And I'm not saying the Venezuelan government has no failings. But there hasn't been any honest discussion of them in the Western capitalist media, which has confined itself to Chavez-Maduro bashing since Day One.)

What I found a bit stunning was how the Obama regime openly advertised Maduro's alleged vulnerabilities. Maduro can only take these as threats (note the oh-so-innocent CIA avowal of being unaware of any coup plots. Sure. Fomenting coups are one of the CIA's main purposes, and it has a long, vicious history of committing and attempting them.) It's like a gangster walking into a business and saying "Nice little shop you have here. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it." The idea that the U.S. and CIA don't want anything BAD to happen to the hated Maduro is just a weird insult to our intelligence, once that the CIA and, worse, the New York Times is willing to shovel down the gullets of its presumably educated (but apparently infinitely credulous) readers- infinitely credulous when the guff is coming from their bourgeous bible, the NY Times. 

It's germane to mention here the fact that the NY Times has a history of hailing U.S. coups, including the three most notorious ones, Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, and Chile, 9/11/73. And leading up to those coups, the NY Times used it propaganda powers to prepare public opinion to see those mass murderous acts as Good Things, "rescuing" countries from "communism."

"Senior American Intelligence Official." 

We got rid of that bastard Chavez, now Maduro goes down!  John Brennan, CIA Director.

By the way, the "government's latest intelligence assessment" is no doubt highly classified, which means the "intelligence officials" who divulged it to the Times committed felonies, since New York Times reporters don't have security clearances. But Obama certainly won't be siccing the FBI and "Justice" Department on them, like he does to whistleblowers, nor put the reporters under criminal investigation, as he's also done. These are "authorized" "leaks." (They aren't leaks, they're plants. The U.S. media deliberately mischaracterizes what is going on in these cases when the government uses the media for its political ends.)

The Washington Post is another imperialist bulletin board where high government apparatchiks can freely post anonymous political notes. Here too those ghostlike "intelligence officials" made an appearance. But the Post is a lot more honest than the Times in this instance, even though the Post is definitely to the right of the Times these days. (The Times is also quite mealy-mouthed, which could be a factor in this case.) [2]

Here are the opening paragraphs of the Post version of the Obama regime secret police planted article:

        Venezuela, where clashes erupted this week between security forces and demonstrators

        protesting food stortages, power blackouts and political gridlock, may be headed toward 

        an all-out popular uprising.that could lead to the overthrow of its government this year, 

        senior U.S. intelligence officials said.

        “You can hear the ice cracking,” an intelligence official said [or gloated]. 

        “You know there’s a crisis coming.” [He added, licking his chops.]

         Disaster is pending in Venezuela at the same time the Obama administration believes that
         it has vastly improved U.S. standing in Latin America, compared with the days when political          
        and economic turmoil in the hemisphere was blamed, sometimes with reason, on either            
        interference or disregard by Washington.

       There have been many times over the past two decades when the United States has wished

       for the demise of the left-wing Bolivarian revolution begun by former Venezuelan president            
       Hugo Chávez and carried on since 2013 by his successor, Nicolás Maduro. The Obama            
       administration and its predecessor have charged the government in Caracas with corruption,
       human rights abuses and drug smuggling, among other things, and have supported the
       political opposition.

You can see the relative frankness of the Post's version vs. the dishonesty of the Times. Still, the Post is discreet enough not to mention with what "reason" the U.S. was "blamed" for "turmoil," which "sometimes" the accusations weren't just shrill blame-shifting, and what the "interference" consisted of. (Like, installing murderous military dictatorships, maybe?)

And yet the Post, like the Times, was perfectly willing to provide a platform for absurd lies, which it ran without demurral. Such as this:

       The days of America rooting for the ouster of Chávez and his revolutionary movement
      “are over,” the intelligence official said. Now, “it’s not really the case that the United
      States is rooting for any outcome, other than that it’s not an outbreak of political violence.
      You’d have to be insane not to worry.” [We all know how much the U.S. ABHORS violence!]

      The senior intelligence officials, who briefed a small group of reporters, spoke on the
      condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the government.

Why they would be any less eager to get rid of Maduro than Chavez is left unexplained.

The Post article concluded by explicating three ways to overthrow the Venezuelan government:

           
      The intelligence officials outlined three possible change-of-government scenarios.
      The failure of this year’s recall referendum could lead to another petition next year.
      But the opposition — itself divided and ill-disciplined — has been a disappointment
      to the Obama administration.

