Caricature: exaggeration by means of often ludicrous distortion of parts or characteristics.

We are well into Twelve Years a Slave this evening, and are yet to meet a character who does not fit the above definition. I don’t know if I can sit through this much longer.

What trash! What nonsense! The quest for moral superiority is never-ending. I remind you that slavery was legal in much of the north as well as the south at that time. I remind you of Dr. King’s words, that he feared the quiet racism of the good people more than the open racism of the bad.

The Holocaust became the reason for World War II, after the fact. It appears to me that slavery became the reason for the Civil War in the same manner. Economics brings out the worst in people. There are still slaves on the planet in abundance, and sweatshop workers are not far removed. The free market demands it. There are people livening nearby you who cannot pay their bills or college loans or afford health care or have enough food based on our current system. People suffered then and now because those who control economics devalue people.

But people are the same, wherever you go. These evil southerners and noble slaves in the movie are literary devices, nothing more. The whole damned movie so far has been one long tortuous device.

Twelve Years a Slave: Rotten apples all the way through. Feel-good junk food.

It has become apparent to me in reading about the Odessa Trade Union fire, seeing videos, watching foreign news reports and listening to interviews, that the following took place (gruesome descriptions follow, but no photos or videos):
Continue reading “Odessa witness: “Third force” terrorists in Odessa set House of Trade Unions fire” →

The Kiev government is unable to rely on its own military to suppress the counterinsurgency in the east, and so is now using foreign mercenaries for that task. This story, from Voice of Russia, points to a German report to Angela Merkel that 400 of them working for the American firm Academi.

Academi, by the way, is just another name for Blackwater. Ever since Jeremy Scahill wrote that book about the company, they have been regularly morphing from one thing to another. They have gone from the unpronounceable “Xi” to Greystone to Academi. As “Blackwater” they were notorious for murdering civilians in Iraq but were left unpunished by the US legal system. Just recently the charges have reappeared via a grand jury – one lone agent is charged. That’s about all the justice that exists in this country.

The Green Berets, Navy Seals and all of that were put together as military units outside the military command structure, essentially paramilitary units under CIA control. They traveled under the euphemism “advisers” in Vietnam, and our entertainment system has done everything in its power to glamorize them. Navy Seals are held in near godlike status these days after the fake Obama killing in 2011.

Blackwater/Xi/Greystone/Academi are generally populated with ex-Berets and Seals. The companies merely uses them as hired guns, terrorists for hire, essentially removing their beards, making honest men of them.
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Update: Moon of Alabama repeats the rumors and their source and offers insight here.

“You son of a bitch, you moved the cemetery but you left the bodies, didn’t you? You son of a bitch! You left the bodies and you only moved the headstones!! YOU ONLY MOVED THE HEADSTONES!!! WHY?! WHY?!!!” (Craig T. Nelson as Steve in the 1982 movie Poltergeist)

That’s a movie quote. It came to mind this morning as I read about elections going on in the Donetsk and Lugansk region of Ukraine. They are voting on whether to be governed by the new regime installed by London/Washington in Kiev, or to be independent republics. The Russian government urged them not to do this, at least at this time. I imagine it has to do with regional security. The elections will inflame tempers in Kiev, and violence and bloodshed will follow.

What caught my eye, the reason for the movie quote was this, from a Voice of Russia article

More than 3.1 million ballots have been printed for the referendum in the Donetsk region.

In the United States we have elections, but generally we don’t have real choices since both (we are only allowed two) parties are bought with the same money. Our news media only reports on partisan differences so that when the candidates agree on the issues, as they generally do, there is nothing to report but the horse race. Our voters are so dumbed down that they are easily influenced by low-information, emotional TV advertising.

But when all else fails, if there is a threat that an election will bring about real change, we have electronic voting machines. They are easily hacked, and rarely audited in any meaningful way.

Here’s an example: David Prosser, a Scott Walker man, lost his reelection bid to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2011 to JoAnne Kloppenburg by 204 votes. So we thought, until a former Prosser worker, Kathy Nicholaus, discovered 14,000 uncounted ballots. Amazingly there were just enough votes for Prosser in that fortuitous find to not only win the election for him, but also to give him a large enough margin so that there could be no recount.

