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.

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.

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?

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?

Where capitalism and brutality merge.

If there was any justice in the world, the international community would have imposed severe economic sanctions on China decades ago, on account of their long and continuing horrific human rights record. China has now merged capitalism with their totalitarianism and has become an economic powerhouse. Money trumps civilized values every time; a sad but true indictment of human nature.

Climategate... c'mon folks.

Tt is the potential interference in the so-called "free market" that is fueling the ire of those who regard the human factor in global warming as a "lie", or a "scam". Suddenly, a long-standing 'way of life' in the US, namely the freedom to conduct business exactly as we please, is being threatened by the specter of some faceless international regulators telling us what we can and cannot do, in an area which we have dominated for a century or more. (How dare they!). Our energy M.O. has given rise to the national infra-structure as it stands currently, and to have some global regulations forced upon us is an absolute no-no. To be dictated to by some non-US body, comprising people of all nationalities is akin to giving up a part of our national sovereignty. The allegiance of many groups who lead the skeptics' charge tend towards the "libertarian" end of the political spectrum, especially in regards to the sacred principle of "keep government out of my business". 

When politics interferes with science and people (from either side of an argument) fudge the facts, cook the books, dry-lab the studies and generallycheat to bolster their political stance, or to save face, there are no winners. The last one standing never wins; we all lose.

Iran's next in line... when will the rain of terror start?

.... most likely courtesy of the US and/or UK. The terrorist group Jundulluh has claimed responsibility for the attack which killed some 30 people including 6 senior Iranian military personnel. 

What is Jundullah anyway? Even the sanitized wikipedia entry lists alleged international support and funding, from countries including the US, UK, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Pakistan. Iran is already accusing the US and UK of involvement in this latest bombing, and this history of US/UK etc involvement appears solid. The degree of US funding appears to be around $400,000,000. Even the very establishment-friendly Daily Telegraph national newspaper published an article in 2007 in which links between CIA and Jundullah, as well as black operations to destablize Iran's government were approved and sanctioned by the Bush Administration. Significantly, this group is not included in the State Department's FTO (foreign terrorist organization) list, even though it is far more active in bombing outrages and other incidents of terrorism than most of the other organizations listed. 



Then there is this article in the UK Daily Telegraph. A quote extracted:

Quote:

The operations are controversial because they involve dealing with movements that resort to terrorist methods in pursuit of their grievances against the Iranian regime. In the past year there has been a wave of unrest in ethnic minority border areas of Iran, with bombing and assassination campaigns against soldiers and government officials.

So, what is the difference between the activities attributed to "al Qaida' and those associated with Jundullah? Bombings and assassinations are all terrorist acts, regardless of the identity of the perps are. But is "al Qaida" any less involved with the US government than Jundullah? Maybe not. Osama bin Laden is (was?) is alleged to be the leader of "al Qaida", but the sworn testimony of whistleblower and former FBI Turkish-American translator Sibel Edmonds alleges that Osama bin Laden was working for the US Government right up until 9/11. Ms Edmonds' direct quote:

Quote:

“I have information about things that our government has lied to us about. I know. For example, to say that since the fall of the Soviet Union we ceased all of our intimate relationship with Bin Laden and the Taliban - those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11.”

Of course the mainstream US media has not reported on this story, presumably because it makes the "boogeyman out to get us" which they have been promoting 24/7 for 8 years appears more like the "boogeyman who is fighting for certain interests within the US government".

So, there is a welter of evidence that the US (UK and others) supports and funds terrorist groups, on the tax payer...(that makes us all guilty of funding terrorism). It's yet one more in thousands of similar pieces of evidence that the "war on terrorism" is nothing of the kind, and should be viewed with the utmost skepticism. It appears that the previous administration were controlled by thugs, and by default, so is the current one, in that the groups we accuse of doing terrible things are doing it on our dollar.... and we're being fed the usual pack of lies to justify the continuation of state-sponsored thuggery.

