Monday, January 30, 2017
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Turkey Trot
I missed Trump's swearing-in, his speech. As far as I know, he didn't promise he wouldn't grab women's pussies while president. General Mad Dog Mattis got sworn in as Secretary of Defense. An old player in the military/industrial establishment, he'll ensure smooth flow of contracts and continuing violence. Melania Trump wore a conservative up to the neck powder blue dress at the inauguration. My mother said she looked "gorgeous," as I'm sure many mothers in America did. For at least a day, even anti-Trump women can take a moment to admire the new First Lady, an immigrant from Slovenia, herself, according to investigative journalists last year, working illegally in the U.S. in the mid-1990s. Melania Knauss's past illegal status by itself, if true, doesn't bother me. Salma Hayek, the "gorgeous," although I mean really gorgeous Mexican actress was for a time an illegal alien. Melania's husband Donald added ironic spice to the matter of his third wife's past, however, by commencing his presidential campaign in June 2015 by bringing up illegal immigration, promising to build a wall that "Mexico will pay for" along America's southern border.
When Trump brought this up publicly, did Melania feel a twinge of unease, remembering her own time two decades ago as a young woman modeling in the U.S. without proper credentials? She didn't know Trump then, but now her husband acts as a cover for anything that might now look bad. Trump covers his entire family, his elder two sons now in charge of his business, supposedly disconnected from ever communicating about said business while their father runs the free world. The Trump effect is one of a rich, charismatic man with no morals bulling his way through all proprieties, making into his servants a fourth estate that's lapsed totally in its obligation to the people to be objective and report on what's really going on.
Last night, "liberal" Rachel Maddow on supposedly left-wing MSNBC, pointed out during a one minute long piece between ads the split screen her director had playing. The left side showed a large room with a mass of people at the bottom of the screen: the "Liberty Ball," the first of two balls to be attended by Mr. and Mrs. Trump. (The second was called the "Freedom Ball.") After remarking that those two names could be used this Thanksgiving as names to call the turkeys traditionally "pardoned" by the president, an inane personal observation of her own, Maddow said that the upcoming celebration for the new president was sharply contrasted by protests across the nation. The right-hand side of the screen showed police clashes with protestors in Portland, Oregon, one of many cities seething with anti-Trump discontent. Today, Days of Trump +1, massive gatherings of women in numerous countries have come together to protest the elevation of a misogynistic pig dedicated to reversing women's rights, human rights, environmental protections, and boosting the worst habits of capitalism, himself a partaker in big money concerns.
Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump will advance their father's business, won't they? Will do so in compliance with what they know their father wants to accomplish. They've had strategy sessions about this, have they not? Are we supposed to believe that President Trump won't be far richer when he's done holding office than he was yesterday? What was the true purpose of Taiwan's president's phone call to President-elect Trump, anyway?
Rachel Maddow and her director showed the contrast of a celebration for a new president with citizens on the streets making noise about their discontent with the new order of things. Maddow had nothing to say about the two images, other than her suggestion for naming the turkeys. Shitty journalism is a disservice to the people and a boon to tyranny.
What else happened? Two days ago, the day before Obama moved on to his vacation in Palm Springs, California, he bombed Libya. I'm glad the war with Libya got wrapped up in a period of weeks, like he promised it would a few years back. Obama, like other recent presidents, revisits crime scenes. Trump has inherited the war with ISIS, a renewed U.S. troop presence in Iraq, conflicts with Yemen and Somalia, an alliance with a loathsome Saudi Arabian government destroying the people of Yemen, the Syrian disaster, and the continuous-since-9/11 war in Afghanistan. I'm likely leaving some violent engagements out, maybe because my mind is so overburdened with thinking about the horrible actions of men and women who plan things on this planet, that I can't think about all of it in the space of one essay.
I saw a curious meme last night. A picture of Osama bin Laden with the caption, "Osama bin Laden, Jenga World Champion 2001."
In Jenga, a tower is built with wooden blocks. Players take turns removing blocks and replacing them on the topmost level. The winner is the player who successfully removes and replaces a block last before the tower falls. If Osama bin Laden is "Jenga World Champion 2001," he removed blocks from the World Trade Center Tower(s), but he didn't collapse it. The conspiracy theory about the Towers collapsing from already in-place charges, blown by official government orders, comes into focus in the sly meme. I don't claim to adhere to the conspiracy theory about the destruction of the Towers, I just point out that whoever came up with the bin Laden Jenga world champion idea is pretty clever.
One thing I will say, though, is that the U.S. government, in its record of making official statements about controversial events, often lies. The Pearl Harbor attack, for instance, has been shown, convincingly by a sober historian, John Toland in his book Infamy, to have been allowed to happen by the Roosevelt administration for the purpose of pushing the U.S. into the war. In October Surprise by Barbara Honegger, we learned that the Reagan campaign tampered with the 1980 election by negotiating with the Ayatollah Khomeini to delay the release of the fifty-two American hostages held for over a year by that point--the bane of Jimmy Carter's presidency. Reagan and his people wanted to prevent an "October surprise," wherein Carter might pull off a rescue or diplomatic coup, securing the hostages' release. The hostages were released at exactly the moment Reagan took the oath of office. This theory was attacked for many years, but the term, "October surprise," entered the lexicon of every newsman and -woman in the U.S. whenever they talk about something coming along to upset a candidate's momentum. The term was even used to describe Trump's bragging about his pussy-grabbing habits, the tape on which he said this released in October 2016.
The John and Robert Kennedy assassinations, like the Martin Luther King assassination, are riddled with flaws in the official theories. Not even many members of King's own family believe the official story that white man James Earl Ray shot the civil rights leader. Members of the King family attended Ray's funeral, believing that an innocent man was being laid to rest.
The rationale for the Iraq War (Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction) turned out to be hokum. Not even a dumbass like Hillary Clinton believes in it anymore. President Woodrow Wilson in his 1916 re-election campaign promised that the U.S. wouldn't get into the big war in Europe. He lied. By April 1917, the country was committed, and after the war, Wilson admitted that the endeavor's purpose on the American front was to make money. I guess you have to lie when the truth is that disgusting.
