Winter Patriot

Distraction 101: Why Are The Prog-Blogs Silent On Gaza? Because That Is Their Job!

2012-11-20T01:34:00.000-05:00

Another Israeli attack on Gaza.
"Progressive" bloggers got nothing to say.

With "the American-armed, American-backed Israeli military [...] busily raining death into the cramped and crowded concentration camp of Gaza," I find it difficult to think clearly, let alone write clearly. The barbarity of the Israeli operation, no doubt carefully planned long ago, fills me with horror, rage, and grief -- and so too do the so-called "justifications" put forth by the so-called "analysts" who populate our so-called "news media." Even were I not hampered by physical injuries, I would find it very difficult to write at this time.

And yet, not writing at this time would be even more difficult, and writing about anything except the Israeli assault on Gaza would be almost inconceivable.

But the key word is "almost," and the crucial issue is context. In other words: I am an independent blogger with a small readership and no outside support. Thus, I am free (some would say "bound") to write what I think. But such was not always the case. Before I became an independent blogger with a small readership, I was a frequent and heavy contributor (and occasionally even the guest host) at a blog with a large readership, and things were very different.

Chris Floyd's latest post, "Blogging and Nothingness: Progressives Turn Their Gaze from Gaza," points out that the "leading" "progressive" blogs -- Digby, Eschaton, and Kos, among others -- have had nothing to say about current round of crimes being committed against the Palestinians, and against all humanity, by the Israeli "defense force." Certainly they are not about to call these crimes by their proper names, nor to admit that none of them would be possible without the support that flows to Israel from the United States.

As I came to see quite clearly when I was about to become an independent blogger, the big, so-called "progressive" bloggers are not interested in digging up and exposing any of the most important truths of our time, including but not limited to: the truth about 9/11, the long-standing, bi-partisan American plan to refashion the Middle East through escalating violence, Israel's outrageous use of military force against defenseless civilians, and the fact that this would not be possible without unstinting American support on numerous levels. (Perhaps you see these as multiple aspects of the same issue, in which case I beg your forgiveness for listing them separately.)

Occasionally I see the assertion made that the "leading" "progressive" bloggers are not shining bright lights on such harsh truths because they are afraid of being called "anti-Semitic." In my opinion, nothing could be further than the truth. The "leading" "progressive" bloggers are mostly interested in preventing such truths from coming to light, because they are anti-Semitic.

Let us speak plainly. Palestinians are Semites. Many Israelis, who came to Israel from Europe, are not. But Israel uses the term "anti-Semitic" to smear anyone who criticizes Israeli policies. Therefore, you will be called "anti-Semitic" if you oppose unwarranted violence against the Semitic people. But in fact it is Israeli policies, and Israeli supporters, which are truly "anti-Semitic."

This is extremely twisted "logic," using the ethnic identity of the victims to shield the perpetrators. But it is entirely typical -- the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a minefield, strewn with words and phrases whose apparent meanings and real meanings are radically different.

In my view, the "leading" "progressive" bloggers shy away from the minefield not because it's complicated -- it's really not very complicated at all -- but because that is their job. Their main purpose is to capture and nullify any potential opposition. They are remarkably successful at it, and heavily supported for doing it so well.

And therefore it is left to the "little guys" -- Chris Floyd and others -- to clear away the mines and tell the horrible truths, even though this guarantees that they will always be independent bloggers with small readerships.

As for the "leading" "progressive" blogs -- Digby, Eschaton, and Kos, among others -- I never expect them to say anything valuable about anything of importance. My expectations have rarely been disappointed.

Meanwhile, death and destruction continue to fall upon the people who are trapped in the Israeli vice. Israeli bombs continue to tear apart homes and kill whole families, while Israeli shills continue to claim that Israel never attacks civilians. And Barack Obama maintains that "Israel has the right to defend itself."

This so-called "right of self-defense" stems from Israel's so-called "right to exist." I wouldn't wait for any "leading" "progressive" blogger to explain how bogus all this is, or to point out that states exist by force of arms alone, not by right but by might. No coercive state has any right to exist whatsoever -- not Israel, not the USA, none of the others. States exist because -- and only for so long as -- none of their opponents can overcome their power.

If this obvious truth is invisible to the "leading" "progressive" bloggers, then maybe they are not so "progressive" after all ... which would explain why they are "leading."

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What Are They Afraid Of? Values Whose Time Has Come

2012-10-09T15:01:00.000-04:00

Cynthia McKinney

The United States of America, I was taught as a youngster, is the greatest country on Earth, precisely because of its freedom of speech. Everyone in America is free to think whatever thoughts he wishes, and to speak his mind in public. And no one is persecuted for saying what he thinks.

Unfortunately, this is not now and has never been true. But it sets a backdrop against which anyone who claims to have been persecuted for political reasons is fighting an uphill battle. "But we don't do that here!" and so on.

Former Congressperson Cynthia McKinney could tell us something about political persecution. She was run out of office for asking all the wrong questions, and for failing to toe the correct lines. But she keeps asking the wrong questions and stepping on those lines all the same. Thus she finds herself at the forefront of some very touchy issues, especially including the outrageous idea of American support for the Palestinians. For that reason, if no other, she's not very popular among those with the coercive forces of the modern police state at their disposal.

McKinney has never wanted to talk about being persecuted for political reasons, but after surviving twenty years of systematic battering, she's changing direction on that question. In an Open Letter released last weekend, she writes:

I am currently conducting research in order to write a paper on the violent repression carried out by individuals acting on behalf of the United States government against certain political actors of the 1960s and early 1970s. It was during this research that I came across the notion of “soft repression” and immediately recognized myself in what I was reading. I said to myself as I read, “Hey, that’s me.” So, I decided to write this Open Letter in order to blow the cover off a secret that I have walked with for years.

Among other things, McKinney says:

I have lived with this “soft repression” since, as a Member of Congress-elect in 1992, I refused to sign the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) pledge of support for Israel.

and

“Soft repression” tactics include ridicule, stigma, and silencing. I have experienced and continue to experience each one of these types of targeting. I routinely receive hate mail and withstand very active organized attempts to ridicule, stigmatize, and eventually silence me. I routinely experience strange occurrences with my computer (typing by itself) and telephone (answered by someone before it even rings on my end), and more. Strange things happen to my friends and to the friends of my friends (like police stops for nothing, and worse, calls to remote immigrant acquaintances asking for information about me).

and

Not too long ago, I received a call from a lawyer with the ACLU who tracks politically-inspired civil liberties violations and he told me that my name came up in a Texas Fusion Center of the Department of Homeland Security document as someone, associating with former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and traveling to Lebanon with him, who should be surveilled for any attempts engaged in by me to push Sharia law for the U.S. It’s ludicrous, I know. It’s even more ludicrous that U.S. tax dollars are being spent to surveil people for this stupidity. But there it is.

and

Upon my return to the U.S. from Cape Town, South Africa at which the Russell Tribunal found that Israel practices its own unique form of apartheid, I was notified by my local FBI office that I was [the] subject of a terroristic threat, along with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama, by some poor hillbillies from the north Georgia mountains. The FBI offered to protect me from any other hillbillies who might get funny ideas.

Well, I’ve been through this before with the FBI, when a journalist called for my lynching on my way to vote. My alarmed Congressional staff alerted the FBI -- only for us all to learn, years later, that this particular “journalist” was on the FBI payroll at the time that he made those reprehensible remarks.

and

What could they possibly be afraid of?

I will answer my own question: values whose time has come—truth, justice, peace, and dignity. Not only for the elite few, but also for the rest of us: everybody’s truth and everybody’s dignity.

and

I will begin to document and make public what has heretofore been covert activity carried out by bullies who pick on the weak.

From where I stand, this is a very welcome development. We've had too few of those lately. We should all know about these covert activities. We should know about all activities carried out by our government, at our expense, against our fellow citizens -- especially our dissident political leaders.

Since I am on McKinney's mailing list, I received a copy of the Open Letter by email. To make it more widely available, I have posted it in full on my blog-away-from-blog, Winter Parking. I hope you will read the whole thing, and I will try to keep you posted on further developments.

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Judge Awards $6 Billion In Damages In Frivolous 9/11 Lawsuit

2012-10-04T21:32:00.000-04:00

Earlier today, I threatened you with some frivolous blogging, and it is not difficult to find frivolous stories to blog about, so let's start with this one: A judge in New York has awarded more than $6 billion in damages to relatives of 47 people who died in the false-flag attacks of 9/11.

These damages are to be paid by a group of defendants -- both organizations and individuals -- who have never been convicted of the crime in any legitimate court of law. The defendants include the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and Ayatollah Khamenei personally, as well as Osama bin Laden, al-Q'aeda, the Taliban, and Hezbollah.

It is interesting, although quite frivolous, to try to imagine conditions under which this $6 billion might be considered collectible. It is also interesting, though equally frivolous, to try to imagine what might have happened had the 9/11 attacks been subject to a thorough and independent investigation, had the perpetrators been positively identified by forensic analysis rather than simply slandered by the US government and media, and/or had the official story actually been true.

But then again, for any story to be true, it must be plausible. And this one is not. Therefore it is not only frivolous but also quite sobering to see how deeply the bizarre fictions of 9/11 have embedded themselves into our national mythology, not to mention our institutions of "government" and "justice."

If $6 billion seems like a lot of money, don't even think about how much has been spent prosecuting the so-called "Global War On Terror," all of which depends on an "investigation" in which the two prime suspects were allowed to specify the conditions under which they would "testify" -- together, behind closed doors, not under oath, and with no one allowed to record, or even keep notes of, their "testimony."

If the suspects in any other case of murder, let alone the mass-murder of thousands of people, tried to establish the conditions under which they could be investigated, well, the idea is so absurd that it's not even worth thinking about ... unless you're feeling exceptionally frivolous!

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Living Under Drones and Living Under Delusions: Reflections on Faith, Evidence, Socks, and America's War against Pakistan

2012-09-29T13:07:00.000-04:00

Would you believe me?

What would you think if I told you I was wearing red and blue striped knee-socks? Would you believe me?

If you did, it would be a matter of faith, for I would have merely made the claim, without showing you any evidence to support it. Your only possible rational reason for believing what I said about my socks would be a strong, underlying belief that I would never lie to you about such a thing.

