The U.S. has opted not to bomb Iraq at this time.

Here’s how to read that decision:

• 1. The U.S. lies about everything they do.
• 2. Ergo, they are lying about this too.

You figure the rest out! We just got back from a week in Yellowstone, sleeping with the grizzlies, walking until my feet burned like firecracker punks. Man I am tired!

Here’s some extraneous data to consider:

• 1. When they say bombing “Iraq,” they mean “ISIS, or the US/French/Turkish-run terrorists that have recently been turned out of Syria.
• 2. The U.S. rarely turns down a bombing opportunity.
• 3. Ergo, they might be bombing and not telling us about it, or might be holding back.
• 4. If they do bomb, it will not be against ISIS forces, which are allies in terror, but rather to assist ISIS forces. So if they bomb, it will be against Iraqi cities and towns, to soften the place for ISIS.
• 5. They will lie about that.
• 5. That’s because they lie about everything they do.

OK … Take it Phil.

Theirry Mayssan at Voltaire Network (Jihadism and the Petroleum Industry) goes a long way in simplifying the “ISIS” attack on Iraq, reducing it to a squabble among oil companies, primarily Exxon/Mobil (aka “Qatar”), and Aramco. The big losers in the conflict are Turkey, Britain, China, and if course, beleaguered Iraq (under unrelenting attack by the US since 1990). The winners are the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel. ISIS itself is a well-financed terrorist force under US, Saudi and French command.

Saudi Arabia claims it has increased production to make up for any shortfall in world supplies due to this conflict. They do not have that capability. The US-backed democratic kingdom, where criticism of the government results in imprisonment or decapitation, is merely fronting for ARAMCO and selling the oil stolen from Iraq on the world market. As Meyssan points out, ISIS could not market anything without cartel, that is, US support.

The goal? It has not changed since put forth by the Bush Administration in 2001, to redraw the map of the Middle East. This particular facet of the oil cartel (NeoCon) scheme involves breaking Iraq into three manageable provinces. The policy has not changed and is unaffected by three presidential elections during that time. US elections do not affect policy, and are mostly for show, a puppet-shuffling affair.

These issues remind me of the old notion of elephant sex, where there is a lot of shuffling of feet on he ground, while the real action is going on high upstairs.

Iraq is under attack again, this time ellegedly by Sunni-led forces straight off duty from terrorizing liberating Syria. National Pentagon Radio reports that Iraq “claims” to have retaken the city of Tikrit, and Iraq reports this as fact. What is true? Why do I need to know anyway?

Put a different way, what is the role of American news media? Is it to keep me informed? Or, more likely, is it to keep me uninformed?

And if their job were to keep me in the dark, how best to do that? One way would be to simply pick up the microphone and tell me to mind my own business, that these things are all above my pay grade anyway. But that would be counterproductive, as it would only stimulate my curiosity.

So the best course of action in keeping me uninformed would be to pretend to keep me informed, and to invest tons of money simply to build an image of people dedicated to reporting things that are true. As The late Johnny Carson was so fond of saying of his job, comedy, “if people buy the premise, they will buy the bit.”

So the best thing to do is to get off the American grid and seek information elsewhere. But wait a minute. American “news” reporters are quick to report to me that China’s Internet is heavily censored, and that Chinese people don’t even know it because they cannot access web sites that would tell them as much.

Them dumb Chinese. Surely Americans can access anything and everything without censorship … wait a minute. What’s wrong with this picture. Our news media lies to us all day long, but we are free to access information elsewhere on our own? This, in a fake reality environment propped up daily in every corner of our existence including movies and television programming?

I deliberately avoid American news reporting, and seek information elsewhere. Does this make me better informed, or better deluded?

A relative of ours was stricken with galloping cancer back when we lived in Montana, and I took him to visit doctors in his final days. While doing that he was in an agitated state, and was strident in giving me directions on how to get there, where to turn, where and how to park. It mentioned this to my wife, who is a wise woman despite her spousal choice, and she helped me understand. It was an expression of powerlessness, she said. He could not control the big things in happening to him, so he was taking charge on anything he could. He just needed some validation.

I followed a link this morning from here to here, and that brought me back to our loved one and his galloping cancer. Throughout this post from Douglas Ernst and his wide and varied responses, I am picking up on his sense of powerlessness. He must be validated in some fashion, and for that to happen, his vote has to matter, and if his vote mattered, then having the Neocon fake liberal Obama in office must be having a deleterious effect on foreign policy which must have been prescient before handed over to incompetents in 2008.

Voting matters, elections have consequences, you see. His vote is a wise one, those for Obama messed things up but good.

I left a nugget there but Douglas screens comments, so I don’t imagine it will ever see light of day.

It’s always difficult to judge intentions after the fact. ISIS was birthed and sprung on us as a grown-up and, like all events, our job is to imagine that it is somehow spontaneous and that the largest military force in human history, with scores of bases and billions in armaments in the region, with its own contrived country nearby, is just watching and hoping for the best. Our job too is to imagine all good intentions in Washington, all malevolent intent elsewhere. Our job too is to imagine cold calculated skill from Republican administrations and incompetence from Democrats. (That last job requires imagining that American elections affect changes in foreign policy, itself a job.)

It’s tough being an American. We have to form opinions without knowing anything. We do our best. Mr. Ernst, you’re making the best of it.

[He let it stand! We’ll see how long I last there. He answered me, I answered him, and then suggested he ban me. Just being proactive.]

The usual Monday morning cluttered brain here needing to unload. Instead I sat down to read for an hour or so, and it led me to a revelation that has some explanatory power – people talk about the Stalin purges and Mao’s Cultural Revolution as defining events in those cultures, all with the arrogance of smugly superior civilized people watching others self-destruct.
Continue reading “Monday meanderings” →

Someone called “Just a Guy” dropped a nice little nugget over at 4&20, linked here. Apparently, according to the article by Floyd Brown of Wall Street Daily, Bryan Schweitzer has used the office of governor of Montana for shakedown purposes.

There’s an expression for what he’s done: extortion. He’s used the office and his creds as governor or bully two mining companies.

Just a Guy notes the indignation at Schweitzer’s intemperate (but funny) remarks about Sen Diane Feinstein, who never met a wiretap she didn’t like until she was the object. He wonders why his real crimes pass unnoticed.

Me too.

Big Swede dropped a comment below linking to a Daily Beast article on how a 27-year old sociopath named Hillary D. Rodham got a rapist off, later laughing (her now-trademark cackle?) laugh on tape about how he passed a lie detector test even as she knew he was guilty.

The rape victim, then 12, has had a less-than-charmed life since Hillary Clinton got her assailant off, and now wonders how such a liar is qualified to be president. She obviously does not follow American politics.

In 1914 the German Army marched through Belgium on its way to France, and snipers were shooting at soldiers who had believed the stories of glory and fame. Rather than fighting a noble cause, they were falling in the mud like peasants. The German propaganda arm saw value in this, and so began to fashion a stereotype for their public of Belgians acting as barbarians. All is fair.
Continue reading “The greatest generation” →