Mueller Lays a Goose Egg. Predictably. (And Predicted.)

There is so much to debunk, and that has BEEN debunked, about the gigantic pile of horse manure agitpropaganda that "the media" has heaped on our heads these past 2+ years, that my brief remarks here can only touch on a few points.

We witnessed absurd conspiracy theories, with every ill in the Western world being blamed on Russian online memes that "divide us." The rise of rightwing populism in Europe is blamed on Russia (not discontent with those in power!). Chuck Todd, the Dumbest Man On Television, speculated that the terror bombs that turned out to have been mailed by a pro-Trump zealot, Cesar Sayoc, were sent by Russia.

Russian clickbait and spam from a troll farm was equated with Pearl Harbor and 9/11 by political demagogues of the Democratic Party. Congressman Adam Schiff made a name for himself as the worst political mountebank in the nation, against stiff competition.

Much was made of the "lies" that tripped up Trump's erstwhile minions. (People Trump threw overboard at the first sign of trouble.)

And what were the lies Mueller obtained convictions for? Inconsequential things. Except for Michael Flynn's lies. Flynn conspired with Turkey to kidnap Fethullah Gulen from the U.S. to hand over to the Erdogan regime. And what were the consequences? Flynn got off easiest, with no jail time, as recommended by Mueller's prosecutors. He was even praised by the judge for his murderous military record. (He served U.S. imperialism in a high position, so he gets privileged treatment.)

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen's main lie was to Congress, when he claimed attempts to do a deal for a hotel in Moscow ended a few months sooner than they actually did.

The severest penalties were meted out to Paul Manafort, for things totally unrelated to Trump and his presidential campaign. Mainly hiding his money from the IRS (which the attempt to do made him guilty of money "laundering" as well as tax evasion), bank "fraud" (he put false information on applications for bank loans- something Trump himself has done with impunity, in fact overstating his assets by $2 BILLION to obtain a loan from Deutsche Bank), and failing to register as a foreign agent. (Because he worked in Ukraine, NOT in the U.S. representing Ukraine, trying to steer the president the U.S. later overthrew, Yanukovych, into pro-EU pro-U.S. actions. He wasn't repping the Ukraine in the U.S., so how could he be guilty of that? At the same time, Flynn got away with not registering as an agent of Turkey, and AIPAC, the AJC, the Congress of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the Zionist Organization of America, et al, act as agents of Israel, take directions fron Israeli government officials in frequent meetings with them, and are NOT prosecuted for refusing to register. U.S. justice certainly is blind. Or rather, it looks the other way for those with special privileges and power.)

Manafort made the stupid mistake of not throwing in with Mueller, relying instead on Trump to protect him! What a dumb grifter. Trump is only loyal to himself,  and to his family who are psychologically extensions of himself.

So what, finally, did Mueller "discover" about Trump's "collusion" with "a hostile foreign power to interfere with our election and subvert Our Democracy"?

Nothing. But the Democrats are twisting this to say Mueller didn't DISPROVE it!

Talk about diehards.

Aaron Maté of the The Nation magazine and formerly at democracynow.org summed up the more than two year saga of a full court press propaganda campaign by most of the major U.S. media and elements of the secret police and Department of "Justice" to paint the president of the United States, Donald Trump, as beholden to Russian president Vladimir Putin and a co-conspirator with him in "stealing" the 2016 presidential election from Hillary Clinton. 

Maté  put it succinctly and accurately thus: "This entire affair is journalistic malpractice." [1]

As for the result of over 2 years of investigating by a large prosecution team with all the "tools" of "law enforcement" (including secret ones) at their disposal, with a howling pack of media dogs sniffing out every factoid to "connect the dots" into a picture of criminal culpability, what did it all add up to? Maté did the arithmatic:

"In terms of the substance of this issue, which is whether or not there is a conspiracy between Trump and Russia, we arrive at zero."

So with the buried treasure chest of the Mueller report turning out to contain only sand, what are the Democrats going to do now?

The Democratic Party's poohbahs STILL intend to press on with it, thus undercutting their own presidential candidates for 2020.

Good luck with THAT.

"Sorry about that." Not the Democratic Party's Saviour After All. Square-jawed former FBI secret police chief and U.S. Marine Invader of Vietnam Robert S. Mueller III. Exit right from the Stage of History, Bob.

1] "Aaron Maté sums up the denouément of the Mueller investigation on the Jimmy Dore Show."

"Pope" Proves There is No "God"

"Pope" Francis, the Supreme Leader of the Roman Catholic Church, has spoken his strongest words yet in the years-long saga of the Catholic Church finally being exposed as a global pedophilia conspiracy. He called down "God's wrath," on pedophile priests and their higher-ranking protectors in his church. (His God, that is, not some other religion's deity, or any of the 2,500 known "Gods" that people have invented over the millennia- there are probably more lost in the sands of time.)

Well, why didn't his "God" get angry at the pedophiles and their protectors all these past decades?

