Spinning

The same thing can be viewed positively or negatively, depending on choice of words, especially adjectives, nouns, and verbs. (Even adverbs!)

Spin is an establishment insider term for manipulation of the establishment media, or the attempt to manipulate it, by politicians' lackeys, media “consultants,” PR “experts,” corporate operatives, celebrity agents, and other such gold-plated riffraff.

Spin is flacks trying to get hacks to write positive propaganda about their clients or bosses, or to “shape the coverage” of some policy or event to make their clients or bosses look good or to deflect bad publicity or blame.

Spin has two directions, or slants: positive and negative.

Positive spin would be trying to make a candidate look good, for example. Negative spin would be trying to make the opposing candidate look bad.

Defensive spin occurs in response to negative information coming into the public domain, or in reaction to a crisis or negative event, such as the killing of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya by jihadi types.

When the media spins things at us, you can call it bias. Most “spinning” is in fact done by the corporate media, to us. Naturally the establishment's propagandists pretend spin is only something flacks do to the propagandists. They maintain this pretense because they want us to believe they are objective, and neutral, and thus trustworthy, and that the propaganda they present us with is in fact the world as it actually is.

Which it most definitely is not. But you figured that out by now, didn't you?

Spin can be as simple as basic word choice. Look at the paired words below. Notice how the same thing can be viewed either positively or negatively.

Warming-- Threat

Committed-- Stubborn

Dedicated-- Obsessive
Passionate- Emotional
Alert to danger- Paranoid

Determined to get justice-- vengeful

Childlike-- Childish

Bold-- Reckless

Brash-- Abrasive

Outspoken-- Shrill

Feisty-- Obnoxious (1)

And so on. Thus the adjective applied to someone or to their action depends on whether the media masters are for or against that person or action.

Now that you have reviewed this short list, find your own examples! Have fun doing your own propaganda analysis!

1) Bella Abzug was “shrill,” Ed Koch “feisty.” I do believe their politics had something to do with those word choices by the $ media.

The Wicked Witch Is Dead

One wicked witch, anyway. Margaret Thatcher, hailed as “The Iron Lady,” a sobriquet with a dual meaning. To admirers, it means steely determination, someone with “backbone,” an admirable quality in “traditional British values.” To her victims and those with humanist values, she was an ideological fanatic and a cruel, remorseless oppressor who waged relentless class warfare on the British working class and on the welfare of the general public. She was a staunch ally of fascists in other countries, a cheerleader for the crimes of U.S. Imperialism during the regimes of Reagan and Bush the Elder. She screeched with outraged indignation when Augusto Pinochet, poster boy of fascist admirers everywhere, was temporarily detained in the UK after he was officially out of power, pursuant to a Spanish arrest warrant for murdering eight Spanish citizens during his bloody, illegitimate reign in Chile. The UK ultimately let Pinochet go on his way, on the spurious grounds of sovereign immunity. He got a get out of jail free card pursuant to ex-ruler immunity privilege. (1)

Predictably, the BBC (and U.S. media) has strewn her path to Hades with rose petals. “She pursued her vision with vigor,” a “vision” they describe in glowing terms. Her “vision” actually consisted of the destruction of working class power by systematically dismantling unions. The bosses of course loved this, as reflected in their agit-propaganda media. Rupert Murdoch in particular took advantage of the anti-union offensive by freeing himself of pesky newspaper worker unions. Now we have to listen to days of praise for this vicious shrew so beloved by the capitalists she fought for.

Just for ersatz balance, BBC leavened its hosannas to the horrible harridan with political hack Neil Kinnock of the fake “Labor” party saying Thatcher “was not a malicious person,” just someone insensitive to the effects of her policies. Which in addition to being a milquetoast critique is a backhanded if unintentional insult to her intelligence. She knew exactly what she was doing. [David Cameron, the current Tory PM, insists Thatcher “saved” Britain. Saved from what, I have no idea. Saved from workers having some security in their lives, maybe.] So the range of acceptable opinion ranges from Thatcher was a heroine to She Meant Well and was a not a bad person.

A day later, [today], noxious NPR cobbled together a puff piece on the putrescent hussy for Morning Edition, chock full of laudatory cliches like “she changed Britain forever” (without saying in what way, or by what means). They put on some Canadian female pol to make the point that she “opened doors” for other women politicians to become country bosses.

Then the young male NPR morning dweeb who did the piece (they all sound the same to me, and they all are the same, just interchangeable cogs in a propaganda machine) asserted approvingly that Thatcher “could be tough and feminine all at once.” She asked some female UK toff to validate the statement, which this woman did by saying Thatcher was “flirtatious,” which surprised foreign country bosses. [Aka "heads of state."]

In other words, she was manipulative and tried to throw other country bosses off balance by behaving inappropriately with them in a sexual manner.

So playing the coquette the essence of feminity. I guess if you're stuck in the 19^th century it is. Is that where your head's at, NPR? The 19^th century?

Of course the mouthpieces of a system of corporate oligarchy would hail one of their class warriors. Thatcher was an aggressive political warlord for capital who went on the offensive against the working class, smashing their organizations and reducing them to isolated, powerless individuals. She emboldened the ideological system to push the parameters of acceptable discourse farther right.

By disempowering the working class, and attempting to discredit the idea that an economy should serve people and not vice versa, she set the stage for social disintegration. As more and more people are discarded by capitalist society as superfluous, they become an alienated, unorganized, inchoate mass with an ideological framework of understanding, prone to outbursts of rage that manifest in mindless crime and occasional bouts of rioting and looting. Yet the capitalists and their politicians have convinced themselves that they are heading into a brighter future. In fact, they are driving society into a black hole of social malaise and despair and an economic dead end of where capitalism grinds to a halt, as in Spain. At that point their only card left to play is overt fascism to stay in power.