I have to add that despite the fact that the Iranian government under Ahmadinejad and the fundamentalist clerics is not exactly a paragon of decency (!!), it remains inappropriate that the nation of Iran remains singled out as the target for the next Israeli/Neocon demand for a war of aggression. As with Iraq and Afghanistan , it will not be the *government* of that country which will face a rain of terror from the skies.... it will be the blameless Iranian people.

The war on drugs... BOGUS!

In 2001, the Portuguese government decriminalized the possession/use of most "recreational" drugs, including marijuana, heroin and methamphetamines. Statistics reveal that since then, fewer people are turning to drug use, and the number of people seeking treatment for drug abuse has soared.... on other words, the policy has proven to be a resounding success.

In the US (and many other places in the world), the Portuguese approach has been roundly ignored. Why is this?

If the powers-that- be really are concerned with maintaining the health of the nation in the area of drug abuse, then nobody has paid a blind piece of attention to this (and other) studies. It appears that either
(a) the powers-that-be don't give a flying fuck about public health issues, or
(b) the powers-that-be don't give a flying fuck about public health issues unless profitable to wellplaced corporations, or
(c) the powers-that-be keep things the way they are because of laziness, inertia and/or inefficiency, or
(d) the powers-that-be keep things the way they are because changing things would mean 'loss of face" for certain high profile people who have championed the so-called "war on drugs", or
(e) the powers-that-be keep things the way they are because going Portugal's way would likely see a decrease in revenue streams for certain wellplaced parties who benefit from the illegality of these substances, or
(f) the powers-that-be keep things the way they are because America is very traditionalist in approach, and old habits die hard, or
(g) the powers-that-be keep things the way they are because drug abuse is rampant amongst inner city minorities, and we are a nation which actively maintains "institutionalized racism". A way of keeping the black and latino communities down is to keep them fighting amongst themselves, and the proliferation of street gangs is a most effective vehicle for such. The story of widespread cocaine importation in the 1980s which was written up in the San Jose Mercury, and the deliberate setting up of crack houses in numerous cities simultaneously and specifically targeting the black communities, is witness to this.

Lunar Landings

40 years ago, the Apollo program climaxed with the first manned mission to the Moon, Apollo XI. Today, there a few people who claim that this program did not take place, and the whole thing was staged in a studio in Burbank, or wherever. For those debunkers, consider this:

The Soviets, for military and security reasons, were closely monitoring the Apollo program at a point when the US and USSR were locked into the arms race and the Cold War, and the prestige of being the first to the Moon and back was enormous. Had the Apollo program been faked in even the slightest way, the Russians would have jumped on it and exposed the fraud for the world's media, to embarrass the US at a time when bogged down in a long, unpopular war in Vietnam; the Soviets would have so loved that! The Soviets reluctantly accepted they had lost the race to the Moon.

Then, there were 6 more successful lunar missions, and also the "successful failure" of Apollo XIII, until the program was abandoned some 2 years later. We would have had to pull the wool over the Soviets' eyes in 7 consecutive, incredibly expensive fakes. The Russians remained mute.

Yes, the Apollo landings did happen, of that there is no doubt. And best wishes and happy 40th Anniversary to all who participated in this wonderful pioneering and peaceful adventure.

Iranian election, and the events of 56 years ago...

One banner which reappears time and again in the recent election protests: "Coup 1953, Coup 2009". Iranians (who like other middle easterners appear to have longer attention spans than we westerners) haven't forgotten how 56 years ago, their parliamentary democracy was violently overthrown in CIA led coup, Operation TP-AJAX, to be replaced by a vicious dictatorship, in order to further the profit margins of private US and European (oil) corporations. 

