Greedy Pigs Launch Counter Offensive

Having brought our reality show TV prez to heel, stolen trillions from the taxpayers through their moles in the government and fat and happy from their record bonuses the evil empire that is Goldman Sachs is now fighting back. Bloomberg announced that Wall Street (aka Goldman Sachs) has enlisted two lackeys of the Frankenstein of financial chicanery Hank Paulson to take their propaganda and shove it down the throats of the American sheeple. The timing is a bit off though and so is their overestimation of the ability of the American Idiots to disengage from their electronic crackpipes, Whacko Jacko kicked the bucket yesterday so a lot of money for this sewage could be saved – but hey, it’s mostly TARP mad money anyway ain’t it. Anyway, while the corporate media vultures are picking the meat from Jacko’s still warm corpse the story that I refer to is Wall Street Sets Campaign on Populist Overreaction. Seems like the anger directed at AIG’s plundering and Jim Cramer and CNBC’s lies has the financial oligarchs a bit restive although that anger has been tamped down by the three months running Green Shoots public relations campaign.

Here is an excerpt from the Bloomberg piece:

June 25 (Bloomberg) — Wall Street’s largest trade group has started a campaign to counter the “populist” backlash against bankers, enlisting two former aides to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to spearhead the effort.

In memos of confidential meetings with top financial executives, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association said it began this month the “execution phase” of the operation, which pledges to “embrace change” and accountability. The plan targets policy makers and the media in New York, London, Washington and Brussels and calls for a “city-by-city, grass roots” approach.

The securities industry “must be perceived as part of the solution, which will allow it to better defend against populist overreaction,” the documents, prepared for a June 17 meeting of SIFMA’s board, said.

The board meeting minutes and staff-written papers, obtained by Bloomberg News, outline the program crafted by polling, lobbying and public relations companies paid at least $85,000 a month. The memos provide a glimpse, in often candid language, into how Wall Street is grappling with its pariah status.

“It is imperative that in this historic period of reform, the industry be recognized as playing a positive role in seeking change and providing solutions to the problems we face,” one of the documents said. “There is currently widespread skepticism about the industry’s commitment to this needed change.”

In other words LIES…LIES..LIES to lure the suckers back into the casinos that were propped up by the Pope of Hope rather than the serious structural problems that caused the implosion to occur be corrected. What Goldman Sachs did is best explained by Matt Taibbi in his latest piece from Alternet Suck On Our Yachts.

This isn’t really commerce, but much more like organized crime: it was a gigantic fraud perpetrated on the economy that wouldn’t have been possible without accomplices in the ratings agencies and regulators willing to turn a blind eye. Imagine a meat company that bred ten billion rats, fattened them on trash and sewage, ground their bodies into chuck, and then sold it all as grade-A ground beef to McDonald’s and Burger King, right under the noses of the USDA: this is exactly the same thing, only with debt instead of food. We’re eating it, they’re counting the money.

That is the best explanation of the swindlers’ financial alchemy that I have ever seen and one that even 200 million Michael Jackson mourners could understand. Now as I stated in a post that I did last week about the fascination over Iran’s phony ‘Green Revolution’ (Green shoots, Green Revolution…..yada fucking yada, you would think that for as much money as they are paid that the public relations shops would at least have some originality) that Americans love a good revolution as long as they don’t actually have to arise off of their sofas, put down their remotes and participate. What Goldman Sachs, the Great Satan has done to us all should have millions of pitchfork and torch bearing taxpayers marching on Wall Street demanding mass lynchings. They certainly have time on their hands now that they are fucking unemployed and homeless.

But American capacity for outrage is limited to silly wedge issues, who was it that once said that he could hire half of the working class to kill the other half. Anyway, in wrapping up I want to bring attention to this delightful little piece from the foreign press on what our vastly more sophisticated European cousins are capable of when ripped off by the greedmongers.

German pensioners ‘kidnap and torture their investment adviser’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6565206.ece

A group of well-to-do pensioners who lost their savings in the credit crunch staged an arthritic revenge attack and held their terrified financial adviser to ransom, prosecutors said yesterday.

The alleged kidnapping is the latest example of what is being dubbed “silver crime” — the violent backlash of pensioners who feel cheated by the world.

“As I was letting myself into my front door I was assaulted from behind and hit hard,” the financial adviser James Amburn, a 56-year-old German-American, said. “Then they bound me with masking tape until I looked like a mummy. I thought I was a dead man.”

He was freed by 40 heavily armed policemen from the counter-terrorist unit last Saturday. The frightened consultant was in his underwear, his body lacerated by wounds allegedly inflicted by angry pensioners.

It appears that two couples had entrusted Mr Amburn’s investment company with €2.4 million (£2 million), which he ploughed into Florida’s boom-and-bust property market. The properties became forfeit during the sub-prime mortgage crisis but the couples wanted their money back.

After being bundled into the boot of an Audi in the west German town of Speyer, Mr Amburn was driven southwards to Chieming, close to the Austrian border, where one of the couples Roland K, and his wife, Sieglinde, 79, had a holiday home.

The financial adviser claims he was held there in a cellar for four days almost naked, fed soup twice a day and beaten. Another couple, Gerhard F, 63, and his wife, Iris, 66, both retired doctors, allegedly helped to torture the prisoner.

“I was beaten. They threatened again and again to kill me,” Mr Amburn said. At least two of his ribs were fractured.

Mr Amburn says he tried to escape once when he was permitted to smoke in the garden. He scaled the wall and ran though the rain in his underpants calling for help.

The pensioners pursued him in their car, shouting: “Stop that man! He’s a burglar!” Two locals pinned him to the pavement and he was taken back to the cellar, where he claims he received another beating.

The investment consultant’s break came when he was allowed to send a fax to a Swiss bank asking for the transfer of the funds demanded by the gang.

On the fax he pretended to refer to call options and to insurance policies (the German word for a financial policy is police). This came out as “call.pol-ice.”

They didn’t notice it but someone at the bank was bright enough to spot it,” Mr Amburn said.

The pensioners are under arrest on suspicion of deprivation of liberty, torture and inflicting grievous bodily harm. These charges carry a maximum of 15 years in prison.

“They were angry because they invested money in propertites in Florida and he lost it all,” Volker Ziegler, chief public prosecutor in Traunstein, said.

The numbers of attacks by elderly people had been rising fast even before the financial crisis hit savings. A three-man gang of pensioners is serving long jail terms for mounting 14 bank robberies across Germany to boost their retirement funds.

Rudolf Richter and brothers Wilfried and Lothar Ackermann were entitled only to modest state pensions of between €100 and €400 a month.

They became enraged by the size of bankers’ bonuses and over nine years — ending in their arrest in 2005 — netted more than €1.3 million. Police recovered only half that sum.

“It is unbelievable how easy it is to rob a bank,” Wilfried Ackermann, 73, boasted during the trial. The men held carrots in their pockets pretending that they had pistols.

On one of the raids Richter, 74, slipped on an icy pavement, dropped the loot and had to be carried to the getaway car.

I can’t happen here.

