Atlas Drugged

There's a wingnut blogger named Pam that has a blog named AtlasShrugs. I was dimly aware of her (I only occasionally hold my nose and do scatological studies at sites like those) but had no idea just how psychotically demented she is. She apparently decided to try her hand at vlogging and the results must be seen to be believed. If she's what passes as a paragon of wingnuttery we can all relax a bit. Go have a laugh.




Thanks to Jane at Firedoglake.

Sound Familiar?

From Wikipedia, edited.

The Gleiwitz incident was a staged (false flag) attack on 31 August, 1939 against the German radio station Gleiwitz on the eve of World War II in Europe. It was one of several actions in Operation Himmler, a German project to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany, which would be used to justify the subsequent invasion of Poland.

Much of what is known about the Gleiwitz incident comes from the sworn affidavit of Alfred Naujocks at the Nuremberg Trials.

On the night of August 31, 1939 a small group of German operatives led by Naujocks seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcasted a message in Polish that urged the Poles living in Silesia to strike against Germans. The Germans' goal was to make the attack and broadcast look like the work of anti-German Polish insurgents.

In order to make the attack scene more convincing, the Germans brought in Franciszek Honiok, a German Silesian known for sympathizing with the Poles, who had been arrested the previous day by the Gestapo. Honiok was dressed to look like an insurgent; then killed by lethal injection, given gunshot wounds, and left dead at the scene, so that he appeared to have been killed while attacking the station. His corpse was subsequently presented as proof of the attack to the police and press.
In addition to Honiok, several other convicts were kept available for this purpose. The Germans referred to them by the code phrase "Konserve" ("canned goods")...

...At the same time as the Gleiwitz attack there were other incidents orchestrated by Germany along the Polish-German border, such as house torching in the Polish Corridor and spurious propaganda output. The entire project, dubbed Operation Himmler and comprising 21 incidents in all, was intended to give the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany.

On the day following the Gleiwitz attack, 1 September 1939, Germany launched the Fall Weiss operation — the invasion of Poland — initiating World War II in Europe. In a speech in the Reichstag, Adolf Hitler cited the 21 border incidents, with three of them called very serious, as justification for Germany's "defensive" action against Poland....

Meanwhile - Israeli assault on Gaza threatens wider Middle East conflagration

and Israel Threatens to Hit Damascus

Collective punishment is a War Crime

Something about the event that precipitated the current Israeli assault on Gaza didn't make any sense to me. Initial reports had it that militants dug a 1000 foot tunnel (in one report) or a dug a 2000 foot tunnel (another) to attack an Israeli military outpost. When I heard this it seemed far fetched as the IDF has the most sophisticated surveillance and detection equipment in the world. Digging a tunnel like that would have been a massive operation that would have easily been detected.

Supposedly the Hamas militants captured an IDF soldier and that's ostensibly the reason for invading Gaza.

It could all be a lie.
How can you dig a tunnel in sand dunes?



And why would you go through all that trouble out in the middle of nowhere to attack a few soldiers?
The truth seems to be that this incident is another of those useful false flag attacks that the Mossad is famous for. Where you commit a violent act that you blame on someone else. In this instance the Zionists had planned an all out assault on the Gaza strip and probably staged a phoney terrorist act to justify it.

Dozens of Hamas officials have been arrested. The power generators were bombed, cutting electricity to hundreds of thousands. Most of Gaza's water supply and the sewage system is dependent on electricity. Israeli jets are flying low and fast over densely populated areas, terrifying the people with sonic booms. There's likely to be heavy loss of life if Gaza is invaded. Families are fleeing for their lives.

Even if palestinian militants abducted that soldier, to do this is hypocrisy to the extreme. . There are over 10,000 palestinians rotting in prison with hundreds of them women and children. The Israelis are using that one soldier as an excuse to collectively punish one million people who have already been suffering under a brutal embargo and almost daily shelling from artillery.
These are war crimes.

Update 6/30 - The detention of Hamas parliamentarians in the early hours of Thursday morning had been planned several weeks ago and received approval from Mazuz on Wednesday.

-------

What Happened to the North Korean Missile Launch?

All last week we were treated to minute to minute hyperventilation about North Korea and the imminent launch of a Taepodong-2 missile. They were fueling it up, it was ready to go, it was a two stage three stage vehicle, it could carry a nuke, it could hit the west coast.

Worldwide hysteria took over. The US debated whether to shoot it down. Australia and Japan promised "harsh measures" if the launch took place. A former defense secretary actually called for a pre emptive attack. For several days the MSM treated us to non stop speculation and blather.

Today the New York Times admitted that nobody knew jack shit what they were talking about.

This isn't the first time this happened. Over the years this fear mongering pattern was repeated endlessly. I remember the big hoopla about Saddam's big guns that were supposed to threaten the entire middle east. It seems this country thrives on having enemies; this country has to have enemies. And so any steps taken by the designated boogeymen worldwide are turned into threats and the media shills take their cue to hype the menace.
Shame on them all.

El Rushbone Now Into "Hard" Drugs

He wouldn't have to haul his stash of little blue pills around if only he'd lay off the oxycoxafloppin.

Singing in the Rain

This new Rovian campaign to portray Commander Codpiece as a leader who can weather the storm is truly pathetic. This photo was on various news sites this morning:



Another one was plastered around the net a week ago:



Rove must have gotten the idea from a protester at the international climate summit in Argentina in December 2004, dancing under an artificial shower:

"No One Becomes Depraved All At Once" - Juvenal

Steve Benen has a good article over at the Washington Monthly, where he sees three years of dirt being shoveled before the presidential elections:

"Lurking just over the horizon are liabilities for three Republicans who have topped several national, independent polls for the GOP's favorite 2008 nominee: Sen. John McCain (affair, divorce), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (affair, divorce, affair, divorce), and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (divorce, affair, nasty divorce). Together, they form the most maritally challenged crop of presidential hopefuls in American political history."

