Nugent explodes!

What a shame that the interviewer Jeff Glor failed to mention Nugent's inglorious past:

Ted Nugent has displayed cowardice of the worst order. He is one of those filthy traitors and hypocrites who advocate sending people to war, as long as his neck isn't on the line. 

He weaseled out of serving his country in Vietnam by pooping his pants, pretending to have a medical problem. Nugent is a First Order Chicken Hawk, complete with "Distinguished Fleeing Cross", and joins the Hall of Shame - alongside Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Jeb Bush, Paul Wolfowitz and a large roster of well placed influential, wealthy, privileged, yellowlivered cowards who actively avoided serving their country. Many in the Chicken Hawk Hall of Shame were the architects of, and the most prominent supporters of, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for corporate welfare.

Nugent should keep his anti-American trap shut and play his guitar. On seconds thoughts, don't bother with the guitar either.

Larry Silverstein, accessory before the fact to terror

My heart bleeds for Larry Silverstein, Bernie Madoff's buddyboy.

Larry Silverstein bought the lease on the World Trade Center from the Port Authority of New York shortly before the attacks. The buildings were in violation of NYC codes and it was estimated that the mandated asbestos removal/treatment from the seven buildings in the complex would have cost several $hundreds of millions. Many of the offices in the Twin Towers were vacant and the entire complex was losing money. Then he insured each building against separate terrorist attacks some 6 weeks prior to the attacks.

When asked as to why he bought the lease on the site, he said "it felt like the right thing to do". (?/!!)

If *I* had a business which was failing, which had several premises, then I insured each premises against arson attacks, and each building was burned to the ground shortly afterwards, I think the FBI would be quite interested, to say the least. Lucky Larry never was the subject of any inquiry; he is too well connected. He "Madoff" with some $4.5 billion in insurance money, no questions asked.

Imagine if the lease owner had been an Arab?

Oh my. One can't even go there.

Ayn Rand and Chicken Hawks. Cowards and hypocrites.

Hardly surprising that invoking Ayn Rand is avoided by conservatives - her non-credibility as the promoter of the hard-assed "rugged individual" has been firmly established. Rand was a fervent skeptic of welfare for the poor and the elderly. However, when it came to walking the walk, she was not that great at it... she gladly accepted government provided welfare while castigating others who did.

Ayn Rand's terminal duplicity is reminiscent of the Chicken Hawk brigade: those privileged, well connected cowards who advocate sending others to war, while demonstrating their own yellow-livered hypocrisy by deliberately avoiding military service, or dodging the draft. In their mindset, its right and proper to order others to front line, as long as their own butts are not on the line. 

Oddly, the majority of blatant chickenhawks are those who pretend to be so "pro national security". Indeed, the list in the ChickenHawk Hall of Shame covers most of the Bush Administration's Iraq and Afghanistan neoconservative war hawks... Many in the war-hungry corporate media and even some the "entertainment" (?!) industry also qualify. Recipients of the "Distinguished Fleeing Cross" include such folks as... here's a random list:

Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Pat Robertson, Doug Feith, David Koch, Roger Ailes (Fox News), Ted Olson, Michael Ledeen, Trent Lott, Joe Lieberman, Richard Perle, Newt Gingrich, Wolf Blitzer, Andy Card, Elliott Abrams, Clarence Thomas, John Bolton, Frank Gaffney, William Kristol, Rush Limbaugh, Ted Nugent, Britney Spears, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Brit Hume, Antonin Scalia, Gary Bauer and Rudy Giuliani....   and Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Skeletons rattle the closet, and the public remain selectively deaf. Ayn Rand is a liability is any argument posed by conservatives in this area.

London Olympics: playing on fear, missile batteries...

The London Olympics to be guarded by surface to air missile batteries? Is the world going completely crazy? Are we now in a Chantix like twilight zone where reality and nightmares co-mingle?

Let us never forget that Hitler also played on public fear of terrorists to gain, and maintain power. In 1933, his Nazi thugs set fire to the German Reichstag parliament building in a classic false flag terror attack, blamed "communists", and that was the beginning of the end. Hitler suspended the German Constitution, and assumed dictatorial powers, and the German public didn't dare speak out, for fear of being branded as "unpatriotic" and "giving in to the enemy".  We know what happened in the following years....

The Nazi war machine was funded by many well connected wealthy Americans, including the Bush and Harriman families... who were fervent believers in the pseudoscience of Eugenics, which Hitler has studied in formulating his Aryan master-race plan. Prescott Bush (W's granddad) was even busted twice under the Trading With The Enemy Act for doing major financial deals with Nazi Germany....  

*

On September 11, 2001.....  Yes, we know what happened in the following years.