Is his "God" lazy? Incompetent? Indifferent?

If the "Pope" has to call out for his "God" to react to all this, what does that say about his "God"? If his "God" really exists, he's a really awful "God."

I think rather it is yet more proof that this god, like all gods, is imaginary.

For that matter, here are a few of many other things a "Just God" might find objectionable:

Such as: the abuse and deaths of children in Catholic "orphanages"

Or the exploitation of enslaved Irish women in Magdalene laundries, regarded as scum for having had sex.

Or the Church's helping Nazis escape Europe after World War II. Or the failure to oppose the Holocaust.

What about the Inquisition, and the infliction of the most hideous tortures on their victims?

How about burning the scientist GIordano Bruno at the stake?

Either their "God" is a vicious, immoral sadist who approves all this stuff, or is completely callous and indifferent to the beings he alleged created "in his own image" (No, I don't capitalize pronouns of imaginary beings), or else "he" doesn't exist.

I think that last is the most charitable interpretation, as well as being true.

But the conclave called by the "Pope" February 21-24 to deal with the crisis of legitimacy of the Catholic Church (CC) wasn't just talk. There were proposals for action. (Well, okay, so far still just talk.) One proposal was the increase the Church-approved age for marriage for girls to 16, from 14. (It's currently 16 for boys.) Very enlightened!

A day before the conclave during which the "Pope"  threatened sexual miscreants under his command with "the wrath of [his] God," he deemed critics of the CC "friends of the devil." [1] 

The Catholic Church is a global authoritarian cult over 1,500 years old that has perfected techniques of mind control that enable it to mentally enslave over a billion people worldwide. It is also a criminal enterprise whose made members, the priests and bishops, have committed countless tens of thousands of sexual crimes, including pedophilia, in numerous countries, and the institution itself was an accomplice in these crimes by protecting the perpetrators, intimidating and silencing the victims, hiding and destroying evidence, and stonewalling for years until their walls were gradually broken down by outside pressure. The CC is clearly an illegal criminal enterprise under the U.S. RICO statutes, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act and others.

The chance that the CC will ever be prosecuted, however, is less than the chance of winning an American lottery (which is about one in 300,000,000.) RICO is reserved for going after unprotected drug dealing organizations, the Mafia, and leftwing movements.

The CC, which formerly ruled Europe until just a few centuries ago, has been the ally of reactionaries everywhere, especially reactionary governments such as the U.S. It creates little authoritarians, obedient to "authority," and punitive-minded, which is why so many police and secret police are Catholics.

1]  "friends of the devil" link. 2/20/19.

This pedophile business is such a headache.

The Irrefutable Proof That Calling Nicolas Maduro a "Dictator" is a Damned Lie: Juan Guaido Is a Free Man IN Venezuela!

Maduro is the elected president and head of state. Juan Guaido is the puppet of a hostile foreign power, who was instructed by the vice president of that power (Michael Pence of the U.S.A.) to declare himself president, and the next morning did so, self-administering a bogus oath of office to himself. Now he's running around pretending to be the president, usurping all the power he can, and that hostile foreign power has transferred control over Venezuelan government assets to Guaido.

Under what "dictatorship" would Guaido not now be undergoing severe torture in a secret dungeon?

Whatever Maduro is, he's not a dictator. And Venezuela is no dictatorship.

Unlike the U.S.' Great Friend, Saudi Arabia.

Guaido openly holds rallies. He calls on the armed forces to overthrow the government. The violent street thugs who are the tip of the spear of the opposition Guaido leads attack police, and are NOT shot dead. (Imagine if Occupy Movement participants or Black Lives Matter protesters had thrown rocks and molotov cocktails at police! There would have been a bloodbath, and the U.S. corporate media would have celebrated the massacres.) If anything, Maduro has for years been far too tolerant towards the reactionary violence, which has blockaded roads and burned people alive who were identified as government supporters.

We saw the exact same thing in Ukraine, where the neo-Nazi terrorists set police on fire (watch the youtube videos if you don't believe it!) and false flag snipers sent in by the U.S. murdered police as well as protesters. There as in Venezuela, the state failed to protect the people from terrorists, the nation from subversion by a foreign power, and itself from being overthrown because it failed to suppress terrorist violence. In both cases, the U.S. threatened the government if it cracked down on the U.S.-backed terrorists. (Obama in the case of the Ukraine, Trump and the imperialist thugs he's appointed in regard to Venezuela.)

And when I say "terrorists," I'm using the U.S. power establishment's definition of terrorism: politically motivated violence by non-state actors. They exclude state terrorism by definition. They have to, since the U.S. is the world's greatest sponsor of state terrorism, such as in Guatemala (250,000 murdered), Argentina (30,000 "disappeared"), Indonesia (one million "communists" exterminated in 1965), and numerous other places. (Sometimes the U.S. does the dirty work even more directly than merely "advising," such as the CIA's Phoenix Program in Vietnam, in which they murdered 50,000 Vietnamese or more.)