Newsweek Newspeak

The green shoots, the most wonderful propaganda onslaught since General Petraeus’s heroic, Reaganesque winning of the Iraq war through the ‘SURGE’ has failed. The stinking undead zombie that is the U.S. economy has not been resurrected through the massive infusions of taxpayer dollars, perhaps spent billions on public relations and lobbying and the changing of the mark to market rules only bought times for the financial predators. The wonderful government subsidized markets are tanking again, there are still no jobs, the housing market is not at all improving, the banks aren’t lending and by the way, bombs are going off in Baghdad again. While neocons and Repiglicans have their panties in a bunch over Barack Obama’s not getting behind their little Iranian PSYOP the real outcry should be from every taxpayer in Der Heimat beause they have just been bent over backwards and butt-fucked by Barack’s Wall Street Dream Team into funneling billions into the Ponzi schemes, getting nothing but pink slips and foreclosure notices in return and are about to have any hope of a national health care ripped away by the corrupt, on-the-take non-term limited cesspool dwellers in Congress.

And the myth of Ronald Reagan is just like the one about Santa Claus, only silliness for the credulous little children of lemming land. Horseshit, total horseshit.

So Newsweek Magazine, a month or so after a ‘change’ to move away from celebrity swill in favor of more hard-hitting and provocative ‘journalism’ has after cover stories featuring celebrities Stephen Colbert and Oprah (so much for ‘change’) rolled out an issue with a cover story – GAG – The Capitalist Manifesto. The piece in question is written by that ubiquitous little geek Fareed Zakaria and in any sane and honestly run news operation would be more honestly entitled The Bullshit Manifesto. But then we are talking about Newsweek, a sorry shitrag that is owned by the Washington Post and is the fruition of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird. The salad days of the WaPo and the crusading investigative journalism in the form of Bob Woodward (a man of questionable integrity) and Carl Bernstein have long been flushed down the memory hole and the herald for the beltway elite and well-connected is a shameful example of just how vile and corrupt that the American media has become. The WaPo last week fired its best columnist Dan Froomkin for his daring to go up against the insipid and overly influential neocon house shill Charles Krauthammer over torture. See Glenn Greenwald’s excellent pieces on the firing of Mr. Froomkin, the hiring of Paul Wolfowitz to augment the neocon Wurlitzer and the sad state of the establishment media in general. Oh, and Newsweek also offers a place for a slimy, bitter, chain smoking, fascist pigfucker Robert Bork to rail against Sonia Sotomayor as he continues to inveigh against all that was once decent or free in this rotting empire of gluttony and greed.

As for Zakaria his long essay in which he defends the scoundrels, money grubbers, chiselers, cheats, schemers, high rollers, paper dealers and four flushing TARP fund welshers and the vile cancerous economic system of capitalism had my bile rising before I was even into the second column. It starts out like this:

A specter is haunting the world—the return of capitalism. Over the past six months, politicians, businessmen and pundits have been convinced that we are in the midst of a crisis of capitalism that will require a massive transformation and years of pain to fix. Nothing will ever be the same again. “Another ideological god has failed,” the dean of financial commentators, Martin Wolf, wrote in the Financial Times. Companies will “fundamentally reset” the way they work, said the CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt. “Capitalism will be different,” said Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

No economic system ever remains unchanged, of course, and certainly not after a deep financial collapse and a broad global recession. But over the past few months, even though we’ve had an imperfect stimulus package, nationalized no banks and undergone no grand reinvention of capitalism, the sense of panic seems to be easing. Perhaps this is a mirage—or perhaps the measures taken by states around the world, chiefly the U.S. government, have restored normalcy. Every expert has a critique of specific policies, but over time we might see that faced with the decision to underreact or overreact, most governments chose the latter. That choice might produce new problems in due course—a topic for another essay—but it appears to have averted a systemic breakdown.

“but it appears to have averted a systemic breakdown”?? Whaddafuck??? Jesus Fucking Christ, we are at the gates of Hell right now as a result of capitalism. However to highly paid ideologues like Fareed and his fellow travelers like Thomas Friedman who make a good chunk of coin on the circuit serving up globaloney to the suckers and don’t have to worry about the trivial existential horrors of the maxed out, stressed out, thrown out and fucked over and fucked out American on the streets the view is of course much different from atop the ivory towers. Here is some more of this rancid tripe:

Many experts are convinced that the situation cannot improve yet because their own sweeping solutions to the problem have not been implemented. Most of us want to see more punishment inflicted, particularly on America’s bankers. Deep down we all have a Puritan belief that unless they suffer a good dose of pain, they will not truly repent. In fact, there has been much pain, especially in the financial industry, where tens of thousands of jobs, at all levels, have been lost. But fundamentally, markets are not about morality. They are large, complex systems, and if things get stable enough, they move on.

More punishment? How about ANY punishment at all. Shit, those greedy pigs are the only ones that did get bailed out and are now engaged in a feverish orgy of speculation that will have gas at $5.00 a gallon by the time the snowflakes start falling, heating oil will also massively spike and along with the accompanying rise in food prices as commodity markets are cornered one hell of a lot of people are going to have to choose between heating and eating. So Zakaria should spare us that elitist scolding, we never did get to see Bill Maher’s suggestion of two bankers hanging from the big board at the NYSE with their balls in their mouth and other than a few big tokens who are going to be given show trials and slapped on the wrist the pain is all passed on to the shmoes and peasants as it always is in Capitalist Murka. It would be just too much to ask an egghead of Zakaria’s stature why a starving father can be busted stealing a can of fucking Chef Boyardee ravioli to feed his cold and hungry family and disappear into the bowels of the vast for profit prison gulag system while the treasonous looters are not only smacked on the wrist with a wet noodle but given more of the house money to piss away gambling. Here is another piece of the essay if, that is if you can stomach it:

A few years from now, strange as it may sound, we might all find that we are hungry for more capitalism, not less. An economic crisis slows growth, and when countries need growth, they turn to markets. After the Mexican and East Asian currency crises—which were far more painful in those countries than the current downturn has been in America—we saw the pace of market-oriented reform speed up. If, in the years ahead, the American consumer remains reluctant to spend, if federal and state governments groan under their debt loads, if government-owned companies remain expensive burdens, then private-sector activity will become the only path to create jobs. The simple truth is that with all its flaws, capitalism remains the most productive economic engine we have yet invented. Like Churchill‘s line about democracy, it is the worst of all economic systems, except for the others. Its chief vindication today has come halfway across the world, in countries like China and India, which have been able to grow and pull hundreds of millions of people out of poverty by supporting markets and free trade. Last month India held elections during the worst of this crisis. Its powerful left-wing parties campaigned against liberalization and got their worst drubbing at the polls in 40 years.

Whenever a neocon or in Zakaria’s case, a neoliberal scoundrel needs to invoke a bit of legitimacy with the masses of asses it is the bread and butter to bring up good ole Winston Churchill. And the drivel about capitalism lifting hundreds of millions up out of poverty is just that, in layman’s terms it’s total bullshit. Capitalism itself, is as iconic Wall Street god and role model to the Reagan generation of shit Gordon Gekko once eloquently put it “a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred from one perception to another”. So Zakaria can engage in as much spin as necessary to argue his case, tell it to the millions of uninsured Americans, the jobless whose employment was shipped overseas to third world shithole sweatshops that are never seen. No, no no…when the shills for the financial cartels want an example of the wonders of globalization they show the glimmering steel and glass towers of modernity in Bangalore, just another Potemkin Village that obscures the ugly truth that capitalism is destroying the planet. Showing the slums, ghettos and slave labor staffed factories would interfere with the grand vision of the Lexus and the Olive Tree. I have had just about enough of the column that I can take without vomiting on my keyboard but just want to throw in this last little piece:

More broadly, the fundamental crisis we face is of globalization itself. We have globalized the economies of nations. Trade, travel and tourism are bringing people together. Technology has created worldwide supply chains, companies and customers. But our politics remains resolutely national. This tension is at the heart of the many crashes of this era—a mismatch between interconnected economies that are producing global problems but no matching political process that can effect global solutions. Without better international coordination, there will be more crashes, and eventually there may be a retreat from globalization toward the safety—and slow growth—of protected national economies.