Thatcher infamously said “there's no such thing as society,” an Ayn Randian vision of human existence as a dog eat dog struggle of all against all, the most selfish being the winners. In practice, it means a highly organized upper class of the rich and power crushing and exploiting a mass of disorganized individuals who are helpless to defend themselves. Destroying their organizational structures, such as unions, of course abets this condition, a throwback to earlier centuries. Thatcher's point was that there was no obligation to help others, no obligation of society- which doesn't exist, remember- to provide medical care, housing, any kind of security against the ravages of capitalism red in tooth and claw. (The BBC forgot to mention that remark of Thatcher's. Odd, that.)

The sickest part if that anti-human creatures like Thatcher and Rand insisted that this nightmare vision in fact is the most moral way to organize society, that attempts to interfere with its realization are in fact immoral. Thus they totally invert morality, and by basing their economic and political credo on a perverted morality, attempt to cement it as an irreversible and immutable condition of our species. This is pathology on a level that threatens humanity, and their ideology should be treated as an infectious mental disease.

1) On the other hand, ex-African nation-bosses (I reject the aggrandizing media term “world leaders”- they don't “lead” anything, they rule, they command, they boss. They control swaths of territory) get put on trial in Europe. They don't seem to get the ex-ruler immunity privilege.

SHHH! Quiet! Don't say it! Don't say “racism.” Europe loves human rights! How could they be racist? For example, they love human rights so much that Dutch troops handed over 8,000 or 10,000 Muslim men and boys (they care so much they don't even know how many it was) to the Serbian military for extermination, and sat on their hands while Saravejo was under murderous siege for four years, and while the Serbs set up rape camps and “ethnically cleansed” what was once Yugoslavia and generally rampaged for a decade while the governments and “leaders” of Europe occasionally cleared their throats and wrung their hands.

But yeah, they did put Slobodan Milosevic, the architect of the ruination of Yugoslavia, on trial. A trial that dragged on for so long- a year, with no end in sight- that Milosevic died before it reached a verdict. I guess they love trials so much in Europe that they don't want them to finish.

Oh, speaking of Pinochet, Chile is currently exhuming the body of Nobel Prize winning poet Pablo Neruda, to confirm that Pinochet had him murdered days after the coup. Neruda had revealed that he was going abroad to organize opposition to the fascist putsch. Subsequently Pinochet sent death squads as far away as Rome and Washington, D.C., to murder opponents of his regime. But Thatcher wasn't malicious! Why, all the UK's toffs agree on that, even the “Labor” ones! By the way, she was the nost ersatz of that fake class, aristocrats, having been born into the petit bourgeoisie and later made a “Baroness.”

One Million Turn Out For Pope Installation! -Or Is It 10,000?

Big difference. You'd think the bourgeois media could get their stories straight. Maybe they need to conspire together more.

That is literally the range of numbers announced on different radio outlets this morning.

NPR, 5:30 am (all times EST): “...thrilled, tens of thousands of people gathered for his installation Mass, taking a winding route...”

Minutes later, Aljazeera at 5:37 am- ”Now this is the scene in St. Peter's Square where world leaders and up to a million pilgrims are expected.” (Note the trapdoor qualifiers, "up to" and "are expected." Expected by whom? The guy in the Vatican press office giving the press handouts?)

But is it fair to call Aljazeera "bourgeois" media? Ok, how about "bourgeois and oil plutocrat media"?

WINS 9:30 am ; “An estimated one million people turned out” for Pope ritual. Estimated by who exactly?

Then yet another billionaire's media, this one owned by Michael Billionaire Bloomberg, WBBR, 9:39 am: “Up to 200,000” people at the Pope ritual, reports Jon Bascom. (I like that weaselly qualifier, "up to." Sounds like those promises of connection speeds from phone, cable, satellite, and ISP companies.) But he's based in D.C., so he might not have even been there.

Given the narrow streets there, I'm gonna guess tens of thousands. Low tens of thousands. It reminds me of the "Salute To Israel Day" parades in New York City. I'd go to them and observe about five to ten thousand people, and the media would claim one million, obviously fraudulent. (Lately they've stopped that game.)

So here's a Muslim-owned channel and a Jewish-owned one (WINS) both shilling for the Roman Catholic Church! Guess they're doing it out of brotherly love.

Or maybe authoritarian capitalists stick together.

Addendum: the self-appointed "newspaper of record," the NY Times, says "The Vatican estimated the number at 150,000 to 200,000."* Which no doubt is a gross exaggeration. Don't know why radio broadcasters can't mention where they get their numbers from. And notice that WINS and Aljazeera both multiplied the Vatican's high end number five times, to one million! They're outshilling the Vatican itself! And they aren't even Catholic!

*"Pope Francis Calls for Service to ‘Poorest, Weakest’" NY Times, 3/19/13. Ugh, that fucking Vatican propaganda right in the headline! No link here, it was just junk. See "Meet The New Pope, Same As The Old Pope," for analysis of how sick this Vatican propaganda offensive is.

Chavez, Cancer, and the CIA

As I've previously said, there's no way to know one way or the other yet if the CIA murdered Hugo Chavez, the late President of Venezuela.

The U.S. media and government is still stalking that country, looking for an opening now that things are somewhat more fluid with Chavez's death.