Of course since Hillary is widely thought to be a candidate, the neocons are drooling over what they'll dish out about the Clintons, so it looks like it'll get pretty ugly pretty quick.
But what about the bloviating water-carriers-for-the-fascists who will lead the charge? After all, Limbaugh, Savage and their ilk are going to spread it far and wide in the lead up to when Diebold tells us who won the election. Wouldn't it be instructive to at least see a little of their personal life too, to get a sense of how they came to their opinions and why they support the fascists?

Rush Limbaugh, aside from his well publicized addiction to hillbilly heroin, has an interesting past. He got fired from jobs as a disc jockey in Pittsburg and Kansas City, under the aliases Rusty Sharpe and Jeff Christy. After failing to wipe his ass correctly he got out of the draft with his pilonidal cyst. From all accounts he was just a normal shlep with liberal views.



Several years ago a guy came forward and said he had a sexual relationship with Rush in 1971 and that our boy is as queer as a $3 bill:

"When asked when he thought Limbaugh "went straight," Sanders replied, "What are you talking about? I mean, he's been married four times now, do people really not get why he doesn't stay married? I guarantee none of those marriages was ever consummated."

Well dog my cats. How about Michael Savage? I'm sure he won't be quiet about the Clinton sexual peccadillos.
Seems Michael Alan Weiner, which is his real name, used to be a liberal tree hugger who sort of, might have, could possibly have had homosexual liaisons while swimming nude with Alan Ginsberg, although those are just speculations, mind you.

Hmmm. Well surely one time Secretary of Education, Drug Czar and all around scold William Bennet can be counted on to tell us the skinny about the candidates on all those talk shows he's on Oh that's right, he's probably off dealing with that gambling jones he has.

OK. Let's wait and see what Bill O'Reilly has to say. If he's not too awful busy stalking interns at Fox. Wait can you hear that? Sounds like he's on the phone to her right now:

"So anyway I'd be rubbing your big boobs and getting your nipples really hard, kinda kissing yor neck from behind, and then I would take the other hand with the falafel thing and..."

Whoa. He's already been slapped with sexual harassment for stuff like that.

How about the omnipresent and shrill Ann Coulter? Her word can be counted on as she maintains that she's an avid church - goer, although the minister at "her church" denies she ever was there. Well, at least she's opinionated and is involved in the voting process even when she commits a felony by voting illegally
Now some real mud has been thrown around about this person. I just can't believe that Ann is really a biological man named Arthur Coltrane from Georgia that went to Denmark for a sex change operation. Even though her prominent adam's apple and 5 o'clock shadow makes it seem like she's a man, I have it on good authority that that adam's apple is really only a piece of her neck bone that was displaced when her head was spinning around a little too much.

It is a little interesting that Ms/Mr Coulter seems to prefer to attack prominent woman who dislike the Bush regime - the Jersey girls, Hillary, Cindy Sheehan. Maybe it's womb envy, no?

So let's keep things like these in mind when the republicans claim the moral high ground of self rightousness, and when these hypocrites criticize opponents of the administration.

Now about that adam's apple - you decide:



For some reason that pic reminds me of Terence Stamp from "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert", but that's just me:

Nil, Nil

People have questioned why soccer hasn't gained much of a foothold in this country. I always thought that since the year is divvied up by the various professional sports there really wasn't any room to squeeze it in. Look at what may - june usually brings - a fustercluck of hockey, basketball, baseball and all the outdoor sports of summer, all at the same time.
And it's not quite violent enough for americans. I mean, two teams on a big rectangular field means smashing into one another, right?

Well I think I've been way off in my reasoning, and this essay by Frank Cannon & Richard Lessner at the Weekly Standard makes much better sense.

"DESPITE HEROIC EFFORTS of soccer moms, suburban liberals, and World Cup hype, soccer will never catch on as a big time sport in America. No game in which actually scoring goals is of such little importance could possibly occupy the attention of average Americans."

Manufacturing Enemies

After two absurdly stupid "terrorist" busts, one in Canada and the other in London, we're being treated to another staged arrest of a "terrorist" group, this time in Miami. They're being accused of wanting to blow up the Sears tower and FBI offices.

After looking at this story just a little bit you can see the usual pattern of government agencies, entrapment, not-so-bright patsies and the inevitable massive coverage by the whoring media. And, as is commonly the case, the individuals involved don't fit any profile of being a "terrorist".

The "possible ties to al queda" is the giveaway phrase in all the news accounts. To begin with, al queda, the mysterious omnipresent government psy op terrorist organization, seems to have been represented in this case by an FBI agent. From various news sources we learn that this agent offered a lot of money, material support and even administered an oath of allegiance to the dupes. We'll never know how much goading and prodding the FBI did but it seems to have been substantial.

So what we have is another staged event meant to inject another dose of fear, done to coerce us all to accept a police state and surrender our rights. It was another government set up to cement the "fact" of the phoney al queda boogeyman in people's minds. And most importantly in this latest farce, it was meant to convince us that there's a homegrown terrorist threat. That's the next phase in the fascist agenda - anyone opposed to the police state will be tagged as a terrorist. That's the whole purpose of exercises like these - to brainwash the public into being afraid of a manufactured enemy, with the enemy turning out to be a lot like you.

update -Knight Ridder put out an unintentionally funny piece about this group in Miami and the Keystone Kops-like handling of the situation by AT Gonzales.