Now the more conspiratorial (or to avoid the pejorative tin foil hatter – aware) types this is starting to sound strangely like a case for that dreaded New World Order aka a global corporate government that is being pimped. You can read the rest of the article yourselves if you have a high tolerance for bullshit. It bears mentioning that Fareed Zakaria is a Council on Foreign Relations mouthpiece and like the rest of his ilk is out there shilling for globalist predatory capitalism in a major publication like Newsweek. We are basically fucked right now because the establishment has rigged the game, Mr. Zakaria, like Obama is there to do the soft closing for those who are actually able to fucking read. For the rest, the prison camps await along with the reeducation to be a good little capitalist slave – think of O’Brien and his pet rats in Room 101, you get the picture.

The CFR along with all of these other big time elite groups (Bilderberg,Trilateral Commission, Davos, G8 etc) are nothing other than proponents for a global corporate state where we are all reduced to chattel and indentured servants in their system. Actually railing against these elitists is one of the few things that the knuckledraggers on the far right actually do that is remotely constructive – unfortunately it is then filtered through CIA fronts like the infamous John Birch Society to meld it with anti-immigrant racism, gun grabber paranoia and in the biggest lie of all turning it into a great Communist conspiracy rather than the quite obvious one of fascist corporatism. The future of capitalism is going to be patterned after that great model that is our top creditor China and the authoritarianism, censorship, goon squad paramilitary types who will grind our bones to make their bread. And this ties back into the Iran uprising, whether it is real, partially real, fomented by spooks or over sensationalized by the pocket media is irrelevant. Until Americans are ready to lay it on the line and take to the streets rather than sitting on their asses in front of state controlled television propaganda and don’t replace Twitter with guns then we are fucked. That’s just the way that it is and our revolution won’t be televised.

It is becoming more apparent that the shits won and won easily, hell our great savior for change Backless Barrack never even gave change a chance, just turned the policies over to pigs like Summers and Geithner so that they could save their casinos and their offshore money pools. The new issue of Foreign Affairs (the CFR journal) gives some time to the concept of G2 which is the U.S. and China. China is the perfect next stage of capitalism, once it has sucked the life out of the working and middle classes it needs an authoritarian police state to function at maximum capacity. Thanks to the Bushreich we already have the police state apparatus here (spying, paramilitary police etc) and not smiling Barack the new face for all of it is ensuring that generations will be condemned to corporate bondage, their fate has already been sealed with his acquiescence to Wall Street paper pushers.

I would recommend an alternative to Fareek Zakaria’s elitst propaganda in their polemic for the rich Newspeak. Harper’s Magazine, a fine, truly American intellectually solid publication has a wonderful cover story on the failure of the Pope of Hope, check out Barack Hoover Obama, subtitled The Best and the Brightest Blow it Again by Kevin Baker. It’s better written, more historically accurate and not delivered by the sort of conniving little swine who would piss down your back and try to convince you that it is raining for an establishment that swears 2+2=5.

Fareed Zakaria is nothing other than another manure monger and god knows that there is no fucking shortage of them here in our rotting, fucked over empire.

Newsweek Newspeak

The green shoots, the most wonderful propaganda onslaught since General Petraeus’s heroic, Reaganesque winning of the Iraq war through the ‘SURGE’ has failed. The stinking undead zombie that is the U.S. economy has not been resurrected through the massive infusions of taxpayer dollars, perhaps spent billions on public relations and lobbying and the changing of the mark to market rules only bought times for the financial predators. The wonderful government subsidized markets are tanking again, there are still no jobs, the housing market is not at all improving, the banks aren’t lending and by the way, bombs are going off in Baghdad again. While neocons and Repiglicans have their panties in a bunch over Barack Obama’s not getting behind their little Iranian PSYOP the real outcry should be from every taxpayer in Der Heimat beause they have just been bent over backwards and butt-fucked by Barack’s Wall Street Dream Team into funneling billions into the Ponzi schemes, getting nothing but pink slips and foreclosure notices in return and are about to have any hope of a national health care ripped away by the corrupt, on-the-take non-term limited cesspool dwellers in Congress.

And the myth of Ronald Reagan is just like the one about Santa Claus, only silliness for the credulous little children of lemming land. Horseshit, total horseshit.

So Newsweek Magazine, a month or so after a ‘change’ to move away from celebrity swill in favor of more hard-hitting and provocative ‘journalism’ has after cover stories featuring celebrities Stephen Colbert and Oprah (so much for ‘change’) rolled out an issue with a cover story – GAG – The Capitalist Manifesto. The piece in question is written by that ubiquitous little geek Fareed Zakaria and in any sane and honestly run news operation would be more honestly entitled The Bullshit Manifesto. But then we are talking about Newsweek, a sorry shitrag that is owned by the Washington Post and is the fruition of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird. The salad days of the WaPo and the crusading investigative journalism in the form of Bob Woodward (a man of questionable integrity) and Carl Bernstein have long been flushed down the memory hole and the herald for the beltway elite and well-connected is a shameful example of just how vile and corrupt that the American media has become. The WaPo last week fired its best columnist Dan Froomkin for his daring to go up against the insipid and overly influential neocon house shill Charles Krauthammer over torture. See Glenn Greenwald’s excellent pieces on the firing of Mr. Froomkin, the hiring of Paul Wolfowitz to augment the neocon Wurlitzer and the sad state of the establishment media in general. Oh, and Newsweek also offers a place for a slimy, bitter, chain smoking, fascist pigfucker Robert Bork to rail against Sonia Sotomayor as he continues to inveigh against all that was once decent or free in this rotting empire of gluttony and greed.

As for Zakaria his long essay in which he defends the scoundrels, money grubbers, chiselers, cheats, schemers, high rollers, paper dealers and four flushing TARP fund welshers and the vile cancerous economic system of capitalism had my bile rising before I was even into the second column. It starts out like this:

A specter is haunting the world—the return of capitalism. Over the past six months, politicians, businessmen and pundits have been convinced that we are in the midst of a crisis of capitalism that will require a massive transformation and years of pain to fix. Nothing will ever be the same again. “Another ideological god has failed,” the dean of financial commentators, Martin Wolf, wrote in the Financial Times. Companies will “fundamentally reset” the way they work, said the CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt. “Capitalism will be different,” said Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

No economic system ever remains unchanged, of course, and certainly not after a deep financial collapse and a broad global recession. But over the past few months, even though we’ve had an imperfect stimulus package, nationalized no banks and undergone no grand reinvention of capitalism, the sense of panic seems to be easing. Perhaps this is a mirage—or perhaps the measures taken by states around the world, chiefly the U.S. government, have restored normalcy. Every expert has a critique of specific policies, but over time we might see that faced with the decision to underreact or overreact, most governments chose the latter. That choice might produce new problems in due course—a topic for another essay—but it appears to have averted a systemic breakdown.