If 9/11 had "inside job" characteristics, or if bin Laden hit the jenga tower but he didn't knock it down, lies would naturally follow, so the official version (which is bad enough, considering that the 9/11 Commission laid out a scenario amounting to a sequence of cascading incompetence and blindness by people failing to act on reports of bizarre information, like men who wanted to learn how to fly a jetliner but didn't want to know how to land it) amounts to a series of "facts" that must be looked at with skepticism at best.
I don't know what happened, but I do know that a 1998 document for a think tank called The Project for the New American Century speculated that "nothing short of a major event, like Pearl Harbor, will get the U.S. on track to taking its place as the coming century's most significant power," or so I paraphrase. Paul Wolfowitz, deputy Secretary of Defense under Bush, was a member of the Project, along with a bunch of warmongering fucks who've never been shot at or bombed. The mention of Pearl Harbor, given the evidence of Roosevelt's foreknowledge, is particularly apt, if Wolfowitz and crew were thinking along the lines of a future attack allowed to happen. Considering U.S. intelligence and its intimacy with such entities as al-Qaeda (dating to the Soviet-Afghan War), it doesn't boggle my mind too much to consider the possibility that bin Laden was working, at least for a time, for the United States. Today, U.S. forces attack terror groups of all kinds, ignoring some for a while, concentrating on others intensely, and then moving on, using shifting alliances in a big strategy that probably is comparable to a corpse sewn together from many different bodies in a horror film.
In effect, whatever you hear on mainstream American news, it's likely you're probably being fucked with at least a good portion of the time.
Yeah, it's really a good idea that a guy named Mad Dog is going to head the Defense Department, the biggest arms dealer in the world. You want a gun, you go to Mad Dog. Mad Dog reports to the Businessman, the blonde guy with orange skin married to the Slovenian, they live in a big white house and they keep a tower on the side. People believe in the Businessman. He's going to solve our problems. He's going to give us a bigger military, one the size of Ares' cock. He's his own Minister of Propaganda--the news networks report all the crap that shits from his mind. They're in thrall to the Businessman. He's high ratings, he's rising stocks, he's the sparkly candle on America's cake. He loves guns. Everybody should have a gun. They should make little guns for babies. We live in a dark but hopeful time. Only the Businessman can save us. He's got plans. Nobody can look at his taxes. He's got too much to hide. He has awkward connections to some shady motherfuckers in other countries. He's very sensitive about his smaller than average hands. He assures us he has a big penis. A seventy year old man with a big virile penis, imagine that. He lies all the time. He lies so much that every once in a while a truth pops out. He accused the former president of being from another country, he did that a lot, and he built up a base of racist support that way, pretty fucking clever. He proposed the pie in the sky idea of building a 1,900 mile long wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and making Mexico pay for it. The audacity! He proposed one crazy shit idea after another, never got into details, and everything he said got reported on by the sensation-hungry news media. He's ratings, he's rising stocks. Curiously, in a country obsessed with appearance, no one in the mainstream news media talks about how ugly and un-photogenic he is. Even Eisenhower was better looking. You'd think that the shallowness of this country's standards when it comes to judging people in the limelight would hurt the Businessman, but no, even though he's on tape discussing his pussy-grabbing technique, no female journalist bothers to tear him up for saying that. The Businessman dances with the Slovenian at the Liberty Ball, cops with armored codpieces stare fearfully at citizens who expect their sophisticated nation to not surrender so easily to the worship of power and money.
Jenga.
Vic Neptune
I missed Trump's swearing-in, his speech. As far as I know, he didn't promise he wouldn't grab women's pussies while president. General Mad Dog Mattis got sworn in as Secretary of Defense. An old player in the military/industrial establishment, he'll ensure smooth flow of contracts and continuing violence. Melania Trump wore a conservative up to the neck powder blue dress at the inauguration. My mother said she looked "gorgeous," as I'm sure many mothers in America did. For at least a day, even anti-Trump women can take a moment to admire the new First Lady, an immigrant from Slovenia, herself, according to investigative journalists last year, working illegally in the U.S. in the mid-1990s. Melania Knauss's past illegal status by itself, if true, doesn't bother me. Salma Hayek, the "gorgeous," although I mean really gorgeous Mexican actress was for a time an illegal alien. Melania's husband Donald added ironic spice to the matter of his third wife's past, however, by commencing his presidential campaign in June 2015 by bringing up illegal immigration, promising to build a wall that "Mexico will pay for" along America's southern border.
When Trump brought this up publicly, did Melania feel a twinge of unease, remembering her own time two decades ago as a young woman modeling in the U.S. without proper credentials? She didn't know Trump then, but now her husband acts as a cover for anything that might now look bad. Trump covers his entire family, his elder two sons now in charge of his business, supposedly disconnected from ever communicating about said business while their father runs the free world. The Trump effect is one of a rich, charismatic man with no morals bulling his way through all proprieties, making into his servants a fourth estate that's lapsed totally in its obligation to the people to be objective and report on what's really going on.
Last night, "liberal" Rachel Maddow on supposedly left-wing MSNBC, pointed out during a one minute long piece between ads the split screen her director had playing. The left side showed a large room with a mass of people at the bottom of the screen: the "Liberty Ball," the first of two balls to be attended by Mr. and Mrs. Trump. (The second was called the "Freedom Ball.") After remarking that those two names could be used this Thanksgiving as names to call the turkeys traditionally "pardoned" by the president, an inane personal observation of her own, Maddow said that the upcoming celebration for the new president was sharply contrasted by protests across the nation. The right-hand side of the screen showed police clashes with protestors in Portland, Oregon, one of many cities seething with anti-Trump discontent. Today, Days of Trump +1, massive gatherings of women in numerous countries have come together to protest the elevation of a misogynistic pig dedicated to reversing women's rights, human rights, environmental protections, and boosting the worst habits of capitalism, himself a partaker in big money concerns.
Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump will advance their father's business, won't they? Will do so in compliance with what they know their father wants to accomplish. They've had strategy sessions about this, have they not? Are we supposed to believe that President Trump won't be far richer when he's done holding office than he was yesterday? What was the true purpose of Taiwan's president's phone call to President-elect Trump, anyway?
Rachel Maddow and her director showed the contrast of a celebration for a new president with citizens on the streets making noise about their discontent with the new order of things. Maddow had nothing to say about the two images, other than her suggestion for naming the turkeys. Shitty journalism is a disservice to the people and a boon to tyranny.
What else happened? Two days ago, the day before Obama moved on to his vacation in Palm Springs, California, he bombed Libya. I'm glad the war with Libya got wrapped up in a period of weeks, like he promised it would a few years back. Obama, like other recent presidents, revisits crime scenes. Trump has inherited the war with ISIS, a renewed U.S. troop presence in Iraq, conflicts with Yemen and Somalia, an alliance with a loathsome Saudi Arabian government destroying the people of Yemen, the Syrian disaster, and the continuous-since-9/11 war in Afghanistan. I'm likely leaving some violent engagements out, maybe because my mind is so overburdened with thinking about the horrible actions of men and women who plan things on this planet, that I can't think about all of it in the space of one essay.
I saw a curious meme last night. A picture of Osama bin Laden with the caption, "Osama bin Laden, Jenga World Champion 2001."
In Jenga, a tower is built with wooden blocks. Players take turns removing blocks and replacing them on the topmost level. The winner is the player who successfully removes and replaces a block last before the tower falls. If Osama bin Laden is "Jenga World Champion 2001," he removed blocks from the World Trade Center Tower(s), but he didn't collapse it. The conspiracy theory about the Towers collapsing from already in-place charges, blown by official government orders, comes into focus in the sly meme. I don't claim to adhere to the conspiracy theory about the destruction of the Towers, I just point out that whoever came up with the bin Laden Jenga world champion idea is pretty clever.
One thing I will say, though, is that the U.S. government, in its record of making official statements about controversial events, often lies. The Pearl Harbor attack, for instance, has been shown, convincingly by a sober historian, John Toland in his book Infamy, to have been allowed to happen by the Roosevelt administration for the purpose of pushing the U.S. into the war. In October Surprise by Barbara Honegger, we learned that the Reagan campaign tampered with the 1980 election by negotiating with the Ayatollah Khomeini to delay the release of the fifty-two American hostages held for over a year by that point--the bane of Jimmy Carter's presidency. Reagan and his people wanted to prevent an "October surprise," wherein Carter might pull off a rescue or diplomatic coup, securing the hostages' release. The hostages were released at exactly the moment Reagan took the oath of office. This theory was attacked for many years, but the term, "October surprise," entered the lexicon of every newsman and -woman in the U.S. whenever they talk about something coming along to upset a candidate's momentum. The term was even used to describe Trump's bragging about his pussy-grabbing habits, the tape on which he said this released in October 2016.
The John and Robert Kennedy assassinations, like the Martin Luther King assassination, are riddled with flaws in the official theories. Not even many members of King's own family believe the official story that white man James Earl Ray shot the civil rights leader. Members of the King family attended Ray's funeral, believing that an innocent man was being laid to rest.
The rationale for the Iraq War (Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction) turned out to be hokum. Not even a dumbass like Hillary Clinton believes in it anymore. President Woodrow Wilson in his 1916 re-election campaign promised that the U.S. wouldn't get into the big war in Europe. He lied. By April 1917, the country was committed, and after the war, Wilson admitted that the endeavor's purpose on the American front was to make money. I guess you have to lie when the truth is that disgusting.
If 9/11 had "inside job" characteristics, or if bin Laden hit the jenga tower but he didn't knock it down, lies would naturally follow, so the official version (which is bad enough, considering that the 9/11 Commission laid out a scenario amounting to a sequence of cascading incompetence and blindness by people failing to act on reports of bizarre information, like men who wanted to learn how to fly a jetliner but didn't want to know how to land it) amounts to a series of "facts" that must be looked at with skepticism at best.
I don't know what happened, but I do know that a 1998 document for a think tank called The Project for the New American Century speculated that "nothing short of a major event, like Pearl Harbor, will get the U.S. on track to taking its place as the coming century's most significant power," or so I paraphrase. Paul Wolfowitz, deputy Secretary of Defense under Bush, was a member of the Project, along with a bunch of warmongering fucks who've never been shot at or bombed. The mention of Pearl Harbor, given the evidence of Roosevelt's foreknowledge, is particularly apt, if Wolfowitz and crew were thinking along the lines of a future attack allowed to happen. Considering U.S. intelligence and its intimacy with such entities as al-Qaeda (dating to the Soviet-Afghan War), it doesn't boggle my mind too much to consider the possibility that bin Laden was working, at least for a time, for the United States. Today, U.S. forces attack terror groups of all kinds, ignoring some for a while, concentrating on others intensely, and then moving on, using shifting alliances in a big strategy that probably is comparable to a corpse sewn together from many different bodies in a horror film.
In effect, whatever you hear on mainstream American news, it's likely you're probably being fucked with at least a good portion of the time.