The election was stolen in broad daylight.

So anyway, I imagined an exchange between, say Zbigniew Brzezinski and his protegé, Barack Obama, that went something like this:

• Obama: It’s not looking good, Zbig. There’s a lot of resistance to our people in Kiev. The vote won’t be to our liking.
• Brzezinski: So change the vote.
• Obama: I can’t.
• Brzezinski What do you mean you can’t? You send your people in with program fixes, you switch enough votes to change the goddammed outcome. You find missing votes in laptops. What the hell is wrong with you? You know this stuff!
• Obama: They use paper ballots. They count them by hand.
• Brzezinski: You son of a bitch, you let them have elections and you forgot to give them voting machines, didn’t you? You son of a bitch! You left the elections and you let them use paper ballots!! YOU LET THEM USE PAPER BALLOTS!!! WHY?! WHY?!!!”

It’s ugly however, as fascists, as with Walker in Wisconsin, do not care about elections. If they cannot change them, they ignore them. Kiev has already said it will not recognize the outcome.

There will be blood.
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Update: Disruptions by the Kiev regime junta are underway as we speak.

This from my own blog post a couple of days ago:

But will Russia be used as the perpetrator behind a new false flag attack? Are we looking at a Cold War franchise reboot?

From Diane Johnstone, Counterpunch (h/t Lizard):

It is not impossible that the pullback order [of Russian troops on the Eastern Ukrainian border] was linked to a Novosti RIA report dated May 6, which indicated that the Ukrainian secret service was planning an imminent false flag operation in order to accuse Russia of violating the border with Ukraine.

Novosti said it had learned from security circles in Kiev that the Ukrainian secret service SBU had secretly shipped about 200 Russian army uniforms and some 70 forged Russian officer ID into the Eastern Ukrainian protest stronghold of Donetz, to be used to stage a false attack on Ukrainian border patrols.

Continue reading “A thrwarted false-flag attack at Donetz?” →

This is troubling: In a speech targeted at our elite planners Defense Chuck Hagel is warning people that cutting war spending is not a good course of action for the United States. But according to the linked Business Insider article, about 47 percent of the public wants the US to cut back.

The three major conflicts of the postwar were Korea and Indochina (1946-1975), and the Middle East (1967 to present). Perhaps encirclement of China was the objective of the first two, and encirclement of oil fields for the latter. But the human toll in these wars was staggering – millions of non-combatants killed. Carpet bombing, as a military strategy, came out of World War II, the US and Britain the major players. Dead civilians and destroyed buildings was the objective. As a war strategy it is not terribly effective. As a means of expending resources, it is.

The Orwellian side of the coin is as follows:

War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

The United States has not been threatened by any other power on earth in the postwar era, but that does not matter. We are constantly attacking other countries. The “Cold War” was a mere cover story to justify the attacks, and when the Soviet Union receded, our leaders in short order staged an ineffective “War on Drugs.” It did not have enough propaganda bite to be a really effective motivating tool. They then staged 9/11, and that put us back on permanent war footing. Our propaganda was revamped to make “terrorism” the new “communism.” Then came business as usual … here a war, there a war, everywhere a war war.

“Killing” Osama bin Laden in 2011 perhaps signified a rift among state planners, or perhaps from a marketing standpoint, merely cleared the way for an introduction of new products. The Boston Bombing, which evidence easily shows to be another false flag event, featured Chechnyan patsies, a far cry from the usual Middle East ones.

The media currently wants us to focus our attention on Ukraine, but the MIC is not about to go to war against a powerful country like Russia, so other objectives are in play
here. I am not on the Twitter feed that sends out the explanations. I do not know the future, but there will not be a major confrontation with Russia. That is a given – we do not attack countries that can defend themselves and inflict comparable damage on us. But will Russia be used as the perpetrator behind a new false flag attack? Are we looking at a Cold War franchise reboot?*

In the larger framework, Hagels’s remarks, though deeply embedded in euphemism, are clear in meaning: Our military-industrial complex is worried that the American public does not have the stomach for more wars.

What fresh hell lay in store for us?
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*Seen in this light, the great efforts being expended to demonize Vladamir Putin make perfect sense. He would serve as the new Osama.