The Venezuelans just had to kick out a couple of subversive U.S. imperialist operatives thinly camouflaged by diplomatic cover. (Diplomatic status is a protective device that gives operatives immunity for criminal activities in the host country. Given that coups and subversion and manipulation of internal politics are routinely run out of U.S. embassies, and the history of the U.S. imposing and/or supporting murderous fascist regimes, especially in Latin America, the U.S.' self-declared “our hemisphere,” Latin nations would be well-advised to close all U.S. embassies and consulates until the U.S. has changed its stripes and is no longer a threat to democracy and the well being of the people of those nations. )

Nicolas Maduro, Chavez's designated successor, just gave a speech that has provided grist for the U.S. media's anti-Chavismo mill. NPR's reliably reactionary Saturday morning “news” host Scott Simon hauled on NPR's current Latin American correspondent Juan Forero to properly indoctrinate us on current events in Venezuela.[1] Forero made sure to call Maduro's speech “rambling,” an adjective bourgeois propagandists frequently use when discrediting a speech, manifesto, or any expression of ideas they need to discredit without having to engage with and refute the actual content. (And they certainly don't want you to know what was said in detail. They just cherry-pick the parts good for painting the picture they want to paint, and aren't even honest about those parts. Cf. how they keep saying Ahmadinejad “threatened to destroy Israel.” No he didn't. Even a high Israeli official admitted that was a- ahem- misquote.) Or maybe Forero just wasn't bright enough to follow Maduro's argument and see the connection between his points. Then it would seem rambling to him. Betcha plenty of Venezuelans had no trouble keeping up with him.

Forero mentioned that the U.S. sent a “low level” rep to Chavez's funeral. Which, Forero failed to note, is a deliberate insult, and a poke in the eye of the Venezuelan people, the large majority of whom admired Chavez and are grieved by his death. (Much was and still is made in the U.S. media about how “polarizing” Chavez was. Unlike their own leader, Obama, huh?)

Forero noted that it was “shocking” to hear Maduro “imply” that “the U.S. had a hand in the death” of Chavez. He skimmed lightly over that point. NPR assumes its “educated” listeners will dismiss such paranoid ravings out of hand, I suppose.

Scientific tests are planned to look for poisons. I would expect these to be futile, unless the CIA used a radioactive substance with a long enough half-life to have left some traces after several years. (Aljazeera recently discovered that it was polonium that Israel used to murder Yasir Arafat. And Putin's goons killed Alexander Litvinenko in Britain with polonium- which made have given Mossad or Shin Bet the idea.) If it wasn't a radioactive substance, all detectable traces may have been eliminated after the several years that have elapsed since the presumed introduction into Chavez's body. [2]

What are well established facts are the following:

It is precisely the main mission of the CIA to be an “action arm” of the U.S. government that conducts covert operations- especially the overthrow of unwanted governments, if necessary by murdering their heads. [3]

The CIA, almost from its formation, began researching and stockpiling numerous poisons, including carcinogens, with an emphasis on untraceability.

The CIA is a murderous organization that instigated the murder of 800,000 people in Indonesia (that number is from the internal CIA boasting about the operation); murdered 65,000 people in Vietnam by its own hand under the Phoenix program (number from a USMC major who participated in the program).

The CIA has instigated coups in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), and elsewhere that have led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

The CIA sent its chief mad scientist, Sidney Gottlieb, to the Congo with a vial of pathogens with which to murder Patrice Lumumba (the plan being to somehow get it on his toothbrush, but ultimately internal enemies kidnapped and murdered Lumumba). [4]

John Stockwell, formerly the CIA field officer in charge of their Angola operation in support of Jonas Savimbi, some years ago attributed a total of 2 million deaths to the CIA.

The CIA has tried an endless number of times to murder Fidel Castro, with plots including poisons (like the infamous plan to poison him with thallium in New York by dusting the inside of his shoes with it- which the U.S. media converted into a harmless prank to make his beard fall out! In fact it would have caused an excruciating death taking months- look up the symptoms of thallium poisoning, something the U.S. media is just too busy to do, I guess.)

The CIA assassinated John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and various other American and foreign citizens over the years.

The CIA has nurtured, trained, cooperated with, and provided lists of people to torture and murder, to numerous fascist secret police and military organizations over the years. These junior CIA's include the Korean CIA (KCIA- now there's a chip off the old block!), the Shah's SAVAK, all the Latin American state murder organizations, and others in Asia and Africa.

Now, for all these decades, this ruthless, murderous organization, one of whose main missions is to overthrow governments the U.S. doesn't like, has stockpiled poisons, but it never uses them? Is that what NPR, Forero, and the entire U.S. propaganda machine wants us to believe? And we're paranoid nuts if we don't drink their Kool-Aid.

No thanks, guys, I'm not thirsty for what you're peddling.

Again, I'm not saying the CIA did murder Chavez. I'm saying it's an entirely rational, reasonable question to ask and should be investigated insofar as it is possible to do so.

But I don't think the answer will mainly lie in science. It will lie in good counterintelligence that can identify the operatives responsible for the poisoning. It could have been someone in Chavez's inner circle. Or maybe a “well-wisher” gave him poisoned food or drink. Or it could have been in a restaurant he frequents. That would be relatively easy to arrange, via a kitchen worker or possibly a waiter. Maybe someone with access to his personal living quarters, access to things he touches, or wears, or puts in his mouth. (A toothbrush, cigar, cigarette, favorite drinking glass.) As far as testing for substances, with hundreds or maybe thousands of possibilities, the lab work required could be quite extensive. (Hey, I know, let's ask the CIA what they used! File a FOIA request! They have to answer those!)

It won't be easy because it must have been done before the cancer was detected about 2 years ago. And there is the potential for a destructive, paranoiac witch hunt among the Venezuelans.