      Second, there could be a “palace coup” in which some members of Maduro’s
      government move to oust him with the help of some segment of the military.

      The third possible scenario is a military move, possibly led by lower-ranking officers
      and enlisted members who also are feeling the economic pinch, to remove the
      government altogether.

Nothing like spelling it out, guys. (Gals too, these days, They're so "progressive," they even let women and blacks be imperialist gangsters now! And gays! How much more enlightened can you get!) So there's the game plans. Rather, the end game plans.

"Senior U.S. intelligence official."

The Maduro regime is this close to the edge. All it needs is one little push...  

James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence.

Here's a measure of the depth of cynicism involved in this propaganda salvo. If the U.S. were truly worried about a collapse in Venezuela, and wanted to avert a coup, it wouldn't PUBLICIZE all this. It wouldn't in effect goad the opposition, and the military, in this way. Instead of very conspicuously handing out a roadmap for overthrowing Maduro, it would quietly inform key opposition and military figures that the U.S. would not support a coup.

Of course the U.S. WILL support a coup, just as it supported the Honduran coup, a fact Obama's previous Secretary of State, Hillary "Hard-nosed Realist" Clinton even bragged about in her recent book,  In fact, it probably prefers one, as that will make it easier for the U.S. to choose Maduro's successor than if the regime is toppled by a mass rebellion of some sort.

So on the guise of being worried about the Maduro regime falling (and the end of Chavismo, hopes the U.S. global masters), the U.S. global gestapo is trying to cause that very thing.

All this parallels Obama's habitual pattern of saying the exact opposite of what he actually intends to do. (Sometimes, of course, he says what he means- when it's something evil.) Obama may well be the most mendacious president in U.S, history. (Although Bill Clinton, another conscience-free con man, is certainly in the running.) Not even Reagan and Nixon quite compare, as both of them frequently came right out with their reactionary intentions. Not so Obama. Obama endeavors to deceive almost always.

Now, here's something very important to notice, that the U.S. propaganda system and imperialist government is trying to slip by you: for all the moaning about leftists taking over Latin America, the U.S. has been overthrowing  can one left-leaning government after another, or certainly giving them a shove. In Brazil, the largest and most important Latin American nation, thieving legislators have removed president Dilma Rousseff (whom the vengeful Obama no doubt held a grudge against for taking offense at his NSA listening in on her phone calls- and if you don't think he's vengeful, and ruthless, take note of how he had Egyptian secret police goons break Medea Benjamin's arm after she interrupted one of his speeches, and how he had Anwar al-Awlaki's son and nephew bumped off). These fine men defenestrated Rousseff so they can quash the criminal investigations into themselves. In Argentina, U.S. billionaire Paul Singer financed an election victory for Macri, replacing Isabel Kirshner. Macri promptly handed over billions of dollars of Argentina's national funds to Singer and his fellow hedge fund hyenas. Honduras I already mentioned. Obama has pried open the door to internally subvert Cuba, an elusive "prize" the U.S. has sought since 1959. Guess we better assume Ecuador and Bolivia are on the list. And except for Cuba, none of these regimes is or was particularly leftist, just mildly social democratic. That shows the extreme intolerance and hard right-wing nature of the permanent U.S. imperialist state.

Capo di tutti capi

I LOVE you guys!     U.S. Emperor Obama

One more thing worth remembering: we still don't know what caused Hugo Chavez's lethal cancer. We do know that Imperialist Boss Obama sure seemed satisfied with it..

This was Obama's entire statement upon Chavez's death, from the White House website: 

March 05, 2013

Statement of President Obama on the Death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez

At this challenging time of President Hugo Chavez’s passing, the United States reaffirms its support for the Venezuelan people and its interest in developing a constructive relationship with the Venezuelan government. As Venezuela begins a new chapter in its history, the United States remains committed to policies that promote democratic principles, the rule of law, and respect for human rights.

There it is. Not a single word of condolence. And a reiteration in coded language of the U.S. determination to overthrow the leftist regime. This is the new verbiage the U.S. uses since invoking The Communist Menace as an alibi for its subversion, sabotage, terrorism and coups became obsolete. Obama's own record is crystal clear the contempt in which he actually holds "democratic principles, the rule of law, and respect for human rights." Massive secret surveillance of the entire U.S. population, assassinations of even teenagers by drone, contempt for law- he writes his own laws, in secret, and refuses to let anyone else read them, and has taken the pieces of the Bill of Rights shredded by his predecessor and reduced them to confetti- this is the rhetoric of cynical global gangsters.