But let us suppose, for the sake of discussion, that you had such an underlying belief, and that you believed what I had said about my socks. In other words, let's say you had enough faith in me to accept my claim without seeing any evidence to support it.

If I took off my shoes, and showed you that I was indeed wearing red and blue striped socks, then you might have some rational grounds for believing me, or at least for suspecting that I might be telling the truth. And if I continued by rolling up my pants to show you that my socks extended all the way to my knees, then you would have all the evidence you would ever need. Your faith would be justified, but it would no longer be required, because the question would have become a matter of evidence, not one of faith.

But what if I took off my shoes and you could see my bare feet? Would you still believe me? It may seem incredible, especially in the context of this trivial and hypothetical example, but if your underlying belief that I would never lie to you were strong enough, you might continue to believe that I was wearing red and blue striped knee socks, even though you could see with your own eyes that I was wearing no socks at all. It would not take a great leap of intelligence to deduce that I was lying, but if your faith were strong enough, it might prevent you from making such a leap.

These thoughts have come into focus for me lately because of the reading I have been doing. As you may know, researchers from two major universities, NYU and Stanford, have recently collaborated in producing a report on America's use of unmanned missile-launchers (which we call "drones") against sketchily defined targets in Pakistan (which our government calls "terrorists"). Pakistan, as you may recall, is supposedly an American ally.

Their report, "Living Under Drones," documents the effects of these heartless killing machines against the defenseless people whose lives they can shatter at any moment. The report provides more detail than has ever appeared in the public record. And, although it makes for very unpleasant reading, it is an important contribution to our knowledge about these quasi-secret attacks. However ...

Having spent quite some time reading "Living Under Drones," as well as many recent pieces about it, I have been struck by the number of times the report has been described as a valuable addition to the "public debate" on the issue, and the number of times the drone campaign has been called "counter-productive" -- even in critical, dissident analysis. And it pains me to say that such analysis appears to be generally accepted among dissidents and critics as "serious," possibly even "penetrating." I see it as deeply flawed.

The ever-incisive Chris Floyd stands alone among those whom I have read, in that he has pointed out one of these flaws. In his words,

[T]his report will have no influence whatsoever on the non-existent "debate" [...] For beyond the rare, isolated op-ed, there is no "debate" on drone warfare in American political or media circles. The bipartisan political establishment is united in its support of the practice; indeed, both parties plan to expand the use of drones on a large scale in the future. This murderous record -- and this shameful complicity -- will be one of the Peace Laureate's lasting legacies, whether he wins re-election or not.

But among the many observers whose words on this subject I have read, no one has apparently thought to pose the question: "Counter to what?"

It is easy to see why opponents of the drone attacks would argue that they are counter-productive. The critics also argue that the attacks are immoral, but hardly anyone expects this argument to carry any weight, given that the decision-makers behind the drone attacks -- Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama and his military-and-intelligence associates -- view their roles as beyond morality.

No nation is moral, say our great leaders, so international relations must be seen, and practiced, as an amoral enterprise, in which statesmen must be guided by self-interest, not morality. Therefore, to persuade our great leaders of anything, one must appeal to their self-interest, not their morals. Thus the critics claim that the drone attacks are counter-productive, in the obvious hope that this argument will cut some ice with the decision-makers, and in the almost certain knowledge that arguments based on morality will not do so.

Why are the drone attacks counter-productive? Because by killing innocent people, including women and children, they provoke anger against the USA, creating more terrorists than they eliminate. This doesn't make America safer; it actually makes America less safe. And it is therefore counter-productive. Or so the critics say.

In making this argument, the critics rely on the unspoken assumption that the Peace Laureate's stated goals are identical to his actual goals. This assumption rests on nothing but faith, since there is no actual evidence to support it. And it is a very powerful faith. We can deduce this because it endures, even though all the evidence points in the opposite direction.

In other words, the American Empire took off its shoes and rolled up its pants a long time ago. For many decades now, the whole world has been able to see that the American Empire wears no socks. And yet, a great many people, including some who would describe themselves as dissidents and critics, continue to believe what they've been told, rather than what they could see with their own eyes if they dared to look. These people, apparently despite their best efforts, are living under delusions. Such is the power of propaganda.

One important fact which many critics tend to overlook is that American politicians speak in a peculiar double-talk -- a slightly-secret code, one in which all the key words and phrases carry meanings very different than what they appear to mean. In most cases, the apparent meaning and the actual meaning are polar opposites. This is a long-standing tradition in American politics.

The "logic" of this double-talk was in play nearly a century ago, when Woodrow Wilson claimed World War I was about "Making The World Safe For Democracy," That project was a huge success, if you consider expanding the victors' spheres of commercial and military influence to be identical with making the world safe for a system of government whose two main enemies are commercial and military influence.

Similarly, Franklin Roosevelt told us that World War II was being fought to provide "Self-Determination For All Peoples." This project worked out even better, if you consider being ruled by the Soviet Union to be the same as "self-determination" for all the peoples of eastern Europe -- and so on (this last phrase covering countless similar successes, from Algeria to Vietnam, in which one nation achieved "self-determination" by becoming, or remaining, a colony of another).

Indeed, American history is replete with such double-talk. The United States has a long and bloody record of destabilizing foreign countries while claiming to bring "stability," of interfering with democratic processes and overthrowing democratically elected governments while claiming to bring "democracy," and of fomenting economic devastation while claiming to bring "liberty."

None of this makes any sense at all, until you understand that a country has "stability" if it is ruled by an oppressive tyrant who does what the Americans tell him to do, that it is a "democracy" if its government (which may have been installed at gunpoint) supports the American Imperial Project, and that conditions of economic devastation provide a certain "liberty" to crooks of the most unscrupulous kind -- such as the American Imperialists.

Occasionally our great leaders (or prospective great leaders) offer us unintended glimpses of the reality behind the double-talk. Mitt Romney, for example, recently claimed that the most sacred duty in a democracy is to protect the overseas embassies. If taken at face value, this statement is pure rubbish. But if we understand that by "democracy," he means "empire," and that by "embassies," he means "bases," the statement makes perfect sense. The most important job in an empire is to protect the overseas bases. And clearly Mitt Romney understands this. He just doesn't know enough to keep his mouth shut about it.

Romney's statement is one tiny example among many which support my contention that the shoes are off, the pants are rolled up, and the Empire has no socks. And yet even some of his harshest critics persist in believing that (or acting as if) our Nobel Peace Laureate President is dedicated to making America safe, and adverse to creating more terrorists. Maybe it's because he keeps telling us he wants to prevent another 9/11.

As Robert Higgs has written, "there are no persistent 'failed' policies." In other words, any policy which is truly counter-productive to the actual goals will be quickly modified. And any long-standing policy which appears to be counter-productive to the stated goals should be seen as a signpost, marking a place where the stated goals and the actual goals are in direct conflict.

The signpost represented by "Living Under Drones" appears to indicate that, far from trying to keep America safe, prevent another 9/11, and win the "Global War On Terror" (or whatever they want us to call it this week), our Peace Laureate is actually trying to extend the Terror War, keep Americans in danger and afraid, and make another 9/11 more likely, or at least render the threat more plausible.

If the dissidents and critics who are still living under delusions could shed their blind (and blinding) faith in America's socks, they might reach the same conclusion by simple reasoning: If Barack Obama truly wanted to prevent another 9/11, he would have empowered a full and independent investigation of 9/11 itself. Then we could have identified the perpetrators of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and we might have brought them to justice, after which we would clearly be in a much better position to prevent another such attack.

But no full and independent investigation has taken place, nor will any such investigation take place anytime soon. The Peace Laureate has made that abundantly clear. And therefore, if he wants to prevent another 9/11, Obama must kill every Muslim on the planet, so that no future false-flag shenanigans can ever be blamed on "Islamic fundamentalists."

Maybe this is what he is trying to do -- kill them all, one family at a time, while enraging and terrorizing the rest. If so, his approach has been anything but counter-productive.

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Ten Years Of Murderous Nonsense

2011-09-10T14:21:00.001-04:00

WTC6 was hollowed out. What did this?

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the last happy day of my life.

It was an ignorant sort of happy, but I remember it fondly nonetheless.

I may as well; tomorrow will mark ten years of murderous nonsense. The official story of 9/11 is impossible to believe, yet it is promoted more brazenly than any contemporary truth.

My effort to avoid the anniversary propaganda having failed, I started trying to mark the biggest, stupidest, 9/11-related lie I can find.

There are plenty of candidates for the honor.

WTC5 had multiple holes. What did this?

Some serious 9/11 researchers have been trying to compile a list of all the "holes" in the official story: the distortions, the omissions, the contradictions, the outright lies, and all the other bits and pieces of evidence which suggest that the real story behind 9/11 is not the one we have been told.

These people remind me of the Renaissance mathematicians who spent their whole lives trying to find all the prime numbers.

The mathematicians were working for the royal courts, in many cases, whereas the 9/11 researchers are working against the powers of our day.

But the fields of research are more or less equally infinite.

Being somewhat less ambitious, I started a list of the people who used to be, or used to be considered, investigative journalists, or at least honest dissident writers, but who have shown quite clearly that their primary interest in the truth about 9/11 is in bashing those who seek it.

What burned these cars?

My list would certainly have been finite, but I lacked the discipline required to keep adding to it.

At last I settled on a smaller task: finding the undisputed facts in the official story.

My list now contains the date, as well as the names and locations of some of the buildings which were damaged or destroyed on that day.

I do not see any possibility of adding to this list in the future.

And that's the state of play.

Jerome Hauer

What drilled huge holes in WTC5 and WTC6?

What burned hundreds of cars, some more than half a mile away from the WTC?

Why are such questions not allowed even at so-called '9/11 Truth' sites?

I could write at length about such matters, and if I were healthy I would probably do so. But I can't.

Instead I can only point out that the people who disseminated the official story of 9/11, the people who have fabricated new "research" to support it, and the people who mount vicious attacks on those of us who don't buy their murderous nonsense, are all -- by their own choice -- mortal enemies of everything that is true and just and righteous, and therefore of all humanity.

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Norway's 9/11: The Horror Is In The Message

2011-08-02T15:02:00.014-04:00

The front page of The Sun
blamed the attacks on al Qaeda.

Unlike many other writers of various political persuasions, I have had great difficulty putting into words my reactions to the recent events in Norway. I hope my comments, though belated, may prove to be of some value.