"This group was more aspirational than operational," said John Pistole, the FBI's deputy director." (probably with tongue firmly in cheek)

"According to the indictment, Narseal Batiste, the accused leader of the group, provided the informant with a list of materials and equipment needed to build an Islamic Army, including boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios and vehicles. At one point, he even provided shoe sizes for his "soldiers", the indictment states." (terrorists in uniforms?)

"U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales held up the case as a good example of the Justice Department's strategy of taking out domestic terrorists before they strike. He said the group is representative of "homegrown" terrorist cells that operate without ties to a larger group like al-Qaida."

I expect this circus will be flogged for all it's worth and it won't go anywhere at all. This is obviously a staged fraud, probably part of a political scheme to make us all believe that the bushistas are looking out for our safety, as well as getting us used to seeing americans branded as terrorists.

Turning Blood Into Gold

"This week an interesting story appeared in the Washington Post – buried on page 16, of course, lest anyone think it was of the slightest importance. It revealed that documentary proof has now emerged confirming the fact that in the spring of 2003, the Bush Regime – flush with its illusory "victory" in Iraq – spurned a wide-ranging peace feeler from Iran which offered "full cooperation" on every issue that the Bushists claim to be concerned about in regard to Tehran: "nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups.

"The offer was made through the Swiss Embassy, which has served as the conduit for communication between Washington and Tehran since America's Peacock patsy, the Shah of Iran, was overthrown in 1979. The 2003 proposal included "full cooperation on nuclear safeguards, 'decisive action,' against terrorists, coordination in Iraq, ending 'material support' for Palestinian militias and accepting the Saudi initiative for a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [which called for all Muslim states to recognize Israel]," the Post reports. The unprecedented initiative was approved by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and then-President Mohammad Khatami – the moderate whose attempts at dialogue were mocked and undercut at every turn by the Bush Regime, helping to discredit the entire reformist movement in Iran and leading to Khatami's replacement by the militant hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In other words, everything that George W. Bush says he wants from the Iranians now, he could have had for the asking – three years ago."

Empire Burlesque

Bush and his handlers want Persia back to the situation that existed under the Shah. They don't want democracy. They don't care about anything in the middle east but dominion and power, as Chris Floyd states. They're profitting mightily from the tension and fear that they've sown there and they'll try to profit from the upcoming war on Iran.

Will It Happen Again?

From Urban Survival:

Screwed up Priorities

While the war profiteers are busy with their snuff flick in Iraq, potential disasters of immense importance to us are basically ignored.

The hurricane season started off in a hurry with Alberto drenching Florida. Forecasters are warning of another big season. this year. And it doesn't have to be a hurricaneto cause immense damage to urban areas.

In southern Florida a new study shows that the levee around Lake Okeechobee could fail at any time.
"Now engineers hired by a state agency are reporting that weaknesses in the vast dike around the lake again pose a "grave and imminent danger to the people and the environment of South Florida.
[...]
If the dike fails, the flow from the lake could submerge vast areas, threaten water supplies in much of South Florida and cause tens of billions of dollars in damage, according to the report, ordered by the South Florida Water Management District."
Tens of thousands of people would be at risk if it happened. To save money only bandaids were slapped on the levee over the years.

Today Reuters published a warning that the San Andreas fault could seriously rumble at any time. A large temblor would be unimaginably destructive.

So what do the fascists concentrate on when the american public is faced with such peril?
They make shit up about the living hell in Iraq and continue to whip up war fever about Iran.
With $300 billion pissed away (at least) and the senate debating the idiocy, no wonder they keep pounding the fear and loathing into us.

Not What it Seems

Two more american servicemen had there lives terminated in the last couple days and we got to know them a little more because the MSM has given a lot of play to the circumstances. Usually the dead soldiers are just numbers and if their names are mentioned they're quickly forgotten.

They were "abducted", which is what Iraqis will do to americans, while americans "capture" Iraqis. The circumstances are somewhat fuzzy as are a lot of situations over there. There was an attack on a checkpoint, they were led away by masked men, they were wounded, there was blood, an abandoned humvee, the bodies were boobytrapped when found.

There's always suspicion that things aren't what they seem in Iraq. There are forces at work there that actively want to escalate the tension. There are lots of false flag operations where someone commits violent acts to blame on someone else. Seemingly inexplicable stuff like muslims being blamed for blowing up mosques or randomly slaughtering civilians at a market happens all the time. There are forces at large who benefit from inceased violence and hatred.

The two soldiers were found mutilated with their heads apparently cut off. Now this beheading thing has been exposed as psy ops several times before. Psy ops are a way to incite hatred and rage and revulsion against the target group. Now who would benefit from rage against Iraqis? The Iraqis? It's time we understood how far the powers that be will go to manipulate us, how vicious they truly are and how little they care about the soldiers on the ground.

Update 6/21/6 - The propaganda spin machine decided to combine their messages into a neat package for the gullable ignorati by declaring that the newly annointed leader of "al queda in Iraq killed the two soldiers.
Even the people who scoff at claims that what we're seeing is a manufactured stage play should smell the deceit.

-------

...And The Sliding Scale of Compassion

There's something about the relatives of of people killed in highly visible circumstances that makes the fascist cheerleaders' blood boil. Look at the way Cindy Sheehan has been slimed. Ann Coulter launched into the 9/11 widows in her new screed. Nick Berg's father was excoriated after his son was supposedly beheaded in that video. It's happened so many times as to suggest a pathology. Now an uncle of one of the soldiers mentioned above catches his share of derision.

What do these bereaved people have in common? They dared to criticize Bush. It seems if you're a mother or uncle or wife of someone who's dead because of synthetic terror or a phoney war, solace and compassion come your way in direct proportion to your support of fascism.