What isn't imaginary (paranoiac) is the murderous hostility of the U.S. to socialistic regimes like Chavez's and to leaders like him who inspire the poor masses and politically mobilize them. That is the most dangerous leader possible to the U.S., the defender and protector of the world's rich. (They call it “defending freedom and democracy.” It makes for a better advertising slogan for their empire.)

1] Forero cut his eyeteeth writing anti-Chavez propaganda for the New York Times. As moving to NPR is really a step down in the bourgeois media hierarchy, one wonders if he was facing demotion or worse at the NYT, although his Chavez-bashing seemed up to NYT propaganda standards to me. It surely couldn't be because NPR made him an irresistible offer. Some people simply find working for the NYT a miserable experience. As the propaganda system is at least as opaque as the Kremlin, which the U.S. media has always loved to tweak for its opacity, we almost never learn the real reasons for media personnel shufflings. I suppose there might be hints in their trade journals. I have read them on occasion, and find them thoroughly dishonest, the content mostly shilling and glorification of executives, the verbiage an impenetrable corporate-like surface that makes finding any nuggets of information hidden between the lines slim pickings, at least for an outsider. Unless someone were paying me to read them, I have better things to do with my time. And in the larger scheme of things, the motives for the career moves of a Juan Forero are insignificant, mostly a matter of idle curiosity with perhaps the potential of providing some slight insight into the internal mechanics of the U.S. propaganda system.

2] The half lives of different radioactive elements and their isotopes ranges from tiny fractions of a second to hundreds of thousands of years, depending on the specific element. A half life is the amount of time it takes for a given quantity of radioactive material to lose half its radioactivity. This is a measure of its decay. The polonium used to murder Arafat was mostly decayed by the time Aljazeera arranged to test his clothes. The corrupt Palestinian Authority, run by U.S.-Israeli stooge Mahmoud Abbas, has dragged its feet for years on investigating the Arafat murder, and even now is stalling, taking months after the Aljazeera expose to allow Arafat's corpse to be checked for polonium. But I think the case for murder by polonium has already been proven, having been found on what Arafat wore around when he died.

It may be that radioactive substances with shorter half lives may be suitable for murder, which would leave a shorter time frame in which to detect them. Different radioactive elements emit different types of damaging particles, in different intensities. These particles have different penetrative abilities, so would impact the body differently. They also lodge in different parts of the body, if they lodge in at all. Some are lethal in tiny amounts, and rapidly so. Many radioactive elements would give you cancer years or decades after you were poisoned. A millionth of a gram of plutonium, inhaled into and lodged in the lung, would reliably give you lung cancer.

You'd have to ask the Russian and Israeli assassins why they chose polonium, and a form of polonium only produced by nuclear reactors, which absolutely rules out “natural” exposure. They apparently wanted a quick and sure result, and assumed no one would think to look for polonium. (From now on, I guess people will look! Or should, anyway, depending on the symptoms.)

3] Covert of course means secret. To maintain secrecy, the cooperation of the propaganda system is essential. The propaganda system cooperates first and foremost by calling the CIA a “spy” organization (yes indeed, it spies, in order to carry out its subversive and violent activities, and to manipulate and control others) that mainly is about “gathering intelligence.” (Probably 99% of U.S. “intelligence” is “gathered” these days by technical means- by the NSA, for example, and by spy satellites, drones, and so forth.) The CIA has often liked to project this ridiculous image of itself as a bunch of scholars who just like to study things. One of their favorite images they foisted on the public- with the eager cooperation of media and book publishing accomplices- were photos of the murderous fascist Allen Dulles smoking a pipe. One of the first CIA directors and part of the cabal that murdered JFK in 1963, Dulles was a Wall Street lawyer along with his brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. These two hatched the fascist coup in Guatemala, that destroy that country's future down to the present day, under Eisenhower's authority. And before that the coup that ended democracy in Iran. And after that, the Bay of Pigs invasion was arranged and handed off to JFK. JFK was lied to and told that there would be a mass uprising in Cuba once the fascist Cubans landed. None other than JFK assassin E. Howard Hunt scoffed at this idea, saying the CIA never believed any such thing. So the CIA deliberated lied to JFK to trap him into the plan, the idea being that he'd be forced to send in the U.S. military after the Cubans. That didn't work. Eventually that was a main reason the CIA, with the complicity of the military, Dallas PD, and after the fact if not before, the U.S. media, bumped him off. The U.S. media mainly because it would be ideologically intolerable and a grave threat to the legitimacy and “stability” of their system to admit that a coup had occurred in the U.S.

Oswald, a low-level CIA asset, was to be the fall guy. He was made to look like a “Castro agent,” apparently with the idea that the assassination would be blamed on Castro, and the most extreme fascists would get their wish, a U.S. invasion of Cuba. That part of the plan didn't work. Oh well. At least they got the Vietnam War they wanted as a consolation prize.

4] In Lumumba's stead the U.S. got a “friendly” (to Western “interests” i.e. Western capital and business) military dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. As usual with these types, he was a mega-thief who did nothing to develop the economy of the Congo or the lives of the people he misruled. Between him and elite Western corporations and banks, billions were drained from the Congo, with nothing to show for the people, the country, or the future. Now the Congo is a perpetual battle ground for various gangster “rebel groups,” some backed by venal neighboring governments, looking to loot the natural resources. Eventually a wasteland will be left behind, with no infrastructure or modern economy.

Megalomaniac Mobutu left behind nothing for his country but bad memories, not even the name he egotistically pasted on it, “Zaire.”

Oops! I digress! I better get back on topic! If Juan Forero ever gets hold of this, he'll tag me for “rambling” for sure!