The acorn doesn't land far from the oak.

Marc Grossman: accessory to mass murder?

Marc Grossman, the  US Special Ambassador to Pakistan and Afghanistan has some major baggage.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, while the attacks were under way, Marc Grossman was in a meeting at the Capitol in Washington DC with Mahmud Ahmed - head of the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence unit, Porter Goss - who later was to be appointed head of CIA by President George W. Bush (only to resign mysteriously shortly afterwards, for no given reason), and Senator Bob Graham, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Why is this so weird, one may ask? Well for starters, it was on 9/11. Secondly, Mahmud Ahmed was the man who authorized several international wire transfers of up to $100,000 each, paid to the alleged lead hijacker on 9/11, Mohamed Atta. After the meeting, Mahmud flew straight back to Pakistan, resigned from the ISI and hasn't been in public life since.

In a just world, Marc Grossman needs to be investigated by the FBI. But in today's world. that is like asking the Mafia to investigate John Gotti's activities.

Ron Paul: the only candidate worth voting for, so far...

Commentary on Rep. Ron Paul from CNN's David Frum:

Frum's commentary is typical corporate media weasel-talk. Anyone who the mainstream media regard as a "clear threat" to the current, terminally corrupt political establishment in America, must be worth voting for.

Any alternative to the Obama administration and its neocon directed obsession with a 'paranoid maximum security state', and trashing our Constitution, is not only most welcome, but essential for the survival of this nation.

Even though I am a liberal, Ron Paul will get my vote over all the establishment candidates

As in the US, so in Russia...

LINK here

The Russians now have a taste of what we Americans experienced in November of 2000, and 2004. Two fraudulent elections in which criminal elements allied to the Republican Party gained control of the vote in two crucial states. In 2000, Florida was ground zero, where 10s of thousands of black voters were systematically struck off the voter rolls by Database Technologies, a "front company".

In 2004, Ohio was election fraud central, where every method was used, including outside parties taking over the central tabulators via the phone lines, and physically swapping hard drives. The Russian people must remove the criminal elements within their government, by force if necessary, just like what we here in the US *SHOULD* have done early in 2001. By being complacent after the "Cheney Administration was sworn in, we failed our country, and look what happened on 9/11/2001 as a result.

Michele Bachmann hates Muslims

LINK HERE: Ron Paul on Jay Leno Show, Friday December 16, 2011.

It's not just Bachmann who hates Muslims. Its the entire Washington DC establishment (and most of middle America) that hates Muslims. The hatred of Muslims (and Arabs) has been indoctrinated into the minds of mainstream America ever since the end of WWII.

If there is any discomfort re. Ron Paul's pointedly accurate statement, it would is that the little secret that nobody dared to discuss is now in the open. I don't particularly like Ron Paul's platform, but he is honest and straightforward, which is far more than can be said about *any* of the others, barring Gary Johnson.

Occupy. Wall. Street.

Occupy is not against free enterprise. It's against a system that rewards BANKSTERS AND CORPORATE CRIMINALS through entrenched cronyism, fraud, corruption, extortion, greed, usury, embezzlement, theft and blackmail. The perps know they can keep doing it because nobody in authority has the will to stop it... because the people in authority are rewarded by the same, evil ,status quo. 1776 will have its day, again.

Banksters... I shit 'em.

When loans are doled out by pimps and thieves with extortionate interest rates and demands with menaces attached... IT IS RIGHT TO DEFAULT. Repayment would only encourage the psychopaths in the financial world to more criminal activity. The Greeks MUST adopt a zero tolerance attitude towards the banksters and financial crime cartels.

A busted system attracts "busted people", in other words, leeches and predators who have privileged access, and take advantage of such a busted system to screw others and enrich themselves.

We have to remember that, most of the big money is "made" by moving money around. Each maneuver accrues interest, thus devaluing currencies and causing inflation. *Interest* is problem, combined with the presence of a disproportionate number of psychopaths in the banking sector.

I don't like Sharia Law as a system (neither does anyone I know), but with interest-free finance, the Muslims have one over we in the West. Sharia Law as regards Islamic banking is working relatively well, and they have not been susceptible to the insane Ponzi type schemes and derivative scams which have caused so much trouble with *our* banks.

Thomas Edison said that "interest is the invention of Satan". The revered inventor who contributed so much to humanity and modern life undoubtedly had to deal with banker parasites who are very adept at making money while contributing nothing to the world.

Wall St. protests continued....

This is not so much an "anti-capitalist" protest, but to draw attention to getting Wall St. and the banking industry to abide by the law, and to get the laws governing the banking and finance sectors policed, just for a change. Is that such a tall order?