Yeah, it's really a good idea that a guy named Mad Dog is going to head the Defense Department, the biggest arms dealer in the world. You want a gun, you go to Mad Dog. Mad Dog reports to the Businessman, the blonde guy with orange skin married to the Slovenian, they live in a big white house and they keep a tower on the side. People believe in the Businessman. He's going to solve our problems. He's going to give us a bigger military, one the size of Ares' cock. He's his own Minister of Propaganda--the news networks report all the crap that shits from his mind. They're in thrall to the Businessman. He's high ratings, he's rising stocks, he's the sparkly candle on America's cake. He loves guns. Everybody should have a gun. They should make little guns for babies. We live in a dark but hopeful time. Only the Businessman can save us. He's got plans. Nobody can look at his taxes. He's got too much to hide. He has awkward connections to some shady motherfuckers in other countries. He's very sensitive about his smaller than average hands. He assures us he has a big penis. A seventy year old man with a big virile penis, imagine that. He lies all the time. He lies so much that every once in a while a truth pops out. He accused the former president of being from another country, he did that a lot, and he built up a base of racist support that way, pretty fucking clever. He proposed the pie in the sky idea of building a 1,900 mile long wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and making Mexico pay for it. The audacity! He proposed one crazy shit idea after another, never got into details, and everything he said got reported on by the sensation-hungry news media. He's ratings, he's rising stocks. Curiously, in a country obsessed with appearance, no one in the mainstream news media talks about how ugly and un-photogenic he is. Even Eisenhower was better looking. You'd think that the shallowness of this country's standards when it comes to judging people in the limelight would hurt the Businessman, but no, even though he's on tape discussing his pussy-grabbing technique, no female journalist bothers to tear him up for saying that. The Businessman dances with the Slovenian at the Liberty Ball, cops with armored codpieces stare fearfully at citizens who expect their sophisticated nation to not surrender so easily to the worship of power and money.
Jenga.
Vic Neptune
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
The Light at the End of the Tunnel May Be a Room That's Never Dark
Barack Obama announced he will commute the sentence of Chelsea Manning, condemned to thirty-five years in prison for giving classified military information to Wikileaks. At the time, Private Bradley Manning (he had gender reassignment surgery while in custody) followed his conscience, letting out secrets about U.S. war crimes. Placed in a cell lit twenty-four hours per day (a form of torture), Manning suffered profoundly for revealing some of the shitty behaviors of the U.S. military during the War on Terror.
Edward Snowden, in exile, sent Obama an open tweet, urging him to commute Manning's sentence. As of now, Manning will be released in May. Who knows what legal back and forth bullshit will occur between now and then, but we can hope that Private Manning, who, when he joined the U.S. Army, swore an oath to protect his country from enemies foreign and domestic, will be regarded as someone who stood up to powers unwilling to reveal the magnitude of their crimes.
The discourse surrounding this commutation reeks of denial. On MSNBC, Steve Kornacki interviewed former Bush attorney general and war criminal Alberto Gonzales, a man who helped Bush administration legal authorities turn torture into "enhanced interrogation," thus, legalization of criminal activities by military and government employees through alteration of terminology: a pure Orwellian method accepted by the U.S. government and U.S. news media as journalists adopted the term "enhanced interrogation techniques" as if its dry descriptive feel could forgive war criminals like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Gonzales, for approving, to describe one "technique," the pouring of gallons of cold water into the lungs of prisoners of war ("enemy combatants").
I apologize for the length of the above sentence.
Kornacki's interview of Gonzales, who, of course, isn't approving of Obama feeling compassion (seven years into Manning's abusive captivity for the crime of telling the truth) for Chelsea Manning, failed to mention Gonzales's own questionable past activities while serving as America's chief prosecutor, a job one would think would involve not violating the law. Gonzales did not, while attorney general, investigate war criminals Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, who fomented war with Iraq and engaged in military activities against that country which killed, maimed, and displaced millions of people, creating additional unrest in the Middle East, felt today in Iraq and Syria; in Jordan too, receiver of a vast exodus from Iraq's civil war that followed the incompetence of America's occupation.
To speak to Gonzales as if he's not culpable for some of the dark and terrible acts committed by the United States' desire for unrest and dominance in the Middle East, makes Kornacki, a highly respected commentator, look like he doesn't realize he's talking to one of the men who helped make mass murder and torture possible during the first decade of this century. I don't think Kornacki is blind and deaf to the crimes of Alberto Gonzales and the Bush administration, nor to the crimes of the Obama administration. He's merely following the conditions of being on the air at MSNBC, a network owned by a corporation that doesn't want to rock the boat.
Establishments (governmental and corporate) of powerful nations engage in warfare, killing, financing of warfare in other countries, manipulation, espionage, terrorism, drug trafficking, cybercrime, and generally shitty behavior. All of these establishments lie about what they do. Their servants, like journalists, especially in the U.S., lie by omitting or side-stepping the nut of the issue. Kornacki today had on his show one of the nuts who helped Bush and Cheney get away with torture. Alberto Gonzales commented on Chelsea Manning, who was tortured by the United States military.
Ask a torture-enabler like Gonzales about someone who was tortured, but don't even bring up Manning's illegal treatment. This illustrates what Noam Chomsky meant when he said that the degree of cooperation with government by the U.S. news media should be the envy of totalitarian countries.
Vic Neptune
Barack Obama announced he will commute the sentence of Chelsea Manning, condemned to thirty-five years in prison for giving classified military information to Wikileaks. At the time, Private Bradley Manning (he had gender reassignment surgery while in custody) followed his conscience, letting out secrets about U.S. war crimes. Placed in a cell lit twenty-four hours per day (a form of torture), Manning suffered profoundly for revealing some of the shitty behaviors of the U.S. military during the War on Terror.
Edward Snowden, in exile, sent Obama an open tweet, urging him to commute Manning's sentence. As of now, Manning will be released in May. Who knows what legal back and forth bullshit will occur between now and then, but we can hope that Private Manning, who, when he joined the U.S. Army, swore an oath to protect his country from enemies foreign and domestic, will be regarded as someone who stood up to powers unwilling to reveal the magnitude of their crimes.
The discourse surrounding this commutation reeks of denial. On MSNBC, Steve Kornacki interviewed former Bush attorney general and war criminal Alberto Gonzales, a man who helped Bush administration legal authorities turn torture into "enhanced interrogation," thus, legalization of criminal activities by military and government employees through alteration of terminology: a pure Orwellian method accepted by the U.S. government and U.S. news media as journalists adopted the term "enhanced interrogation techniques" as if its dry descriptive feel could forgive war criminals like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Gonzales, for approving, to describe one "technique," the pouring of gallons of cold water into the lungs of prisoners of war ("enemy combatants").