As you must have read by now, a bomb exploded in central Oslo on the afternoon of July 22, killing eight people. And a few hours later, a shooting rampage decimated a gathering of about 700 people on the picturesque island of Utoeya, northwest of Oslo.

I became aware of the attacks shortly after the explosion but before the shooting started, and I got my first hint that things were not as they appeared when I saw that ABC News, citing U.S. State Department sources, had declared the blast the result of "a vehicle bomb."

This happened before the Norwegian police were even calling it "a bomb."

"How," I asked myself, "could the State Department know more about the cause of the blast than the police who were just starting to investigate it?"

"Watch closely," an inner voice replied, "and you may find out."

So I watched and read and listened and learned.

Bomb damage in Oslo, July 22, 2011

The target of the bomb appears to have been government offices, and the victims of the shooting were attending a camp run by the youth wing of the Labor Party. And the bombing and the shooting were the work of one man, Anders Behring Breivik, who planned the assault for nine years without any outside help, and pulled it off without any apparent source of significant income.

The shooting spree lasted more than an hour, even though the police had been alerted. They couldn't reach the island quickly because no helicopters were available, and no helicopters were available because all the helicopter crews were on holiday simultaneously. So the police approached by road and inflatable raft instead. But they overloaded the raft and it began to sink, so it took more than one try before they could reach the island. And still, they say they made the quickest response anyone could have asked for.

Even though multiple eyewitnesses described bullets coming from multiple directions, and some spoke of a shooter with dark hair, the blond-haired Breivik, who arrived on the island wearing a police uniform, acted completely alone, according to the Norwegian authorities. Therefore it should come as no surprise that all his court appearances will be held in secret, to prevent him sending coded messages to his accomplices.

In polite company, it may be considered improper to ask how the lone nut killer obtained a police uniform. Did the police search his residence? Did they find a sewing machine? Solitary psychos must sew their own uniforms, no? They can't get them anywhere else, can they? Not if they want to remain "lone" nuts!

After killing more than 60 campers, Breivik reportedly called the police, who arrived promptly and arrested him without a fight. The story is getting more and more credible as it develops, is it not?

The killer allegedly left a 1500-page manifesto, some of which was plagiarized from the Unabomber and some of which refers to modern writers who take extreme anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant positions. Although Breivik was Norwegian, the manifesto is mostly about other countries. There's not much about Norway itself. And it's in fluent English, which has made certain people wonder.

Bomb damage in Oslo, July 22, 2011

The manifesto was reportedly emailed to 250 of the lone nut's closest associates just before the attacks, and discovered online shortly afterward. In it, the author claims to have traveled extensively, although no record can be found of Breivik ever earning substantial income. How could he afford all that travel? Alas, we are getting ahead of ourselves.

When the story broke, many mainstream "news services" jumped to the immediate conclusion that the carnage was the work of al Q'aeda. Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid, The Sun, ran a front page headline saying as much, and calling the episode "Norway's 9/11." For words such as these, the mainstream operators were heavily criticized, even though the claim appears to have been substantially correct.

The suspect, who has been "strikingly calm" according to the police, appears to be a brain-damaged patsy. The story being told by the victimized government is full of internal contradictions and dotted with assertions that cannot possibly be said to make any sense. The mainstream media are busy echoing the official tale with blatant disregard for its lack of provenance, having made no discernible attempt to verify any of it. And many so-called "investigative reporters" and "dissident bloggers" are doing the very same thing, even though some of the self-incriminating evidence Breivik supposedly posted on the Internet did not appear until the day after he was arrested. It's 9/11 all over again, but on a different stage and in a different language.

And, just as in the aftermath of 9/11, reports almost everywhere have been full of transparently obvious nonsense.

Bomb damage in Oslo, July 22, 2011

As one example among many, consider the following, written by Peter Beaumont in The Guardian of July 23:

Norwegian police said that the individual believed responsible for the shooting in Utøya, a 32-year-old Norwegian man, was also spotted in Oslo before the bombing there.

The targeted nature of the attacks at both government offices and the Labour party youth camp both suggest a more political agenda rather than an attempt to create widespread terror.

Norwegian news reports said that police did not think the attacks were linked to international terrorism and that it was more likely directed at the current political system.

There were reports that the gunman responsible for the attack on PM Jens Stoltenberg's party youth camp on the island of Utøya was blond haired and Nordic looking – allegations still yet to be confirmed.

This suggests the attack might have been the work of an individual or individuals closer in outlook to the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh driven by their own ideology, a theory backed up by a Norwegian police official who told the Associated Press the man suspected of the attacks does not appear to be linked to Islamist terrorism. He went on to say that the attacks probably have more in common with the 1995 attack on a US federal building in Oklahoma City than the September 11 2001 attacks.

The suspect appeared to have acted alone, he said, and "it seems like that this is not linked to any international terrorist organisations at all." He added that the investigation is still ongoing and that things can change.

Did you catch all that? Top marks if you did; it's spinning in so many different directions simultaneously that it's tough to catch any of it. So let's go slowly:

The targets of the attacks suggest a political agenda, rather than an attempt to create widespread terror. Why? Apparently because the fear generated by attacks on office buildings and defenseless children would not be widespread, provided the buildings and the children were connected to a political party.

Anders Breivik, the blond suspect

Even though allegations that the gunman was blond haired and Nordic looking were still unconfirmed, a Norwegian police official had already told the Associated Press that the suspect appeared to have acted alone. How did the police know this? Maybe they had been tipped off by one of the hundreds of people to whom Breivik emailed his manifesto.

All of the above certainly explains why the police could say, "it seems ... this is not linked to any international terrorist organisations at all," before journalists could even obtain confirmation of the color of the suspect's hair. It all makes perfect sense if you look at it from a certain angle.

Some people may think it's a remarkable coincidence that the police, who couldn't get a SWAT team to the scene of a massacre in less than an hour, could say almost immediately where the killer was seen before the attacks began, let alone that he apparently had no accomplices. It's probably also a coincidence that police conducted a bomb-scare terror drill and that suspicious sewer work was reported being done on Wednesday, in the very place where the bomb went off on Friday.

What can we make of all these strange coincidences? My understanding of the events in Norway has been colored by some of the writers I have been accustomed to reading, and my understanding of those writers has been colored to a certain extent by their coverage of the events.

In the blogosphere, I started, as I usually do, with Chris Floyd, whose site, Empire Burlesque, has been a great source of information and inspiration as long as it has existed. Floyd's one and only piece on the subject, "Fade to White: The Tender Treatment of Christian Terror," was posted the day after the attacks, and it reads:

There is not much to say about the horrific events in Norway, beyond this general observation. If a white, Christian nationalist carries out such atrocities, then he is, inevitably and always, a "lone nut," an outlier, emblematic of nothing but his own individual lunacy. But if a Muslim -- or any person of color or non-white ethnicity -- does anything similar (or indeed, far less serious in scope), why then, that perpetrator is emblematic of an entire race or religion or ethnic group: a group which must then be laid under collective suspicion, and collective harrasment, by the "security" forces (and the chattering classes) of the West.

In the coming days, we will hear much about the tormented psychology of the Norwegian terrorist ... who, as Glenn Greenwald notes, will no longer be known as a "terrorist" at all -- precisely because he is white, Christian and a "patriot."

I agree with almost all of this. But in my opinion, there is a great deal to say about these horrific events.

The piece by Glenn Greenwald to which Floyd linked was called "The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and meaninglessness of 'Terrorism'" and it primarily concerned itself with tracking the early mainstream coverage of the attacks. All such coverage, needless to say, assumed that 9/11 was done by bearded Muslim madmen in caves half a world away who couldn't even talk to one another on their cell phones without the NSA knowing what they were saying, but who somehow outsmarted the largest security apparatus ever built and outmanoeuvered the laws of physics to demolish three buildings with just two airplanes.

All such coverage, needless to say, is worthless, as are the propaganda organs which produced it. How anyone could analyze such nonsense every day, without ever mentioning that it is nonsense, is beyond me. But this could be one of the reasons why Glenn Greenwald has a huge audience whereas I do not.

In an earlier post called "The Oslo attacks," Greenwald had taken the New York Times to task for its description of Norway, writing:

Most media accounts express bafflement that Norway would be the target of such an attack given how peaceful it is; The New York Times, for instance, said "the attacks appeared to be part of a coordinated assault on the ordinarily peaceful Scandinavian nation." This is simply inaccurate. Norway is a nation at war -- in more than just one country.

Far from grasping the NYT's point that Norway is fittingly described as "ordinarily peaceful" because gun violence is not rampant in its cities (unlike some countries one could name), and mass murder there was formerly very rare (ahem), Greenwald continued by documenting Norway's relatively minor involvement in Afghanistan and Libya, and wrote:

I simply do not understand this bafflement being expressed that Norway -- of all countries -- would be targeted with violence.

Regardless of the justifications of these wars -- and Norway is in both countries as part of a U.N. action -- it is simply a fact that Norway has sent its military to two foreign countries where it is attacking people, dropping bombs, and killing civilians. Historically, one reason not to invade and attack other countries is because doing so often prompts one's own country to be attacked. Western nations typically only attack countries that are incapable of responding in kind, but those nations and their sympathizers are capable of perpetrating asymmetrical attacks of the sort that Oslo just suffered.

I cannot argue with Greenwald's other main point -- one so obvious that in a sane world it would not even require a mention -- that our media take a different approach to violence inflicted by Western countries than to violence inflicted upon Western countries.

But I can argue with part of his conclusion, which runs:

[O]ur own country and those in alliance with it -- unintentionally or otherwise -- replicate the horror that took place in Oslo in countless places around the world with great regularity, and that requires at least as much attention and discussion as the Oslo attacks are sure to receive.

Specifically, I don't understand how the horrors our countries inflict on others could possibly be described as "unintentional." But I suppose we must consider the source, the audience, and the platform.

However, my primary area of disagreement in this instance lies in the way Greenwald speculatively connects the attacks on Norway to the wars in Afghanistan and Libya, without mentioning that these wars were instigated and are driven from places like Washington, London, and Tel Aviv (which would be more likely targets for anyone seriously seeking retribution), or that Norway has obviously been, like many other small European countries, dragged into foreign entanglements reluctantly, pressured by the usual extortions and lies about membership in NATO and the UN, and itching to get out.