Let's take another look at Saudi Arabia, one of many repressive tyrannies the U.S. backs to the hilt. In Saudi Arabia, there are no elections for the rulers of the country, and anyone who criticizes or protests is arrested, tortured, and some are beheaded, even crucified.

No complaints from the U.S. Government or establishment media about THAT!

The "Crown Prince," a nasty piece of word named Mohammed bin Salman, imprisoned scores of rich Saudis and forced them to turn over billions of dollars. One or two died in the process.

But Maduro is "corrupt," don't you know! And he's "stealing the assets" of Venezuela. Like the oil money.

The oil money which John Bolton announced on January 24 will be turned over to U.S. oil corporations. He said this on Fox Business tv program. He absurdly added that this would benefit the American and Venezuelan people.

How so, John? Will the U.S. oil corps fund programs for the Venezuelan people? Will they provide cut-rate heating oil to poor people in Boston, as Hugo Chavez, Maduro's predecessor, did?

I don't think so, asshole.

U.S. propagandists aren't satisfied with branding Maduro a "dictator," which they apparently think justifies overthrowing him (never mind the scores of dictators the U.S. has supported, many of which could never have achieved power without U.S. help, and are reliant on the U.S. for staying in power), but these propagandists demand that everyone call Maduro "dictator." 

Just this morning, on the U.S. Government created and funded NPR national radio network, the host of the morning "news" show, the reactionary Scott Simon, started by griping that Senator Bernie Sanders "doesn't call himself a democrat, he refuses to call Maduro a dictator!" The fact that Sanders has been spewing anti-Venezuela propaganda mirroring that of the U.S. government and media apparently isn't good enough.

What nerve that Sanders has! Who does he think he is, to go against the political line of the U.S. Imperialist establishment! Does he think this is a free country or something? (OOPS!)

Smarmy unctuous reactionary dweeb Scott Simon, of NPR infamy

Bernie Sanders better get in line!

U.S. "friend and ally," the sinister Saudi "Crown Prince," Mohammed bin Salman. 

If you criticize him, he might cut you to pieces! (Think Jamal Khashoggi.) 

There's a dagger in that hand...

Was the Pecker Gang "Extorting" Jeff Bezos or "Negotiating" With Him? BOTH!

Currently there is a tiff between The World's Richest Man, Amazon.com Supremo Jeffrey Bezos, and The World's Sleaziest Man, David Pecker, Boss of Bosses at a tawdry racket named American Media Inc. (Sooo, patriotic, that name!) AMI publishes smarmy, sensationalist rags sold at supermarket checkout stands, the most notorious of which is named the "National Enquirer." It specializes in ginned up sex scandals and celebrity gossip. Its target audience is bored housewives and others with low intellectual standards attracted by the tawdry. [1]

An AMI executive and an AMI lawyer sent letters to the lawyer of the investigator Bezos had assigned to find out how AMI got photos and private emails of him and his mistress. These two threatening to publish nude photos of Bezos (which they described in detail) UNLESS Bezos agreed to issue a public statement retracting his claim that AMI had a political motive in going after him, which they called "libel," and stuck to that position in future. More tellingly, AMI demanded that Bezos stop investigating how they obtained his emails and the photos. In other words, a classic case of both blackmail and extortion.

Rather than knuckling under to this criminal extortion/blackmail attempt, Bezos went public with it, exposing AMI's action.

The result in the establishment jabbersphere has been an avalanche of quizzical questions, Is It Or Isn't It Extortion? AMI, after a period of silence where they imitated a deer frozen in oncoming headlights, recovered their composure and said they were merely "negotiating" "in good faith," just a perfectly normal business practice! Much of the jabbersphere made it a He Said He Said story.

But that won't wash with this fact set.

Kidnappers negotiate ransom payments. Hostage-takers negotiate their demands. Criminals can negotiate in the commission of their crimes. Happens all the time. A bank robber can demand X amount of money, and be told it's not available, and settle for a lesser amount.

Blackmailers and extortions ALWAYS negotiate with their victims! They present their demands, and the victims respond. There is a back-and-forth about terms and conditions. Likewise with kidnappers.

The backstory here is that Bezos owns The Washington Post newspaper, which has been relentless in documenting Trump's endless firehose of lies, and is also upset that Trump is allowing the Saudi Arabian regime to get away with murdering one of their contributors, the Saudi Jamal Khashoggi. Pecker is a close friend and ally of Trump, who during the campaign used the rags he controls to relentlessly promote Trump every single week, and denigrate Trump's Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Furthermore, AMI made illegal undeclared campaign contributions in the form of paying off at least one woman Trump has sexual relations with, by buying exclusive rights to her story and then not publishing it, effectively silencing her. AMI subsequently entered a plea agreement with Federal prosecutors. In return for no criminal charges being brought, AMI agreed to cooperate with their investigation, and to commit NO MORE CRIMES for a period of three years.

