Monday, August 30, 2010

Hurricane Earl... and possible responses according to where it hits...

August 30, 2010: On the 5th anniversary of Huricane Katrina's landfall on the Gulf Coast, that 2nd "day of infamy" during the Bush Adminstration's reign of crime (9/11 being the first), a new potentiel threat to the US.

Hurricane Earl became a Category 3 storm this morning. It is expected by the National Hurricane Center to make a turn to the Northwest, and eventually recurve out over the Atlantic. However, the further west it goes before making its turn, the greater the chances of an impact on the US East Coast. If Earl does hit the East Coast, expect two different types of responses from the authorities, according to which demographic gets most affected.

Hurricanes Katrina and Andrew, for example, hit (mainly) low income black and low income white areas respectively: federal help was not forthcoming until almost a week after the event.
On the other hand, after the major fire-storm disaster in the San Diego area two years ago, FEMA did an incredibly efficient job, as did all the powers-that-be. Victims and evacuees were treated to free concerts, quality free hotel accommodation, free gourmet food, free counseling, yoga and massage therapy and more.

It just happened that the San Diego firestorm struck a (mainly) wealthy area, populated by many military and defense contractor people, many obviously with a lot of influence. In stark contrast, the evacuees from Katrina were treated like common criminals, at best: Some were even used as target practice by the domestic terrorist group Blackwater Inc. (now Xe).... some 400+ bodies recovered by rescue services in the wake of the storm had multiple bullet wounds from automatic rifle fire, according to the New Orleans coroner's reports, although this serial mass murder was kept well away from any article in the corporate media.

If by chance Hurricane Earl impacts the posh Hilton Head area, for example, expect the San Diego type response from FEMA etc. If Earl hits a primarily poor area, whether black or white, expect little response at best.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

West Virginia bombing incident... more duplicity.

There has just been an incident in W. Virginia, in which a bomb exploded, killing one person (probably the bomber), but apparently, terrorism has been ruled out. Other explosive devices were discovered by police... indicating that the bomber had planned multiple explosions.

This says it all: "Ferguson called the blast an "isolated incident" and said it was unlikely that the explosion was related to terrorism. We don't have much of that here."

Good heavens... someone builds a bomb, detonates it, a person is killed, and the powers-that-be consider that it's "not related to terrorism"? Earth calling West Virginia.... beep... beep....beep....

Perhaps they should be a little more honest and say it the way it is: Basically, the public in the US have been programmed and conditioned for decades that terrorism is a Muslim characteristic.. all Muslims are terrorists and all terrorists are Muslims: There is no muslim connection here, so this is merely a crime, nothing to look at here folks. If the perps' name had been Saeed (or Mohammed, or Ahmed etc.), the fearmongering mainstream media would have swarmed all over this like ants, as they did with the Times Square fake bomb incident, which didn't kill (and couldn't have killed) anyone.

How did our country get into such a duplicitous frame of "awareness"? Consider who owns the mainstream media, and then consider who provides all the translation services to the MSM as regards news from the Middle East (MEMRI), and then consider the words of William Colby, ex CIA chief, who was very frank and honest about the influence of the intelligence agencies, regarding the material that Americans are permitted to hear. Hatred and irrational fear of middle eastern people (non-Jewish of course) is one of the biggest factors here.

Friday, May 21, 2010

The Liberal Media. LOL

Liberal media? If journalists had the liberty to publish the articles they would wish to write in the mainstream media, then we might have a liberal media. But journalists, radio and TV presenters etc are shackled, hidebound and straitjacketed: as everyone knows, the further up the media hierarchy one goes the more "un-liberal" it gets. The way this ridiculously meaningless "liberal media" phrase gets bandied about would make any unsuspecting visitor believe that the corporate media boardrooms (where the major policy decisions are made) were populated by a bunch of forward-thinking, centered, people with a sense of decency and proportion. The media is no more "liberal" than the market is "free". The "liberal media" in the US is limited to city freebies and a few boutique magazines, and even they have taboos regarding a number of topics which should (if there was any justice or sense of priorities in the world) be in blazing 4 inch flashing headlines.

Liberal media... Goebbels would be proud of such doublespeak.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Kagan: Saudis princes count for much more than US families.

To protect the personal security and wellbeing of Saudi royalty/princes, Kagan stuck a big fat middle finger up at family members bereaved as a result of the 9/11 attacks. Some 6000 family members had filed lawsuits against the Saudi elite.