With respect to Libya, Greenwald's "connection" was especially spurious, because even as the war instigators were saying it might take a year or longer to effect the changes they desire, the Norwegians had already announced the imminent end of their participation in slaughter of innocent Africans.

But then again, we must consider the source and the platform. Unfortunately for the audience, in order to offer a more credible explanation for why Norway might have been so brutally attacked, one must grasp the third rail of American politics. This, as Glenn Greenwald has shown repeatedly, he will not do.

I certainly agree with William Blum, who wrote:

Amidst all the sadness and horror surrounding the massacre in Norway, we should not lose sight of the fact that "peaceful little Norway" participated in the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999; has deployed troops in Iraq; has troops in Afghanistan; and has supplied warplanes for NATO's bombing of Libya. The teenagers of those countries who lost their lives to the US/NATO killing machine wanted to live to adulthood and old age as much as the teenagers in Norway. With all the condemnation of "extremism" we now hear in Norway and around the world we must ask if this behavior of the Norwegian government, as well as that of the United States and NATO, is not "extremist".

But to explain the significance of "Norway's 9/11," one must delve much deeper.

Breivik (or someone who looks a
bit like him) in a mock military uniform.

William Blum has compiled and continues to enlarge an agonizingly long and detailed compendium of CIA black ops -- crimes against democracy and crimes against humanity committed over the decades and all around the world. But he still accepts the official lies about "America's 9/11." Apparently he has trouble recognizing a black op when he sees one unfolding.

An even less astute analysis came from another longstanding favourite, Bob Koehler, who wrote:

Young adults — teenagers — being stalked and methodically murdered at their bucolic summer camp on Utoya Island in Norway. In God’s name, why?

This is the question we ask instantaneously, with sucked-in breath. Why? The question is bigger than any answer we make up. The killer, Anders Behring Breivik, had an agenda, of course. The Utoya murders, along with the deaths meted out by the bomb he detonated in Oslo a short while earlier — 76 victims in all — were explicit political killings; but first, they were the product of some psycho-social kink in the human condition ... Anders Behring Breivik is our creation.

Koehler's column is, like many others, utterly devoid of skepticism. Worse, in my opinion, it incorrectly tries to assign the blame for this monstrous attack, it claims without proof that the question is bigger than any possible answer, and it implies that the only available answers are those we "make up."

Well, no! Bob, I'm sorry! Anders Behring Breivik is not my creation! Neither is he yours! Please do what you ask and expect of real journalists: look at your sources to see whether they make any sense, and whether what they say is verifiable, before you go any further. This outrage is not my fault. It's not yours, either. Rather than labeling the killer "our creation," guys like you should be trying to figure out whose fault it really is, rather than simply pointing fingers at the mainstream media for pinning the blame on al Q'aeda.

It's been almost 10 years since ordinary Americans first heard of al Q'aeda, and if they are still inclined to link outrageously brutal terrorism with Muslim madmen, that reflects nothing so much as the failure of our allegedly dissident writers. We didn't expect the war-cheerleaders to stop in the middle of their blood-orgy and tell us the truth themselves, did we?

A large part of the horror of "America's 9/11" became visible in the aftermath, when, one after another, supposedly dissident writers, who were then thought of as leaders of the purported anti-war movement, published vicious screeds attacking the people who were questioning the official story of those attacks. Another part of the horror came more gradually, with the slow realization that certain writers were never going to mention doubts about the official story at all, much less tackle them.

To see so many intelligent people accepting without question another blatantly ridiculous official story about another politically-motivated mass murder was not especially surprising -- after all, it's been ten years. But, seriously: What has Norway been doing lately to tick off powerful people? Why is this question so difficult for people to formulate?

It turns out that the question itself isn't especially difficult. The problem people are apparently having is with the answer.

Norway has been a reluctant member of NATO's foreign expeditions. Norway owns and manages its own natural resources. Norway has refused to join the EU. And Norway has been a major thorn in the side of Israel.

Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store was met by demands that
Norway must recognize a Palenstinian state when he visited the
Labour Youth League summer camp on July 21. (Reuters)

From boycotting Israeli goods to divesting from joint Norwegian-Israeli enterprises; from resisting pro-Israeli propaganda merchants to barring investment by Israeli companies; from sponsoring education about Israel's crimes against the Palestinians to calling for Israeli leaders to be tried for their crimes; from offering to recognize a Palestinian state to threatening to attack Israel in the event of another attack on Gaza or the West Bank (using the same logic currently in play in Libya), Norway has been leading a growing worldwide campaign to stand up for the victims in the region, rather than the aggressors. The Labor Party has been prominent in that effort, and the youth of the party have been especially committed -- committed to supporting some of the most forsaken people on Earth.

Let us review, shall we? Supposedly to atone for crimes committed by Germans, the people of Palestine have been forced off their land, penned up in open-air concentration camps, cut off from normal life by walls and checkpoints, and terrorized by armed Israeli madmen who shoot first and ask no questions.

Their groves, to which they are almost always denied access, are being burnt and ripped up and converted into settlements in which the rightful owners are unwelcome at gunpoint. Their land and water have been stolen, their freedom of movement has been curtailed, and many thousands of them have been killed. But this is not enough for their oppressors, who now use deadly force against peaceful people who wish to bring them assistance.

And nobody is supposed to read about any of this, and nobody is supposed to write about any of this, except for propaganda outlets who deny that the Palestinians are oppressed, or that they are people, or who claim it's their own fault. And anybody who dares to criticize Israeli policy is anti-Semitic.

For that reason, members of the mainstream audience will never have access to the idea that the attack on Norway may have been a scripted event, a prefabricated act of terror in which Anders Breivik was a pawn of forces larger than he could ever imagine.

To some people, it will always remain an inexplicable act of madness, a psycho-social kink in the human condition, horrible and insane and ultimately meaningless. There are even some writers arguing that any attempt to find meaning in the Norway massacre is a sign of an unhinged mind.

If that is the case, I am proud to be unhinged. Ultimately, I have no choice, because the meaning of the massacre is as clear to me as it apparently is to some Norwegians, such as the Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, who seemed to be speaking to a foreign audience when he said:

I have a message to the people who attacked us, and those behind them. This is a message from all of Norway:

You will not destroy us.

You will not destroy our democracy nor our quest for a better world. We are a small nation, but we are a proud nation.

No one shall bomb us into silence or shoot us into silence. Nothing will frighten us out of being Norway.

This night we will comfort each other, talk with each other, and stand together. Tomorrow we will show the world that Norway’s democracy grows stronger when it is challenged. We shall find the guilty and hold them responsible.

If Jens Stoltenberg believed the guilty had already been found, he would not have been speaking in such terms, would he? He seemed to be responding to a secret message, rather than reacting to the crime which the police and media have described.

But the message was no secret.

You will go along with the program. You will send your troops where we tell you, you will buy foreign products regardless of ethical considerations, you will stop supporting the vermin we are trying to eradicate, and under no circumstances will you threaten anyone.

Otherwise we will bomb your offices and kill your children.

We will do it on a famous anniversary, but it in such a way that no direct evidence leads back to us.

We will do it in a way that shows your police are thoroughly compromised and no use to you at all. We will do it in a way that exacerbates tensions between Christians and Moslems. And we will do it in a way that lends credibility to those who would trash the best features of your open, democratic society.

We will cover our tracks with a lame distraction which will confirm quite clearly -- to those with eyes to see -- that the entire world's "news" media are in our pocket. And most of your friends and neighbors -- including many who should know better -- will play along with it, if they show any interest at all.

And then ... ah, yes: then we will rejoice in your grief!

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Still Kicking

2011-07-30T02:22:00.004-04:00

Kick the ball with your instep. [source]

I apologize for leaving this blog dormant for so long. I'm still kicking, and to prove it, I've started a redesign of the site to take advantage of some of the new features that Blogger has been offering for years and years. Some of us are slow that way. Sorry about that.

If you are accustomed to scanning the blogroll, you will find it's not on the sidebar anymore, but at the bottom of the page. The same goes for the blog archives, although the news links are in their usual place.

The redesign may have scrambled some old posts, and one of my many happy tasks in the upcoming days and weeks is to find and fix them. Sometimes there's a reason why we're slow.

I hope to get back here again soon, both to finish the redesign and to write a post or two. In the meantime I am still busy researching the life and death of Gareth Williams and writing "Sherlock Holmes And The Alderney Street Mystery," to which I gently draw your attention.

With any luck, I will soon be able to write about the recent events in Norway. I am also working on some other things, and I will post them when they are ready but not sooner. In the meantime I thank you for visiting my mostly dormant blog, and I remind you to kick the ball with your instep.

UPDATE: My friend Bob in Prague remarked in an email, "Don't forget to bounce!" In my view, if you hit it right, you can't avoid bouncing! which sets you up perfectly for a back-flip when the ball hits the back of the net!

Wikileaks: US Ambdassador Called Pakistani Military Instructors "Naive" And "Biased"

2011-05-25T02:26:00.006-04:00

Anne Patterson, former US Ambassador to Pakistan

The following is old news at best, possibly fictional, and from sources of dubious, if any, integrity. But it is still of some interest to a cold blogger who begs your forebearance as we explore...

The Pakistani daily Dawn says that according to Wikileaks, in 2008, Anne Patterson, who was then US Ambassador to Pakistan, wrote a memo in which she described instructors at Pakistan's National Defence University (NDU) as "naive" about and "biased" against the USA.

Dawn says Ambassador Patterson attributed this "bias" to the "distance" that had crept in between Pakistani and US military officers following "the discontinuation of the IMET (International Military Education and Training) programmes" during the years when Pakistan was under sanctions because of having developed nuclear weapons.

Dawn quotes the memo which quotes a US army officer, Col. Michael Schleicher, who attended a course at NDU, and who, according to the cable, told Ambassador Patterson:

"One guest lecturer – who is a Pakistani one-star general – claimed the US National Security Agency actively trains correspondents for media organisations. Others thought the CIA was in charge of US media (and that MI-5 was in charge of the BBC)."

And not only that, but:

Students in the junior course ... shared "many of the biases prevalent in the Muslim world, including a belief the US invaded Iraq for its oil and that 9/11 was a staged 'Jewish conspiracy,'"

You can see the bias right away, can't you? Everybody who has done honest research has found that the staged conspiracy of 9/11 was not entirely "Jewish." It contained "Christian" elements as well. And so, of course, does the continuing torrent of nonsense about it.