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

Media Marching Orders For The Day: All Hail The Pope!

Orders for the week, actually.

Now, is it a newsworthy event? Of course it is. What is out of whack is the amount of “coverage,” and since there are hardly any facts to report, they're stretching this story like Turkish Taffy to fill all that time with two facts: 1) the “Pope” is resigning, and 2) the “Cardinals” will pick a successor. (“Who will it be? We don't know! is the breathless trope endless repeated to stretch that tiny fact to fill loads of air and print space.)

Most shows on NPR dedicated to Pope palaver.

Bogus claim of “One Billion Catholics,” repeated uncritically. (1) (Sounds like the tally kept by a certain hamburger chain, only a lot less reliable.) Where does this number come from? No doubt the CC (Catholic Church) itself. I would bet it is highly exaggerated, and even if technically accurate- anyone who goes to “Mass” once a year being counted as a member, say- very misleading. We're told, for example, that most U.S. Catholics don't even obey the Church's “teachings” on birth control, for example. (Imagine, a gang of pedophiles and alleged male virgins “teaching” anyone else about sex. Of course, by “teach,” they mean “order.” It's a dictate, under threat of burning in eternal hellfire for disobedience. Unless you “confess” to a priest. Imagine telling a priest intimate details of your sexual relations! What kind of idiots are Catholics, anyway? Of course, forcing people to reveal intimacies is a standard control technique of cults. Then there's abortion- I'm sure that no Catholic has ever had an abortion, aren't you?)

The media has been assiduously whitewashing his role as protector of pedophiles. In fact, does just the opposite, claiming he was good on it. “Better than John Paul” in some unspecified way. Crap. He's spent years as part of the Vatican pedophile protection racket, going back to his days in Germany.

NPR put on some fool who was molested as a child by a priest and who was chumped by the Pope, to gush that the Pope “gets it.” This fool was obviously carefully selected by the CC to meet with the Pope. This idiot is still a loyal Catholic, apparently. NPR willingly made itself a tool of Church propaganda in the way it reported this insignificant meeting, at which apparently all that happened was that the Pope got to “feel the man's pain” (as we now say, thanks to a certain slippery politician who was President of the U.S. between the reigns of Bush the Elder and Bush the Younger). Totally gratuitous. NPR goes above and beyond the media's self-assigned duty to protect Roman Catholicism, bending over backwards to rehabilitate the CC- even as the Vatican still stonewalls and evades responsibility for its massive sexual crimes.

As I started writing this at a little before 4:30 in the morning last week (EST), I turn on the BBC to get some news. Instead of news, they're doing exactly what I'm writing about- vague, pointless speculation. (“Who do you think is likely” to be the next Pope? Answer: I dunno. And is the ex-Pope going to have influence? A: Dunno, but I expect so. Q: What about sexual politics under the new unknown Pope? And so on, worthless empty musings.)

Amid all the chatter about the quitting Pope's future living quarters, the media hacks omit the fact that by hiding out in the Vatican, he evades lawsuits against himself.

Of course, this news is actually unimportant, because another reactionary will be appointed (or anointed, if you want to semi-sanctify this shit) as Godfather of Catholicism. Nothing is going to change, contrary to the hopeful, idle speculation of some. On the other hand, the media is currently virtually ignoring lot of more significant news around the world. One worth mentioning: Baby Doc Duvalier is semi-embroiled in court in Haiti.

The establishment media has always done its utmost to promote and protect the Roman CC. It's easy to guess their motive. The CC is a bulwark of reaction. So that dovetails nicely with the interests of the corporate media and big business. The three have been allied throughout the world for over a century now. They're also united in hatred of their common enemies, “communism” (Bolshevik socialism) and socialism (variously understood). The two terms are also often conflated.

1) Aljazeera apparently couldn't decide if it was 1 billion or 1.2 billion, using both numbers within seconds of each other in a single broadcast.

The BBC: Cover-Up Central

What's up with the BBC? Every day lately they seem determined to obfuscate reality instead of reporting it.

For example, on January 30^th, 2013, the BBC reported (from afar) on the discovery of 69 “men” (some were boys as young as 12, actually) in a river in Aleppo, Syria. (Their hands were bound and they'd been shot in the heads.) To the BBC, it's a mystery who killed them. Was it the regime, or the rebels? It's impossible to tell, in the BBC's version. [The U.S. media also took this “it's a baffling mystery” line.]

But Aljazeera, which actually had a reporter at the scene, left no doubt who the killers were. The local inhabitants, and relatives of the murdered, made clear that the Assad regime was the culprit. The victims had been kidnapped a week earlier. And the river is a favorite dumping ground of Assad's cutthroats.

Aljazeera aired its report before the BBC story.

Obviously the BBC is aware of Aljazeera, and monitors it. [Or are they so high-handed, or inept, that they don't?]

It's routine for media organizations to report things other media organizations report, with or without attribution. The BBC could have said “Aljazeera reports” and still spin the matter of responsibility for the executions as uncertain. You'd think that media organizations without a reporter on the scene would pay attention to one that did. Well, you better think again.

And here's the BBC is on February 6^th, 7 am GMT (Greenwich Mean Time, the time in London), running interference for the right-wing, corrupt Spanish ruling party which is making the Spanish economy scream and has driven the official unemployment rate up to 26% and still rising (but none in the bourgeois media dare call it a depression- it's a “recession”) in the name of “fiscal responsibility.” (This vicious class warfare is officially called “austerity.”)