“but it appears to have averted a systemic breakdown”?? Whaddafuck??? Jesus Fucking Christ, we are at the gates of Hell right now as a result of capitalism. However to highly paid ideologues like Fareed and his fellow travelers like Thomas Friedman who make a good chunk of coin on the circuit serving up globaloney to the suckers and don’t have to worry about the trivial existential horrors of the maxed out, stressed out, thrown out and fucked over and fucked out American on the streets the view is of course much different from atop the ivory towers. Here is some more of this rancid tripe:

Many experts are convinced that the situation cannot improve yet because their own sweeping solutions to the problem have not been implemented. Most of us want to see more punishment inflicted, particularly on America’s bankers. Deep down we all have a Puritan belief that unless they suffer a good dose of pain, they will not truly repent. In fact, there has been much pain, especially in the financial industry, where tens of thousands of jobs, at all levels, have been lost. But fundamentally, markets are not about morality. They are large, complex systems, and if things get stable enough, they move on.

More punishment? How about ANY punishment at all. Shit, those greedy pigs are the only ones that did get bailed out and are now engaged in a feverish orgy of speculation that will have gas at $5.00 a gallon by the time the snowflakes start falling, heating oil will also massively spike and along with the accompanying rise in food prices as commodity markets are cornered one hell of a lot of people are going to have to choose between heating and eating. So Zakaria should spare us that elitist scolding, we never did get to see Bill Maher’s suggestion of two bankers hanging from the big board at the NYSE with their balls in their mouth and other than a few big tokens who are going to be given show trials and slapped on the wrist the pain is all passed on to the shmoes and peasants as it always is in Capitalist Murka. It would be just too much to ask an egghead of Zakaria’s stature why a starving father can be busted stealing a can of fucking Chef Boyardee ravioli to feed his cold and hungry family and disappear into the bowels of the vast for profit prison gulag system while the treasonous looters are not only smacked on the wrist with a wet noodle but given more of the house money to piss away gambling. Here is another piece of the essay if, that is if you can stomach it:

A few years from now, strange as it may sound, we might all find that we are hungry for more capitalism, not less. An economic crisis slows growth, and when countries need growth, they turn to markets. After the Mexican and East Asian currency crises—which were far more painful in those countries than the current downturn has been in America—we saw the pace of market-oriented reform speed up. If, in the years ahead, the American consumer remains reluctant to spend, if federal and state governments groan under their debt loads, if government-owned companies remain expensive burdens, then private-sector activity will become the only path to create jobs. The simple truth is that with all its flaws, capitalism remains the most productive economic engine we have yet invented. Like Churchill‘s line about democracy, it is the worst of all economic systems, except for the others. Its chief vindication today has come halfway across the world, in countries like China and India, which have been able to grow and pull hundreds of millions of people out of poverty by supporting markets and free trade. Last month India held elections during the worst of this crisis. Its powerful left-wing parties campaigned against liberalization and got their worst drubbing at the polls in 40 years.

Whenever a neocon or in Zakaria’s case, a neoliberal scoundrel needs to invoke a bit of legitimacy with the masses of asses it is the bread and butter to bring up good ole Winston Churchill. And the drivel about capitalism lifting hundreds of millions up out of poverty is just that, in layman’s terms it’s total bullshit. Capitalism itself, is as iconic Wall Street god and role model to the Reagan generation of shit Gordon Gekko once eloquently put it “a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred from one perception to another”. So Zakaria can engage in as much spin as necessary to argue his case, tell it to the millions of uninsured Americans, the jobless whose employment was shipped overseas to third world shithole sweatshops that are never seen. No, no no…when the shills for the financial cartels want an example of the wonders of globalization they show the glimmering steel and glass towers of modernity in Bangalore, just another Potemkin Village that obscures the ugly truth that capitalism is destroying the planet. Showing the slums, ghettos and slave labor staffed factories would interfere with the grand vision of the Lexus and the Olive Tree. I have had just about enough of the column that I can take without vomiting on my keyboard but just want to throw in this last little piece:

More broadly, the fundamental crisis we face is of globalization itself. We have globalized the economies of nations. Trade, travel and tourism are bringing people together. Technology has created worldwide supply chains, companies and customers. But our politics remains resolutely national. This tension is at the heart of the many crashes of this era—a mismatch between interconnected economies that are producing global problems but no matching political process that can effect global solutions. Without better international coordination, there will be more crashes, and eventually there may be a retreat from globalization toward the safety—and slow growth—of protected national economies.

Now the more conspiratorial (or to avoid the pejorative tin foil hatter – aware) types this is starting to sound strangely like a case for that dreaded New World Order aka a global corporate government that is being pimped. You can read the rest of the article yourselves if you have a high tolerance for bullshit. It bears mentioning that Fareed Zakaria is a Council on Foreign Relations mouthpiece and like the rest of his ilk is out there shilling for globalist predatory capitalism in a major publication like Newsweek. We are basically fucked right now because the establishment has rigged the game, Mr. Zakaria, like Obama is there to do the soft closing for those who are actually able to fucking read. For the rest, the prison camps await along with the reeducation to be a good little capitalist slave – think of O’Brien and his pet rats in Room 101, you get the picture.

The CFR along with all of these other big time elite groups (Bilderberg,Trilateral Commission, Davos, G8 etc) are nothing other than proponents for a global corporate state where we are all reduced to chattel and indentured servants in their system. Actually railing against these elitists is one of the few things that the knuckledraggers on the far right actually do that is remotely constructive – unfortunately it is then filtered through CIA fronts like the infamous John Birch Society to meld it with anti-immigrant racism, gun grabber paranoia and in the biggest lie of all turning it into a great Communist conspiracy rather than the quite obvious one of fascist corporatism. The future of capitalism is going to be patterned after that great model that is our top creditor China and the authoritarianism, censorship, goon squad paramilitary types who will grind our bones to make their bread. And this ties back into the Iran uprising, whether it is real, partially real, fomented by spooks or over sensationalized by the pocket media is irrelevant. Until Americans are ready to lay it on the line and take to the streets rather than sitting on their asses in front of state controlled television propaganda and don’t replace Twitter with guns then we are fucked. That’s just the way that it is and our revolution won’t be televised.

It is becoming more apparent that the shits won and won easily, hell our great savior for change Backless Barrack never even gave change a chance, just turned the policies over to pigs like Summers and Geithner so that they could save their casinos and their offshore money pools. The new issue of Foreign Affairs (the CFR journal) gives some time to the concept of G2 which is the U.S. and China. China is the perfect next stage of capitalism, once it has sucked the life out of the working and middle classes it needs an authoritarian police state to function at maximum capacity. Thanks to the Bushreich we already have the police state apparatus here (spying, paramilitary police etc) and not smiling Barack the new face for all of it is ensuring that generations will be condemned to corporate bondage, their fate has already been sealed with his acquiescence to Wall Street paper pushers.

I would recommend an alternative to Fareek Zakaria’s elitst propaganda in their polemic for the rich Newspeak. Harper’s Magazine, a fine, truly American intellectually solid publication has a wonderful cover story on the failure of the Pope of Hope, check out Barack Hoover Obama, subtitled The Best and the Brightest Blow it Again by Kevin Baker. It’s better written, more historically accurate and not delivered by the sort of conniving little swine who would piss down your back and try to convince you that it is raining for an establishment that swears 2+2=5.

Fareed Zakaria is nothing other than another manure monger and god knows that there is no fucking shortage of them here in our rotting, fucked over empire.