Dead husband? Clap LOUDER.

Leaked Memo

The WaPo obtained a leaked memo from the "AMEmbassy Baghdad" on June 6. The typed name at the very bottom is Khalilzad -- the name of the U.S. Ambassador, though it is not known if this means he wrote the memo or merely approved it." according to Editor & Publisher. The purported "sensitive" cable isn't just despairing in tone about the situation in Iraq, it's a dark indictment of how hopeless a snuff movie it really is. So just before Sockpuppet sneaked into the green zone in Baghdad to pose for pictures and give a rousing huzzah, everyone at the top knew the truth.

But, it seems, the great unwashed in this country probably won't see that truth any time soon. Aside from some websites like E&P, the Independent from the UK and blogs, this info is totally absent from the MSM online. As of midnite EDT, to wit:

ABC - Superman: Gay? Jewish? Christian?

CBS - Bush Racks Up Frequent Flier Miles

CNN - Guard Troops Head To New Orleans

MSNBC - Researchers Find New Gene That Greatly Boosts Risk Of Breast Cancer

Faux - Hurricanes Win 2006 Stanley Cup

Of course the memo itself could be fraudulent as anything goes these days with psy ops, propaganda and lying. But here's the smell test I frequently employ. If a story doesn't make it to the emm ess emm, it's probably true as the media is basically corrupted filth, designed to mislead and lie. If a story gets big play especially in what looks like a coordinated manner, my bullshit antenna starts to quiver.

As far as the damning cable goes it centers on the horrid conditions of embassy personnel. Basically, they've lost all their freedoms and are in constant fear of death, or worse. These are Iraqis who are supposed to be protected by their occupiers. One can only imagine how bad it is for those away from the green zone bubble.

-------

Hearing Test - see what your threshhold is.

Over at a site called Ochen K there's this:

"Most humans are born with the ability to hear frequencies from about 20 Hz (low) up to 20,000 Hz (high) but that range shrinks as we get older. A guy in England figured that meant kids can hear things adults can't - specifically, very high frequencies. He created a device that pulses an annoying tone at about 15,000 Hz with the idea that when the device is used, it will repel kids while being unnoticed by adult. Perfect for solving that youth-loitering problem you've been having in front of your shop."

"I then wondered where my frequency threshold was, so I made a few sample tones."

10,000 Hz
11,000 Hz
12,000 Hz
13,000 Hz
14,000 Hz
15,000 Hz
16,000 Hz
17,000 Hz
18,000 Hz
19,000 Hz
20,000 Hz
21,000 Hz
22,000 Hz
23,000 Hz
24,000 Hz
25,000 Hz

I top out at 16,000, maybe 17. Mrs Lipstick has hearing loss and can't hear 10,000.

Mirror Image of the War

When Rear Admiral Harry Harris said that the Guantanamo suicides weren't "an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us", it spoke volumes as to how fascists view themselves. Turning things on their heads, the torturers become the victims and the prisoners are attacking them by refusing to rot in their cells.

How dare they kill themselves in despair at being locked away indefinitely with no legal recourse, just to make Americans look bad?

This is par for the course in our new bizarro Bush-world, where war = peace, truth is relative and everything assumes it's opposite meaning -



Ted Rall decides to put a mirror up to the Gitmo idiocy:

The Other Side of the War

BAGHDAD--The deaths of three Americans who hung themselves in their secret cells brought renewed calls from human rights groups to bring other foreigners to trial. But leaders of the Iraqi resistance forces dismissed suggestions that the captured U.S. soldiers had committed suicide in despair over the harshness or indefinite length of their imprisonment.

"They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own," said Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, of the detainees. "I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."

Other Iraqi resistance leaders echoed this hard line, noting that radical Americans sacrifice happy and secure lives in the United States in the hope of achieving martyrdom on the dusty battlefields of the Middle East. Moreover, their fundamentalist interpretation of their Christian faith promises eternal paradise in the hereafter.

"It does sound like this is part of a strategy--in that they don't value their own lives, and they certainly don't value ours; and they use suicide as a tactic," said Mohammed Daham Abid Hamadi, a top deputy of the Popular Resistance for the Liberation of Iraq told a nationalist website. "Taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good PR move."


The "public relations move" that our fascists fear the most is to signal that they, in fact, are not omnipotent. The Guantanamo prisoners ended their torture, and as Anthony Alessandri points out at Globalresearch, we can't have THAT now, can we?

"This attitude is also implicit in the follow-up article printed by the New York Times the next day, with the headline: "Prisoners' Ruse Is Suspected at Guantanamo." This, we learn from the article, should be the focus of inquiry: not the circumstances that drove three men to their deaths, but the question of how, given the fact that one of the elements of their confinement was constant monitoring by their captors, these men could have managed their "ruse.
"The point of systematic torture, of course, is to force the tortured to acknowledge, every minute of every day, that his life is in the hands of his torturer. No wonder, then, that the prison's commanders and their willing mouthpieces in the press are alarmed. In the most macabre and tragic sense, these are the first escapees from Guantanamo."

Thank Heaven for 7-Eleven

"A spring Sunday morning and I am at the politically incorrect 7-Eleven buying my cholesterol loaded half-and-half for my peasant slave labor grown coffee. In the parking lot, car speakers blare out Bob Marley from a grungy 1987 Olds Cutlass (the last year GM made 'em), while the owner, a Haitian guy, sits on the curb eating his Smokey Big Bite hot dog, sunshine pouring over the whole world sweet as that quart of chocolate milk he is going to wash it all down with. Bob Marley is singing "One Love" and that Smokey smells so damned good I order one for myself and settle in next to that Haitian dude. And I think, "Is this a great fucking country or what? Yessiree, the world's best hope.