The problem, according to Dawn, according to Wikileaks, according to Ambassador Patterson, was that the Pakistani military had been been insufficiently propagandized, although she would never think to express herself in such terms. But clearly this is her understanding, and clearly this is why she wrote:

"We need, in particular, to target the 'lost generation' of Pakistan military who missed IMET opportunities..."

The word 'target' is particularly apt in this context.

Ambassador Patterson also wrote, according to Wikileaks:

"Given the bias of the instructors, we also believe it would be beneficial to initiate an exchange program for instructors..."

An exchange program would double the propaganda benefit, of course, because the Pakistani instructors would be whisked off to be indoctrinated in the US, leaving their students to be indoctrinated by visiting Americans.

It goes without saying that if and when all this indoctrination came to pass, the Pakistani military would be even more naive with respect to the United States, and even more biased -- but for rather than against, which after all is the only thing that matters to the masters of the American Empire.

And then, diplomatic tensions would be eased, because future ambassadors would write cables in which Pakistani military officers were all well-informed about American actions and motives, and loyal and keen supporters of the American Imperial Project as well.

The properly trained Pakistanis would have been instructed never to admit that the NSA would be negligent if it failed to actively train correspondents for media organisations; that the CIA would be aghast if it lost charge of the US media; that the Bush-Cheney administration would have lost the support of its "base" had it failed to invade Iraq for its oil; and that MI5 would go ballistic if the BBC ever admitted the obvious truths about these things, or explained to its viewers exactly why Britain came along for the ride.

And then, if the IMET programmes could continue for long enough, eventually nobody in the Pakistani military would ever again be "naive" or "biased" enough to give voice to any of this, or any of the other truths about America which are, shall we say, politically inconvenient to acknowledge.

This is what we would call "winning hearts and minds." And it's a shame that the US neglected to keep the propaganda machine running on the Pakistani military during the sanctions, because had it done so, hoaxes such as the big one nine and a half years ago, and the almost-as-big one earlier this month, would have been a good deal easier to sell.

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Double Bogus When Lit: Obama Campaign Begins, Reality Obliterated

2011-05-04T05:32:00.004-04:00

You may have noticed that last week Barack Obama released a document which was purported to be his birth certificate. The document wasn't exactly credible, but then again it didn't need to be. It only needed to exist.

It wasn't supposed to be carefully examined; it was only supposed to be used for political purposes, in much the same way as some other very obvious lies were not supposed to be examined, and have been and continue to be used.

Wherever you look, you see brainless authoritarians spouting ignorant arrogance, from "Anyone who questions Obama's citizenship is a racist" to "This settles the question once and for all, and anyone who still questions Obama's citizenship ought to be ashamed of himself."

Personally, I think anyone striving for the most powerful position in any government ought to be able to provide a full documentary trail of his life, not just a birth certificate, but high school and college transcripts and much more. If a candidate -- let alone a president -- can't do that, it seems suspicious to me, regardless of whether he be black or white, lavender or chartreuse. And if something comes up in national politics that looks suspicious, I think people ought to be able to say so without being called racist.

You may also have noticed Barack Obama several days later, telling a story about the death of Osama bin Laden. That story wasn't credible either, but once again, it didn't need to be.

The official story of the 9/11 attacks, in which Osama bin Laden supposedly played a central role and inside help did not, is a multi-threaded one. And not one single thread of that story is even partially credible. But it doesn't matter anymore, because reality has been obliterated.

It doesn't matter where in the 9/11 morass we turn -- whether we concentrate on the planes, the buildings, the hijackers, the phone calls, the response of the military, the response of the president, the response of the vice-president, the official investigations, the documents produced by those investigations, or the arguments of the people who support the government's story. In any of these cases -- in all of these cases -- we are looking at transparently obvious, officially sanctioned, fiction.

It doesn't matter that the fiction is transparently obvious, because the echo chamber repeats it endlessly until it becomes part of the national landscape. That's what happens to officially sanctioned stories, true or otherwise.

The point is: because the fiction is officially sanctioned, it will not go away. Therefore, to the politicians, it might as well be used. The Obama campaign to get re-elected in 2012 has begun.

Can we expect eighteen more months of similar psy-ops? A year and a half of even more obviously politically slanted manure?

Oh yes. We can expect at least that. You don't suppose the timing of all this is a coincidence, do you?

With major distractional nonsense involving both birth and death coming so close together, it seems as though all we're missing is something about marriage. Maybe there's a great big distracting wedding of some kind in the offing. Keep your eyes open, and so will I.

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Civic Duty

2011-05-02T20:41:00.002-04:00

O Canada,
what are you doing in Kandahar?

When you live in a pretend democracy, every now and then you have to go out and pretend to vote.

Best wishes to my Canadian friends on the occasion of their civic duty.

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Can We Still Say 9/11 Was A SCAD?

2011-04-30T21:04:00.002-04:00

Was 9/11 a SCAD?

Gloria Tatum of Atlanta Progressive News: For Activists, Architects, 9/11 Questions Linger Ten Years Later

Can we still say that?

Kenny's Sideshow: ‘Fantastical’ 9/11

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NO! I Do Not Support Obama On Regime Change In Libya

2011-04-18T01:20:00.005-04:00

Just for the record, I do not consider myself a "Concerned Engaged Enlightened Rule-of-Law Liberal Progressive," although I am very concerned and somewhat enlightened, and once upon a time I believed we lived under the rule of law.

But "Liberal" politics leaves me cold and has done so for many years. And in my opinion, the word "Progressive" has been co-opted by people who don't care about anything in the whole world except getting more of what they want for themselves and the hell with everybody else. (Or maybe that has always been the "progressive" way and I have only recently noticed.)

Nonetheless, it is clear enough for me now and it has been for a long time, and if I were well enough to carry on blogging on politics, terrorism and international relations, I would still be condemning Barack Obama, his associates, his policies, and his supporters.

I would be doing so with the same tone and the same thoroughness that drove away most of my former readers when I started writing about the transparently deceitful utterances of the man who was then threatening to become president.

And my condemnation would include his current mass-murderous campaign in Libya as well as the covert terrorism his administration admits to carrying out in at least 75 other countries.

Not that it matters, or anything. But I wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea.

It may be that the silence of other so-called "Concerned Engaged Enlightened Rule-of-Law Liberal Progressive" bloggers indicates their approval of the "noble Nobel Peace Laureate," or perhaps it simply shows their fear of criticizing him. I cannot speak for them.

But I would not wish my silence (on Libya or any other subject) to be construed as a sign that I am among them, especially because the opposite is true.

My reduced physical capabilities have forced a shift in focus, and now instead of blogging about politics, terrorism and international relations, I am paying special attention to one story that seems to touch on them all, and weaving my thoughts about all these subjects into the most factual fiction I can manage.

I still hope to make a full recovery, and someday I may be able resume blogging, but in the meantime it would be a serious mistake to take my silence on Libya or any other issue as indicating anything at all. And it would be a horrible blunder to construe my lack of recent blogging as support for the vicious liar who is currently running the imperial machine.

Unfortunately, my current project is taking up what little typing I can do these days. And, even though I say so myself, it's a shame that hardly anybody is reading it, because the people who are reading it are loving it!

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... Then There Was This Hole, And Then I Fell In ...

2010-12-19T12:03:00.004-05:00

As we approach the season of seasonal greetings, I send my very best wishes to my friends and colleagues of the blogosphere. Unfortunately my writing has been exceptionally hampered lately, but I do expect to rejoin you, and as soon as possible.

I especially wish to acknowledge and thank those readers who have posted comments at the Winter Patriot Community Blog, or sent me email, checking in on me during my long periods of deep quiet. I appreciate your support more than I can tell you.

When my current difficulties come to an end, as they surely will, you will hear from me again on a regular basis, both here and at my current home-away-from-home, Sherlock Holmes And The Alderney Street Mystery.

In the meantime, I offer you some reflections on the season and its meaning, from two years ago:

Christmas And The GWOT
Christmas And The GWOT [2]: Personal Salvation And National Destruction
Christmas And The GWOT [3]: Sell Your Stocks And Run
Don't Stand Underneath When They Fly By

Best wishes to you and yours. Back soonest.

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Cheering For War Criminals: What's The Music?

2010-11-02T14:09:00.004-04:00

I made a series of tactical errors on Sunday night. Thinking my sons might enjoy some baseball before bedtime, I visited mlb.com to see when the 4th game of the World Series was scheduled to start. The site said "LIVE! NOW!" so I turned on the television. But it was only the pre-game show, so I switched it back off.

About half an hour later, I turned it back on, fully expecting the ballgame to have started, but -- shockingly! -- I was wrong again.

I got the sound first. I heard music playing and the crowd cheering; then the picture came up and I could see that the cheering wasn't for any players, but for a couple of war criminals -- a father and son team who between them had launched multiple wars of aggression, killing uncounted millions of innocent people (so far), while doing untold damage to their own country in a thus-far successful effort to shield their crimes, and who therefore -- being deep in the heart of Texas and all -- had been given the "honor" of throwing out "the first pitch".

I switched the set off again as soon as I saw what was happening: so fast that I only heard one note, and I still don't know what music was being played. For some reason, I keep thinking about that moment, and every time I do, I hear the opening riff of the only song I know that would have been appropriate to the occasion.

I first heard it in 1983, at a lecture/slide show/concert given by the composer/performer, Bruce Cockburn. Bruce had just returned from an eye-opening tour of Central America, and as part of his presentation, he played a new song for us, one he had just finished.

We were in a little ampitheatre, every word was clear, and Bruce's new song took the place apart. It was called "If I Had A Rocket Launcher" and the lyric ran like this:

Here comes the helicopter -- second time today
Everybody scatters and hopes it goes away
How many kids they've murdered only God can say
If I had a rocket launcher...I'd make somebody pay

I don't believe in guarded borders and I don't believe in hate
I don't believe in generals or their stinking torture states
And when I talk with the survivors of things too sickening to relate
If I had a rocket launcher...I would retaliate

On the Rio Lacantun, one hundred thousand wait
To fall down from starvation -- or some less humane fate
Cry for Guatemala, with a corpse in every gate
If I had a rocket launcher...I would not hesitate

I want to raise every voice -- at least I've got to try
Every time I think about it water rises to my eyes.
Situation desperate, echoes of the victims cry
If I had a rocket launcher...Some son of a bitch would die

In case you're wondering whether this is all about Bush, I should add: If Barack Obama had thrown out the first pitch, I would have shut it off just as fast, and the juke box in my head would have played exactly the same song.