Keep in mind that Obama personally reviews death lists before the CIA and military carry out their assassinations. He even authorized the murder of the teenage son and nephews of al-Qaeda in Yemen propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki. So he's not squeamish. (Awlaki father and son, "terminated with extreme prejudice" two weeks apart, were both American citizens, for what that's worth. Not much, it seems. Mere citizenship didn't save Michael Hastings or Sandra Bland either. "Fellow Americans" is indeed a hollow, cynical term.)

To review the death of Chavez, the cold satisfaction the U.S. took in his death, and the unresolved question of whether the CIA murdered Chavez by inducing the cancer that the Cubans' best doctors couldn't cure, see "Chavez, Cancer, and the CIA," March 9, 2013; "With Chavez Dying, Obama "National Security Team" Preparing to Gloat," January 10, 2013; "Dead Man Walking: Hugo Chavez Doomed. CIA Dancing a Jig?," December 12, 2012.

And the British government did its bit in the demonization of Chavez. Like a puppy-dog eager to please, it is usually avid in its desire to demonstrate its usefulness to the U.S., an urge manifested in its leaping to the U.S. military's side with forces of its own when there's a fight on somewhere. (This sycophantic urge was played on by Obama when he opined that the UK would be less useful to the U.S. if it left the EU. The cold manipulator Obama thus expertly plucked the strings of British elite insecurity about its power and position in the world.)

The British ruling class still suffers from the delusion that the U.S. will reciprocate its servility by sticking up for Britain's dessicated imperialist pretensions. (At best, the UK is allowed to ride the U.S.' coattails. Here's a telling historical fact: the Reagan regime almost sided with the fascist Argentine military junta in the Falklands War, at the urging of the fascist Jeane Kirkpatrick and demented reactionary Alexander Haig.*  What turned Reagan around was his Secretary of war, Caspar Weinberger, who insisted the U.S. had to aid Britain.) Someone needs to tell the British: nations don't have "friends," notwithstanding the constant invocation of that word, nations have interests.

Given this quasi-craven attitude of the British government, it's no surprise that its propaganda arm, the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), often reliably parrots the U.S. media/government line and attitude. A particularly grotesque example of this occurred when Huge Chavez died. I discussed this, quoting the BBC in the essay title: "Hugo Chavez: Champion of the Poor or Unhinged Megalomaniac?" March 6, 2013. Oh those English are so refined and subtle.


* Haig was an obscure colonel and son of a Republican lawyer whom Nixon rapidly elevated to four-star general rank. A reactionary fanatic, he committed many crimes during his "career." He actually suggested a "nuclear warning shot" in Europe to "deter" the Soviet Union. [Congress and the Nuclear Freeze: An Inside Look at the Politics of a Mass Movement, by Douglas C. Waller, 1987, page 19.]

But the bourgeois media will remember him, if at all, for declaring himself "in control" at the White House when Reagan was shot and hospitalized in March 1981. Haig was Secretary of State at the time, a post he resigned in mid-1982, a year and a half into Reagan's reign.

1] New York Times, May 14, 2015.

2] "U.S. intelligence officials: Venezuela could be headed for collapse," Washington Post, May 13,      2016.

Obama’s Chief Mouthpiece Tiptoes Out of White House

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hugo Chavez: Champion of the Poor or Unhinged Megalomaniac?

That's the question posed by the BBC on the death of Chavez.

3/6/13 circa 8:25 am London (GMT): BBC female anchor announces the big story is the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who just died. “Was he a champion of the poor or an unhinged megalomaniac?” Those are the choices, as framed by the BBC. (Yes, that's an exact quote. Given the BBC's unrelenting anti-Chavez bias to date, his death must be a moment they were eagerly awaiting.) Then the male announcer reads a handful of very brief listener comments on Chavez, which either praise him in general terms or damn him with invective.

Following that, we get to hear him comparing Bush to the Devil in a UN speech. He also denies being a dictator because he was elected, and “the rich” tried to overthrow him in a [failed U.S.-backed] coup.