Mad Man in a Roomful of Mirrors

Americans love a good revolution, as long as they are not the ones taking to the streets. In what would appear to be an Iranian version of the Bush crime family election theft of 2000 it appears that the New Hitler Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stolen the Iranian election. It was all there, polls that didn’t support the results, a corrupt power structure and even the state run media to pop in ala Bush’s cousin John Ellis of FOX ‘News’ came out and called the election in Dubya’s favor. But it was a rigged game, I will never forget the shit-eating grins on the Bush family as they sat clustered around a big screen television on that terrible night of November 7, 2000 – they knew goddamned well that it was rigged. I am sure that the mad mullahs and ayatollahs were just as smug just before the Iranian election was called (prematurely) for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Champagne corks were also popping at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) because with their poster boy for deviltry, global terrorism and anti-Semitism still in power they had scored a body blow against Barack Obama for daring to reach out from the confines of imperialist madness in his Cairo speech. The propaganda mills began to churn faster, the attacks against Obama were ratcheted up and the GOP gauleiters placed on high alert.

You have to give it the Iranians, at least they are out raising hell over a perceived theft of their election, how long did it take Americans to get out in a similar way after the second blatantly stolen election in 2004? We are still waiting for that revolt. This one though, at least at first glance is appealing to Americans because it is on television, a spectator sport of bone crushing violence and passion that puts even the NFL to shame, it makes for marvelous viewing as one is ensconced upon a sofa paying homage to the digital living room god. The Green Revolution is on, but what if it’s bullshit? If there is one thing in the post 9/11 wasteland of Der Homeland that I have learned to be it is skeptical of absolutely everything. First let me say that I have no love for that unshaven demagogue Ahmadinejad or for that matter for the religious zealots who run him. I believe that it would be a damned good thing were he, his paramilitary goons and the clerics were to be chased down and shot like rabid dogs Ceauşescu style in the streets of Tehran. Shit, they could decapitate the bastards and march around with their heads on sticks for all that I care.I hate thug regimes and take to theocracies even less kindly, they should all be torn to bloody pieces and their remains buried in fields sown with salt for all that I care. But I for one do remember the 2002 U.S. backed coup d’état in Venezuela that failed to rid the world of that horrible little socialist man Hugo Chavez and given the amount of agitation in Iran this could be another example of destabilizing a regime by fomenting rebellion and manipulating public opinion.

The network news, the corporate cable cesspool and the nattering nabobs of nonsense that are the talking heads are all discredited, you can immediately throw out most of that gibberish as propaganda. Now however there is the alternate media and such technology enabled information tools as You Tube and Twitter that are able to circumvent the normal and easily controlled information streams. During the recent Burma/Myanmar revolts it was the new technology that allowed for communication to continue, Iran is an example of this on a larger scale with even more advanced mediums available. Why is it that they work so hard on filtering and censoring the internet in full blown goon states like China? The internet is the biggest threat to tyranny that has ever existed and since China is the prototype of what our very own government is desperately trying to do in controlling dissent here, often under the cover of fighting child pornography, chasing down loosely defined and ‘dangerous’ right and left wing extremists and the utterly ludicrous and lame crackdown on cyber bullying. The protectors of the oligarchy are keeping an especially keen eye on Iranian protests and the ability to pass on information. That however is a story for another time, I am sure that all savvy bloggers are aware of the threats that they pose to a corrupt establishment and the coming pushback.

The pictures that are coming out of Iran are quite powerful, beatings, shootings, bloody young people trying to duck and cover truncheon swing black suited state paramilitary goons but the information itself is what is suspect, what if Ahmadinejad really did win the election? I have witnessed in the past days an irrational exuberance on the blogs and boards in support of the latest and greatest color coded revolution but be mindful that Mirhossein Mousavi is just another puppet of the imperialists, just like Mikheil Saakashvili, the tie chewing little twit in Georgia. Mousavi allegedly has ties to the ultimate players in Iran-Contra including Michael Ledeen. Now that Americans are throwing in with the protesters, jubilant, cheering, twittering, it makes the PNAC boys jobs that much harder when it comes to bombing them…or does it? Glenn Greenwald weiged in with the following on yet another neocon contradiction:

From: The “Bomb Iran” contingent’s newfound concern for The Iranian People

I’m going to leave the debate about whether Iran’s election was “stolen” and the domestic implications within Iran to people who actually know what they’re talking about (which is a very small subset of the class purporting to possess such knowledge). But there is one point I want to make about the vocal and dramatic expressions of solidarity with Iranians issuing from some quarters in the U.S.

Much of the same faction now claiming such concern for the welfare of The Iranian People are the same people who have long been advocating a military attack on Iran and the dropping of large numbers of bombs on their country — actions which would result in the slaughter of many of those very same Iranian People. During the presidential campaign, John McCain infamously sang about Bomb, Bomb, Bomb-ing Iran. The Wall St. Journal published a war screed from Commentary’s Norman Podhoretz entitled “The Case for Bombing Iran,” and following that, Podhoretz said in an interview that he “hopes and prays” that the U.S. “bombs the Iranians.” John Bolton and Joe Lieberman advocated the same bombing campaign, while Bill Kristol — with typical prescience — hopefully suggested that Bush might bomb Iran if Obama were elected. Rudy Giuliani actually said he would be open to a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran in order to stop their nuclear program.

Imagine how many of the people protesting this week would be dead if any of these bombing advocates had their way — just as those who paraded around (and still parade around) under the banner of Liberating the Iraqi People caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of them, at least. Hopefully, one of the principal benefits of the turmoil in Iran is that it humanizes whoever the latest Enemy is. Advocating a so-called “attack on Iran” or “bombing Iran” in fact means slaughtering huge numbers of the very same people who are on the streets of Tehran inspiring so many — obliterating their homes and workplaces, destroying their communities, shattering the infrastructure of their society and their lives. The same is true every time we start mulling the prospect of attacking and bombing another country as though it’s some abstract decision in a video game.

While many neocons like the oozing, fetid Daniel Pipes actually came out and endorsed the mad Mahmoud in the runup to the election the tactic now has shifted to bringing pressure on the Obama administration for intervention on the behalf of Mousavi. I have to admit that it really makes one want to vomit when an onerous old vulture like John McCain works his grampers into a twist over unfair elections. I sure as hell don’t remember him saying anything after Bush stole the White House in 2000 while the wounds from the area where his balls used to be prior to being ripped off by the Karl Rove machine in South Carolina was still smarting. The cringing but still loudly barking old dog yapped “I’m disappointed, it is an American principle ever since our founding that we are dedicated to the principle that all are created equal and the fact is they have the right to free elections and to select their leadership” – I haven’t seen anything from the other two stooges (Lieberman and Graham) yet but I am sure it’s out there as well because just like the sun coming up in the morning Moe and Jack are always in tune with Manny. Hell, hearing any Republican giving lectures about stolen elections is hysterical, kind of like being given lessons in dinner table etiquette from Jeffrey Dahmer or marital fidelity from Senator John Ensign. These people have absolutely no fucking shame whatsoever, their hypocrisy is as blatant as the Democratic party’s fecklessness.

So to close here I offer up some food for thought and please do take it seriously. Despite the blather and bombast that goes along with their political rhetoric and rank demagogy what if the neocons are deliberately instigating the mayhem in order to push the devil Ahmadinejad into a violent, over the top Tiananmen Square style put down that will further reinforce the years long propaganda campaign to demonize him? After all, it is already out there courtesy of Seymour Hersh among others that money has been being pumped into Iran for covert operations that would destabilize the regime. There is still conflicting information on what really happened in Iran so be cautious. There is a crackdown in progress and instigating the protesters into more violent action against the regime may very well result in the sort of ugliness and bloodshed that will only crystalize the neocon version of Ahmadinejad as the New Hitler and in additon to a failed revolution that we are treating as a spectator sport we will have a resurgent push to bomb all of those green flag waving freedom fighters into bloody bits – just collateral damage folks, we have seen this movie too many times.