Please watch and listen as Bruce Cockburn performs "If I Had A Rocket Launcher" with a small band, from 2000, and/or solo, from 2005.

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No More Waiting: Holmes And Watson Roll Again

2010-10-28T12:02:00.001-04:00

Holmes and Watson on their way to Wales

I have been away for more than a week, and during that time at least three or four readers have been waiting patiently for Chapter 20 of my factual/fictional work-in-progress, in which Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson are investigating the mysterious death of Welsh code-breaker Gareth Williams.

Fortunately for all of us, the wait is over. I am back at my desk on a more regular basis, and the 20th chapter is finished and posted.

I understand that following a serial-in-progress can be frustrating for those who prefer to read the last page of a mystery first. They want to see how it turns out before they read the rest of the book, and in this case it is simply not possible.

On the other hand, there may be some compensation in knowing that the last page of this story is not yet written -- and that my readers will find out what happens immediately after I find out myself.

For those who have been waiting, here's the newest: [Chapter 20: Unthinkable]

For those wishing to start at the beginning, this would be the link: [Sherlock Holmes and the Alderny Street Mystery]

Many thanks to those who have been encouraging me with respect to the "Alderney Street" project. I hope you will enjoy the newest chapter and those to come.

More soonest...

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Surprise! Canadian Forces Commander Was A Serial Killer

2010-10-19T02:16:00.008-04:00

Col. Russell Williams, Canadian Armed Forces

Like every other day, I suppose, it's been a day of sick news.

An Obama administration task force is now trying to strengthen legislation that would uphold [read: shred] the Constitution by making sure the telecoms don't do anything that might interfere with warrantless government surveillance. This action provides even more [read: less] support for Barack Obama's claim that voters who don't work as hard as possible to support the Democrats are "irresponsible", since their civil rights are so endangered by Republicans.

And Bush's Secretary of Defense [read: Attack], Robert Gates, is still running the Pentagon, and plenty of other Bush cronies are still filling their appointed offices, and virtually all the Bush policies are still in place, although a few things are actually worse now. So it makes perfect [read: no] sense for John McCain to describe Obama as running "the most partisan administration I have ever seen".

Pakistan's Foreign Minister spoke at Harvard University and made the totally [read: scarcely] understandable claim that Iran has "no justification to pursue nuclear weapons."

According to Dawn, Shah Mehmood Qureshi told his Harvard audience:

"Who's threatening Iran? I don't see any immediate threat to Iran."
...
Qureshi also pointed out that Iran was signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Pakistan and India never signed.

“They have an international obligation. They have signed NPT and they should respect that,” he said.

To clarify: India, Pakistan and Israel all have nuclear weapons but have not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, so technically they should not be allowed to have nuclear weapons at all, or nuclear power either.

The United States, which has signed the NPT, acts as if the treaty has been nullified, and uses nuclear weapons against civilians in places like Iraq.

And Iran, which has also signed the treaty and therefore should be allowed to have nuclear power, is being hampered in its pursuit of same by the repeated claim (rejected by the Iranians, and never proven or even partially substantiated by anyone) that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

The absurdity is compounded by the fact that Iran is threatened by neighbors with nuclear weapons, and also by a rogue state halfway across the world with more nuclear weapons, and therefore the diplomatic [read: propaganda] tack at the moment is to claim that Iran is not threatened.

If it wasn't so sick, I could laugh even harder.

But the sickest laugh of the day comes from Canada, where

The decorated former commander of Canadian Forces Base Trenton, in eastern Ontario, pleaded guilty [on Monday] to all 88 charges against him — including two counts of first-degree murder, two counts each of sexual assault and forcible confinement and 82 break-ins and attempted break-ins.

According to the CBC,

Thousands of explicit photos that Col. Russell Williams took while wearing women's and girls' lingerie show how his sexual obsession escalated from lesser crimes to sexual assault and murder
...
He admitted to police he sought out homes where "attractive young women" lived, targeting those in their late teens to early 30's.

Col. Russell Williams photographed himself wearing lingerie

The Crown said Williams's behaviour was obsessive in the number of break-ins, in the meticulous manner in which he dealt with stolen clothes and in the sheer volume of photos he took and methodically filed.
...
Williams would place lingerie in boxes or bags when he got home. He was so obsessive in his collection of undergarments that he had to burn some of his trophies in a field to make room for more.
...
Williams took thousands of explicit photographs of himself at crime scenes — wearing women's and girls' lingerie, and masturbating on their beds — which he put in a complex file folder system with a date stamp.

The folder system gave a sense of how long Williams was in homes and what he did. He kept a log that stated the nature of the offences and stored evidence of the murders and break-ins on two hard drives. Police found them stored above the ceiling in the basement of his Ottawa home.
...
Crown prosecutor Robert Morrison ... said Williams's repeated sexually obsessive behaviour dates back to 2007 and 2008 — long before he escalated to actual sexual assaults on women — or the eventual murders ... In some of the photos, Williams is in a girl's lingerie, wearing parts of what the Crown said appears to be his Canadian military uniform.

That's the sick part; now for the laugh:

The Canadian media are turning themselves inside out in their attempt to answer the question: "How could a guy like this rise to a position of power in an organization such as the Canadian military?" The question is more difficult than first appears, because media types and analysts must answer it without admitting any reality into the discussion.

They can't talk about the fact that psychopaths and the military are made for each other, or the obvious reasons why this is so. But I can.

Listen: People who enjoy wielding power over others tend to seek positions in which they can do so legitimately. They become policemen and soldiers and prison guards, and politicians and "news" anchors. The most extreme of these people seek out the most extreme situations, and nothing suits a psychopathic killer better than a job in which he is required to kill people. There is no draft in Canada, so the only people in the military are those who voluntarily decided to enlist.

This photo taken by Russell Williams was used as evidence against him.

Now: Armies seek out people who enjoy wielding power over others, who can live seemingly "normal" lives punctuated by episodes in which they take part in the tearing, shredding, crushing and burning of human flesh -- all for the "noble" cause of spreading liberty and freedom, of course. Those who bring strong administrative skills to the table, who are comfortable giving orders, and who are capable of manipulating large groups of people -- sometimes sending them to faraway lands to kill and die -- are quickly promoted.

In Canada -- just as in the USA -- it is not permissible for media types to say "our country is involved in an aggressive foreign war against people who have never attacked, or intended to attack, us or any of our friends." Instead the coverage starts and ends with the idea that Canadian soldiers are always doing the right sorts of things overseas, giving the little Afghan kids candy bars and so on.

And so we don't get any reality, and we don't get any insight, and we are all left to scratch our heads and wonder: "How could a guy who commanded stuff like that, have gone home and done stuff like this?"

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To catch up on the adventures of Holmes and Watson, who are still trying to crack open the Gareth Williams mystery, click here.

Common Ground With A War Criminal: Stryker Brigade Commander Harry D. Tunnell IV Sneered At COIN Doctrine, And So Do I

2010-10-14T04:05:00.015-04:00

Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV, US Army

The Stryker Combat Brigade in Afghanistan, some of whose members stand accused of killing civilians for sport, was led by a man who openly sneered at the U.S. military's counterinsurgency strategy, according to Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post.

From Whitlock's report of September 18th:

The U.S. soldiers hatched a plan as simple as it was savage: to randomly target and kill an Afghan civilian, and to get away with it.

For weeks, according to Army charging documents, rogue members of a platoon from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, floated the idea. Then, one day last winter, a solitary Afghan man approached them in the village of La Mohammed Kalay. The "kill team" activated the plan.

One soldier created a ruse that they were under attack, tossing a fragmentary grenade on the ground. Then others opened fire.

According to charging documents, the unprovoked, fatal attack on Jan. 15 was the start of a months-long shooting spree against Afghan civilians that resulted in some of the grisliest allegations against American soldiers since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Members of the platoon have been charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoarding a skull and other human bones.

The subsequent investigation has raised accusations about whether the military ignored warnings that the out-of-control soldiers were committing atrocities. The father of one soldier said he repeatedly tried to alert the Army after his son told him about the first killing, only to be rebuffed.
...
Seven other soldiers have been charged with crimes related to the case, including hashish use, attempts to impede the investigation and a retaliatory gang assault on a private who blew the whistle.

And so on.

As Whitlock reported on October 13th,

When the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade arrived in Afghanistan, its leader, Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV, openly sneered at the U.S. military's counterinsurgency strategy. The old-school commander barred his officers from even mentioning the term and told shocked U.S. and NATO officials that he was uninterested in winning the trust of the Afghan people.

Instead, he said, his soldiers would simply hunt and kill as many Taliban fighters as possible, as dictated by the brigade's motto, "Strike and Destroy."

What resulted was a year of tough fighting in territory fiercely defended by the Taliban and a casualty rate so high that it triggered alarms at the Pentagon. By the time the 3,800-member brigade returned in July to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Wash., it had paid a steep price: 35 soldiers were killed in combat, six were dead from accidents and other causes, and 239 were wounded.
...
As sordid accounts of the platoon's activities continue to emerge, critics inside and outside the Army are questioning whether the brigade's get-tough strategy, which emphasized enemy kills over civilian relations, influenced the behavior of the accused.

Questions also persist about why the 5th Stryker Brigade's chain of command did not intervene earlier ...

And so on.

I happen to agree with Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV, at least insofar as I have openly sneered at the U.S. military's 'counterinsurgency' strategy myself.

In a much different way, no doubt, but apparently to the same degree, Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV and I see the so-called 'COIN' strategy as -- to use the clinical term -- one big fat lie.

I cannot speak for Tunnell, but my understanding begins with the fact that the words 'insurgent' and 'insurgency' are entirely inappropriate in this context. In dictionary-English, as opposed to the political double-talk that goes on in America, an 'insurgent' is someone who rebels against a legitimately established government.

Both Iraq and Afghanistan were bombed, invaded, demolished and occupied, based on transparently obvious lies. The fact that the lies were exposed as such -- which wasn't very hard to do -- has not made a whit of difference to the wars; they still carry on, although the propaganda attending them has morphed as the official 'justifications' change and change and change...