Next, to figure Chavez out, while totally ignoring any discussion of his actual policies, they bring on, of all people, Jon Lee Anderson from the New Yorker. The discussion with Anderson focuses on Chavez' alleged personality- a typical way the bourgeoisie avoid discussing actual issues and policies, in this case the reality of economics, politics, and U.S. Imperialism's role in Latin America. (Anderson does allow in passing that “the poor,” Chavez's constituency, are the majority in Venezuela.) Anderson authored the recent hatchet job titled “Slumlord” in the New Yorker, which was mainly a hatchet job on Venezuela's poor, who it presented as criminals. Facing the first page of the article was a full-page picture of a close-up of Chavez' face. He looks dour and vaguely menacing, as anyone photographed in that fashion while not smiling might look. Don't be too subtle, New Yorker! “Slumlord” indeed! Guess you decided to exchange your usual stiletto for a meat cleaver this time.

On the BBC, Anderson calls Chavez “thin-skinned.” Why? Because when Anderson repeated to Chavez's face racial epithets that his “opponents” use against him, Chavez “became visibly upset.” I guess you'd have to call all African-Americans “thin-skinned,” because if you called them “nigger” (or “asked” them to “respond to” their “opponents calling you nigger,” as Anderson must have phrased it or something like that) they'd get upset. That's the sole evidence Anderson presents for Chavez's thin-skinnedness. He may very well have been thin-skinned, but Anderson damns himself in my book with his gross racial insensitivity, at best, or racist baiting. As a Head of State, Chavez sure got no respect from bourgeois media hatchet men like Anderson!

But if you want to prove that someone was a dictator, showing that they couldn't handle their “opponents' criticism” without getting upset is a useful tactic, I suppose! What says "dictator" better than "volatile" and "quick to anger"?

The BBC also treats us to the U.S. ambassador's take on Chavez. (Guess. Let's just say he's not a fan.)

[The BBC, in all its hours of interviews and blather, didn't have time to talk to any ambassadors from countries friendly to Chavez. Unimportant countries like, oh,  Russia, whose UN Ambassador offered praise for Chavez and regrets over his passing. Not what the BBC or the rest of the Western media pack is looking for. Hey, you gotta prioritize when you're in the media biz!]

The BBC did mention at one point that Chavez provided subsidized oil to 18 countries. This was either an act of solidarity with the poor of those nations, savvy politics, or “bribes,” depending on one's attitude towards Chavez. Or a combination of some of the above. Unmentioned by BBC: Chavez provided cheap fuel oil to poor Americans. This act of generosity got short shrift in the U.$. media, predictably. The U.S. Government didn't provide the oil. (In fact heating oil subsidies are on the budget chopping block, as are all programs aimed specifically at the poor.) None of the numerous rich plutocrats in the U.S. did it. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn't (and doesn't) do it.

NPR launched “Morning Edition” with co-anchor Steve Inskeep proclaiming Chavez championed the poor “and demonized his enemies.” (Just paying them back in kind, no Steve?) An hour later (6 am Washington D.C. time) he's saying Chavez beat a coup and recall attempt, “but he couldn't beat cancer.” Which just goes to show that there's more than one way to skin a (red) cat, huh U.S.?


Later, co-anchor Renee Montagne “interviews” NPR's U.S.-imperialism-beat reporter Tom Gjelten, who speculates about harm to Cuba from the possible loss of subsidized oil. Maybe there'll be unrest! he speculates. The previous afternoon (3/5), NPR's Audie Cornish “interviewed” him on their afternoon "news" show All Things Considered. Topic: “Rivalries And Infighting Could Follow In Wake Of Chavez's Death.” That's how it's titled on NPR's website. You can read or listen to it there, but why bother? The title says all you need to know. Yes indeed, rivalries and infighting could follow after Chavez's death. How right they are. Or maybe they won't follow. NPR did say “could,” after all. Who knows? We'll just have to wait and see. (Don't worry, the U.S. will do its best to exacerbate rivalries and infighting. Look how well that worked to help destroy the Black Panther Party.)