The leading Spanish newspaper El Pais got hold of a ledger that detailed secret, undeclared (and thus untaxed) cash payouts to party bigwigs, including the loathsome party boss and current PM of Spain, Rajoy, doled out by the party treasurer. So far the response of the party- which controls the government- has been to lie through their teeth. They've also blocked any discussion in parliament of the matter. [A party members has admitted to witnessing the handing out of envelopes of cash by the party treasurer.]

But the BBC doesn't tell you any of this. All they “report” is that El Pais has some “documents” about which the party treasurer is to be questioned. The treasurer denies the “documents” authenticity. And the Prime Minister is “linked” in some unspecified way to these “documents.” That's the BBC's story, crafted for maximum obfuscation. No hint of the content of the “documents,” no mention of money, secret payments, anything that gives you the slightest idea what it's all about. An hour later they drop the story entirely. Just as well. Might as well do a total cover-up, BBC.

The BBC was at it again on 2/8/13, 2 pm GMT. In Kano, Nigeria, two separate groups of gunmen attack two health clinics simultaneously and murder 9 female health workers and two men to stop the polio vaccine campaign. BBC calls them “unknown gunmen.” Doesn't say “Boko Haram,” “Islamists,” “terrorists,” or anything else. Not even “militants.” No reference to the Islamofascists' ongoing attacks on polio vaccination. There's an extensive history here which the BBC omits. Providing no context enables the BBC to block understanding of what happened. It's a blatant, deliberate obfuscation of the situation. It's not a mystery what happened and why. Why the BBC wants to protect Boko Haram is the real mystery here. I'm not saying they should say Boko Haram did it. Providing the correct context allows people to draw their own conclusions. And I know they know how to provide context, since they so often provide slanted, biased, tendentious contexts to slam their chosen enemies abroad.

Later, at 2:30 pm GMT: The main “presenter” (“anchor” in American media-speak) brings the BBC reporter back on (from Lagos, where he is, NOT from the scene, where he isn't) to again run interference for Boko Haram. The BBC reporter, a white guy, says “We'll never know who did it,” “there are lots of people with guns there,” “there are criminal gangs and business disputes,” irrelevant red herrings. This was a planned assassination carried out against vaccinators!! Asshole! It's left to the presenter to even mention Boko Haram. The reporter says they haven't taken credit for the attack. So I guess it wasn't them! Just before the murders, one of their Islamofascist preacher bosses denounced the polio vaccine campaign. He claims the vaccines cause malaria.[sic!] Omissions, red herrings, raising baseless suspicions about other parties: This reporter could be Boko Haram's defense lawyer.

On 2/9/13- 7am GMT: the BBC mentions that the body of “the left-wing poet Pablo Neruda” is being exhumed. He “died 12 days after” the CIA coup in Chile. (“CIA” isn't mentioned by the “presenter” i.e. propaganda reader Paul Henley- hey, he just reads the stuff.) The only explanation for the exhumation given by the BBC is the cryptic sentence “there have long been standing doubts about the cause of death.”

Actually it isn't a matter of vague suspicions. His long time servant has provided detailed information about how Neruda was murdered. In fact, the military injected Neruda with poison. BBC hides all the key information. About 20 minutes later there's a one sentence mention, this time it's just “a left-wing poet” is being exhumed. Not even Neruda's name this time. No mention of “poison” at any time. But the entire point of the exhumation is to look for the poison! How dishonest can you get, BBC? (Pretty dishonest, apparently.)

Then there's a bit of fluff about the notorious Catholic Church cult the Knights of Malta, which the BBC fraudulently identifies as “a major humanitarian organization” that used to be a military unit. They're parading “in their distinctive robes.” Real informative. The Knights of Malta is a cabal of rich and very extreme reactionaries who indulge in political manipulations and conspiracies.

You don't suppose the BBC is a right wing outfit, do you? Their constant demonization of FARC while simultaneously systematically blacking out all the atrocities of the Colombian rulers, including routine murder of labor organizers, might make one wonder. They also have a bee in their bonnet about Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and about Cuba- toeing the line of U.S. Propaganda. But doesn't the UK virtually always slavishly follow the U.S.' lead?

So over just a few days we find several egregious examples of dishonest misreporting. Unfortunately this is par for the course for the self-proclaimed world's leading news organization. (They really do claim that accolade for themselves.)

Why Is The BBC Defending Chinese Computer Hacking?

2/2/13: BBC COVERS FOR CHINESE HACKING INTO AND PLANTING SPYWARE IN COMPUTER SYSTEMS OF NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, WASHINGTON POST. A BBC presenter reading the news starts with a report that 3 U.S. newspapers revealed hacking attacks on themselves. (1)  As I'm listening, I'm waiting for her to say “China” or “Chinese.” After blowing smoke and drawing verbal doodles she finally gets around to mentioning the attacks' timing being around articles about China, like the only evidence is that circumstantial thing. Then she puts on some limey dude (the sole commentator in the piece) to bat away the idea that China did it. He says that the reason there are “fingers pointing at” China (this indirect reference to the facts is as close as the BBC gets to mentioning the facts, or “accusations,” if you prefer, but BBC didn't even mention accusations) is because China has it in for dissidents, but “equally it could have been regular spammers.” Spammers! Spam is junk commercial email. This has absolutely nothing to do with spam. And in fact, as the reporting by the American newspapers previously made clear, it could not “equally” have been spammers, or anyone else. The BBC entirely ignored the facts presented by the NY Times that proves China did it.  (2)

As the BBC story is obviously derived from articles the victim newspapers ran about the attacks, starting with the NYT, which detailed the LINKS TO CHINA discovered by security experts they hired, the BBC WELL KNOWS it is not mere idle, unfair speculation that China is doing it. In the case of the NYT, they targeted reporters and editors working in China, plus the attacks were traced back to Chinese hacker groups linked to the military and using familiar Chinese computer crime techniques and spyware. [Minutes later, NPR's On the Media opened with the words “Chinese cyber-attack” on NYT.]