And it is. Or was. Or something."

"Americans have always been an obedient people, proud to be answerable and obedient to the nation's law and god, with one reinforcing the other somehow in the national mind. Obedient people do not look up from their assigned cubicles; do not ask if their work is meaningful or contributory to mankind. Never question the way things are. Not in church, nor in daily life. And if the air reeks of a republic rotting from the inside out, you just hold your nose."

I'm a sucker for acerbic cynicism, especially when it's combined with good writing. I've found a lot of it at Joe Bageant's site. A good antidote for relentless journalistic whoring for the fascists a la Faux© News. "Fantastic news for the White House today -- yet another top presidential aide was not indicted for perjury or obstruction of justice."

Irrisistable Force Meets Immovable Object

Yesterday the SCOTUS ruled that police could use evidence in no-knock entries. Without identifying themselves the door kickers could rush a residence and presumably do their thing with less danger. With this newest attack on the 4th amendment anybody can see what's in store for us.

"The libertarian Cato Institute also denounced the ruling. "Because of today's decision, we can expect to see an even more pronounced increase in the use of illegal, military-style no-knock raids," Cato policy analyst Radley Balko said. "

But Texas, Florida and some other states have a law called the castle doctrine, which stipulates that you don't have to retreat in the face of armed aggression and you can use deadly force by standing your ground.

A sticky wicket. -(The Phrase Finder): A difficult situation.

Watershed Moment?

Peter Daou over at Crooks and Liars took a look at the Tonight Show last night and saw something I didn't catch. Leno had Coulter and Carlin on his program and I thought the possibilities for broader ramifications were there but nothing much occured.

Daou instead saw this latest appearance by the bloviating bimbo as a "watershed moment in the war between the establishment media and the progressive netroots...". He maintains it may be the start of a media clash between the established lapdog-to-power mainstream outlets and the growing voice of the progressive internet communities. I don't know about that as she's been given plenty of venues in the past to project her vomit. He says "Parading Coulter on national television is a statement from the establishment media that we don't matter, that our 'pressure' is meaningless, that our voices are worthless."

Maybe he's right. In this stampede to fascism the mainstream media is playing a pivotal role in filtering the news and structuring the debates. Fascist ideologies can't ever stand on their own - they have to be propped up and prettified, given a veneer of legitimacy. Hosting the likes of Coulter by the established media could be an in-your-face statement that rational debate about this New McCarthyism is long over and now it's a race to the bottom, at least on TV and radio.



Or perhaps having the shrill harpy on makes slightly less fascist ideas just a little less crappy.
-------

Coulter also seems to be a bit of a plagiarist, with the Rude Pundit and the Raw Story all over it.

-------

There's a guy named Daniel Borchers who works at a labor-management organization dealing with health and safety issues in Washington. He's an old time conservative who detests the current fascist push. He's producing a video called "The Truth About Ann" which is due out this month. Should be interesting.

-------

Henry Rollins sends a video letter to her.

Tonight's Cage Match

I never watch television but this evening I'm making an exception by tuning in to the Tonight Show. George Carlin and Ann Coulter are going to be featured.

Now I know that this is network television and I don't expect there to be fireworks; tomorrow I'll probably be underwhelmed by my very rare TV experience. Still, Carlin has been deflating fascist hypocrites since before the Professional Skank was born and it might be worth a few grins.

Speaking of the wench, a lot of people are saying that it's probably wise to just ignore her. It's the attention that people like that crave and if they don't get it they'll go away. I don't buy into that philosophy just like I'd never buy her books. What was that old saying - "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." People like Coulter will always be around to spread their hatred and bile and need to be stood up to, and confronted. Her latest smear of the 9/11 widows is marvel of assinine vituperativeness -"I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." Beyond belief.

Here's a thought, you cowardly bitch: try saying that to their faces.


Added later - no interaction at all between the two. Carlin is still sharp at 69. Seems they bussed in some Harpy supporters to scream gleefully whenever she opened her piehole.
How anyone takes her seriously is a mystery.

Precious Leader Visits Baghdad

The Codpiece Commander pulled a "surprise" visit to Iraq, sneaking into the city to meet his satrap Nouri al-Maliki for a photo op.
Some thoughts about this trip crossed my mind when I read about it. According to news reports, it was all quickly arranged and the prime minister was kept in the dark until 5 minutes before the meeting. Not exactly the usual exchange between heads of state but more like the office manager popping into a cubicle to see if the guy is playing video games.

And the obvious message to us all is that the Victorious War President is exulting over the staged Zarqawi production from a few days back, possibly stressing how much safer and secure Iraq is now that the terrible boogeyman was removed.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect a visit like this has to be planned some time in advance and isn't like driving down to the store for beer. The security aspect has to be a convoluted nightmare especially considering the hell hole that Baghdad is every day. The trip logistics have to be meticulously thought out and perhaps dry runs are necessary. Which brings me to suspect that this trip is part of the whole propaganda package, perhaps scripted two months ago when they decided to dump the exposed Zarqawi terror sales campaign.

Maybe before he left he took a victory jog around the green zone or dropped into the mess hall to have some lunch with the grunts. You know, like when he helped serve up some yummy looking dinner a while back

The Blown Zarqawi Deception

Desperate Bush Admin Ends Blown Zarqawi deception by Larry Chin, Online Journal Associate Editor
June 12, 2006

"The purported execution of "Al-Qaeda mystery man" Musab al-Zarqawi ends what was exposed two months ago as a Pentagon psychological operation in leaked military documents.