I apologize for the length of the above sentence.
Kornacki's interview of Gonzales, who, of course, isn't approving of Obama feeling compassion (seven years into Manning's abusive captivity for the crime of telling the truth) for Chelsea Manning, failed to mention Gonzales's own questionable past activities while serving as America's chief prosecutor, a job one would think would involve not violating the law. Gonzales did not, while attorney general, investigate war criminals Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, who fomented war with Iraq and engaged in military activities against that country which killed, maimed, and displaced millions of people, creating additional unrest in the Middle East, felt today in Iraq and Syria; in Jordan too, receiver of a vast exodus from Iraq's civil war that followed the incompetence of America's occupation.
To speak to Gonzales as if he's not culpable for some of the dark and terrible acts committed by the United States' desire for unrest and dominance in the Middle East, makes Kornacki, a highly respected commentator, look like he doesn't realize he's talking to one of the men who helped make mass murder and torture possible during the first decade of this century. I don't think Kornacki is blind and deaf to the crimes of Alberto Gonzales and the Bush administration, nor to the crimes of the Obama administration. He's merely following the conditions of being on the air at MSNBC, a network owned by a corporation that doesn't want to rock the boat.
Establishments (governmental and corporate) of powerful nations engage in warfare, killing, financing of warfare in other countries, manipulation, espionage, terrorism, drug trafficking, cybercrime, and generally shitty behavior. All of these establishments lie about what they do. Their servants, like journalists, especially in the U.S., lie by omitting or side-stepping the nut of the issue. Kornacki today had on his show one of the nuts who helped Bush and Cheney get away with torture. Alberto Gonzales commented on Chelsea Manning, who was tortured by the United States military.
Ask a torture-enabler like Gonzales about someone who was tortured, but don't even bring up Manning's illegal treatment. This illustrates what Noam Chomsky meant when he said that the degree of cooperation with government by the U.S. news media should be the envy of totalitarian countries.
Vic Neptune
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
The Age of Reason
Donald Trump gave "his first press conference since the election," according to a banner on CNN while the president-elect stood behind a podium, flanked by the usual American flags, his arrogant prick son, Donald, Jr., and daughter/incestuous sexual fantasy object Ivanka standing to his right, Governor Pence to his left.
We heard in a statement by Trump's attorney that President Trump's sons, Donald and Eric, will run the business and not communicate with their father about it. This absurd arrangement suggests that two corrupt heirs of one of the most corrupt men in America won't work out ways to convey information about the money-making opportunities to be had when a powerful political figure is in a position to make clandestine deals, to operate on a quid pro quo basis with businesspeople worldwide. Taiwan's president's controversial phone call within days of Trump's win pointed to such corrupt and lucrative practices coming in the next U.S. administration (not that this kind of thing hasn't been going on for a long time).
Trump is the kind of man who takes interest in many opportunities, always in movement, operating on several levels simultaneously, his adult children (excepting Tiffany) acting as further extensions of his will as they increase their own fortunes. Trump gave Ivanka's husband a cabinet level advisory position, a clear case of nepotism, yet, while some in the news media condemn this, nothing will be done about it.
Trump's control of mainstream journalists' courage will follow on his successful campaign, when not even plausible sexual assault lawsuits filed against him in the past few years knocked him off track. Female journalists in direct contact with Trump never got on his case about his "grab em by the pussy" comments recorded in 2005. Would MSNBC's Katy Tur, an attractive woman who extensively covered the Trump campaign, enjoy Trump's actions in a one-on-one situation in which he pushes his body against hers and tries to kiss her, groping her and behaving like a rich sexual predator who knows he'll never go to prison? He's not questioned by the press about this kind of loathsome behavior because rich, powerful men can get away with almost anything. This particular sexual predator, as the head of CBS put it, is great for ratings.
Trump's alleged ties to Russian oligarchs, a compromising position for any U.S. politician, won't matter if ratings are of prime concern. If these so far murky stories prove true, all the better for news corporations--what a story! In a culture of bullshit, a bullshitter running the nation doesn't stir the consciences of those other bullshitters who sift what news is chosen to be shared in mainstream outlets with the American people.
What I saw while watching Trump's press conference today was a liar talking to a roomful of people willing to be lied to, because they also tell lies in their well-paid work for corporations that lie to the American people in conjunction with a government that practices deceit regularly.
I saw a news fragment move across the TV screen's bottom while Trump "answered" a reporter's question. It said that a Congressional panel questioned former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson (Trump's pick for Secretary of State) about his relationship with Vladimir Putin. I've seen pictures of Putin and Tillerson in Moscow, smiling at each other. This doesn't mean anything by itself, although let's not forget the photograph of two grim reapers, Saddam Hussein and Donald Rumsfeld, smiling and shaking hands in 1983 after the Iraqi leader's military gassed thousands of Iranian soldiers.
Tillerson, one of the major oil business assholes of the world, knows Putin because the latter runs a country with important energy concerns and enterprises. I didn't see Tillerson's confirmation hearing, but I suspect the politicians conducting it were deferential to a man who has more money and influence than all of them put together. Putin, too, reportedly abundantly rich, has far more money than Trump, whose likely exaggerated wealth is believed in by far too many journalists and American citizens. Trump may have wanted the presidency as a way of making a shitload of money to pay off a shitload of debts (to some, maybe, whose first language was Russian), and to make a shitload beyond that, like his former golfing partner Bill Clinton, in partnership with his morally deprived warmongering wife, have been doing with their "Global Initiative," a charity for desperate people that also amasses treasure to further the Clintons' questionable political interests.
I suggest possibilities, but the powerful ones mentioned in this essay don't operate according to what most of us would regard as normal ways of doing business in a fair way that benefits the many.
For instance, drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean when development of wind and solar energy as a much cleaner alternative that won't ultimately accelerate disastrous climate change is a fucking insane thing to do, right? To minds like Tillerson's and Putin's, though, the Arctic Ocean is just an untapped resource covered over by an inconvenient ice cap that's conveniently disappearing due to the climate change caused significantly by the fossil fuels industries and human dependence on them, since alternate and more sensible energy possibilities aren't being developed and utilized enough.