The New York Times didn't leave any doubt as to who attacked its computer system for 4 months. Their article announcing the siege, which came out on January 30, three days before the mendacious BBC report, opens with these words:

“For the last four months, Chinese hackers have persistently attacked the The New York Times, infiltrating its computer systems and getting passwords for its reporters and other employees.”

No ambiguity or uncertainty there.

And naturally, as the article points out, the Chinese made “efforts to hide the source of the attacks, which investigators say is China.” Not “suspect” or “might be” or “there are indications of.” IS China.

The Times also reported that the malware used is the same malware the Chinese have used before, over and over.

And that the attacks originated from the same computers in the same Chinese military-front “school” that previous Chinese attacks on U.S. military contractors have originated from.

And that the Chinese attack on the Times stole reporters' passwords and attempted to identify the sources for a story the Chinese rulers didn't like, specifically the expose of big boss Wen Jiabao's greedy family.

And the attacks would begin at 8 am Beijing time, most days.

And Chinese officials even threatened the Times with “consequences” for the story. (But maybe it was just some spammers disguised as Chinese officials and they fooled the Times. It's a possibility, right BBC?)

The Chinese Foreign Ministry, as always when their cyber-warfare breaks into public view, lied through its teeth and denied it was them, piously stated that Chinese “law” bars such things, and for good measure waxed indignant over the “baseless” accusations. (Actually, proven fact.) But that's exactly what they do every time they're caught red-handed. They're nice and consistent that way. Just as their cyber-attacks have a consistent m.o. (Modus operandi.)

The highly organized, persistent, sophisticated, months-long covert siege and infiltration, which included the placing of backdoors in the Times' system (no, BBC, “spammers” can't do all that) started when the Times was preparing the story about how the family of the corrupt current “prime minister” of China, Wen Jiabao, amassed a fortune worth billions of dollars. The attackers were specifically hunting for the sources for that story. (For good measure the regime blocked access to the Times website when the story came out. God forbid the Chinese people find out the nature of the people ruling them. At least our political masters wait until they're out of office to pile up the wealth, and modestly limit themselves to millions, like Bill Clinton, or hundreds of millions, like Al Gore. Or like Britain's Tony Blair's millions.) The email accounts of the author of the Times' stories on Wen's family, the Shanghai bureau chief, were broken into.

But no customer data of the Times was targeted by the “spammers,” as the BBC would call them. There was no pecuniary motive in this 4-month-long infiltration.

Furthermore, the attack pattern matches previous attacks on U.S. corporations that were traced back to China. These attacks originate from Chinese schools with links to the Chinese military. The security company Mandiant, which the Times hired to trace the assault and provide countermeasures to, was able to specifically identify the exact Chinese hacker unit doing the attack, one of about 20 attack groups that Mandiant monitors. This particular unit of the Chinese cyberwar army has broken into computer systems of hundreds of Western organizations, the Times reports. It is also tracked by and has been traced back to China by the FBI and AT&T.  (3)

These offensive arms of Chinese cyberwarfare and repression target Tibetan activists, dissidents, U.S. Government agencies and corporations (especially military contractors, from whom they steal weapon blueprints and information to make knockoff armaments; computer tech firms like Google and Hewlett-Packard; and media companies) banks, and governments and corporations of other nations.

You may recall they broke into the Dalai Lama's email account, among other such crimes.

Their aims are quite sinister- to build up a threatening military machine in order to neutralize U.S. military power and thus enable China to bully and intimidate its neighbors, seize islands and undersea oilfields it wrongly claims the rights to, ultimately invade Taiwan or force its acquiescence to a Sino version of Anschluss (but one unwanted by the Taiwanese); and to track, spy on, and target for repression dissidents and anyone who resists or challenges the oppressive rule of the Chinese “Communist” Party oligarchs, plus attempt to neutralize people abroad who support the causes of democracy, human rights, or Tibetan rights in China.

The Times article reported that since 2008 the Chinese oligarchs have been targeting reporters in order to discover their sources and contacts and repress them.

The Chinese are darn lucky that someone like me will never be President of the U.S. I would have long ago ordered retaliatory cyber-attacks on the Chinese.

But there's an asymmetry here. What secrets do the Chinese have that are worth stealing? The U.S. doesn't care about Chinese media sources (which are mostly government bosses anyway), nor is their inferior technology worth stealing. (The U.S. doesn't need the plans for a Chinese stealth jet that's a knockoff of the U.S.' own warplanes, for example.) I suppose one could try and ferret out embarrassing information about their horrible system and venal rulers to make public- but ultimately that's low-grade harassment, although it apparently drives the Chinese oligarchs, with their emperor complexes and deep insecurity over maintaining their illegitimate rule, to distraction. (See what they just did to the NY Times?) And actually wrecking Chinese computer infrastructure would risk retaliation on the U.S. The same applies to trying to cause physical destruction, as the U.S. and Israel have done to Iran's nuclear centrifuges for example. The U.S. is too vulnerable to be too aggressive in response. So the U.S. must mainly play defense.

Here we see the weakness of the U.S. political system manifesting itself. A Federal bill to set security standards for large corporate computer systems was killed in Congress, because the corporations don't want to spend the money, and don't want to submit to Federal oversight of their systems.