The pursuit of Zarqawi is being sold as the "turning point" of the Iraq war. It is nothing of the sort. This is another lie, heaped upon the multitude of lies that comprise the "war on terrorism" itself.

Zarqawi: Pentagon psy-op and intelligence asset

What is a well-established (and deliberately unaddressed) fact is that the United States government and US-connected intelligence agencies created Islamic "terrorism." The US and its allies have continued to use and guide terrorist cells, as well as fill worldwide media with "terrorism" propaganda.

See, "Who is Osama bin Laden?" and "Al-Qaeda: the database"

As pointed out by Michel Chossodovsky in "The Anglo-American War of Terror: An Overview", the continuing US-led war of conquest rests upon a labyrinth of deceptions, of which "Zarqawi" is one:

"One of the main objectives of war propaganda is to 'fabricate an enemy.’ As anti-war sentiment grows and the political legitimacy of the Bush administration falters, doubts regarding the existence of this illusive 'outside enemy’ must be dispelled.

"Propaganda purports not only to drown the truth but also to 'kill the evidence’ on how this 'outside enemy,’ namely Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda was fabricated and transformed into 'Enemy Number One.’"

With the Zarqawi hit, a bit more of this evidence has been killed. Literally.

Zarqawi has been reported dead more than once, and now he is dead again, deader than ever."

There was a quote from someone a few decades ago along the lines of "If communism didn't exist, we'd have to invent it."
There was also a book that came out in the eighties by Jonathan Kwitny called "Endless Enemies." In it he gave reams of evidence that succeeding american administrations never tired of inventing boogeymen for profit and power.
I'd say that they're still at it, big time.

The Other Deaths

Mike Holmes at LewRockwell.com has a salient point that most everyone else seems to have glossed over:

"One aspect of the recent spectacular bombing death of alleged Iraqi terror leader Abu Al-Zarqaawi has thus far passed without comment. This sad fact is yet another indication of the conditioned tolerance we have absorbed regarding the ongoing killing of innocent civilians there.

We are told that along with the alleged “Mr. Big” of Iraqi terror, his “spiritual advisor” (who led the U.S. to him) was killed as well as a yet unidentified “woman and child.” The supposed spiritual advisor has not been labeled a terrorist and no one has commented on whether his death was in fact justified. As for the woman and child, no one has identified them either (at least in the western press to date)."

(...)

"Iraqi parents just have to hope that their little Iraqi loved ones don’t happen to end up underneath one of those precision guided laser bombsights of democracy… To America, those deaths don’t count, aren’t even acknowledged, much less condemned. They are just somebody else’s children who got in our way. To George Bush’s Wehrmacht, those kids don’t even exist."

Just more casual murder in the continuing Iraq catastrophe.

And there's a far larger war crime being perpetrated there right now - the obliteration of a city of 400,000 people. US forces and their vichy mercenaries have cordoned off Ramadi and residents are fleeing for their lives, but thousands are trapped there with all municipal services cut off. It seems to be a repeat of the destruction of Falluja in 2004 when the US pulverized that city, using banned weapons and killing countless numbers of innocent civilians. Nobody knows how many of course as the bulldozers were sent in to flatten what was left.

The unfolding atrocity can be seen here - Fear of Big Battle Panics Iraqi City

"This whole endeavor is so appallingly pervaded by the most blatant moral hypocrisy that one scarcely knows where to begin a denunciation, except perhaps at the moment George W. Bush ordered the invasion to begin. All the rest followed naturally and might well have been foreseen—indeed, it was foreseen, by me and by many others. Yet, at this late date, we are still being treated to mock-shocked media reports and make-believe discussions of "bad apples" and all the rest of the public-relations pretense trotted out to cloak the ongoing mass murder."
Robert Higgs

Such a Short Lived Second Coming

Complete Insanity

1. The American gulag at Guantanamo is the fascist's declaration to the world that there is no higher power than themselves. It's a message to us all that there is, in fact, no more law.

Some men have been kept there for years without being charged with anything. The government has said repeatedly that they may be held for life. We're so blinded by the soothing narrative of our special goodness that we don't see tyranny when it's right in front of our face.

There have been hundreds of suicide attempts there and dozens of hunger strikes. Three succeeded in escaping their torture and abandonment this weekend by hanging themselves to death.

What's the response from the camp commander? The americans are victims.
"I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."

Meanwhile, some douchebag spokesflack calls it a publicity stunt.

Alicublog - "Fox News announced it would refer henceforth to such suicides as "homicide suicides" to let viewers know that they were actually attacks on American self-esteem.

No getting around it. Fucking. Bozos.

2. The Israeli army shells a Gaza beach, killing 10 palestinians and wounding 40 others.
An Israeli version of spokesflackery calls it a "work accident".

3. Professional Skank Ann Coulter continues to shill for the fascists by attacking 9/11 widows as 'self-obsessed' 'millionaires' 'reveling in their status as celebrities'
Apparently upset that they don't show enough fealty to the Sockpuppet and that they forced the fascists to hold their whitewashing 9/11 commission, the Skank shrieks that "they enjoy their husbands' deaths".
Keith Olbermann chronicles the stooges and sycophants in the media who are falling all over themselves to rationalize her mental imbalance.

Still More on The Dead "Zarqawi", And the Tender Mercies of US Troops

First reports from the propaganda mill had it that the guy died from US bombs. . They then proudly showed pictures supposedly of his dead face :



along with the standard grainy airplane video of the bombing run.

Within hours the obvious question began to circulate - ummm, instead of a jelly like smear of constituent protoplasm, the guy looked no worse than if he was at a friday night bar fight.

Yikes!