This video came to mind this morning for two reasons: One, listening to RT news I was reminded of the courage of the Russian people in defeating fascism. Here is JFK speaking at American University, June of 1963:

No nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation’s territory, including nearly two-thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland – a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.

I do not think I was supposed to learn about World War Two this way, not as an American. The European War started on D-Day. That’s when fearlessness struck at the heart of evil.

The Russians know their own history. They know about fascism. People on the streets of Odessa interviewed by RT speak freely on the neo-Nazis and fascists that have taken control of their country. RT is a Russian propaganda outlet, of course. These days it has more viewers than the American propaganda outlet, CNN.

I also listened to the American propaganda outlet NPR. There I learned that Americans are worried that Russia will try to disrupt the election to be held later this month in Ukraine. That is so typical of American treachery – to disrupt a country, instigate a violent coup d’état, support a reign of terror, and also call for an election. If they like the election outcome, fair or not, it will be a fair election. If they dislike the election outcome, fair or not, it will be ignored.

Which is why this video came to mind of that stupid, stupid movie. As John Wayne and the young boy head down the beach, it is sunset. The only problem is that the Vietnam coastline faces east, so that there is no sunset from that direction. It is ass backwards.

The American world view is ass backwards too, just like that movie.

I’ll get to the Monkees in a minute.

In the video above, it is suggested to us that the man firing the gun is shooting at people trying to escape the fire at the union hall in Odessa. That would be SOP in terrorist acts, the same reason why the US will attack with drones, and then later return when people are helping the victims to attack again. It’s called the “double tap.”

RT presents an interesting chronology of events that led up to that fire. Judge for yourself.
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From my vantage point, it helps to remember that the Americans are very good at agitation by use of media and professional agents provocateur. Some of the most memorable battles in our history involved people sent in to stir up violence to justify a police response. Two such events in my lifetime were at the Chicago Democratic convention in 1968, where a police riot was depicted as rioting kids, and the so-called Battle in Seattle in 1999, where a peaceful demonstration against the WTO become a bloody confrontation due to agents provocateur.

So much of what became media spectacle in our past was put there on purpose, to keep public opinion under control. I don’t think that Kiev set out to create the Odessa fire, but that is certainly the source of the agitation that led to the event (which it is now blaming on the victims).
Continue reading “You thought it was just the Monkees?” →

Here’s some advice to readers on how to read American news coverage of any event where the truth is being kept from us: Look for “scare quotes” and passive voice.

Examples: Soviet President Putin says “American agents” are behind violence in Eastern Ukraine. Those quotation marks are a signal to American readers not to believe the words contained therein.

Passive voice merely means events occur without cause. When the US is fomenting violence, wars break out, violence occurs, tensions mount, all in the same manner that rain storms occur. The Russians have strong evidence that Kiev agents set the fire that killed so many in Odessa, but according to American sources, people were arguing and the damned fire just broke out! Huffington Post tells us that sides clashed and unrest gripped the place.

“Sides” and “unrest” are the agents behind the violence. Thanks HuffPo. You’re on top of your game, as usual.

That’s how it rolls here. That’s now our news media covers the news without actually giving us any useful information or saying anything true.
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Update: UK’s Daily Mail does not use passive voice, and says that violence is caused by “pro-Russian thugs with baseball bats.” We all know that baseball is a big sport over there, so those bats surely came from Russia. In fact, the bats say right on them that they are “Moscow Sluggers.”

31 people have died in fire in a trade union facility in Odessa.

The Trade Unions House was set on fire by pro-Kiev radicals after they surrounded and destroyed the tent camp of anti-government activists that stood in front of the building on Odessa’s Kulikovo Field Square. It was torched in a storming attempt after some of the anti-Maidan activists rallying in the square barricaded themselves inside the building.

What is interesting to me is how the US, at least within our borders (under our bubble), manages to distance itself from this violence, just like it has from the massive violence against Syria since 2011. Russian President Putin makes no bones, saying the US is orchestrating everything. The possibility – even the possibility – is never broached on our state-controlled news media in any its thousands of outlets. Such control of information is impressive.