And here's how loutish Obama is: his “statement” on Chavez's death doesn't even offer condolences to the Chavez family, instead putting in a barb about “democratic principles” and “respect for human rights.” Shut up, man. Can the bogus ideological cant for once. You got what you wanted. You could at least be gracious enough to offer a normal condolence message to the family of the dead. If hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, Obama is so morally cheap he won't even cough it up. (1)

It's obvious from all this, and from Obama's "statement" [see below at (1)] that the U.S. is eager to take advantage of Chavez's passing to get rid of the Chavez party and put back in power the rightful rulers of Venezuela, Venezuelan rich and their political representatives. That is who the U.S. sees as the rightful rulers of every country on earth.

An Aljazeera man made the odd comment that when Chavez took office he “intended to provoke” the U.S. He certainly did provoke the U.S. But that doesn't mean he set out to do that. I think he set out to push back against U.S. domination and indeed oppression of Latin America. The U.S. has been doing that for over a century. (Indeed, it tacitly announced its intention to do so with the Monroe “Doctrine,” which brazenly declared This is Our Hemisphere.) The U.S. has been imposing its will on Latin America by force at least since its 1898 conquests of Cuba and Puerto Rico, then Spanish colonies. That was also when it foisted the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and Prison/Torture/Show Trial Center on Cuba. Inevitably the U.S. finds resistance to its will “provocative.” That should be on the U.S.' head, not Chavez's. And in a piece by Patty Culhane on Aljazeera, we get a soundbite of Donald Rumsfeld delegitimizing Chavez by saying “Chavez was elected. Hitler was elected.” Ergo, elections don't count when you're a Bad Guy.

Culhane also includes an Obama soundbite, attacking Chavez as “authoritarian” who's “repressing dissent.” (Good one, coming from him. Obama's been no slouch in the domestic repression department.)

Only problem with Rumsfeld claim is, Hitler was never elected to anything!! He was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President (and former Field Marshal and head of the German general staff in World War I) Paul Hindenberg, in January 1933. Then the Nazis arranged the burning of the Reichstag (national legislature building), which they used as a pretext to imprison all the leftist members of the Reichstag and “vote” to give Hitler dictatorial powers. (It was an emergency, don't you know!)

This right-wing trope, that “Hitler was elected,” started some years back in the U.S. I first noticed the American Tory George Will pushing this disinformation. No one ever corrects it or demurs. Now Aljazeera is (unwittingly?) putting it out there. Thus do lies gain currency and become “truth,” through uncontradicted repetition.

And by the way, the Nazis never got more than about a third of the vote for Reichstag seats. They were never voted for by a majority of Germans. (You can look it up. Try a reputable history book. Every one I've ever read has the same facts.)

I won't waste time scraping the bottom of the propaganda barrel, except to note one bit of poison poured into my ear when I was looking for the weather and had to endure this, from WINS, a CBS property in New York City, that used to brag it was “the most listened to station in the nation.” One of their long-time hacks was saying “he's been in this country for 12 years, during which time he says Huge Chavez divided his country.” Then we get a guy with a foreign accent- evidently a Venezuelan- saying “He created a lot of hatred, a lot of resentment.” Well man, if you hate someone, whose fault is that? I guess it depends on whether they did something to deserve it.

WINS plumb “forgot” the rule from Journalism 101, about providing “balance.” But hey, Propaganda 101 says always be one-sided.

I'd love to see an objective, balanced critique of Chavez's policies and accomplishments (if any- I believe that at the very least the political mobilization of the Venezuelan majority alone is an advance in human progress) anywhere in the U.S. media. But that is like looking for a needle in a haystack. There may be one in there somewhere- good luck finding it. (Hint: don't waste your time looking for it in the self-appointed “newspaper of record,” the New York Times. They've had it in for Chavez since Day One. Others have documented this well, such as the people at fair.org. Or you could go the NYT online and read their shit. I've had the misfortune to do that for years.)

So Chavez, dead at 58 from cancer. Now, did the CIA give him that cancer? Very possibly. With the available information, it is impossible to rule that in or out, rationally. What seems obvious is that it was a form of cancer guaranteed to be lethal from the outset. Even from the beginning two years ago, when the cancer became publicly known, the prognosis appeared poor. Despite the attempts of the Chavez regime to obfuscate the details, this is how it seemed to me.

But that question will never be taken up by the capitalist propaganda system. Except if it generates a certain level of interest among “conspiracy theorists” (aka “kooks). Then the system will deign to notice the question and ridicule it, without actually engaging with it either factually or logically. This might include speculation as to the weird psychological problems of people who are attracted to such crazy ideas. (Perhaps they should do as the Soviet Union did, and lock up people with “crazy” political thoughts in mental “hospitals.” Why not? They've already called them nuts. Locking them up would be the next logical step.)