Hurriedly switching gears, the military said the guy somehow survived the two 500 lb bombs.:

"Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, for more than three years the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, briefly survived the US air strike on his safe house north of Baghdad, and was still alive and speaking when Iraqi police reached the scene on Wednesday afternoon. The astonishing new details of Zarqawi's death were given yesterday in a video briefing from Baghdad by Maj-Gen Bill Caldwell, a military spokesman who the previous day had said that Zarqawi was killed instantly."

Got that? Oh, and now comes word of women's lingiere.

Then the military insisted they began cleaning him up:

QUESTION: Did anyone render medical assistance to him? Did U.S. troops try to render medical assistance?
( U.S. Army Maj. Gen. William) CALDWELL: Again, as I was reading the report, they went into the process to provide medical care to him.

The latest reports have an eyewitness claiming troops applied a slightly different method of medical assistance. Here's Yahoo:

"Also, an Iraqi man raised fresh questions, telling Associated Press Television News that he saw U.S. soldiers beating an injured man resembling al-Zarqawi until blood flowed from his nose."
The Iraqi, identified only as Mohammed, said he lives near the house where al-Zarqawi was killed. He said residents put a bearded man in an ambulance before U.S. forces arrived.

When the Americans arrived they took him out of the ambulance, they beat him on his stomach and wrapped his head with his dishdasha, then they stomped on his stomach and his chest until he died and blood came out of his nose,"

Making sure the patsy who played the Berserking Beheader couldn't blow the whistle on the psy ops? What a joke this all is. Expect even more swill from the spinmeisters.

Entertainment News Tonight

billmon plays television critic:

"Over the next few weeks, insiders say, Pentagon Channel executives determined that while the Zarqawi Show still had a dedicated following of hardcore fans who would swallow any plot device, no matter how ludicrous, the series no longer made commercial or artistic sense. It was also believed that a spectacular and upbeat finale might lure viewers away from Haditha, the controversial docudrama now airing on the rival Reality Network.
Network sources say the Pentagon Channel is weighing a possible sequel to the Abu Zarqawi Hour, featuring an identical plot but a completely different cast. The network and Zarqawi have permanently severed their relationship, these sources added, due to "irreconcilable creative differences."

Zarqawi "Dead" - Help Wanted: New Swarthy Terror Poster Boy

It hasn't been good news for the bushistas lately.
At home approval ratings for the Flaccid Puppet have been in free fall. Grandstanding about the sanctity of marriage tanked immediately.
Abroad Afghanistan has exploded in new violence.
Islamists overthrew and kicked out the US backed warlords in Somalia.
The posturing against Iran is met with yawns. There's a growing split between the US and the UN.
The formerly compliant satraps in Iraq denounced US violence and unilaterally released prisoners from jail.

What to do?

Well, the fascists decided to "kill" one of their Emmanuel Goldsteins and claim a triumph in their phoney war on terror. Sockpuppet even called a press conference to crow about it, which cinches the fact that it's a ruse.

"Al Queda" as the fascists want you to believe is a myth. It was a CIA construct that was set up in the 80s to fight the Soviet presense in Afghanistan. Afterward it was used to destabalize the central asian Stans and was useful to the CIA in the Balkans in the 90s. It was the inside job on 9/11 that pushed this nebulous myth to star status as the Foe That Will Never Be Defeated in the Long War. Within minutes of the first plane strike the tightly controlled media chanted "Al Queda" and Osama relentlessly.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq was always a priority in the fascist agenda. The problem was how to justify and sell it to the ignorati. After 3 years the presense of the US military there has magically transformed into a struggle against you know who. But the rubes need to personalize their enemy to get emotionally involved. Think the two minute hate from Orwell's 1984:

"The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even - so it was occasionally rumoured - in some hiding-place in Oceania itself."

So the propaganda spinmeisters chose Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, who was actually killed several years ago, to be the poster boy for AQ in Iraq. All the atrocities and barbaric behavior that was attributed to him was carried out by black ops squads, the Mossad and American and British agents. His "death" will be convenient to the fascists also in that their future crimes can be attributed to vengeful followers.

Yay. Little boots gets some huzzahs and a temporary spike in a job survey. However they're going to have to find another patsy to take Zarqawi's place as villain du jour. Because they need us to focus on something like this



rather than this




see also Hubub in Hibhib by Chris Floyd on Zarqawi, the notorious shape-shifter.

-------

bagnewsnotes captions this picture "Give Me The Largest Frame You've Got"



Does this mean the ban on photos of war casualties, both American and Iraq, is over?
Just asking.

Gangs Claim Their Turf in Iraq

The Chicago Sun-Times had an article that hinted at a growing gang presense in the military, and a lot of evidence shows that they're over in Iraq.

"Barfield said Army recruiters eager to meet their goals have been overlooking applicants' gang tattoos and getting waivers for criminal backgrounds.
"We're lowering our standards," Barfield said.
"A friend of mine is a recruiter," he said. "They are being told less than five tattoos is not an issue. More than five, you do a waiver saying it's not gang-related. You'll see soldiers with a six-pointed star with GD [Gangster Disciples] on the right forearm."

"Because of the extreme danger of his mission in Iraq, Stoleson said he does not relish the idea of working alongside gang members, whom he does not trust. Stoleson said he once reported to a supervisor that he suspected a company of soldiers in Iraq was rife with gang members.
"My E-8 [supervising sergeant] told me not to ruffle their feathers because they were doing a good job," he said."

It was inevitable. Deliberately lying the nation into an illegal and filthy invasion of Iraq and murdering uncounted thousands seems to have dampened enthusiasm for military service. Recruiters have lowered standards and "fixed" criminal records. Yo Eskimos! They're even signing up autistics. It seems decent, intelligent people want nothing to do with the unnecessary slaughter overseas and Uncle Sham has to pull a lot of tricks with a wink and a nod to get the numbers needed to perpetuate it. Is it any wonder that the US military doesn't concern itself with Iraqi body counts?