The fact that AMI tried to blackmail Bezos into ceasing to investigate how they obtained their material on him, led Bezos to believe that Trump had obtained or given it to them to use to embarrass him and pressure him to jerk the Washington Post's leash and ease up on criticizing Trump. Another suspicion was that Saudi Arabia was involved. Pecker put out, at company expense, a preposterous 100-page glossy magazine positively glorifying the murderous "crown prince" of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, who has been bombing Yemen and starving its population with essential U.S. help, and who ordered the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi last year.

What a WONDERFUL tyrant!

The commentator Glenn Greenwald, who usually is trenchant and on-the-mark in his analyses, made a logically flawed argument about the case to say that it wasn't clear if it was extortion, it was in a grey area, because it happens all the time that people accuse each other of libel and then arrange to stop libeling each other. Except Bezos was NOT being libeled by AMI (AMI CLAIMED Bezos was libeling AMI by asserting they had a political motive in attacking him- which they obviously do), and Bezos never claimed they were libeling him. They published the true fact that he was having an affair, with whom, and of course embarrassing photos that are really of him are not libelous.

The "business model" of AMI is extortion and blackmail, coercing celebrities wishing to avoid career-damaging embarrassment to provide juicier "dirt" on others or to cooperate in other ways. Unsurprising that the sleazy Pecker is pals with the mega-grifter Trump. Trump attracts to himself like a dustmop collecting dirt dodgy and disreputable hustlers like Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen the Fixer, political mountebank and saboteur Roger Stone, and novice grifter Michael Flynn, who was in the pay of Turkey. Trump has frequently broken the law over the years, and he and his family have committed tax fraud for years and defrauded their tenants, as documented by the New York Times.  [2]

A number of Trump's appointed government officials have committed multiple acts of graft and corruption and malfeasance, such as his first EPA head Scott Pruitt, his first Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Ben "$30,000 Office Chair We Paid For" Carson, and others.

Previous regimes did a better job of hiding their moral corruption than this gang.

An example of the fine "journalism" produced by "American" Media, Inc. 

The barracuda bares its teeth: David Pecker, Sleaze Personified.

"You dirty little PECKER!"

1] There are other "titles" in AMI's staple of garbage publications. All peddle celebrity gossip and fluff, sexual titillation, and sensationalistic nonsense. These include a cheesier version of the Time Inc. magazine People, named Us (sic!). They used to publish an absurd supermarket tabloid, Weekly World News, which relentlessly promoted- in all seriousness, NOT tongue-in-cheek- fake stories of extraterrestrial aliens on earth, complete with cooked-up photos. The people who churned out this brain-poison for the lower uneducated classes were Harvard graduates. Cynical, soulless, amoral graduates, I presume. Calling such garbage, peddled year after year, and not as satire or irony, is properly viewed as psychological warfare against credulous members of the hoi polloi. Keep them dumb and distracted and confused. 

2] See from the New York Times, "Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father," October 2, 2018; "11 Takeaways From The Times’s Investigation Into Trump’s Wealth," October 2, 2018, and "4 Ways Fred Trump Made Donald Trump and His Siblings Rich." October 2, 2018, among other articles.

World's Richest Man Uses His Newspaper To Threaten Politicians- Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon

Jeffrey Preston Bezos, the World's Richest Man [1], likes to pretend that he's a hands-off owner of the Washington Post, a conceit that the bourgeois propaganda system (aka "the media") respectfully indulges him in. The Post is the elite daily paper of the of the empire's capital city, Washington, D.C. So it could be called The Daily Diary of U.S. Imperialism.

Unsurprisingly, turns out that's a lie.

Today he used his paper to send a warning/threat to politicians in New York City who are outraged at the $3.7 billion dollar bribe that the governor of New York State, Andrew "Son of Mario" Cuomo, and the NYC mayor, Bill "Big Liberal" deBlasio, handed Bezos to locate part of his operation in the city- something astute observers thought he was going to do out of necessity without bribes. (Since both Cuomo and deBlasio have presidential ambitions, and such ambitions could be aided by favorable treatment by Bezos' paper, that is one possible motive for the gigantic bribe in the form of tax exemptions and other emoluments.)

Now the Washington Post is running an article claiming that Amazon was considering reneging on its promise to set up shop in the largest city in the U.S., which is a leading global technology center in its own right, a key consideration for Amazon, which of course as an Internet company needs large numbers of digital drone workers. It cited the gripes by NYC politicians as the reason for this alleged reconsideration. [2]

Of course this greedy asshole's bluff should be called.

Bezos' rag, and Cuomo and deBlasio, speak of "25,000 jobs" that hang in the balance. How many of these jobs would actually be high paying, and how many slots would be filled by workers moving to NYC from elsewhere, is never discussed by the hypesters.

Ironically, while Bezos is extorting New York, he's complaining that American Media Inc. is extorting him. (Probably it is. I'll deal with that in another essay.)

Amazon's new digs, if they come to fruition, will strain existing infrastructure, which it won't contribute to due to the tax "relief" it's being gifted, will displace existing businesses and tenants, and drive up rents in the area.