Mad Man in a Roomful of Mirrors

Americans love a good revolution, as long as they are not the ones taking to the streets. In what would appear to be an Iranian version of the Bush crime family election theft of 2000 it appears that the New Hitler Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stolen the Iranian election. It was all there, polls that didn’t support the results, a corrupt power structure and even the state run media to pop in ala Bush’s cousin John Ellis of FOX ‘News’ came out and called the election in Dubya’s favor. But it was a rigged game, I will never forget the shit-eating grins on the Bush family as they sat clustered around a big screen television on that terrible night of November 7, 2000 – they knew goddamned well that it was rigged. I am sure that the mad mullahs and ayatollahs were just as smug just before the Iranian election was called (prematurely) for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Champagne corks were also popping at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) because with their poster boy for deviltry, global terrorism and anti-Semitism still in power they had scored a body blow against Barack Obama for daring to reach out from the confines of imperialist madness in his Cairo speech. The propaganda mills began to churn faster, the attacks against Obama were ratcheted up and the GOP gauleiters placed on high alert.

You have to give it the Iranians, at least they are out raising hell over a perceived theft of their election, how long did it take Americans to get out in a similar way after the second blatantly stolen election in 2004? We are still waiting for that revolt. This one though, at least at first glance is appealing to Americans because it is on television, a spectator sport of bone crushing violence and passion that puts even the NFL to shame, it makes for marvelous viewing as one is ensconced upon a sofa paying homage to the digital living room god. The Green Revolution is on, but what if it’s bullshit? If there is one thing in the post 9/11 wasteland of Der Homeland that I have learned to be it is skeptical of absolutely everything. First let me say that I have no love for that unshaven demagogue Ahmadinejad or for that matter for the religious zealots who run him. I believe that it would be a damned good thing were he, his paramilitary goons and the clerics were to be chased down and shot like rabid dogs Ceauşescu style in the streets of Tehran. Shit, they could decapitate the bastards and march around with their heads on sticks for all that I care.I hate thug regimes and take to theocracies even less kindly, they should all be torn to bloody pieces and their remains buried in fields sown with salt for all that I care. But I for one do remember the 2002 U.S. backed coup d’état in Venezuela that failed to rid the world of that horrible little socialist man Hugo Chavez and given the amount of agitation in Iran this could be another example of destabilizing a regime by fomenting rebellion and manipulating public opinion.

The network news, the corporate cable cesspool and the nattering nabobs of nonsense that are the talking heads are all discredited, you can immediately throw out most of that gibberish as propaganda. Now however there is the alternate media and such technology enabled information tools as You Tube and Twitter that are able to circumvent the normal and easily controlled information streams. During the recent Burma/Myanmar revolts it was the new technology that allowed for communication to continue, Iran is an example of this on a larger scale with even more advanced mediums available. Why is it that they work so hard on filtering and censoring the internet in full blown goon states like China? The internet is the biggest threat to tyranny that has ever existed and since China is the prototype of what our very own government is desperately trying to do in controlling dissent here, often under the cover of fighting child pornography, chasing down loosely defined and ‘dangerous’ right and left wing extremists and the utterly ludicrous and lame crackdown on cyber bullying. The protectors of the oligarchy are keeping an especially keen eye on Iranian protests and the ability to pass on information. That however is a story for another time, I am sure that all savvy bloggers are aware of the threats that they pose to a corrupt establishment and the coming pushback.

The pictures that are coming out of Iran are quite powerful, beatings, shootings, bloody young people trying to duck and cover truncheon swing black suited state paramilitary goons but the information itself is what is suspect, what if Ahmadinejad really did win the election? I have witnessed in the past days an irrational exuberance on the blogs and boards in support of the latest and greatest color coded revolution but be mindful that Mirhossein Mousavi is just another puppet of the imperialists, just like Mikheil Saakashvili, the tie chewing little twit in Georgia. Mousavi allegedly has ties to the ultimate players in Iran-Contra including Michael Ledeen. Now that Americans are throwing in with the protesters, jubilant, cheering, twittering, it makes the PNAC boys jobs that much harder when it comes to bombing them…or does it? Glenn Greenwald weiged in with the following on yet another neocon contradiction:

From: The “Bomb Iran” contingent’s newfound concern for The Iranian People

I’m going to leave the debate about whether Iran’s election was “stolen” and the domestic implications within Iran to people who actually know what they’re talking about (which is a very small subset of the class purporting to possess such knowledge). But there is one point I want to make about the vocal and dramatic expressions of solidarity with Iranians issuing from some quarters in the U.S.

Much of the same faction now claiming such concern for the welfare of The Iranian People are the same people who have long been advocating a military attack on Iran and the dropping of large numbers of bombs on their country — actions which would result in the slaughter of many of those very same Iranian People. During the presidential campaign, John McCain infamously sang about Bomb, Bomb, Bomb-ing Iran. The Wall St. Journal published a war screed from Commentary’s Norman Podhoretz entitled “The Case for Bombing Iran,” and following that, Podhoretz said in an interview that he “hopes and prays” that the U.S. “bombs the Iranians.” John Bolton and Joe Lieberman advocated the same bombing campaign, while Bill Kristol — with typical prescience — hopefully suggested that Bush might bomb Iran if Obama were elected. Rudy Giuliani actually said he would be open to a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran in order to stop their nuclear program.

Imagine how many of the people protesting this week would be dead if any of these bombing advocates had their way — just as those who paraded around (and still parade around) under the banner of Liberating the Iraqi People caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of them, at least. Hopefully, one of the principal benefits of the turmoil in Iran is that it humanizes whoever the latest Enemy is. Advocating a so-called “attack on Iran” or “bombing Iran” in fact means slaughtering huge numbers of the very same people who are on the streets of Tehran inspiring so many — obliterating their homes and workplaces, destroying their communities, shattering the infrastructure of their society and their lives. The same is true every time we start mulling the prospect of attacking and bombing another country as though it’s some abstract decision in a video game.

While many neocons like the oozing, fetid Daniel Pipes actually came out and endorsed the mad Mahmoud in the runup to the election the tactic now has shifted to bringing pressure on the Obama administration for intervention on the behalf of Mousavi. I have to admit that it really makes one want to vomit when an onerous old vulture like John McCain works his grampers into a twist over unfair elections. I sure as hell don’t remember him saying anything after Bush stole the White House in 2000 while the wounds from the area where his balls used to be prior to being ripped off by the Karl Rove machine in South Carolina was still smarting. The cringing but still loudly barking old dog yapped “I’m disappointed, it is an American principle ever since our founding that we are dedicated to the principle that all are created equal and the fact is they have the right to free elections and to select their leadership” – I haven’t seen anything from the other two stooges (Lieberman and Graham) yet but I am sure it’s out there as well because just like the sun coming up in the morning Moe and Jack are always in tune with Manny. Hell, hearing any Republican giving lectures about stolen elections is hysterical, kind of like being given lessons in dinner table etiquette from Jeffrey Dahmer or marital fidelity from Senator John Ensign. These people have absolutely no fucking shame whatsoever, their hypocrisy is as blatant as the Democratic party’s fecklessness.