I'm not a particular fan of Chavez. I believe Venezuela's majority, who are poor, need a government that serves their interests. Chavez tried, but he wasn't very competent in the realm of policy, it seems. While his showmanship and extroversion were necessary to inspire people and get them to follow him as a leader, the downside was the creation of a personality cult and the absence of a strong movement and organizational structure that is guaranteed to survive his death. He would have needed a deeper understanding of economics and politics to be truly successful. In short, it would practically take a superman/woman, a perfect person, to overcome the obstacles to progress put in place by the existing social order there, backed by a global economic-political power system. (Now that Chavez is dead, get ready for increased attempts at subversion by the rich and the reactionaries there, in league with the U.S., the global patron of those types.) Also some of the alliances of convenience Chavez made with the likes of the Iranian regime, while perhaps necessary as a defense against the hostile U.S. and its Euro-lackeys et al, provokes moral queasiness in me.

But his ties with Cuba (and Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Nicaragua) are fine and completely justified on the other hand, and are based on genuine ideological and political affinity. Yes, Cuba is a one-party oligarchy. But Cuba is such a long-standing victim of the U.S. that it has to get a pass on its undesirable political system. And the Castros are far and away the most benign dictators in Latin America, ever. It's the only Latin America dictatorship without death squads, for example. And in all the anti-Cuban propaganda in the U.S. media over the years, I don't see descriptions of horrible torture, as is the case in every other Latin dictatorship. (Have there been stories of people dying under torture in Cuba, as they have under U.S. torture during the never-ending “war on terror”? The U.S. media would be waving such stories like bloody flags if they existed.)

Colombia, today, in which the murder of union organizers and many others (lawyers, activists, peasants, whoever) is still routine and ubiquitous, is far, far worse than Cuba in human rights terms. Yet Colombia's government is beloved by the U.S. media and BBC, among others. (Those media reflect the political and ideological alignment of their respective governments in matters of foreign policy, not 100%, but 90-95%.)

In terms of economics Cuba would function better with more small-scale entrepreneurship. More capitalism, sure.

But I'm not sure that should even be called “capitalism.” There have been merchants trading, buying, and selling goods and services for millennia. Small-scale independent farming has co-existed with various forms of serfdom for ages. Yet “capitalism” as a system is commonly dated as only a few centuries old. Perhaps the Cuban Communist Party is overly allergic to anything having to do with making a profit. I don't think there's anything wrong with people accumulating some wealth. There's something wrong with people accumulating grotesque amounts of wealth (and power), like billionaires, for example. There's something wrong when 400 people on a magazine list (Forbes) control two trillion dollars of wealth, while tens of millions of others struggle in unnecessary economic insecurity. 

But now we're wandering off the topic of BBC/New Yorker propaganda. Propaganda that is obviously ideologically motivated. The ideology in turn is designed to defend, protect,and uphold the economic interests of billionaires, multi-millionaires, and the large corporations that are the vehicles of the ruling economic class, against all challenges, actual and potential.

Yes, we wandered off the topic there, but I believe the scenic detour was edifying in heuristic terms, don't you agree?

1. One might argue that Obama is hypocritical many a time. No, he's cynical. A hypocrite cons himself. Obama is a conscious manipulator and liar. For example, when he prattles on about global warming, and then promotes more fossil fuel consumption, he's being cynical.

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

Statement of President Obama on the Death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez

At this challenging time of President Hugo Chavez’s passing, the United States reaffirms its support for the Venezuelan people and its interest in developing a constructive relationship with the Venezuelan government. As Venezuela begins a new chapter in its history, the United States remains committed to policies that promote democratic principles, the rule of law, and respect for human rights.

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/03/05/statement-president-obama-death-venezuelan-president-hugo-chavez]

Just take a look at the U.S.' murderous policies in Honduras, Colombia, Bahrain, and scores of other nations to see what unadulterated, cynical balderdash that last sentence is.

As far as U.S. “support for the Venezuelan people” goes, if the word rich were added before people, then it would be an honest assertion.

Here's a timely coincidence: Aljazeera has a program on their website dated today about Operation Condor. Kissinger gave the global terrorist murderers a green light, which led directly to the murders of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in D.C., among other victims.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2013/03/2013367461442124.html