Big favor.

That's what happens in a dog-eat-dog society of "winners" and "losers."

"I'm so RICH it's FUNNY!"

1]  Bezos has been "the world's richest man" since at least July 2017. Most of his wealth is tied to the price of the stock of Amazon Corporation.  His wealth hit a peak of $150 billion (1,500 millions) last year. As of the beginning of 2019, it is estimated to be a mere $125 billion. 

But don't cry for him. As of today, his mound of moolah is back up to $134 billion. 

"Bloomberg Billionaires Index," February 8, 2019.

"These are the 50 richest people in the world right now," Business Insider, January 4, 2019.

2]  "Facing opposition, Amazon reconsiders NY headquarters site, two officials say," Washington Post, February 8, 2019, listed under the misleading heading "Virginia Politics.

A Night of Guff from Presidente Trump

Trump the Grump put on his best face- but the xenophobia and racism still poured out liberally from his noisehole at the annual "State of the Union address" before Congress, a key political ritual of the U.S. political rulers.

He made a big deal, once again, about the horrible tidal wave of murderous drug dealing migrants pouring across the southern U.S. border, and vowed for the 7,000th time to "build'a wall!" Trump campaigns on appeals to anti-Hispanic racism and xenophobia, and he campaigns permanently. This was the longest part of his speech.

Trump also couldn't resist complaining for the 2,796th time (give or take) about being investigated. He claimed the Mueller investigation would damage the U.S. economy (apparently a stab at humor that the audience missed- not really) and threatened/pleaded that if the House Democrats launched investigations of him, that would stymie the passage of legislation. (A good thing, in my opinion, since the only laws both ruling political cartel parties agree on these days are horrible- they invariably increase domestic repression and the military budget, and back U.S. imperialist crimes, such as the recent open attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government, hailed by almost all Democratic party politicians in lock step with their Republican "rivals.")

Speaking of Venezuela, Trump took the opportunity to attack the government of Venezuela, while declaring the U.S. puppet Guaido the "legitimate" government, an act of naked subversion that both corporate capitalist parties fully support. And in the very next paragraph he used his denunciation of Venezuela to redbait the handful of genuinely leftist politicians in Congress: "Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence — and not government coercion, domination and control. We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country." 

This kind of vicious demonization goes back as far as the late 19th century in the U.S. The capitalist ruling class has always been fanatically ideological as far as that goes. You can find the same sort of verbiage at any point in the last 130 years or so. And before that there was ruling class hysteria about the French Revolution and the Haitian revolution. The U.S. is reactionary at its very core.

The power establishment's media "analyses" of Trump's speech were completely oblivious to the extremely reactionary nature of the screed. To them, hard right politics are just normal.

In addition to the redbaiting, which the bourgeois media failed to denounce of course, Trump took the opportunity to break a campaign promise on abortion. During his campaign he said he wanted the Supreme Court to reverse Roe v. Wade, and let each state decide its own abortion laws. Well no more. NOW he wants Congress to ban late term abortions. He attacked New York State specifically for a new law finally legalizing such abortions in the state, which Trump falsely claims in inflammatory rhetoric  that "the late-term abortion of children [sic]" has babies "ripped from the mother's womb moments from birth." This is the kind of demagogic lie that causes fanatics to murder abortion doctors.

But then, Trump has no problem with such violence.

Trump also called for "unity-" behind HIS policies, of course. Like every ruler, strongman, dictator, and "president," what Trump means by "unity," is "get in line and conform to my rules." Calling for "unity" doesn't mean "let's find a way to compromise together," it means "agree with ME!"

Of course the "opposition" party, the Democrats, agrees wth most of what Trump is doing and wants- like an ever-increasing military budget, shoveling endless billions into the maw of the military-industrial complex, and overthrowing "socialist" regimes, having a reactionary Supreme Court, lame regulation of business and light taxation of the rich. On those last two points, the differences between the parties are a matter of degree.

The Republican Congressmen leapt to their feet to bellow lusty cheers every two or three sentences of The Leader's Speech, some whistling in ecstatic enthusiasm. At one point the assembled party apparatchiks started chanting "USA! USA! USA!," a jingoistic standard.

No Trump speech or even off-the-cuff remarks would be complete without an absurd boast. Here's one from the speech: "If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea." Now, certainly the situation is better than it was under Obama, or Bush, or Clinton. But Hillary Clinton is too cautious to have gotten into a war with North Korea. But to show how phony these rituals are, this ridiculous remark was NOT greeted by laughter.

As is standard for these rituals, the entry of El Presidente is treated like the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, with wild, prolonged cheering and a sustained standing ovation. The Big Man's exit is marked by another display of bombastically phony enthusiasm by the assembled political hacks of the Leader's own party.