If we, as members of society, have to follow the law, then why are the Wall Streeters largely exempt? Why do so many Americans, especially those on the right wing - who are constantly trumpeting about "getting tough on crime" - remain mute on this issue, or even openly supporting the banksters and corporate parasites?

Do people honestly feel that the financial sector has the right to extort, defraud, rob and pillage without penalty? In a sane world, the answer is a big round NO! But the world today is an asylum, and the inmates are in control.

Michael Moore at Wall St.

Love him or hate him, Michael Moore is a self-made American, who made his money on creative effort and hard work. In other words, he is living the so-called "American Dream". He may be fat and unshaven, but he's not a criminal.

Many of the wealthiest on Wall St. made their money via being in positions of privilege, insider trading, convoluted accounting scams, and financial parasitism (pushing money around to make money)

The difference between Michael Moore and the Wall Street crew, is that the former makes real money from a tangible product, and the latter makes fake money out of thin air.

That errant satellite.....

The government has satellites which can "read newsprint from geostationary orbit", but cant locate and track an object the size of a school bus, re-entering the atmosphere in a fiery blast visible to the naked eye? Gimme a frackin' break!

Coming to you from the same media that told us of the "rescue" of Jessica Lynch, the "dead incubator babies" in Kuwait, Saddam Hussein's ability to attack the US with miniature airborne drones loaded with sarin gas, and the miraculous ability for random office fires to collapse buildings at free fall acceleration for the first time in history.

LIARS!

"Hikers" released by Iran...

This is one of the most LENIENT treatments for espionage I can recall. Hikers, my a$$! Why would three US citizens travel half way across the world, to go "hiking" in an unfriendly nation when there are so many wonderful, beautiful and challenging places in the US to hike without being harassed?

Now, imagine the situation in reverse... three Iranians illegally in the US, apparently "hiking"? Gitmo, held without charge for years, no access to counsel, branded as terrorists in the corporate media, tortured, and then, 10 years later, still in solitary, no charges, no legal counsel, torture and still branded as terrorists.

The Lockerbie "bomber" near death.

Link here.

al Megrahi's trial was one of the worst travesties of justice in Scottish history. It is so plain that this guy was railroaded and the case was rigged. All the evidence against him is either hearsay or has since been roundly debunked.

The mandate from both US and UK governments was "get someone, get anyone", as long as he has an Arabic name, invoke phony "national security" language to restrict information and evidence in court, and the supine, cowardly corporate media will play along and write history, diverting attention away from the real perpetrators, the identities of whom REMAINS UNKNOWN.

The worrying part of this stinking case, is that the bomber or bombers, are probably still be on the loose. Who knows what they may have done since Lockerbie, and how many people have been killed? It could be in the thousands, and not necessarily in either Europe, Africa or the Middle East.

Enough of the wacky Libyan conspiracy theories. Infantile baby-formula bull-buscuits for the gullible masses in their comfort zone bubbles.

"A lie can make its way half way around the world before the truth has got its boots on". Mark Twain.

Banksters: the real looters

It's so easy to criticize looters who ripped off some electronics and tennis shoes... they are common criminals, and should get dealt with severely by the courts.

However.. put it into perspective: We seem to be blissfully unaware of the biggest looting spree in human history - the wholesale rape, pillage and ransacking, of TRILLIONS of dollars, from the taxpayers of western nations by the international banksters and corporate Wall Street insider elites, in 2008 and 2009, and continuing to this day... these guys do it just because they can, and can threaten politicians. It's just a big game in the fevered, sociopathic minds of those scum, and the losers are the ordinary taxpayers. These super-criminals are above and beyond the reach of the law... they do golf and dinner parties with favored lawmakers.

In the light of the real mega-crime wave of the millennium, the sense of proportion and priority appears wildly out of whack.

Taxation!

To anyone complaining about taxation: think about where 60%+ of your tax dollars go: The Pentagon and the humingous corporate welfare black hole that is “defense” spending. The corruption and scamming that is the Pentagon’s budgetary (mis)management is a conman’s wet dream.

On the afternoon of September 10, 2001, Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced in a US Senate hearing that the Pentagon was “cannot account for $2.3 Trillion in transactions….”. For the mathematically challenged, that’s $2.3 Trillion, or $2,300 Billion, or $2,300,000,000,000. If you spent $1 million each day (imagine that!), for the next 6,300 YEARS, that would pretty much cover this missing money, pilfered from the US taxpayers in recent years.

So, what happened as a result of what was arguably the biggest rip-off in human history? SQUAT…. everyone was too stunned and busy, in a state of shock and awe, flying flags and pretending to be “patriotic”, to do anything: the 9/11 attacks happened on the following morning. And the thieves were never brought to justice.