Trump in his press conference slammed journalists at one point for "going after Hillary," and then brought up Donna Brazile's leaking of debate questions to Mrs. Clinton before a CNN debate. Trump, turning on his former opponent quickly after sympathizing with her, demonstrated his sociopathy succinctly when he said, "She [Clinton] got the questions before the debate, and she didn't tell the press? Imagine if I had done that, it would've been the biggest story in the history of stories!"
Really? Jesus? World War One? Pearl Harbor? The Cuban Missile Crisis? Anything along these lines ringing a bell in your warped brain, Donald? The French Revolution? Luther taking on the Catholic Church? The Battle of Actium? Moses? The emigrations from Europe to America that made this country "a melting pot," a story your own grandfather, Drumpf, participated in?
No, I guess the president-elect is right. The greatest story ever told (sorry George Stevens, who made a movie about Jesus called that), would've been candidate Trump receiving two or three debate questions from an insider at the news network conducting the upcoming debate, and then not sharing that mildly scandalous information with the press. Holy shit, go back to 1431 and tell Joan of Arc she will have died for nothing.
Vic Neptune
Donald Trump gave "his first press conference since the election," according to a banner on CNN while the president-elect stood behind a podium, flanked by the usual American flags, his arrogant prick son, Donald, Jr., and daughter/incestuous sexual fantasy object Ivanka standing to his right, Governor Pence to his left.
We heard in a statement by Trump's attorney that President Trump's sons, Donald and Eric, will run the business and not communicate with their father about it. This absurd arrangement suggests that two corrupt heirs of one of the most corrupt men in America won't work out ways to convey information about the money-making opportunities to be had when a powerful political figure is in a position to make clandestine deals, to operate on a quid pro quo basis with businesspeople worldwide. Taiwan's president's controversial phone call within days of Trump's win pointed to such corrupt and lucrative practices coming in the next U.S. administration (not that this kind of thing hasn't been going on for a long time).
Trump is the kind of man who takes interest in many opportunities, always in movement, operating on several levels simultaneously, his adult children (excepting Tiffany) acting as further extensions of his will as they increase their own fortunes. Trump gave Ivanka's husband a cabinet level advisory position, a clear case of nepotism, yet, while some in the news media condemn this, nothing will be done about it.
Trump's control of mainstream journalists' courage will follow on his successful campaign, when not even plausible sexual assault lawsuits filed against him in the past few years knocked him off track. Female journalists in direct contact with Trump never got on his case about his "grab em by the pussy" comments recorded in 2005. Would MSNBC's Katy Tur, an attractive woman who extensively covered the Trump campaign, enjoy Trump's actions in a one-on-one situation in which he pushes his body against hers and tries to kiss her, groping her and behaving like a rich sexual predator who knows he'll never go to prison? He's not questioned by the press about this kind of loathsome behavior because rich, powerful men can get away with almost anything. This particular sexual predator, as the head of CBS put it, is great for ratings.
Trump's alleged ties to Russian oligarchs, a compromising position for any U.S. politician, won't matter if ratings are of prime concern. If these so far murky stories prove true, all the better for news corporations--what a story! In a culture of bullshit, a bullshitter running the nation doesn't stir the consciences of those other bullshitters who sift what news is chosen to be shared in mainstream outlets with the American people.
What I saw while watching Trump's press conference today was a liar talking to a roomful of people willing to be lied to, because they also tell lies in their well-paid work for corporations that lie to the American people in conjunction with a government that practices deceit regularly.
I saw a news fragment move across the TV screen's bottom while Trump "answered" a reporter's question. It said that a Congressional panel questioned former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson (Trump's pick for Secretary of State) about his relationship with Vladimir Putin. I've seen pictures of Putin and Tillerson in Moscow, smiling at each other. This doesn't mean anything by itself, although let's not forget the photograph of two grim reapers, Saddam Hussein and Donald Rumsfeld, smiling and shaking hands in 1983 after the Iraqi leader's military gassed thousands of Iranian soldiers.
Tillerson, one of the major oil business assholes of the world, knows Putin because the latter runs a country with important energy concerns and enterprises. I didn't see Tillerson's confirmation hearing, but I suspect the politicians conducting it were deferential to a man who has more money and influence than all of them put together. Putin, too, reportedly abundantly rich, has far more money than Trump, whose likely exaggerated wealth is believed in by far too many journalists and American citizens. Trump may have wanted the presidency as a way of making a shitload of money to pay off a shitload of debts (to some, maybe, whose first language was Russian), and to make a shitload beyond that, like his former golfing partner Bill Clinton, in partnership with his morally deprived warmongering wife, have been doing with their "Global Initiative," a charity for desperate people that also amasses treasure to further the Clintons' questionable political interests.
I suggest possibilities, but the powerful ones mentioned in this essay don't operate according to what most of us would regard as normal ways of doing business in a fair way that benefits the many.
For instance, drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean when development of wind and solar energy as a much cleaner alternative that won't ultimately accelerate disastrous climate change is a fucking insane thing to do, right? To minds like Tillerson's and Putin's, though, the Arctic Ocean is just an untapped resource covered over by an inconvenient ice cap that's conveniently disappearing due to the climate change caused significantly by the fossil fuels industries and human dependence on them, since alternate and more sensible energy possibilities aren't being developed and utilized enough.
Trump in his press conference slammed journalists at one point for "going after Hillary," and then brought up Donna Brazile's leaking of debate questions to Mrs. Clinton before a CNN debate. Trump, turning on his former opponent quickly after sympathizing with her, demonstrated his sociopathy succinctly when he said, "She [Clinton] got the questions before the debate, and she didn't tell the press? Imagine if I had done that, it would've been the biggest story in the history of stories!"