Obama even acknowledged this event in a recent speech in Cairo to the world's muslim community where he maintained that the US "isn't at war with the world's Islamic community" ...  honestly... (!!). But then he admonished Iran regarding "behaving themselves in the global community", as regards their alleged (but unproven) program to manufacture nuclear weapons. Such a flagrantly duplicitous statement doesn't go down well with Iranians, makes the US appear even more arrogant and is more of a diplomatic faux pas than helpful. The US (and Iranian) people would obviously prefer stable relations between the two countries, but as far as the US (and current Iranian powers-that-be) are concerned, that seems to be entirely a different matter.

Its probably more about flowing testosterone on both sides, and the paranoia of "losing face", or seen to be "weak".... not to mention the recurring problem of hardline religious conservatives such as Iranian president Ahmedinejad, and others who shall remain nameless

Auditing the "Federal" Reserve....

HR 1207, introduced by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) has now got 224 sponsors, with Rep. Kucinich (D) OH being the 218th, thus taking HR 1207 out of Committee to a full debate in Congress. All indications are that this Bill is going to have a rough time, especially in the Senate, and will probably get defeated, and Federal Reserve is marshaling all the lobbying power at their disposal to keep this bill from becoming law.

This bill is seeking accountability and transparency re. the "Federal" Reserve. Why would such a standard concept in an official institution be seen as such a threat? What kind of practices might be threatened (or even stopped) by the legal requirement of such accountability?

My speculation on this, is that because of the (private, non-Federal) nature of the "Federal" Reserve Bank, it will be ruled that Congress has no jurisdiction over the rules and laws governing how the "Fed" works, and the Bill will be quietly dropped for such technical reasons. Of course, the national media will ignore the issue and accuse those who level any criticism of the "Fed" as being wacko conspiracy theorists. Such is the current state of play in the corporate media arena.

Piracy....

The Indian Ocean is massive and thus its impossible to know exactly what goes on the recent piracy off the East African coast. However, we believe mostly what we want to believe, prefer to believe, or are more comfortable believing, and what story gets the endless repetition in the national media. The clear winner in the story stakes, is that these Somalis are a bunch of opportunists without a cause. The probability that piracy emerged as a result of foreign corporate irresponsibility/criminality combined with the lack of formal policing/coastguards in the waters off the Somali coast, is heresy. 

The squashing of unorthodoxy has long been a national pastime, and its never been more popular as in the last few years.

The pot calling the kettle... part 24539

The paranoia about Iran and North Korea is absurd and overblown beyond all proportion. The wars in which both nations have been involved in modern history have been local affairs, against their neighbors; Iraq in the 1980s and South Korea in the 1950s respectively. In Iran's case, they were attacked by US ally Iraq. Neither Iran nor NK have a current intent, or a past track record of far-reaching imperialism accompanied by wanton violence, and neither have the means to even fantasize along those lines, let alone accomplish such. The temptation for NK to develop nuclear weapons, and the possibility that Iran might want to follow suit, is to lessen the chances of being attacked, end of story. The US (and allies) have a track record of initiating dozens of wars in recent decades.. this cannot be denied.. and it is difficult or impossible to rationalize "national security" as a reason for any of them. 

The likelihood of Iran attacking a European country, or the United States, is as far fetched as aliens landing on the W.H. lawn. The possibility of the US, or Israel, (or a US led coalition) attacking Iran is very real however, and the neocons have been itching for such a conflict since 1999. We're addicted to making war, but we are in denial about it.

Some people are after a war with North Korea? (!!)

If NK (or rather lunatic Kim and his crazy government) is a genuine security threat to the region (as opposed to a bit of testosterone-induced bluster with the odd nuke test and missile launch), then perhaps the nations in that region should deal with it. Perhaps they should organize their own coalition of the willing, issue a "disarm or else" ultimatum, and go to war if as a last resort. I say the US should stay out of it this time around. We're already in two endless, major wars against countries on the far side of the globe, neither of which were a proven threat to US national security, and which have cost our tanking economy $1 trillion so far. We can't afford a 3rd simultaneous war, especially if it spreads and drags other countries in (no names). We've also proven ourselves a lousy, godawful global policeman for the last few decades... so lets stop digging that hole any deeper. If we lay off this time around, maybe we may gain a little bit of respect and regain some friendships (perhaps even make some, yikes what a concept), after the last 8 years debacle. But maybe we're so addicted to conflict that the powers-that-be won't be able to resist another fight.