Talk about going soft on crime!

Norwegian terrorist: an ardent supporter of Zionism.

Breivik got much of his “inspiration” and hatred from the likes of prominent Islamophobes Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz, and the political philosophy of the neoconservative cartel which stacked the 2001 Bush Administration, whose members admittedly “craved an event like 9/11″ to get their otherwise unsellable “endless war” agenda up and running.

Whether there is a “mass movement” as described by Ledeen in the above article is immaterial: many innocent people were murdered in cold blood for doing nothing worse than becoming politically aware of a terminally unjust and perpetually horrific situation in Gaza, and showing moral support for this unfortunate population under heavy manners.

The new yellow journalism: Goebbels would be proud

Much of what we hear in the corporate media, as regards controversial events for example, war and terrorist events, is single sourced, for example, a particular government spokesman, or a particular government agency. The Iraq war of 2003, and the 9/11/2001 terror attacks were prime examples.

In the case of the Iraq war, the entire corporate media took government pronouncements on Saddam Hussein's alleged "weapons of mass destruction" as a religious truth which cannot be denied. All the networks featured an endless procession of self-proclaimed experts and pundits, retired colonels and generals, defense analysts, Pentagon officials, White House propagandists, politicians on both "sides" of the aisle, defense sector spokespeople and more, all touting material that was known to be 100% false. What was even worse, is that the actuality of Iraq's 100% lack of WMDs, was already known by everyone in the relevant circles of those promoting the war. Philip Zelikow even admitted such, when asked about the reasoning behind choosing "WMDs" as the rationale for invasion: making a case for WMDs was the best option to achieve consensus. The story put forward by the man known as "Curve Ball" was known to be false, and he was known to be an unreliable witness with criminal tendencies. The Iraq war was largely "justified" and started on the basis of this one story, known to be false, from one person: A single, dishonest source, and the corporate media, in true Goebbels-wannabe obedience, regurgitated it in lockstep. 4500 American soldiers and 500,000+ Iraqi civilians were killed, and defense contractors made a killing, and the American people paid $1.2 trillion as a result this stack of corporate-media/government single sourced garbage.

As regards news from the Middle East in general, even many of the translations are being single sourced: MEMRI is the organization used by the US corporate media to translate most of what we hear from the region, from Arabic or Farsi or other language/dialect, to English. MEMRI, as has become well-known, has a very checkered history as regards accuracy, and an intent to fool or mislead readers.

Just as controversially, as regards 9/11, what we have all heard, and led to believe as the infallible truth, is as a result of the long, protracted, and detailed phone calls, allegedly sent from passengers about the alleged hijackers, most especially the infamous call to former Solicitor General Ted Olson from his wife Barbara, who was allegedly on AA Flight 77 when it allegedly hit the Pentagon. However, according to the FBI (referencing the case transcript in the trial of the alleged 20th hijacker Zararias Moussouai), *zero* cell phone calls were connected from Flight 77, and specifically, none as regards the case of Barbara and Ted Olson. Furthermore, according to a study of cellphone connectivity from the air by a certain Professor A. K. Dewdney, it was highly unlikely that any of the alleged phone calls could have been successfully connected as alleged, since the technology to do just that did not exist in 2001. The first reliable "in-air cellphone technology" was demonstrated by Qualcomm in 2004, a full three years later.

In other words, the entire backbone of the version of events on 9/11, relayed to us via the corporate media is not just single sourced, but also hearsay. It appears that we tend to give credence to versions of events that fit our comfort zone, and the art of not just journalism, but also how we write history is being poisoned for the sake of convenience, or worse. The corporate media, in the mandate to appear superficially 'patriotic'... a government lapdog as opposed to watchdog.... appears to have become no more reliable than a very well sponsored and far reaching blogger.

Fukushima news blackout

The cessation of coverage of the Japan catastrophe is most likely as a result of the lobbying power of the defense and nuclear power industry: the nuclear disaster at Fukushima is already likely to have caused that 35% spike in infant mortality in the Pacific Northwest, since the anomaly started a week or so after the radiation plume spread across the area.

The nuclear power industry, in the US at least,primarily exists not for the civilian infrastructure and generating power, but for the manufacture of atomic weapons: the very bad PR generated by the Fukushima multiple meltdowns, and the Chernobyl scale radioactive pollution would have been disastrous for the US (and worldwide) nuclear industry, and could have faced major funding hurdles, that is, had the media covered the story to the extent that was justified.

Since the US mainstream media is owned by the same corporate cartels that benefit from warmongering, (such as General Electric etc etc) it's hardly a surprise that coverage was strictly censored after 2 weeks or so.

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.

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.

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.

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!!!!

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.