And the governments set up by the Americans in Baghdad and Kabul are mere puppets, even though they sometimes try to bite the hand that moves them. The so-called 'elections' in both countries which installed these governments were controlled by occupying foreigners, so even if they had been 'fair', they never could have been 'free', and their results would have been tainted in any case.

Because the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are undoubtedly war crimes and crimes against humanity of the highest order, and because the governments of these two countries are decidedly illegitimate, the people in these countries who are fighting against the US-led, NATO-assisted, ongoing war crimes are not 'insurgents' by any stretch of the imagination.

Secondly, as I see it, 'COIN' doctrine, which has evolved precious little despite the enormous numbers of casualties it has claimed and the relatively few successes it can point to, is based on the idea that occupying foreign soldiers can 'win' the 'hearts and minds' (or, in the Vietnam-era acronym, HAM) of indigenous people.

Perhaps in some fantasy land somewhere, but not on this planet, is it possible to 'win' anything resembling the 'hearts and minds' of any people at the same time as you are systematically killing their friends and relatives, demolishing their social and physical infrastructure, poisoning their landscape, setting up checkpoints to control their movement, kidnapping and torturing them, and dropping bombs on them from the skies -- all in an effort to gain control of their country.

The only way in which it is possible to stop indigenous people from attacking invaders and occupiers is to kill enough of them, in gruesome enough ways, and destroy enough of their environment, so completely and so permanently, that the survivors lose every aspect of their humanity except their survival instinct, and start cooperating, albeit tacitly, with manifest evil.

I understand that, and Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV understands it, and Barack Obama understands it too -- but Obama can never say it, and neither can Tunnell, and neither can any of the other men and women who make their living by manifesting the policy of evil.

But sometimes -- even despite the best efforts of those who have nothing but contempt for humanity and the truth -- facts come out which demand action. In such cases, the difference between the truth as we know it and the lies that must be told serves as a grindstone which destroys anyone unfortunate enough to be squeezed against it.

This is the inevitable consequence of a long-standing, bi-partisan, national policy so unspeakably evil that the people who implement that policy will never dare to tell the truth about it ... if they think anybody's listening.

In other words, they don't call it the Stryker Brigade for nothing.

If they were truly out to win Hearts And Minds, they would call it the HAMster Brigade.

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Sounds Like A Great Idea! But How Are They Doing It?

2010-10-13T00:41:00.004-04:00

The Most Intriguing Headline of the Day by far, and seemingly a certain winner for Largest Headline-To-Content Ratio of the Year (perhaps of the Decade), comes from the Pakistani daily Dawn.

The headline reads: "German social networks wage virtual war on rightists", and the article says:

Yes! That's right! It says nothing at all.

But apparently it used to say something, for it has been "Tweeted" 13 times.

Perhaps the German rightists are fighting back by trying to suppress this story?

Perhaps Dawn has simply screwed things up?

If I learn any more about this, I will post more details. If you know more about it, please don't be shy.

[UPDATE]

Apparently Dawn had screwed things up again. The text of the article has finally appeared. And apparently I shouldn't have got too excited.

Big news! German "leftists" are being mobilized to stand up against neo-Nazis and the spread of anti-Semitism (which normally means telling the truth about Israel) (now that it's not World War II anymore) (which means the "leftist movement" is probably funded and organized by Israel) (and how convenient is it for the Israelis to have German skinheads to work "against"?)

Oh well. We couldn't possibly use social networks to mobilize against the neo-Nazi rightists who vex us here and now, bombing, invading and occupying foreign countries that never threatened us, taking away all the civil liberties and economic protections they can, while supporting Israel to the hilt. Could we?

Nah, we couldn't even use social networking against obvious enemies of the people, such as John Raese, the idiot running for the Senate from West Virginia, who makes a point of mis-pronouncing the first name of his opponent, and longs to abolish the minimum wage law.

Or maybe, now that I mention it, we could. But we won't.

Or maybe we will, but if we do, it won't be written up in any newspapers.

Not even a screwed-up Pakistani daily.

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Two More Tales From America's Very Dark History

2010-10-09T22:16:00.004-04:00

I've lost track of the number of times that I have been profoundly disgusted to read mass-murderous nonsense from "investigative journalists" and "citizen bloggers" whom I have supported over the years. Whether that support has involved active assistance or simply linking with praise, it's always painful to realize once again that I've been wrong about somebody's intentions and that I have directed my readers to people who clearly have more respect for their own agendas than they have for the truth.

On the other hand there have been a few occasions on which I have been pleasantly surprised to find excellent work from people of whom I have been critical, and two of those occasions came along a few days ago. It behooves me to share.

Truth Excavator at Disquiet Reservations has pulled together some excellent information regarding the insane conspiracy theory about President Roosevelt and the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor. Did Roosevelt know, as some have claimed, that the attack was coming? Did the American government actually go out of its way to provoke that mass-murderous attack? Read all about it here: "October 7, 1940: The Day That Should Have Lived in Infamy"

From Robert Parry of Consortium News (of whom I have been unreservedly critical in the recent past), in collaboration with Peter Dale Scott (of whom I have not), comes a piece called "A Long History of America's Dark Side", which could easily have been called "A Short History of America's Long Dark Past". And even though I could quibble with the title, I think you should read the piece.

Must Read: Chris Floyd's "The Altars of Fear"

2010-10-03T00:09:00.000-04:00

Chris Floyd's most recent piece, "The Altars of Fear: Wrong Turns on a Long, Dark Road", is extraordinary, even by his very high standards, and I urge you to read it in full if you have not already done so.

Jews In America Are An Oppressed Minority -- OR ELSE!

2010-10-02T12:58:00.003-04:00

Rick Sanchez

Brian Stelter of the New York Times reports on the firing of Rick Sanchez by CNN:

Rick Sanchez, a daytime anchor at CNN, was fired on Friday, a day after telling a radio interviewer that Jon Stewart was a bigot and that “everybody that runs CNN is a lot like Stewart.”

The latter comment was made shortly after Mr. Stewart’s faith, Judaism, was invoked.
...
Mr. Sanchez’s comments came Thursday during a contentious conversation with the comedian Pete Dominick on satellite radio. By Friday afternoon, a recording of the conversation had circulated widely on the Internet.

In the conversation Mr. Sanchez, who is Cuban-American, repeatedly suggested that he had experienced subtle forms of discrimination in his television career.
...
One of the co-hosts of the radio show brought up the fact that Mr. Stewart was a Jew, saying to Mr. Sanchez that he was a minority “as much as you are.”

Mr. Sanchez answered sarcastically, “Yeah. Yeah. Very powerless people.” He let out a high-pitched laugh.

“Everybody that runs CNN is a lot like Stewart,” Mr. Sanchez said. “And a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart. And to imply that somehow they — the people in this country who are Jewish — are an oppressed minority? Yeah.”

Indeed. They are actually so oppressed that they can have anyone who suggests otherwise stipped of his employment within 24 hours, as CNN has so clearly demonstrated.

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It's All News! Jester Scoops Wingnut!! OR Falling Down The Rabbit Hole Becomes A Distant Memory

2010-10-01T10:06:00.006-04:00

[UPDATED BELOW]

As I mentioned the other day, I have been tracking news coverage of the mystery of Gareth Williams, the British intelligence worker whose body was found in a bathtub late last month, padlocked in a duffel bag in an MI6 "safe house".

Among the coverage I have been tracking, I have noticed a British site called "The Spoof" which has been running satirical items on the Williams case. These items are always short and nonsensical and would appeal to a person with a particular absurdist sense of humour -- not me, but perhaps somebody else. Nevertheless, since I have Google News Alerts set and I do periodic Google News searches for the topics that interest me, and since, for some unfathomable reason, Google News considers The Spoof a "news source", whenever The Spoof posts another bit of nonsense about Gareth Williams, I find out about it immediately. Such is the power of Google News.

On Wenesday, September 29, The Spoof posted an item saying

A new theory about the death of MI6 maths genius Gareth Williams claims he had worked on the Stuxnet cybermunition program.

The piece is short and it's obviously nonsense. It's not as obviously complete nonsense as the one that claimed the Queen's security men were worried she was going to lock herself into a travel bag as a form of "copycat suicide", but still...

Today, just two days later, [in a total coincidence, right?] the right-wing lunatic site World Net Daily, which for some other unfathomable reason Google News also considers a "news source", has this big hot scoop from security genius Joseph Farah:

Spy's death linked to Iran computer-virus attack?

Investigators looking into the still-shrouded details of the death of Government Communications Headquarter spy Gareth Williams have learned that in the last months of his life before being found dead in an MI6 safe house he was a member of a team tracking the first-ever computer virus designed to sabotage oil refineries and other industrial installations, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

Of course you have to subscribe to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin if you want all the details. Personally I am not substantially interested.

[UPDATE! Two hours later]

[In another total coincidence, right?] Joseph Farah's piece, "Spy's death linked to Iran computer-virus attack?" is no longer available at its original link, and it is no longer mentioned on the front page of World Net Daily either.

Now the link I posted above gives you a "server error" instead. I should say so! Some "server"! Some "error"!!

[END UPDATE]

I can remember a time when if you said the news was nonsensical fiction, nobody would believe you.

Nowadays it's a full day's work just to separate the fiction from the so-called news of the day.

And apparently I am overloaded on that, because my "fictionalized account" of the Gareth Williams story continues, in the chapter-by-chapter style of the old magazine serials. At least two or three readers are waiting impatiently for the ninth chapter of the series, and I invite you to join them by [insert shameless plug here].

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Old News: The USA Has Been A Police State Since 1787

2010-09-27T12:56:00.012-04:00

Last week the FBI raided the homes of anti-war activists in multiple states simultaneously, prompting Paul Craig Roberts to write a searing column called "It Is Official: The US Is A Police State".

I caught excerpts from Roberts and comments on his work from Chris Floyd, in "Domestic Disturbance: FBI Raids Bring the Terror War Home".

I don't disagree with anything Roberts or Floyd wrote about this story, and I would recommend both columns. But neither of these very fine writers approached the idea that struck me hardest when I saw Roberts' headline.

What's new about the USA being a police state? Why is it suddenly official now?