Bloomberg, and his weasel brigade....

Regarding the recent arrest of patriot Luke Rudkowski, after asking "His Excellency", NYC Mayor Bloomberg a difficult, but relevant question:

What pathetic little weasels Bloomberg and his cronies are. It is becoming more and more apparent that our alleged "representatives" are doing their utmost to insulate themselves from the people they are *allegedly* representing. This denotes either complicity in criminal activity (thus questions from the public are unwelcome), or their opinion of ordinary people is so low that they cannot stoop to addressing the questions of what, in their kinds, are the "unwashed masses". It is also abundantly clear, all over the world, that police departments' priorities are to protect these mega-criminals from challenges by the people, thus further insulating them from the awkward questions that are impossible to answer without telling blatant lies and obvious fabrications.

This kind of police activity is becoming de rigeur here in the West: one famous case last year involved a journalism student, in a *privately run class*, asking Sen. John Kerry an awkward question: the police present in the room were obviously under instruction to use force to quell any verbal challenges, and the man was instantly assaulted with a taser, without warning, repeatedly, while retrained on the ground, merely for using his First Amendment rights as a citizen of the United States, for asking a question which has not been answered satisfactorily (by Kerry of anyone else), to date, in any public forum. As the West degenerates into various degrees of proto-fascism and oligarchy, expect more of this in the coming years. Perhaps another false flag terrorist attack is on the cards, in order to speed up the general process of the destruction of freedom.

If a politician cannot, or refuses to answer questions from the public in a representative democracy, then he has no right to be in office. So the question now is, if the public are now forbidden from asking questions, do we still have any semblance of a real democracy? The answer is a clear, resounding, NO.

Psychopaths are us?

Anyone who *orders* torture must have some degree of psychopathic personality disorder, at the least, especially in the knowledge that torture produces garbage "intelligence". Torture is fundamentally against any principles of civilized human conduct. Those who *execute* methods of torture would, of course, benefit from having a psychopathic kind of personality, but the consequences of disobeying orders is likely to be considered more important than any moral issues raised by torturing people; in the military, shit rolls downhill, (aka chain of command).

There are people in very senior positions in this administration who exhibit psychopathic traits. Furthermore, when many of the neoconservatives within (and associated with) the Bush Administration have a blatant track record of hatred and phobia towards arabs and muslims, and that a principle aim of the neoconservatives within this administration is to demonize the muslim community worldwide..... it's hardly surprising that torture would be part of their M.O. They probably even derive pleasure from the knowledge that they have the power and motivation to inflict great pain from the comfort of their offices and executive suites.

Fred Phelps and inverted Christianity...

Today, gays and lesbians protested outside the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka KS, bastion of the "Rev". Fred Phelps' agenda of bile and hatred spewing. Its amazingly odd that such bizarre interpretations of Christianity can gain mainstream traction...but I guess in Kansas, anything goes?

These hatemongers cherrypick the bible looking for whatever fits their preordained agenda, while ignoring the legion of material that contradicts, or is inconvenient. If these folk are so entangled with following Biblical dogma to the letter, then they should perhaps be demonstrating other such "abominations" such as working on the Sabbath, or eating shellfish etc. Why this medieval old Testament focus on gay and lesbian people, especially considering that Jesus himself never said anything against homosexuality?