And a big reason the U.S. takes so much crap off China is that large U.S. corporations are still high on the illusion of getting rich off of “1.3 billion Chinese consumers.” So they keep letting their Chinese “partners” rip-off their technology and manufacturing know-how, after which they're forced out with their tails between their legs. This keeps happening to Japanese and European corporations too. The Chinese ripped off Japanese high-speed rail patents and knowledge, they've ripped off Siemens, and on and on. GE is handing them jet engine technology! The U.S. Government should ban that. But it won't, because the U.S. Government is the handmaiden of the largest U.S. corporations and basically does their bidding. But you better pack your toothbrush for a stay in Federal prison if you try to send some radios to Cuba or socks to Iran or coloring books to Palestinians. That's not an exaggeration either.  (4)

Which is why someone like me could never be President of the U.S. I would never be a corporate gigolo, hence I am unqualified to be President. Literally unqualified by the operative if unspoken requirements of the job. Not that I'm unhappy about it. If I were a politician it would bother me.

Of course, all these attacks are heavy felonies under Federal law. The U.S. Government just drove Aaron Swartz to suicide using those laws. Mere “unauthorized access” to a computer is a serious felony carrying a long prison term. The U.S. consistently uses computer “crime” laws to go after dissidents who challenge its power.

But don't expect the U.S. to indict any Chinese computer aggressors working for the Chinese military, nuch less those who ordered the attacks. No doubt the top rulers of China have violated U.S. conspiracy laws in arranging the attacks, at a minimum. China is powerful, and Western dissidents who resist U.S. oppression and secrecy are weak. The U.S. goes after the weak and vulnerable, not the powerful.

That's a pretty good definition of a bully. And a coward.

But to be “fair,” that could apply to many ruling classes. The ones with courage are few and far between. And not necessarily admirable. Those willing to defy the powerful can be righteous, like Ecuador's President Rafael Correa going to bat for Julian Assange and granting him political asylum (the U.S. of course wants to assassinate or imprison Assange, so Correa better watch for any bullseyes the CIA has pinned onto his own back), or evil, like Qaddafi of Libya, who wasn't shy about sticking his thumb into the eyes of Western powers, or Saddam Hussein, whose megalomania, hubris, and lack of judgment has been a two-decades-long disaster for his country, Iraq. And on the other hand, there were plenty of American generals straining at the leash to launch a nuclear holocaust on the Soviet Union right up into the 1960s. But they were insane.

But why would the BBC, the main fount of UK Government propaganda, want to run interference for Chinese attacks on the U.S.? Is this a passive-aggressive expression of UK resentment at being the U.S.' poodle? Or are they trying to ingratiate themselves with China? Or both? Or something else? Of course, the British even barely made a peep over the Chinese murder of a British businessman in China by the wife of Bo Xilai, the recently imprisoned former Chinese provincial lord. (5) That's not a courtesy the Russians got when they murdered the exiled Alexander Litvinenko in Britain. Maybe it depends on where you murder a British citizen. (Litvinenko had been granted British citizenship a few weeks before his murder. He worked with British intelligence.)

You better ask the BBC to explain themselves. That's their job, not mine.

Of course, these are the same creeps that provided facilities for the formerly “beloved” freak Jimmy Savile to molest children, then killed an expose about his career as a pedophile, and instead ran not one but three puff piece programs celebrating him after his death, and then made up for it by falsely accusing a Tory politician of molestation. And then lied and obfuscated about who does what in the BBC and who knew what. But just to make it all ironic, the NY Times' boss, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., went and hired the former boss of the BBC, who claims to be totally in the dark about it all, for a top executive post at the Times. Sounds like he'll make a great manager there. Either he's completely clueless and inept or completely dishonest and ethics-free. Evidence indicates the latter.

1) Bloomberg News was also attacked after publishing an article in June 2012 about the wealth amassed by the family of then “vice president” of China Xi Jinping. They're really touchy about people finding out how rich they are, these “communists.” They really need to stop wrecking the word communist and call themselves something else. How about “greedy oligarchs”?

2)  “Hackers in China Attacked The Times for Last 4 Months,” New York Times, Jan. 30, 2013.

3) The Times reports that the Symantec antivirus software they had installed on their network only caught one of 45 custom malware programs the Chinese had surreptitiously planted in their system. Another good reason not to pay for antivirus software- use the free versions from AVG, or avast!, or others.

4) I should mention in passing that China is not a total loss for U.S. corporations. McDonald's and Yum Brands are doing well in China, and Hollywood has pried open the door a crack- the Chinese allow a small number of cinemas to show a few censored versions of Hollywood shlock. And more significantly, the U.S. corporate system does benefit from China's cheap labor, allowing it to order up consumer products on the cheap and sell them for fat markups to consumers outside China. And since China is then stuck with lots of U.S. dollars from the resulting trade surplus, the Chinese government then buys U.S. Treasury securities to subsidize U.S. budget deficits. But that is really bookkeeping. The Fed could create money and give it to the Treasury to “pay its bills.” We just heard that the Treasury could mint a trillion dollar coin and “deposit” it in its “account” at the Fed. The real bottom line is that Chinese workers are serfs making goods for U.S. “consumers,” while simultaneously hurting U.S. “workers” by helping drive down wages in the U.S. Notice that to separate people into somewhat artificial categories of workers and consumers is a misleading trick of “economics.” Try “consuming” without money, and try getting money without employment or being dependent on an employee. Yes, there are also “entrepreneurs,” owners, and “professionals,” most of whom “work” in some sense of that word.

5) The British businessman Neil Heywood, who was a spy for MI6 and drove a Jaguar with the license plate “007,” according to the Daily Mail of Britain. (“British businessman murdered in China worked for MI6, claims extraordinary new report,” Nov. 6, 2012.)