 A CBS "News" propagandist deemed the ending "deep poetry" and a generous offer to the Democrats. Just what was this profound windup? A bunch of mawkish platitudes. After bragging about America defeating "communism" and battling "evil empires," here's what he said:

Here tonight we have legislators from across this magnificent republic. You have come from the rocky shores of Maine and the volcanic peaks of Hawaii. From the snowy woods of Wisconsin and the red deserts of Arizona. From the green farms of Kentucky and the golden beaches of California.
Together, we represent the most extraordinary nation in all of history. What will we do with this moment? How will we be remembered?

I ask the men and women of this Congress: Look at the opportunities before us. Our most thrilling achievements are still ahead. Our most exciting journeys still await. Our biggest victories are still to come. We have not yet begun to dream.

We must choose whether we are defined by our differences — or whether we dare to transcend them. We must choose whether we squander our inheritance — or whether we proudly declare that we are Americans: We do the incredible. We defy the impossible. We conquer the unknown.

This is the time to re-ignite the American imagination. This is the time to search for the tallest summit, and set our sights on the brightest star. This is the time to rekindle the bonds of love and loyalty and memory that link us together as citizens, as neighbors, as patriots. This is our future — our fate — and our choice to make.

I am asking you to choose greatness. No matter the trials we face, no matter the challenges to come, we must go forward together.

We must keep America first in our hearts. We must keep freedom alive in our souls. And we must always keep faith in America’s destiny — that one nation, under God, must be the hope and the promise and the light and the glory among all the nations of the world.

Thank you. God bless you, and God bless America. Thank you very much.

Like I said, so much self-righteous, self-satisfied, self-aggrandizing boastful GUFF that's Made In The USA.

What If China Declared Nancy Pelosi President of the U.S. and Deemed Trump Illegitimate?

That's the equivalent of what the U.S. is doing to Venezuela. Simply outrageous.

The U.S. has just declared that the elected, LEGAL president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, isn't really the president because the U.S. has decided he is "illegitimate." The "real" president is a U.S. stooge Venezuelan politician (Juan Guaidó) whom the U.S. has decreed by imperialist fiat is now Venezuela's "interim president." It has lined up a score of lackey nations in Latin America ruled by reactionaries, and in Europe ruled by bourgeois toadies to U.S. power, to agree with this insane diktat, which the U.S. is now moving to forcibly impose on Venezuela through various means, including a military coup d'état.

But the U.S. is doing something more outrageous than what even China is doing in this thought experiment. The U.S. claims to be doing this in the name of "freedom and democracy." Declaring the elected president of another nation "illegitimate" and naming his replacement in the name of "freedom and democracy." This is Orwellian to a mind-bending extreme.

This is the same country that SO LOVES freedom and democracy that it is best buddies with Saudi Arabia, a nation ruled with an iron fist by an intolerant hereditary and totalitarian monarchy. Nothing "illegitimate" about THOSE rulers!

The horrible killer U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo called the Venezuelan government "morally bankrupt," "profoundly undemocratic" and- get this- "corrupt." Nice example of projection by a reactionary, an extremely common phenomenon.

The propaganda media of not just the U.S. but scores of lackey nations in Europe and Latin America are backing this grotesque imperialist aggression.

We're told that Britain, France, Germany, and Spain are falling in line behind the U.S.' move. Tells you all you need to know about the moral bankruptcy of the ruling classes of the Eurolackey states, as well as the emptiness of all their blather about "democracy" and respecting national sovereignty. All the aforementioned nations have a history as among the most vicious empires in history. All committed numerous acts of mass murder to enforce their imperial rule.

Those trying to defend Venezuelan independence are Mexico, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Russia. A weak group with little cohesion as a group.

Pompeo bulled into the UN to demand that other nations "pick a side," either for the U.S. coup and installation of its chosen puppet, or on the side of international law and respect for self-determination of people and for national sovereignty. That's not how he described it, of course, but that's what it is. What he said was the most mendacious propaganda imaginable, on a par with the U.S.' excuse for invading Iraq and Hitler's lies "justifying" the conquest of Poland.

But Russia and China will veto the U.S. ploy to get the UN Security Council to rubber-stamp its imperialist aggression. That won't stop the U.S. of course. The U.S. will simply attack the UN as a body that "doesn't work."

Anything that doesn't take orders from the U.S. is by definition broken.

In response to the U.S. declaring that he is no longer president and proclaiming its chosen lackey "interim president," the real president, Maduro, who was legitimately elected, broke off diplomatic relations (about time!) and ordered U.S. "diplomats" to leave. The U.S. is arrogantly refusing to remove its "diplomats," obviously and deliberately setting up a confrontation. "We're going to sit in your country and refuse to recognize your government," is what the U.S. is declaring in effect.

Outrageous. But not in the global capitalist media's telling.