Cherrypicking the most convenient or conclusion-friendly facts is the same method used by the 9/11 Commission regarding their fatally flawed "investigation" into the September 11, 2001 attacks, or the Bush Administration's methods when it came to justifying their preordained war against Iraq. The pre-selection of material that fits a pre-ordained conclusion, or agenda (while ignoring everything that doesn't fit) is the classic methodology of bad science. But since we live in times of a War Against Science™ on many fronts, such manipulation and distortions of reality are par for the course.

McCain and the media vultures

I have no love for McCain, and I really dread the possibility of a "President McCain"... but this nascent media circus re. a "possible affair with a lobbyist" is as much BS as the other "sex scandal" that everyone was obsessing about 9 years ago. IF McCain had had an affair with a lobbyist, so fucking what? It's McCain's (alleged) business, his wife's business, and the lobbyist's (alleged) business, and nobody else's! When we get so bent out of shape regarding gossipy trivia, an indiscretion in the PRIVATE LIFE of a politician (and not even proven), while all the real gnarly stuff gets glossed over and ignored, things are in a really sad way.

Our nation's consciousness is a mess, and our priorities seem to be more ass backwards than ever before.

Obama for "change"? Pull the other one!

"CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN.... STAND FOR CHANGE" .....

Amongst the current crop of front-running candidates, who is going to represent and support "change"? Obama talks part of the talk, and makes it appear on the surface as if he is for the people...(he's damned good at it, he is an excellent orator). However, if he prevails in November, he will not walk any of the walk (let alone half of it). He's 2 moves in front of the rest of us, and the muscle that will be assembled in an Obama White House are 5 moves in front of him.

There will be no change, apart from the spokesperson in the form of the CEO. It will remain business as usual. Another 4 years of the current "in pur faces" approach could result in civil unrest, and the most effective way of defusing that potential is to get behind a charismatic intelligent person with communication skills (albeit insincere ones), i.e. someone who can string a sentence together, to present a fresh, more velvet gloved approach to towards whatever kind of society that the powers-that-be would like to realize, or impose upon us.

Having said this about Obama... Clinton would be several degrees worse. I also believe that the majority of America isn't ready for a black person of any gender, or a woman of any race (sadly).

Hence my prediction that McCain will win in November, by fair means or foul.

Let's see.

Election Observations....

There is no doubt about the Democratic Party's ability to select two candidates to run for president and vice president. However, can a nontraditional/unconventional team consisting of a white woman and a black man win the hearts of "middle America" over a traditional/conventional Republican pair; I have my doubts, unfortunately. I don't have a list of democratic "electables": any candidate which represents the base, or core values of the party (for example Dennis Kucinich), as opposed to "Republican-Lite", have been been ignored by the media, and thus been denied the publicity and face recognition required for any hope as a front-runner. The lion's share of the attention has been given to Clinton and Obama. Similarly on the the Republican side, the candidate closest to traditional values of the party, Ron Paul, has been actively shut out of the circus by the media.

The majority of the voting public are starved for the time to do the necessary reading/research into the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates. Had these two designated outsiders (Paul and Kucinich) been given the same degree of attention and publicity given by the media to the favorites (Romney/Huckabee/McCain Clinton/Obama), then maybe we would see their percentages up in a similar range? I guess we will never know, because the media will continue to ignore them. Why does the media ignore them?.... now that's a hard one to know, but I very much doubt that "merit" comes within several light years of being a parameter in that equation.......

NewsMax: virtual toilet paper that I wouldn't wipe my virtual ass with.

Hands up... who is getting spammed relentlessly by NewsMax?

To paraphrase John Cleese's retort to Manuel in Fawlty Towers, these folks are such a "waste of (cyber)space". Their latest garbage is beyond ridiculous, or what.. to claim that the National Intelligence Estimate report on the lack of a nuclear weapons program in Iran is the work of "Iranian extremists" score highly on the "giggle factor" index. So Ahmedinejad and company are the CIA's paymasters? Tell that to the Israelis! (rolls eyes).

My little morning greeting to these imbeciles at NewsMax went as follows.