Really? Jesus? World War One? Pearl Harbor? The Cuban Missile Crisis? Anything along these lines ringing a bell in your warped brain, Donald? The French Revolution? Luther taking on the Catholic Church? The Battle of Actium? Moses? The emigrations from Europe to America that made this country "a melting pot," a story your own grandfather, Drumpf, participated in?
No, I guess the president-elect is right. The greatest story ever told (sorry George Stevens, who made a movie about Jesus called that), would've been candidate Trump receiving two or three debate questions from an insider at the news network conducting the upcoming debate, and then not sharing that mildly scandalous information with the press. Holy shit, go back to 1431 and tell Joan of Arc she will have died for nothing.
Vic Neptune
Saturday, January 7, 2017
The Spanish Didn't Blow Up the U.S.S. Maine, Either
Today in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, an Iraq War veteran opened fire on airline passengers in the baggage collection area. Newspeople were careful to apply the grease of neutrality on a guest's statement that the killer's mother said her son suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and couldn't get help for it.
"We're not claiming that he committed this violent act because he was suffering from PTSD. We're just saying that he's an Iraq War veteran."
Iraq War veterans know how to use guns. Iraq War veterans often served multiple tours of duty in a conflict with no evident goal. Iraq War veterans have been ill-served by the Veterans Administration, a knotty mess of a government agency with a huge backlog of cases, the volume of which is probably at least partially due to the constant warfare our nation has been waging since 2001. In other words, the people killed in the Florida airport are dead partly because Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and other non-indicted war criminals decided to finish the job started by Bush's father.
I saw another news story about the posh house where the Obamas will live, starting in late January. A wall is being constructed around the Washington, D.C., mansion. It looks like a nice place, except that a man who blew up lots of children will be living in it.
Trump, meanwhile, criticized in Twitter the "low" ratings received by the opening episode of the new season of Celebrity Apprentice, hosted now by another pretend politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger. CNN, Fox, or MSNBC--I can't remember which since they're all seeming the same to me--spent a few minutes with a graphic illustrating the drop in ratings of Celebrity Apprentice since its premiere episode over a decade ago. It started out "huge," but last season, the final one with Trump hosting, the show seized the attentions of a mere 1.6 million "folks" over last night's episode hosted by "the Terminator," former California governor, son of a Nazi, and ex-Kennedy in-law. In ratings talk, a million and a half people aren't very many viewers. A million and a half people dead, wounded, and displaced in Iraq also aren't something worth talking about on American news, either.
Trump today received a classified briefing about "the Russian hack." The Russian hack of the American electoral process, which doesn't seem to have had anything to do, ultimately, with who won the election, has become the cause célèbre of the Democratic Party and all news media organizations in sympathy with them.
"Whether or not the Russian hack actually swung the election in favor of Trump," Ari Melber of MSNBC said this afternoon, "the fact remains that this nation's electoral process was interfered with."
I don't discount the importance of a foreign power fucking with America, but I'm always aware that America fucks with other countries all the time. A senatorial panel questioned some intelligence luminaries, including National Intelligence Director James Clapper, a bald, humorless man who has the dour facial expression of someone who knows all about injustices committed by underlings and has no interest in doing anything about it because if he were young and muscular he'd gladly beat an Arab prisoner to death. Senator John McCain managed a dig at Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, asking James Clapper rhetorically if the statements of Assange about U.S. misdeeds can be trusted.
"No, they can't," Clapper said, almost chuckling.
Tearing at Julian Assange's character today was hard for MSNBC hostess Joy Ann Reid to resist. She dismissed him as "someone hiding out in an Ecuadorian embassy." She also, a few weeks ago, maligned Jill Stein, the good and moral woman who ran for president against the immoral female Democrat friend of Henry Kissinger and broker of arms deals with Saudi Arabia in exchange for contributions to her husband's entrepreneurial enterprise.
Why would Assange be in hiding? Why would he want to avoid being Predator Drone-targeted? Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a strategy meeting asked her staff why they couldn't "just drone Assange?" Others at the meeting at first thought she was kidding, but she went on about it at length, indicating a real desire to blow up Assange, whose great crime against the United States consists of releasing information about the horrible shit this country sometimes does.
Clapper, incidentally, a few years ago, perjured himself before Congress, when he said the NSA doesn't gather information about ordinary American citizens. He suffered no penalty for lying to Congress, as any ordinary American would for doing the same.
From the tone of this essay, it should be clear that my disgust for the sons of bitches sneered at herein hasn't improved with the new year's arrival. I don't expect things to improve with the Trump administration. One of my pet names for him is Crazy Motherfucker. He does say funny (stupid) things sometimes, like when talking about computers the other day:
"[I'm paraphrasing] Assange said a fourteen year old could've hacked [John] Podesta's phone. I have a ten year old son who can do anything with a computer."
He seems to be implying that the "Russian hack" could've been the work of a little boy.
Megyn Kelly of Fox News announced that she's leaving that network, supposedly to spend more time with her children. She signed a multi-million dollar deal with NBC to host a daytime talk show, and a show on Sunday evenings. The porousness of Fox and NBC (right-wing and left-wing) is here demonstrated, for her views are not dissimilar enough from so-called liberal news outlets to keep one of them from putting her out front, with big bucks and lots of screen time. MSNBC is now extensively populated with right-wing pundits and commentators. Mainstream news media outlets cannot be trusted as truth-tellers. The link between the state and corporations is stronger than ever, a Fascist's wet dream.
Maybe I'm wrong, but if Vladimir Putin had wanted to really affect the 2016 U.S. presidential election, he would've done a more insidious job of it, so that no one would've found out about it for many years. As it is, those on the news who have traditionally denigrated "conspiracy buffs," have too readily embraced conspiracy theories about Russian meddling, handed to them by U.S. intelligence agencies, the very organizations so invested in spreading disinformation at the service of the motherfuckers running the show. War on terrorism in the Reagan era passed into the 1990s, giving way in 2001 to full blown declared war against a technique practiced extensively by first world powers. Cyberwar, with Russia playing the main enemy, takes on a familiar role--that of a technique practiced extensively by first world powers, with intense new focus on "the Russian hack," the "assault on our democracy" a convenient cover for U.S. spy agency activity using the same methods, for purposes including the subversion of democracy in other countries.