Kagan posited “that the princes are immune from petitioners’ claims” because of “the potentially significant foreign relations consequences of subjecting another sovereign state to suit.

Anyone who has read up on 9/11 (outside of the infantile gibberish regurgitated by the mainstream media of course) knows full well that the 9/11 attacks were not carried out by those alleged 19 Arabs (including 15 alleged Saudis), and Kagan probably also knows this is the case. The threat of a highly public lawsuit, with thousands of plaintiffs involved, following the money trail and other aspects of 9/11, where high level people in both the US and Saudi (and elsewhere) are subpoenaed and placed under oath in a courtroom, is the LAST thing that the powers-that-be wanted to happen, and get the subject under public scrutiny. Kagan (as well as the Supreme Court justices) were probably under enormous pressure to get this issue swept under the carpet ASAP.

But the message reaching mainstream American, if the media do their duty and report this, is as follows:

Elena Kagan to Saudi princes: "FUNNELING $$$ TO TERRORISTS IS OK,.... and the US supreme court agrees with me.
Elena Kagan to thousands of American families: GO FUCK YOURSELVES!!!!

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Silly season at the Supreme Court... yet again.

The controversial cross in the middle of the Mojave desert has been stolen. I cannot condone theft and vandalism, of course, but this is the inevitable result of the lack of forethought and awareness on the part of those who selected the final design of the monument. Same old.....

A war memorial honoring the dead should be "faith neutral". Perhaps some of those who died in the service of their country (or to be more accurate, multinational corporations) were Jews, or Buddhists, or atheists. A cross is an inappropriate design, and when placed on federal land, plainly provocative. The supreme court's decision was not only wrongheaded and unconstitutional, but pandered to the over powerful "Christian" right.

The article at yahoo.com, written by a seemingly geographically challenged A.P. reporter, mentions that the cross was erected some "200 miles northwest of Los Angeles". This would place the monument in the Pacific Ocean, perhaps the best place for it.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Health "care" or health terror?

The insane state of heath care in the US:

Many people think the problem is about "greedy doctors and surgeons". Yes, there a always a few bad apples in the bunch: this can be expected anywhere. The real problem has little to do with medical practitioners: Think in terms of the parasitic insurance scammers, ie the middle men who get between doctors and patients, while providing nothing except a huge set of bills; perhaps so the directors and senior management can own yet more luxury cars, mansions and yachts, and the shareholders can reap yet fatter dividends?

Then there's the fact that we here in the US have become so bad at communication skills that we resort to the practice of "sue first, maybe talk later". Doctors have to insure against being arbitrarily sued by and army of criminally unscrupulous lawyers serving an army of predatorial, opportunistic clients.

This uncivilized approach is reflected in our arrogant dealing with certain other nations: we bomb them first, rather than to find diplomatic solutions, perhaps because its more profitable for defense contractors with close relationships with DC lawmakers.

Friday, April 23, 2010

The real terrorists...

Here we go again. Killer Fungus is going to get us all! It doesn't take just bombs and bullets to terrorize the masses ... which in the USA is extraordinarily rare; the chances of dying via a terrorist's bomb in the USA is 150 times less likely than being struck by lightning... and on that occasion, it would most likely be courtesy of some domestic crazy, invariably a white man who wears the "Christian" religious label.

It is the corporate media that are doing most of the fearmongering, using the more subtle but equally effective approach by telling the people that we are all in grave danger from fungus, avian flu, Africanized killer bees, swine flu, Muslims or Martians. What's next? Crows? Godzilla?

Then there's the banks and credit agencies.... but that's not a "short" or "aside".

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Holocaust: Selective Denial and the ever present threat

Two days ago, April 11, 2010 was Holocaust Remembrance Day. This is a very tough subject to deal with, riddled with duplicity of a most disrespectful and unfortunate variety. Whenever we hear mention of the Holocaust, the “6 million” figure is consistently the fashionable number quoted; it has become common awareness, via historical revision, that the death toll in the Holocaust was “6 million”. However, this figure refers to the Jewish toll only, the group which suffered the largest numerical loss. For those who are unaware (which seems to be a large majority these days), the total death toll in the Holocaust ranges from about 11.5 million (the lowest estimate) to as many as 17 million, and perhaps even 26 million (the high estimate).
In addition to Jews, many other groups were targeted by the Nazis, including blacks, gays, academics of all variety, physically and mentally handicapped people, Soviet POWs, the Romani, Slavs, Poles, Jehovah’s Witnesses, communists, socialists, the unemployed, non-comformist youth, Freemasons, prostitutes and beggars. It has been estimated that the Romani (Gypsy) community might have suffered the largest *proportional* loss.