Good Morning Appeasers,

If you really want people to see the world the way you see it, how about delivering some genuine news items, rather than episodic, ridiculous conspiracy theories and cheap Bush Admininstration propaganda. Why talk down to the US public as if everyone is a bunch of total morons? You output is reminiscent of a hybrid of Baghdad Bob, Joseph Goebbels and "Dick and Jane". I guess thats par for the course re. the likes of Bill O'Reilly and company: see who can shout the loudest, content be damned!

So please quit spamming me. Thankyou.

Bloggulator (sic).

Maybe, someone, somewhere on the payroll of Ruddy's little "Weekly World News" wannabe empire, might wake up.

Democracy... It's sadly over in the United States, no doubt.

To what extent does "publicly elected government" (as is popularly perceived) affect peoples' lives, as compared with powerful privately run institutions? Unelected bodies, for example the banking system, the mortgage and credit card companies, credit rating organizations, corporate employers, health management organizations etc. etc., have a huge influence in directing and shaping people's everyday existence, and the less a person earns , the greater extent that these institutions have in inflicting their will, which runs the gamut from "minor inconvenience", all the way to what is becoming known as "financial terrorism".

The main contact most people have directly with "government" comes around in April each year, when taxtime comes around. Apart from that (as well as any need to contact the emergency services), contact with "government" remains largely indirect. And then, one has to examine "government", to determine on whose behalf this "tool of force" (as you call "government") is largely acting. The overwhelming evidence is that "government", when not serving itself, is almost always acting in the service of big business. The great unwashed public (peasantry?) is being cut out of the equation. If you look behind the new Massaschusetts auto-insurance laws, as you mention, the most pragmatic guess would point to lobbying on behalf of the insurance industry, to influence the state government into passing those very regulations.

Private enterprise/corporate America is affecting and controlling people's lives not only directly, via its own rules and regulations, but also in its ever increasing ability to control/run government. This is Mussolini's fascism in action to a tee, although many people would instantly cover their ears on hearing the other "F-word" used to describe what they still might see as a bona fide "democratic republic" (50% of the people are still under the impression that their votes actually do count for something)! We now have a uniform coalescence of state and corporate power, where there is little to distinguish between the two. Bland feel-good references to the "people's representatives", when referring to "elected government", are becoming yet more unrealistic and redundant in time; an individual and collective denial of the failure of democracy.

Google and Censorship......

I just "googled" the author Sander Hicks. Hicks is a playwright, journalist, songwriter and activist. He founded Soft Skull Press, Inc. in 1996, the same company that released the unauthorized biography of George W. Bush, (the author of which died shortly afterwards). Hicks was the lead singer in the band "White Collar Crime "from 1996 to 2003. He has some controversial political viewpoints, something that is now being increasingly regarded as suspicious (or even criminal) in these days of raging paranoia on the part of government/corporate.

The first two google entries for "Sander Hicks" display a warning: [B]"this site might damage your computer"[/B]. (!!!!!). Try it! How the hell can a website "damage a computer", according to the great gods of google? What kind of crack have the googly-mooglies been smoking now? If you try to go to Sander Hicks' website via Google, it won't even let you in (!), instead displaying a dire warning *not to go there*. So naturally, I went there. It's a perfectly normal working website, and my computer, OS and browser remains predictably intact. The site didn't crash, or spew a load of obnoxious pop-ups, or anything else sinister or weird. There are numerous websites on the net that *are* unstable, and will hang your machine., which google doesn't mention....

Can anyone shed any light on the latest round of google paranoia and arbitrary lockouts? Are there any other sites out there which come with similar warnings? The Sander Hicks censorship appears to be politically motivated. Is this the shape of the "net to come", when people with unconventional viewpoints have their webpages blocked or are subject to phony warnings, courtesy of the overlords? When the internet is subject to this kind of crap, the rest of society will probably follow suit.. down the toilet.