I make an educated guess at this based on practices long established by the motherfuckers who run things on this planet. One doesn't have to be Julian Assange or James Clapper to figure this shit out.
Vic Neptune
Today in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, an Iraq War veteran opened fire on airline passengers in the baggage collection area. Newspeople were careful to apply the grease of neutrality on a guest's statement that the killer's mother said her son suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and couldn't get help for it.
"We're not claiming that he committed this violent act because he was suffering from PTSD. We're just saying that he's an Iraq War veteran."
Iraq War veterans know how to use guns. Iraq War veterans often served multiple tours of duty in a conflict with no evident goal. Iraq War veterans have been ill-served by the Veterans Administration, a knotty mess of a government agency with a huge backlog of cases, the volume of which is probably at least partially due to the constant warfare our nation has been waging since 2001. In other words, the people killed in the Florida airport are dead partly because Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and other non-indicted war criminals decided to finish the job started by Bush's father.
I saw another news story about the posh house where the Obamas will live, starting in late January. A wall is being constructed around the Washington, D.C., mansion. It looks like a nice place, except that a man who blew up lots of children will be living in it.
Trump, meanwhile, criticized in Twitter the "low" ratings received by the opening episode of the new season of Celebrity Apprentice, hosted now by another pretend politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger. CNN, Fox, or MSNBC--I can't remember which since they're all seeming the same to me--spent a few minutes with a graphic illustrating the drop in ratings of Celebrity Apprentice since its premiere episode over a decade ago. It started out "huge," but last season, the final one with Trump hosting, the show seized the attentions of a mere 1.6 million "folks" over last night's episode hosted by "the Terminator," former California governor, son of a Nazi, and ex-Kennedy in-law. In ratings talk, a million and a half people aren't very many viewers. A million and a half people dead, wounded, and displaced in Iraq also aren't something worth talking about on American news, either.
Trump today received a classified briefing about "the Russian hack." The Russian hack of the American electoral process, which doesn't seem to have had anything to do, ultimately, with who won the election, has become the cause célèbre of the Democratic Party and all news media organizations in sympathy with them.
"Whether or not the Russian hack actually swung the election in favor of Trump," Ari Melber of MSNBC said this afternoon, "the fact remains that this nation's electoral process was interfered with."
I don't discount the importance of a foreign power fucking with America, but I'm always aware that America fucks with other countries all the time. A senatorial panel questioned some intelligence luminaries, including National Intelligence Director James Clapper, a bald, humorless man who has the dour facial expression of someone who knows all about injustices committed by underlings and has no interest in doing anything about it because if he were young and muscular he'd gladly beat an Arab prisoner to death. Senator John McCain managed a dig at Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, asking James Clapper rhetorically if the statements of Assange about U.S. misdeeds can be trusted.
"No, they can't," Clapper said, almost chuckling.
Tearing at Julian Assange's character today was hard for MSNBC hostess Joy Ann Reid to resist. She dismissed him as "someone hiding out in an Ecuadorian embassy." She also, a few weeks ago, maligned Jill Stein, the good and moral woman who ran for president against the immoral female Democrat friend of Henry Kissinger and broker of arms deals with Saudi Arabia in exchange for contributions to her husband's entrepreneurial enterprise.
Why would Assange be in hiding? Why would he want to avoid being Predator Drone-targeted? Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a strategy meeting asked her staff why they couldn't "just drone Assange?" Others at the meeting at first thought she was kidding, but she went on about it at length, indicating a real desire to blow up Assange, whose great crime against the United States consists of releasing information about the horrible shit this country sometimes does.
Clapper, incidentally, a few years ago, perjured himself before Congress, when he said the NSA doesn't gather information about ordinary American citizens. He suffered no penalty for lying to Congress, as any ordinary American would for doing the same.
From the tone of this essay, it should be clear that my disgust for the sons of bitches sneered at herein hasn't improved with the new year's arrival. I don't expect things to improve with the Trump administration. One of my pet names for him is Crazy Motherfucker. He does say funny (stupid) things sometimes, like when talking about computers the other day:
"[I'm paraphrasing] Assange said a fourteen year old could've hacked [John] Podesta's phone. I have a ten year old son who can do anything with a computer."
He seems to be implying that the "Russian hack" could've been the work of a little boy.
Megyn Kelly of Fox News announced that she's leaving that network, supposedly to spend more time with her children. She signed a multi-million dollar deal with NBC to host a daytime talk show, and a show on Sunday evenings. The porousness of Fox and NBC (right-wing and left-wing) is here demonstrated, for her views are not dissimilar enough from so-called liberal news outlets to keep one of them from putting her out front, with big bucks and lots of screen time. MSNBC is now extensively populated with right-wing pundits and commentators. Mainstream news media outlets cannot be trusted as truth-tellers. The link between the state and corporations is stronger than ever, a Fascist's wet dream.
Maybe I'm wrong, but if Vladimir Putin had wanted to really affect the 2016 U.S. presidential election, he would've done a more insidious job of it, so that no one would've found out about it for many years. As it is, those on the news who have traditionally denigrated "conspiracy buffs," have too readily embraced conspiracy theories about Russian meddling, handed to them by U.S. intelligence agencies, the very organizations so invested in spreading disinformation at the service of the motherfuckers running the show. War on terrorism in the Reagan era passed into the 1990s, giving way in 2001 to full blown declared war against a technique practiced extensively by first world powers. Cyberwar, with Russia playing the main enemy, takes on a familiar role--that of a technique practiced extensively by first world powers, with intense new focus on "the Russian hack," the "assault on our democracy" a convenient cover for U.S. spy agency activity using the same methods, for purposes including the subversion of democracy in other countries.
I make an educated guess at this based on practices long established by the motherfuckers who run things on this planet. One doesn't have to be Julian Assange or James Clapper to figure this shit out.
Vic Neptune
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