He's Back

TBogg sees an eerie parellel with today's opening of Richard Donner's remake of The Omen:

"As you may remember, an American ambassador (played by Gregory Peck) adopts a baby boy after his somewhat brittle wife (Lee Remick) miscarries. The creepy little child (played by Harvey Stephens whose career arc presaged Fred Savage) turns out to be the anti-Christ and various people are killed in exceedingly elaborate ways paving the way for movies like Final Destination. Of course it is very important to note that Satan (who is no dummy, let me tell you) manages to place the adoptable lil devil with a well-connected government official."

Creepy anti-Christ child + adopted + father is a Presidential appointee =



Justice Stevens better watch his ass...

-------

A gay marriage we all applaud -

Lioness in Zoo Kills Man Who Invoked God

God has a sense of humor.

(Reuters) KIEV - A man shouting that God would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lioness in Kiev zoo after he crept into the animal's enclosure, a zoo official said on Monday.
"The man shouted 'God will save me, if he exists', lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took his shoes off and went up to the lions," the official said.
"A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery."


nice pussycat...

In a related issue, are your cats ready to learn about Jesus?



"People often ask me when they should teach the Good News to their housecats. I have but one answer: "What are you waiting for?"

Take a good look at Iran before it's turned into a smoking, irradiated ruin.

The Enron Story Everyone Is Missing: The Bush-Ken Lay Connection

The putrid Enron nightmare made simple.

"Enron is Whitewater in spades. This isn’t just some rinky-dink land investment like the one dredged up by right-wing enemies to haunt the Clinton White House--but rather it has the makings of the greatest presidential scandal since the Teapot Dome."

The Way Americans Like Their War

Robert Fisk has a post at counterpunch where he ruminates that Haditha could be the tip of an iceberg.
I would say that's a certainty. Ever since 9/11 we've been told there are no rules to the game any more. We can torture, we can spy on anyone, throw them away without charges, kill them, even when they're innocent. And the scum at the top have incessantly repeated the lie that Iraq = 9/11, so much so that a shocking number of soldiers over there believe it.

"What kind of trauma is now being experienced in Iraq? Just who is doing the mass killing? Who is dumping so many bodies on garbage heaps? After Haditha, we are going to reshape our suspicions."

-------

While I'm referencing good reads, tbogg has The Return of Now Can We Compare It To Viet Nam?

"So let's check out the old Official Quagmire Scorecard™

Unpopular war? Check.

Insurgency that won't go away? Check.

Domino effect? Check.

Media is at fault for losing the war? Check.

Atrocities? Check.

Unpopular President? Check.

Light at the end of the tunnel Secretary of Defense? Check.

Hmmmm... What are we missing? Oh yeah. Blaming the politicians (who got us into this mess) for not letting the military win the war

NY Gets a 40% Cut in "Antiterrorism" Money

According to the NY Times the reason why Homeland Insecurity withheld the dough was because the city faxed the application in instead of emailing it:

"Federal officials said yesterday that the city had not only done a poor job of articulating its needs in its application, but had also mishandled the application itself, failing to file it electronically as required, instead faxing its request to Washington.
City and state officials insisted that they had made no mistakes. And a state official provided a written acknowledgment from the federal government saying that the city's application for grant money had been "successfully submitted" and said that the city could "log in" any time to view the application."

Forget that the funding, our tax dollars, probably gets swallowed up by bureaucracy and spiffy new swat gear for the paramilitary police units. Hopefully some of it gets used in a positive manner. Mostly it's just more politics.
But somehow this idiotic reasoning just sort of, um, fits the swine in Washington.

The US Is Determined To Go To War With Iran

The insane warmongers in Washington will get their war with Iran. It's obvious what's going to happen with this manufactured "crisis".

When the US proposes talks, the entire world knows the farce was meant to fail.

More and more ships are being deployed to the middle east.

But the war criminals have a problem on their hands. With the whole world now aware that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was predetermined to happen and the preliminaries were a phoney stage play, their problem is how to get the fireworks started. And still be able to blame the victim.

The scumbags are running out of time on many fronts. Basically they're losing the propaganda war to Tehran, and with good reason because Iran is well within it's rights to do what it's doing. Nobody is buying the blustering and posturing from psychos like Rice and Bolton. The Iranian oil bourse is coming and trading in euros will threaten the dollar. Coupled with a new Russian market that will trade in rubles the dollar is doomed. It looks like it's only Israel and the US who'll attack Iran as even Britain is turning it's back on a new war. Turkey earlier refused to allow an attack from the Air Force base in Incirlik.

Iran is constantly expanding it's influence worldwide by forming trade alliances with China, Russia and Venezuela. Iran is basically sitting in the catbird seat and needs to do nothing to change the current situation.
Even if somehow the US twists arms at the UN to get sanctions approved, one glance at the countries bordering Iran shows just how effective they would be. Just how secure and not porous does anyone think the borders with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey and Iraq would be?

Given this real world arrangement, if anything ugly happens in the near future, you can bet the farm that Iran will have had nothing to do with it. Just like 9/11, it'll be a synthetic terror event or series of events, courtesy of the fascists who will use it to destroy yet another country in their march toward global domination.
They'll have their war. Only this time the consequences will be enormously filthy.

See also Endgame in Iran.

And Former CIA Analyst Says Iran Strike Set For June Or July

"The propaganda has been laid, the aircraft carriers are in place, it doesn't take much to fly the bombers out of British and US bases - cruse missiles are at the ready, Israel is egging us on," said McGovern.