Barack Obama, if you ignore surface phenomena, is just another Neocon. This was apparent in his retention of Robert Gates at the Pentagon (I cannot bring myself to use the word “defense”) and appointment of Israeli citizen Rahm Emmanuel as Chief of Staff when he took office. As a Democrat, he is effectively cloaked. He has allowed the NeoCon faction to move forward with their Post-9/11 agenda of aggressive war in the Middle East. He’s useful.

In today’s New York Times, there is an op-ed piece by Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is highly significant. The Times, which allowed (apparent) CIA mole Judith Miller front-page prominence during the agitprop campaign leading up to the Iraq war, has not had a change of course or heart. But it is a frontispiece behind which there is obviously a squabble going on. Otherwise, Putin would not have access to the pages of the venerable state organ. There is obviously not unanimity within the ruling class that the US should attack Syria.

I cannot overstate the significance of this move by the powers behind the Times. Imagine that Leonid Brezhnev were allowed op-ed space there to criticize the Johnson or Nixon Administration prosecution of the Vietnam War. It’s just not done!

That significance aside, the piece is worth reading, especially since it echos a warning that has gone around the world but has not been mentioned in US mainstream news, that the Syrian terrorists are planning a false-flag attack on Israel to give them and the US further cause for aggressive war.

Never let it be said that I am not susceptible to advertising. We have gone without satellite TV since last spring, but normally hook up in the fall and winter. We’ve been using DirecTV for years now, and like Coke/Pepsi Democrat/Republican, the alternative is Dish Network. The latter offered a device called the “Hopper” that allowed us to skip advertising, and I bought in. Here’s what it does: You must record all of a given network’s offerings all evening on any given night. There are only four choices, FOX, NBC, ABC and CBS, or Coke/Coke/Pepsi/Pepsi.* The scads of cable channels that are so riddled with advertising that they are unwatchable are not options for this service.
Continue reading “Coke/Coke/Pepsi/Pepsi” →

I have participated in press conferences in the past, as a member of Montana Wilderness Association and when campaigning for Nader. It’s been many a year, and I have better insight now. Such affairs were, for me, an ego trip, to see my face on TV and hear my name. Beyond that, I was merely a tool, especially for MWA – I was given a script, at that time by John Gatchell, and adhered to it. That’s not a good thing, but is where I was at intellectually at that time. It would have been more honest if Gatchell had done the thing himself, but MWA liked to foster a grassroots feel, and so used civilians to front for the professional staff. That was my role.

I do have one reflection of value from those experiences. We had a dog that I used to walk daily, and each time we passed a certain fenced yard she would bare her teeth and bark viciously at the dog on the other side. She was menacing. Panda (her name when we got her) was one mean bitch.

However, if she came face-to-face with the same dog and without a fence, she was docile, merely touching nose and sniffing butt.

The reporters who covered our press conferences back then manifested something similar. Because we were liberal and environmentalists, they were free to ask us any question whether it was confrontational, thoughtful or burrowing. They could actually do their jobs.

I also sat through press conferences these same reporters were part of, but with Senator Conrad Burns at the helm. They were no longer tough, and instead diligently took notes as Burns spoke down to them. Their questions were more obsequious than curious, their mission to deliver Burns’ message to the public. They stopped being journalists and became mere scriveners.

I watched Charlie Rose interview Syrian President Bashar Assad last night, and thought of Panda and the fence. Charlie was actually a journalist of sorts, pushy, accusatory, unwilling to accept pat answers. He’s not free to be so forceful with other guests, and isn’t. Put him opposite a powerful American, and he becomes a butt sniffer.

For the simple reason that Washington had announced a “red line,” Syria would have been stupid to use chemical weapons, as it would invite a US military attack. Therefore, it’s easy to see that the attack was staged by the terrorists and death squads. That fact firmly in mind, it is simply a matter of looking for evidence that either confirms or denies that premise. Evidence of death squad involvement in the attack, much of which was apparently done for cameras’ benefit, it abundant and easy to find.

It’s an obvious con job. How can they get away with it?

For one thing, the American public is not presented with any alternatives beyond the official story, except when there is conflict within the power centers over the desired course of action. But the more important advantage for the con artists behind this transparent ruse is that the American public cannot think critically, and easily believes the most transparent lies.

According to RT, the death squads and terrorists are now planning an attack on Israel using the same weapons, the USS Israel no doubt complicit. The painful thing to watch, if it happens, is the ease with which it will go down. But the encouraging thing is that due to involvement of Russia in throwing debris on the path to war, the US feels a need to take it up a notch by staging yet another fake event.

American and Israeli militants are lined up on the borders of Syria now in anticipation of the invasion, and have been since mobilization three days before the purported event.

And yes, I am deliberately switching the pejorative terminology from the mainstream US media usage, turning it inside out. If this creates cognitive dissonance in the mind of the reader, I’ve achieved my objective. You’re being diddled by US state-controlled media, and I am merely un-diddling.
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PS: I still fear that they might use 9/11 as the date, for agitprop purposes.

The girl to the left, “Nayirah,” was presented to the American public in 1991 as a Kuwaiti citizen who witnessed atrocities committed by Iraqi soldiers. She claimed that they had entered a hospital and taken babies from incubators and thrown them on the floor to watch them die. It was a lie, of course, and later we learned that Nayirah was the daughter of Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah, the Kuwait ambassador to the US, and that the whole scene was orchestrated before congress by the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton, working for the Kuwaiti government.

It was a scam, but that is not important. It worked, and by the time we discovered the hoax, it was far too late. Rather we need to concentrate on these three issues: Continue reading “Ineptitude” →

This rarely happens, and is a sign of how bad it has gotten in DC. Even the Bush Administration people never swung so low. From Moon of Alabama:

The President of Russian Federation Putin just called U.S. Secretary of State Kerry a liar. This because Kerry insisted, in contradiction to U.S. intelligence and recent news reports, that the al-Qaeda affiliated fighters in Syria are only a shrinking minority of the Syrian opposition.

Kerry asserted that the armed opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “has increasingly become more defined by its moderation, more defined by the breadth of its membership, and more defined by its adherence to some, you know, democratic process and to an all-inclusive, minority-protecting constitution.

“And the opposition is getting stronger by the day,” Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.”

To this Putin responded:

Mr Putin said: “This was very unpleasant and surprising for me. We talk to them (the Americans) and we assume they are decent people, but he is lying and he knows that he is lying. This is sad.“