So to close here I offer up some food for thought and please do take it seriously. Despite the blather and bombast that goes along with their political rhetoric and rank demagogy what if the neocons are deliberately instigating the mayhem in order to push the devil Ahmadinejad into a violent, over the top Tiananmen Square style put down that will further reinforce the years long propaganda campaign to demonize him? After all, it is already out there courtesy of Seymour Hersh among others that money has been being pumped into Iran for covert operations that would destabilize the regime. There is still conflicting information on what really happened in Iran so be cautious. There is a crackdown in progress and instigating the protesters into more violent action against the regime may very well result in the sort of ugliness and bloodshed that will only crystalize the neocon version of Ahmadinejad as the New Hitler and in additon to a failed revolution that we are treating as a spectator sport we will have a resurgent push to bomb all of those green flag waving freedom fighters into bloody bits – just collateral damage folks, we have seen this movie too many times.

Fozzie Bear Fascism

“The most difficult choice a politician must ever make is whether to be a hypocrite or a liar.”

-Unknown

Despite some wonderful rhetoric in a major speech given in the a police state in total lockdown last week when he visited Cairo newly crowned President Barack Obama is by the nature of his position of figure head of the American Empire a major disappointment to this point. The Cairo speech was astonishing in that an American President actually went into the heart of the Muslim world, admitted U.S. culpability in the 1953 CIA coup to overthrow democratically elected Iranian leader Mohammad Mosaddeq. Now of course, in the age of the internet (prior to the coming Chinese style censoring of it) the Iranian coup and the installation of the blood drinking puppet the Shah of Iran and his savage torture regime there is really no sense in denying this anymore, it was a hell of a gesture and he deserves credit for it, especially since it puts a gigantic bug up the asses of the dark forces and their nearly half-century reign of malevolence on behalf of big U.S. corporations and the financial oligarchs.

Obama also dared to speak harshly of our very ’special friend’ Israel which is refreshing given the long history of their involvement in propagandizing America, shaping foreign policy through their vicious, take no prisoners intimidation tactics of a vast lobby here in The Homeland. The agents of Israel have long been engaging in spying on Americans, buying and blackmailing the Congress to ensure that they retain the upper hand and that the Palestinians are treated as sub-humans and terrorists in the U.S. media. The tough talk with Israel (let’s see some action instead of words now) is welcome and very ballsy and Obama is now going to face the withering attack of the fascist Republican neocons, the dead-ender brownshirts of their knuckle-dragging Rapture death cult base and the knives of the bought and paid for Democrats in a Congress that arch-conservative pundit Pat Buchanan referred to as “Israeli occupied territory”. With enemies like these diseased pigs I would certainly hope that Mr. Obama has some pretty damned good (and loyal) security. With the Newt Gingrich-Rush Limbaugh angry army being whipped into a foaming at the mouth frenzy the assassination plots will grow exponentially as the extremists grapple for the right conditions for their return to power in 2010 or 2012.

The speeches aside, as of this day it is beginning to look increasingly apparent that once again Americans have been suckered, duped, swindled and bent over at the ballot box. The grand campaign trail rhetoric of CHANGE is just another empty slogan as Mr. Obama continues to not only flip-flop like an oxygen starved carp on the shore of the sewage collection facility known as Washington D.C. but to slyly reinforce some of the worst transgressions of the more openly fascist Bush-Cheney Axis of Evil. Despite the promises of CHANGE we still live in a high-tech police state that has not been reigned in an inch, the Obama administration is still down with illegal domestic spying and is even going to the extreme in pushing for the ability to shut down the internet, the framework for an authoritarian system of oppression beyond anything ever dreamed of in America is not only being kept but it is being augmented with twisted Stalinist legal mechanisms like preventative detention. He reneged on the release of the torture photos (they reputedly include graphic images of the rape of children) under pressure from fascist elements in a contradiction (LIE) that his government would be open. The wars of course go on, only the venues change, drones are blasting civilians on a near daily basis and with the ruthless assassination specialist General Stanley McChrystal taking command in Afghanistan it looks like the Phoenix Program has been resurrected and of course the big lie of Al Qaeda as global villians invoked to justify the ongoing imperialism. The restarting of military tribunals is also a stab in the back.

Of course Obama screwed us all by saving the Wall Street looters, the presence of some of the most notorious fixers on the planet Tim Geithner and Larry Summers among others should never have been confirmed due to their conflicts of interest to the financial oligarchs. The price that you are now paying at the pump is a direct result of Obama’s refusal to close the casino window and instead of nationalizing the crooked banks, cleaning them up and then returning them to private hands they were allowed to survive. The ballyhooed stress tests were a fraud and the recent Lazarus style rise of the markets is more attributable to a ‘The Surge is Working’ style of propaganda campaign as well as the chaning of the mark to market accounting rules that allowed derivatives with the worth of used toilet paper to be booked at whatever value that the Wall Street jackals happened to pull out of their asses to show phantom profitability. Now the oil speculators are back in business and 4 bucks a gallon is on the way. With a great fix like that for the economy (the real collapse is still coming) one has scant hopes that any sort of a legitimate first world style national healthcare system is coming, it is a certainty that the insurance industry leeches will still be attached to our backs.

Obama has also slagged the so-called radical left (actually they are anything but in fascist USA) elements of his base by failing to implement liberal/progressive policies. The feckless shoot down of ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ being the latest. Being a veteran myself and having served with gays (who were closeted out of necessity) I must say that they served with honor and that I would share a foxhole with a gay soldier any day rather than with a dickless, cringing Republican chickenhawk. The corporatist Democrats treat the base the same way that the fascist Republicans do the Jesus juicing ‘Christian’ base, they fire them up and then once elected throw them under the bus. I voted for Obama, it was the threat of Sarah Palin being a heartbeat away from the presidency that made that choice for me, I kept seeing pictures of Hitler and Hindenberg in my mind. Now I wish that I had only done the right thing and voted for Nader or Cynthia McKinney, at least my dignity would be intact.

Anyway, if I were to spend much time on putting together a laundry list of Obama’s lies, half truths and prevarications it would take me just too long and it’s off to the salt mine time. I will however post this delicious piece from Ted Rall in it’s entirety:

Desperate and Afraid, People Trust Leader

WASHINGTON, NORTH AMERICAN PROTECTORATE, GREATER GERMAN REICH–From Honolulu to Portland, Maine, North American citizens of the Greater German Reich gathered on June 6th to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the victory of Axis forces at D-Day, the battle that decided World War II. Fallen heroes of the Wehrmacht and SS were commemorated at solemn ceremonies and Party rallies throughout the Reich, but the day held special meaning in Washington, which until 1945 was the capital of the former United States.

Speaking at the Supreme Kommandatur, which was built at the site of the former American presidential palace, Chancellor Adolf Hitler III said the war against the Western Allies paved the way for the years of peace and prosperity that followed. “It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the 20th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach only six miles long and two miles wide,” he said.

Recollections of the National Socialist triumph at Normandy were clouded by several developments–a severe recession, a war with no apparent end in sight, and continuing concerns over human rights abuses.

Hitler III swept into power last November with a slogan–“change you can believe in”–that charmed members of the Reichstag across the political spectrum from far right to extreme right. Since that time, however, changes have proven either incremental or non-existent. For example, Hitler III promised during the campaign to help national comrades in danger of losing their homes–but instead spent trillions of marks to bail out feckless banks. He promised to withdraw from the Eastern Front, but has extended the pullout timeline by a year, is leaving tens of thousands of troops in place, and even plans to open a new front in South Asia.

Finally, he declared his intent to close Auschwitz (“Germany does not ‘do’ genocide,” he said) only to move the remaining inmates to other camps, which are being expanded.

Despite the lack of action, most people continue to support the charismatic new Leader. “He has a lot on his plate,” says Kristof Mathewsohn, the cable TV commentator. “Give the guy time.”