The dire economic straits Venezuela is in is harped on, as if that is an excuse for overthrowing its government. NEVER mentioned is the fact that the U.S. has been systematically strangling Venezuela with economic warfare. Instead "economic mismanagement" is constantly blamed. I'm willing to believe that's a factor. Now can the propagandists ever explain say WHAT economic mismanagement they're referring to? They never say. Just the assertion is enough. [1]

1] It's the same way the U.S. "intelligence community" "determined" that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee's computer server, the "evidence" being mere assertion of the claim. But actually it wasn't even "the intelligence community," but merely three "analysts" from the CIA, FBI, and NSA handpicked by Obama regime "Director of National Intelligence" James "Pinocchio" Clapper, the man who infamously testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee, that allegedly "oversees" the various secret police agencies, that the NSA does NOT gather all Americans' phone calls, when it fact it does. But repeatedly saying that the entire massive infallible trustworthy "intelligence community" "determined" it is more convincing to say, which is why "the" media keeps saying it, even though it's untrue.

Latest Demented Russiagate Conspiracy-Mongering Is So Over-The-Top That Mueller Publicly Denies It's True

For two years, most of the U.S. media have subjected the public to a frantic saturation campaign of agitpropaganda claiming that the president of the U.S., Donald Trump, is under the sway or control of Russia (a designated hostile foreign power), or is being blackmailed by Russia, or is in debt to Russia, or is directed by Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, or has a special relationship with Putin, or "colluded" with Russia to steal the presidential election from the rightful heir to the presidency, Hillary Clinton, or something or other that's sinister.

This campaign, which has had the dark hand of the secret police deep state involved, started in earnest ten days before Trump was sworn in as president. On January 10, 2017, Buzzfeed "News" published a sensational (in more than one sense of the word) "dossier" concocted by a former British secret policeman (veteran of MI6, the British "CIA,") Christopher Steele, that made lurid allegations against Trump, supposedly provided to Steele by Kremlin sources. The most obviously preposterous allegation was that Trump had paid prostitutes to urinate on a hotel bed in which the Clintons had previously slept, and the Russians had a video of this. (Notice one never hears about this claim anymore, except by late night U.S. tv comedians, who pretend it is a fact.) [1]

Since Trump lies so constantly and obviously, it must have been calculated by the perpetrators of this hoax dossier that Trump's denials would lack credibility with at least a large segment of the public.
It turned out that the Clinton campaign had paid for this dossier, a fact the Democrats spent a year denying, lying through their teeth.

Now Buzzfeed is at it again, with a false claim that Trump instructed his former fixer Michael Cohen to perjure himself to Congress regarding a Russian business deal.  [2]

We know it is false because no other than the very tight-lipped Russiagate special prosecutor, Robert S. Mueller III, has issued a statement saying so.  [3]

Buzzfeed, a tawdry website full of celebrity tittle-tattle and the most cheesy "clickbait," "stands by its story" nonetheless. It's editor stubbornly refuses to back down (as of yet), demanding Mueller be specific about what is false.

Obviously Mueller wouldn't bother issuing a denial if it wasn't to refute the main claim, the Trump suborned perjury.

Numerous media organs immediately grabbed Buzzfeed's false propaganda and ran with it. This is a pattern that has repeated over and over in the two-year-old Russiagate propaganda campaign. Major media organs have repeatedly aired ridiculous conspiracy theories, based on the flimsiest- or no- factual basis. [4]

The Mueller denial of the Buzzfeed article caused some media outlets to slam on the brakes and do a screeching U-turn. The Washington Post, a leading fount of Russiagate conspiracy speculation and favorite bulletin board for the Deep State secret police to plant its anti-Trump accusations, fretted that Buzzfeed was hurting "the" media's credibility. Worse, it wrung its hands over the fact that this isn't the first time some anti-Trump propaganda turned out to be false. Bizarrely, this ran under the heading, "Style." Huh? [5]

The silver lining in all this is that the U.S. corporate propaganda system, a gigantic brainwashing mechanism, is losing credibility. Ironic that it is occurring in political combat with a man, Trump, who tells ludicrous lies on a daily basis.

For the past two years, much less attention has been paid to the horrible policies of Trump, such as on the environment, where his EPA is increasing lethal pollution. We never hear about the awful tax "reform" at all. Apparently the corporate media secretly is pleased with these venal policies. So instead they have been trying to gin up a scandal based on painting Trump as a Russian agent (Rachel Maddow on MSNBC explicitly says exactly that) or stooge or puppet. They genuinely seem to believe he can be removed from office this way. Or maybe they are merely trying to hem him in. Whatever the case, the disarray among U.S. ruling elites must be greatly pleasing to China, which is stealing a march on the U.S. to supplant it as the dominant world power.

Way to go, fools!

It won't be the first time in history that stupidly by a complacent ruling class led to the downfall of an empire. Ruling classes long in power get overconfident and smug, it seems.

1]  "These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia," Buzzfeed, January 10, 2017


2]  "President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project," Buzzfeed, January 17, 2019, "updated" January 18.


3]  According to Peter Carr, a spokesman for Special Counsel Mueller, “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate.”