That the USA is a police state has been, if not officially official, then at least totally bloody obvious, for my entire life -- and the same is true of Roberts, and Floyd, and you (dear reader), and your parents, and their parents. For all our lives, we have lived in a police state that calls itself a democracy, and the cover story has been so effective that even some of our leading dissident writers are now just discovering the truth behind it.

Lest we forget: Forty years ago, in the midst of another generation's undeclared, unjustified, unwinnable and unpopular war, unarmed anti-war protesters were gunned down in broad daylight in public, and not one of the shooters who committed the crime was even tried.

In the decade leading up to those shootings, four civic and political leaders, all of whom posed threats to the established order, were also gunned down in public. The victims included a sitting President and a US Senator, yet no justice was ever served for any of these murders.

During the same period, countless civil rights activists and anti-war protesters were viciously assaulted, and some of them were also killed. Sometimes the crimes were committed by "law enforcement officials" themselves; at other times the crimes were committed with the silent approval of "the law".

From the 1930's through the late 1950's, the nation's "law enforcement" officers brutally crushed anyone they could find who had sympathy for communism, socialism, or any other "-ism" that didn't begin with "capital". None of this is secret. None of it is news.

All through our history, Americans whose skin wasn't quite white enough have been hassled, assaulted and ruthlessly murdered, often by the police whose lives depend on the taxes we all pay, and who are supposed to be protecting all of us. Most of the perpetrators of these crimes have never been brought to justice.

This pattern of official injustice -- supported more often than not by the police themselves -- has been going on for as long as you care to look. It runs as deep as American history itself. Though it may be pleasant to forget it, the USA is nation whose history includes -- nay! is a nation that was built upon -- genocide, slavery, lynching, and other forms of public terror, all with the open support of "the authorities".

A careful reading of American history shows that the basic problem here is not the current administration's disregard of the Constitution, nor the disdain for the Constitution shown by previous administrations. As Jerry Fresia points out in "Toward An American Revolution", the problem is the Constitution itself.

The Articles of Confederation, by which the "United States of America" came into being, guaranteed direct democratic representation at the national level, in a government which could be swept from power quite easily when and if the voters of the country were displeased. The most powerful men in the land -- slaveholders, mostly -- found their riches, their status and their privilege in jeopardy, and feared for what they were pleased to call "an excess of democracy".

So they banded together and wrote the Constitution, which set up our current system of "representative" government, under which the President is elected by an Electoral College chosen by the State legislators, rather than directly by the people; under which it takes three election cycles to change the entire Senate; under which countless federal officials -- including every justice on the Supreme Court -- are appointed by the President and approved by the Senate, with nary a word from the House of Representatives, which is, at least in theory, the only part of the federal government over which the voters are meant to have any immediate influence.

Then, through a series of incidents that today would be called "terrorist attacks" (as long as they were perpetrated by Muslims), the authors of the Constitution inflamed enough other powerful men to ensure the ratification of the new Constitution -- quite against the wishes of the "common people" of the day -- setting the course which we now travel, and which the best of us (including Chris Floyd and Paul Craig Roberts) rightfully despise.

Rather than guaranteeing direct democratic representation and fair and equal rights to all citizens, the Constitution set up a federal government with the power to put down "insurrections", and a mandate to protect interstate and international "commerce". In our present-day terms, it empowers a deeply entrenched government running a police state at home to support a commercial empire abroad.

Those who support the Constitution, who pine for a return to "Constitutional law", who rail against one administration after another for taking "un-Constitutional actions" and passing "un-Constitutional laws", have a legitimate point. Life in the United States would certainly be better for a very large number of people if the civil rights granted in the Constitution -- limited tough they may be -- were strictly observed.

But we would still have the same problem. The federal government would still be owned by the most powerful men in the country, and would still be geared to putting down "insurrections" at home while supporting a "commercial" empire abroad.

That was the whole point of the Constitution in the first place. This is why we are where we are today. As Chris Floyd pointed out some time ago, "the purpose of a system is what it does". And what our current system does, its purpose, is still congruent with the wishes of the "Founding Fathers".

I fear that, if our leading dissident writers continue to miss this point, the best we could possibly accomplish -- even if we all stood together against the abomination that is our federal government -- would be a reversion to the root cause of our current problems.

And that's not going to be good enough.

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Good News, Bad News: My Blog Sucks And Will Continue To Do So

2010-09-24T15:39:00.004-04:00

Look at my blog! It really does suck!!

Yes, yes, I know: My blog sucks.

It has sucked -- quite vigorously -- for most of the past two and a half years. Mostly it has sucked because I have been incapacitated, first emotionally by the premeditated murder of a close friend, and then physically by two serious injuries from which I am still struggling to recover, one of which limits my typing considerably.

My physical condition is gradually improving, and lately I have been able to do a small amount of "discretionary typing", but my blog continues to suck, and it will do so for some time to come. Now, however, the reasons are different.

I am continuing to spend a large share of my waking hours doing (painful, boring) rehab, but with my "discretionary" time -- here's the good news -- rather than trying to get my blog rolling again, I've been working on something else.

Why is this good news? Because my new project allows me to work with two (very) old friends, pulling together many of the threads we have been trying to weave in the past, and presenting them in a manner which (though I say it myself) long-time readers and newcomers alike will probably find quite refreshing.

It's a factual-fictional account of a horrible true story, and it starts like this:

On August 23, 2010, Metro Police entered a well-appointed flat at 36 Alderney Street, in the heart of London. In the flat they found an ensuite bathroom, and in the bathtub they found a padlocked bag, and in the bag they found the body of Gareth Williams.

Williams, a brilliant mathematician from Anglesey, Wales, worked in Cheltenham for GQHC, Britain's domestic eavesdropping service. He was living in London on a one-year secondment to MI6, Britiain's Secret Intelligence Service, and the block of flats in which his body was discovered was an MI6 "safe house".

Apparently uninterested in potential national-security angles, the police immediately announced they were looking for clues to Williams' mysterious death in the details of his private life. But they didn't make much headway. A month after his body was found, they still hadn't determined the cause of death, although they had admitted the case was "complex" and "unexplained".

It seemed like a job for Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

Gareth Williams was buried today in Valley, Anglesey, Wales.

Gareth Williams was buried today -- more than a month after his body was discovered.

I grieve for his parents Ian and Ellen, his sister Ceri, his uncle William Hughes, and all his other relatives and friends.

I cannot imagine what happened to him, or what is hampering the police in their investigation, or what his former colleagues at MI6 and GCQH are thinking ...

... unless maybe I can.

Please don't click this link unless you wish to read more:

Sherlock Holmes and the Alderney Street Mystery

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'Genetic Damage' In Fallujah: The BBC Reports

2010-07-22T04:39:00.014-04:00

Before

The BBC has posted a video report from veteran war reporter John Simpson, concerning children growing up in Fallujah and the genetic damage inflicted on them by the depleted uranium ammunition so generously expended in defense of their freedom and democracy (and to make them an ally!) by the most righteous of all possible superpowers.

True to form, the BBC runs the phrase 'genetic damage' in quotes, as if it weren't real but only alleged -- and without doubt the allegations would have been made by conspiracy theorists whose twisted minds have been warped against BBC and its excellent, impartial coverage, ever since 9/11.

People who cannot handle reality were stunned when the BBC scooped the world's media in reporting the destruction of World Trade Center's Building 7, (WTC-7), a 47-story skyscraper many people still haven't heard of, which suddenly turned to dust and broken twisted steel on the afternoon on September 11, 2001.

American media -- and the 9/11 commission -- have been criticized for not reporting the amazing disintegration of this building at all. But the BBC reported the "collapse" before it happened. Some people have gone to excessive lengths to try to make something incriminating out of this excellent reportage.

During

For its part, the BBC says it wasn't part of any conspiracy, just a fluke. So it's probably also a fluke that the video either sits and spins, or says

"This content doesn't seem to be working. Try again later".

Well, of course.

The BBC web page says:

Cancer, leukaemia and infant mortality are all increasing in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, which saw fierce fighting between US forces and Sunni insurgents, a new survey says.

Still one of the most dangerous places in Iraq, doctors have been reporting a large number of birth defects since the 2004 offensive.

John Simpson reports.

But that cold snippet of text was all I have been able to get [until later: see the update below].

After

The page was listed as "2nd most watched" when I first loaded it, but that's changed too, and rightly so, since a

20ft oak sculpture in the heart of Dartmoor national park is due to be pulled down despite a Facebook campaign to save the giant sculpture of a chair.

Thus the truth about horrible crimes burns itself into the consciousness of the multitudes.

Or, as Karl Rove writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Iraq is a democracy and an ally instead of an enemy of America.

It's remarkable the extent to which our bountiful leaders will go to make friends and instill democracy, is it not?


After

According to the Rational Optimist:

America believes ... that it would be a desirable thing if the world did become more democratic, and backward nations did become more like us. We regard that as our own national interest, and in the interests of those other nations as well. As John F. Kennedy said, “We seek not the worldwide victory of one nation or system, but a worldwide victory of men.” [And women.] And, with admittedly many zigs and zags, that is the essence of American foreign policy.

I can't tell you how relieved I am to have somebody so rational and so optimistic telling us what America believes, and what is the essence of American foreign policy.

After

When American cities look like this, we will know we have arrived -- the backward nations of the world will finally be just like us, and all mankind will enjoy the blessings of a democratic Paradise on Earth.


After

But in the meantime, the video is now available, and some of the details and images are indeed chilling.

It was only possible [for BBC reporters] to stay [in Fallujah] a few hours, but in that time we found large numbers of children with serious birth defects.

Some had six or more fingers on each hand. Many had tumors which affected their spines. There was plenty of evidence of brain damage. Some of the cases were too dreadful for us to show.

BBC decides what's fit to show, and what's too dreadful. Thus the truth about horrible crimes burns itself into the consciousness of the multitudes.

Nonetheless, BBC reports, the spectrum of genetic damage in Fallujah is similar to what was found in Hiroshima, but much, much worse.

This could be something serious. But then again, as the BBC report notes:

American legislation makes it extremely difficult for foreigners to sue the US government over acts of war.

So ... perhaps I'm too realistic ... but it's not possible for me to imagine all the uproar over this most recent revelation of state-sponsored made-in-America horror lasting more than about 15 or 20 minutes.

Currently top of the BBC most watched list: Archeologists unearth Neolithic henge at Stonehenge!

Do you see what I mean?

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