We must never forget about this, one of the most horrific events in human history. Sadly, the most visible parties associated with keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive, (the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Anti Defamation League) have relegated, ignored and forgotten the other Holocaust victims to the extent of pursuing a form of selective "Holocaust Denial". Does this lack of acknowledgment imply that the non-Jewish victims are “less worthy of mention”, or represent some kind of “off-message inconvenience?

The double standard is breathtaking, and the implications are ugly. Anyone recall what happens to those who are considered "inferior"?

*

Because the Jewish people bore the brunt of the Holocaust, obviously there is far greater general awareness amongst the Jewish community as a whole regarding the nature of the Holocaust and the extent of the Nazi regime's gross inhumanity. Unfortunately, a large section of public at large do not share this knowledge; the viewpoints cover a spectrum of ignorance, ranging from the simple unawareness of non-Jewish victims, to cancerous idiocy, such as belief that the "Holocaust never happened".

Despite the unspeakably horrific deeds planned and executed by the Nazis, the fact remains that these people were human beings, like you and I, and anyone else. They had homes and jobs, owned businesses, tended their gardens, they had wives, and families, they had friends and acquaintances, and essentially they led normal lives. Psychopaths were no more common in Germany than in any other nation.

Then, Hitler took the stage, and over a period of some 10 years or so, he built his Nazi party and political platform, with considerable support from American and European/British businesses and prominent families. The slide towards brutal fascism didn't happen overnight, but rather in a gradual process, a parallel of "immersing a frog in water, heating the water very slowly and gradually so their frog isn't aware that he is about to die from being boiled alive". The German public, decent ordinary people, unwittingly permitted a tyrant to take the reins and take the world into six years of hell.

One of Hitler's many obsessions was "national security". One of his methods of exercising such was the gradual erosion of civil rights; this program got a big boost when the Nazi party staging a "false flag" event on their own nation, the firebombing and destruction of the German "Reichstag" Parliament Building, for which they blamed the Communists; the German and world's media echoed the regime's explanation, and the German public were utterly duped. Hitler's evil agenda grew by deliberate marginalization of those groups targeted by his regime, for example, the forced and violent rehousing of Jews in ghettos (which eventually culminating with the systematic extermination of millions). He started invading nations which represented no threat. He maintained power by playing on the fears of the German people, using the threat of terrorism as a big stick. The rest is ugly history, which we still appear doomed to repeat.

Herman Goering was even arrogant enough to admit what they were doing, when he uttered these (in)famous words:

........... “Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” ............

If we are to make sure that such events "never happen again", as is allegedly the mission of those committed to Holocaust remembrance, then we must become aware of that most disquieting part of the Holocaust, which, unlike the actual Nazi perpetrators, is still very much alive. Humanity is no different in the 21st Century to what it was in the 1940s, or the 1300s, or at any time in recorded history. If such an appalling debacle could happen to a long established European democracy in the 1930s and 1940s, then what is to stop a similar thing happening elsewhere, in modern times, in a democracy, and all in the name of some misappropriated version of patriotism, and where the mainstream media dupes the public wholesale into supporting and believing a tyrant?

We are all human beings, flawed, susceptible beings with fears, and we are all equally at risk.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Apollo XIII: 40 years ago.

The crew and flight controllers of Apollo XIII are true heroes. This event, a truly amazing rescue effort on the part of NASA, happened in a day when the future looked bright, America was on top of the world and (apart from an insane, wasteful, expensive and idiotic war in Vietnam started after the people were lied to about the Gulf of Tonkin), people truly looked up to us. Now, after 8 years of infamy under a rogue, unelected, wannabe-fascist-of-a-president, and a year and a half under a cowardly weasel who has abandoned his base, fear and economic terrorism rule the roost, the banks are run by thieves, corporations have more rights than people, the economy is in a nosedive, and we are fighting two more insane, wasteful, expensive and idiotic wars... both of these also started on the basis of lies, regarding 9/11 and weapons of mass destruction.

America is almost 234 years old ; we should be doing better than this. We need more heroes like Gene Kranz in positions of public office. America's rescue mission is long overdue.