4]  One example of anti-Trump media immediately hopping on Buzzfeed's bandwagon: "IF TRUMP TOLD COHEN TO LIE, IMPEACHMENT IS COMING," Wired, January 18, 2019. Wired, which is supposed to be a digital technology magazine, is one of the most dishonest organs obsessively pushing the faux "collusion-election hacking-democracy interfering-Trump Russia conspiracy" narrative. And with every new cooked-up "bombshell revelation," the propagandists predict Trump's impeachment. How many times can a boy cry Wolf! before people stop listening? I guess if the people are Democratic Party partisans, the answer is an infinite number of times.


5]  "Style: BuzzFeed’s stumble is highest profile misstep at a time when press is under greatest scrutiny," Washington Post, January 19, 2019. Here are the first two paragraphs:

"BuzzFeed News’ apparently mistaken story about Michael Cohen and President Trump is the highest profile misstep yet for a news organization during a period of heightened and intense scrutiny of the press, as the special counsel’s office issued a thorough rebuke of the website’s story published Thursday.

"Reporters at the Guardian, CNN, McClatchy News and other outlets [INCLUDING THE WASHINGTON POST, THEY FORGOT TO MENTION] have published disputed, suspect or uncorroborated stories about Trump and the investigation swirling around him since special counsel Robert S. Mueller III began his probe 21 months ago. Each instance has elicited cries of 'fake news' from the president and his supporters, stoking the claim that the mainstream media is biased and irresponsible." Which of course it is.

The Washington Post "reported" that Russia has infected a Vermont electric utility with malware, a completely false story. It also ran a smear job on progressive media outlets, falsely claiming they were all in league with Russia. There are plenty of other examples.

Racist Reactionary U.S. President To Deliver Nationally Televised Speech Tonight Demonizing Poor Immigrants Fleeing U.S.-Created Hellholes

Trump, a racist demagogue, has effectively commandeered numerous television and radio organs this evening to deliver a vicious attack on Central American migrants fleeing the poverty and terror that the U.S. creates and enforces by violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

Trump will continue to viciously smear these desperate migrants, who cannot even afford transportation but instead must walk a thousand miles or more to the U.S. border, as an invading horde of terrorists, criminals, and drug smugglers. He and his minions dismiss the women and children as props "pushed to the front" to dupe people.

"The" media, that is, the corporate propaganda system, has been falling all over itself to publicize the noxious propaganda speech Trump will deliver. As usual, they cannot give Trump enough coverage.

Trump is portrayed as a master manipulator, the same story told about the fascist president Ronald Reagan. In fact, both are virtually media creations. Without the media building them up, no one would know they exist. (Reagan of course is deceased.)

The migrants are portrayed as a "national security threat," verbiage "the" media adopts uncritically.  It is the U.S. that threatens them, even murdering their children, as it just did to two young Guatemalan children.

Of course, the U.S. has murdered countless tens of thousands (or more) children in its history, so the murder of two more by acts of depraved indifference homicide (denial of food, water, and timely medical care)  should not come as any surprise. An outrage, one of millions in U.S. history, but no surprise.

Trump is the equivalent of the Roman emperor Nero. A particularly noxious ruler, but one fundamentally of a piece with the empire he temporarily heads.

BBC Demonstrates How To Make Palestinians The Bad Guys

The BBC reported today that two Jewish colonialist conquerors were killed in the West Bank by a Palestinian "gunman." (Not an armed Palestinian patriot fighter, say.) But they cleverly left something out.

A few hours before that, Israeli Jewish troops conducted more of their ceaseless terror raids into the West Bank, murdering another three Palestinians on top of the tens of thousands they've murdered since 1948.

The picture looks a lot different when you include that fact. But the BBC is not in the business of providing objective news. It is in the business of political propaganda in the guise of news.

Political mythology claims the West Bank is under the control of collaborationist Palestinians called the "Palestinian Authority," headed by a corrupt leech named Mahmoud Abbas. He and his accomplices aided and abetted the murder of Yasir Arafat, by obstructing as long as possible the exhumation of Arafat's corpse to confirm the presence of radioactive polonium which the Israelis slipped into his food. Since then they've been as quiet as possible about the murder.

The PA's "security forces" are CIA-trained, which tells us all we need to know about the nature of those secret police thugs. Their job, like all CIA-trained "security forces" and "intelligence services" is the repression of the people they are assigned to contain.

Another way the BBC- and U.S. media too of course- cover up the fanaticism and imperialism of Israel is by never mentioning what the Israelis calls the West Bank- "Judea and Samaria." These fanatics are literally recreating something that existed over 2,000 years ago, combining ancient violent tribal supremacist ideology straight from the Old Testament with contemporary repressive military and police state technology.

Israel is indeed "part of the West" in the true sense of what that means- it is a nation of "white" imperialists conquering those designated as dark-skilled and subjugating them by force and violence and "settling" their lands, which hiding behind a facade of "democratic values."

[Thanks to Democracynow.org for reporting the facts the "venerable" BBC omitted from its version of reality.]