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Street Gangs... the terrorists we love

It is peculiar, that despite the government and media's obsession with Islamic terrorism (i.e. "all Muslims are terrorists and all terrorists are Muslims", an absurd notion heavily promoted by paranoid 'neoconservative' Islamophobic hatemongers in both the Bush and Obama Administrations), domestic street gang activity, which terrorizes millions of people throughout the U.S on a daily basis, both actively and passively, is largely ignored as regards the terrorism framework in which it belongs. Perhaps street gangs are not "Muslim" enough to warrant a terrorism moniker, according to State Department classification?

The chance of witnessing, and even more to the point, succumbing to an act of international (read Muslim) terrorism in the US is 100 times less likely than being struck by lightning.. and we all know how unlikely that is. However, we all know about domestic terrorist groups, ie street gangs, whose member annually murder thousands of people in all major cities nationwide; this violence being the primary byproduct of the illegal status of certain drugs, the second of course being the profit motive for the largely privately run prison industry.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

WikiLeaks: Serving freedom and the people.

From Michael Collins: U.S. Army Counterterrorism issued a report that said WikiLeaks is a threat to U.S. security, particularly in Afghanistan. The report says that the organization should be destroyed and offered a plan. Does the government really think it can destroy WikiLeaks or is the leaked report part of a plan to smear the organization so badly, it will lose supporters and money?

If Wikileaks has garnered such a paranoid and over-the-top reaction from the evildoers, THEN THEY MUST BE DOING SOMETHING RIGHT. Without a shadow of doubt, Wikileaks is not an enemy of this country... that title should be reserved for those who insist that "Wikileaks should be destroyed".

There are very few areas of life which are best kept secret,... obvious examples being nuclear weapons technology,or troops deployment on the battlefield (referring to war in the *genuine defense* of the United States, of course). Virtually ALL secrecy is used as an mechanism to protect powerful people from the law, and to permit the continuation of their exercise of power.

It is blindingly obvious that nothing of what Wikileaks has published has any bearing on the *national* security of the United States, but rather the job and financial security of well-placed individuals within the US Government, corporate, and military who are, and have been involved in serial criminal activity.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

What's the IDF doing in Haiti?

Heres a factoid set that makes very little sense:

Within 3 days after the quake on January 12, the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) had a comprehensive fully-equipped and staffed field hospital set up with the latest medical technology. They had to fly all the required personnel and hardware from half way around the world, at considerable expense. Is that efficiency or what? In contrast, the medical response effort from the US, despite being far closer at hand (ie just across the Caribbean), is painfully slow; the US Navy hospital ship is still on the way to Haiti and it will probably take a few more days to become operational.

There are 50,000 US citizens in Haiti (presumably there are many injuries (and fatalities)... yet the Jewish population in Haiti numbered less than 50 in 2007. Even though there's an obvious effort on the part of both nations to be seen to be a part of (or leading) what is being touted in the media as a "humanitarian response", what is with the enormous disparity in effort and efficiency, especially as, apart from the great PR scoop, the IDF has zero interest in Haiti... unless there are other factors that we are not aware of?

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Haiti Response: A convenient presidential makeover opportunity?

Former Presidents Bush and Clinton team up with Obama in an effort to raise funds for Haiti. 

Is this out of genuine concern and empathy with fellow humanity, or a PR exercise to give the office of the president a much needed makeover?

* Why the sudden concern by the US elite, on both sides of the poltical aisle,. for a bunch of people in one of the poorest nations on Earth, who contribute NOTHING to the bottom lines of big business? 
* Is the US (financial and military) involvement more to do with maintaining order and the continuity of a government which was the result of a US aided coup d'état in 2004?
* Is this a PR exercise, taken up by both major parties, and the establishment in general, to make it appear that the powers-that-be in the U.S. have an element of humanity, especially after the last 10 years of infamy?
* The ordinary American *PEOPLE*, on the other hand, have a long history of extraordinary generosity and concern when it comes down to disaster response. Look at the $billions collected in the wake of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the SE Asian Tsunami and more. 

Ordinary people act out of their own concern for our fellow humans, no matter their what religious/ethnic/national etc backgrounds. Governments, on the other hand, play on peoples' emotions, and at times like this, out comes the emotional blackmail card.

If, for the sake of a thought experiment, an earthquake leveled the Iranian capital Tehran killing 10s of thousands, you can bet your ass that the American people would step up to the plate and donate $Billions in aid (yet again) even though Iran/Iranians have been officially designated as "evil" by our media and members of a prior administration. There would also be a similar exercise in PR-mongering by the administration, while behind the scenes, a sizable portion of influential DC policy makers and think tanks would be High Fiving and laughing like drains. 

Cynical, harsh reality, or both?