Indeed, five months into his chancellorship, the Leader remains the most trusted figure in North American politics. A new poll of homeless, recently dispossessed workers found that 72 percent trust Hitler III “to do the right thing.”

“In watching and listening to Hitler III’s press conferences, it’s easy to appreciate why people trust him,” said a man who preferred to remain anonymous because, as a Jew, he could be arrested and murdered by the state. “Sure, I wish he’d shut down the gas chambers and the ovens, but he has a lot of other problems to fix first. I’m sure he’ll get around to investigating the guys in the previous administration for their role in the Holocaust–nothing drastic, maybe a truth and reconciliation commission or something.”

Members of the media remain in thrall to the Leader’s suave persona, which is magnified by the glamour his statuesque wife and adorable daughters have brought to Germania (formerly Berlin). “Finally–parties we can believe in!” quipped a reporter as he slipped into a sold-out Wagner performance where Hitler III and his family appeared for a long-promised “date night.”

Few have forgotten that Hitler III offered the best alternative. “We live in a one-party system,” pointed out Rachel Maddoff, host of “The Rachel Maddoff Show.” “Can you imagine how much worse it would have been had Hitler III lost?”

We will be left with nothing but our mouths to laugh with due to the failures of this latest political administration of charlatans. Not that it wasn’t predictable given the vast amounts of Clinton era toxic waste that has been pumped back into Washington. The laughing may soon stop though as the Obama administration policies continue to totally alienate progressives and liberals by the thousands with each and every betrayal – hell, they seem to come every fucking day don’t they? The fascist Republican hydra is now in full regeneration mode, the blast furnaces of the hatred of the fucked, failed and doomed provide the fuel for the engine of this doomsday machine. Wanna think of something even worse than Obama’s Fozzie Bear Fascism? Imagine a return to power of a full blown fanatic party, boiled down to the purest and most potent form, like black tar heroin returning to power starting next November when progressives and liberals decide that they are finished having the big red, white and blue dick rammed up their poop chutes with a nice jellied red hot habanero pepper sauce for lube.

And the torture state apparatus is only being strengthened and institutionalized every day that Lord Obama and the shit eating Vichy Democrats allow it to exist.

Fozzie Bear Fascism

“The most difficult choice a politician must ever make is whether to be a hypocrite or a liar.”

-Unknown

Despite some wonderful rhetoric in a major speech given in the a police state in total lockdown last week when he visited Cairo newly crowned President Barack Obama is by the nature of his position of figure head of the American Empire a major disappointment to this point. The Cairo speech was astonishing in that an American President actually went into the heart of the Muslim world, admitted U.S. culpability in the 1953 CIA coup to overthrow democratically elected Iranian leader Mohammad Mosaddeq. Now of course, in the age of the internet (prior to the coming Chinese style censoring of it) the Iranian coup and the installation of the blood drinking puppet the Shah of Iran and his savage torture regime there is really no sense in denying this anymore, it was a hell of a gesture and he deserves credit for it, especially since it puts a gigantic bug up the asses of the dark forces and their nearly half-century reign of malevolence on behalf of big U.S. corporations and the financial oligarchs.

Obama also dared to speak harshly of our very ’special friend’ Israel which is refreshing given the long history of their involvement in propagandizing America, shaping foreign policy through their vicious, take no prisoners intimidation tactics of a vast lobby here in The Homeland. The agents of Israel have long been engaging in spying on Americans, buying and blackmailing the Congress to ensure that they retain the upper hand and that the Palestinians are treated as sub-humans and terrorists in the U.S. media. The tough talk with Israel (let’s see some action instead of words now) is welcome and very ballsy and Obama is now going to face the withering attack of the fascist Republican neocons, the dead-ender brownshirts of their knuckle-dragging Rapture death cult base and the knives of the bought and paid for Democrats in a Congress that arch-conservative pundit Pat Buchanan referred to as “Israeli occupied territory”. With enemies like these diseased pigs I would certainly hope that Mr. Obama has some pretty damned good (and loyal) security. With the Newt Gingrich-Rush Limbaugh angry army being whipped into a foaming at the mouth frenzy the assassination plots will grow exponentially as the extremists grapple for the right conditions for their return to power in 2010 or 2012.

The speeches aside, as of this day it is beginning to look increasingly apparent that once again Americans have been suckered, duped, swindled and bent over at the ballot box. The grand campaign trail rhetoric of CHANGE is just another empty slogan as Mr. Obama continues to not only flip-flop like an oxygen starved carp on the shore of the sewage collection facility known as Washington D.C. but to slyly reinforce some of the worst transgressions of the more openly fascist Bush-Cheney Axis of Evil. Despite the promises of CHANGE we still live in a high-tech police state that has not been reigned in an inch, the Obama administration is still down with illegal domestic spying and is even going to the extreme in pushing for the ability to shut down the internet, the framework for an authoritarian system of oppression beyond anything ever dreamed of in America is not only being kept but it is being augmented with twisted Stalinist legal mechanisms like preventative detention. He reneged on the release of the torture photos (they reputedly include graphic images of the rape of children) under pressure from fascist elements in a contradiction (LIE) that his government would be open. The wars of course go on, only the venues change, drones are blasting civilians on a near daily basis and with the ruthless assassination specialist General Stanley McChrystal taking command in Afghanistan it looks like the Phoenix Program has been resurrected and of course the big lie of Al Qaeda as global villians invoked to justify the ongoing imperialism. The restarting of military tribunals is also a stab in the back.

Of course Obama screwed us all by saving the Wall Street looters, the presence of some of the most notorious fixers on the planet Tim Geithner and Larry Summers among others should never have been confirmed due to their conflicts of interest to the financial oligarchs. The price that you are now paying at the pump is a direct result of Obama’s refusal to close the casino window and instead of nationalizing the crooked banks, cleaning them up and then returning them to private hands they were allowed to survive. The ballyhooed stress tests were a fraud and the recent Lazarus style rise of the markets is more attributable to a ‘The Surge is Working’ style of propaganda campaign as well as the chaning of the mark to market accounting rules that allowed derivatives with the worth of used toilet paper to be booked at whatever value that the Wall Street jackals happened to pull out of their asses to show phantom profitability. Now the oil speculators are back in business and 4 bucks a gallon is on the way. With a great fix like that for the economy (the real collapse is still coming) one has scant hopes that any sort of a legitimate first world style national healthcare system is coming, it is a certainty that the insurance industry leeches will still be attached to our backs.

Obama has also slagged the so-called radical left (actually they are anything but in fascist USA) elements of his base by failing to implement liberal/progressive policies. The feckless shoot down of ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ being the latest. Being a veteran myself and having served with gays (who were closeted out of necessity) I must say that they served with honor and that I would share a foxhole with a gay soldier any day rather than with a dickless, cringing Republican chickenhawk. The corporatist Democrats treat the base the same way that the fascist Republicans do the Jesus juicing ‘Christian’ base, they fire them up and then once elected throw them under the bus. I voted for Obama, it was the threat of Sarah Palin being a heartbeat away from the presidency that made that choice for me, I kept seeing pictures of Hitler and Hindenberg in my mind. Now I wish that I had only done the right thing and voted for Nader or Cynthia McKinney, at least my dignity would be intact.

Anyway, if I were to spend much time on putting together a laundry list of Obama’s lies, half truths and prevarications it would take me just too long and it’s off to the salt mine time. I will however post this delicious piece from Ted Rall in it’s entirety:

Desperate and Afraid, People Trust Leader

WASHINGTON, NORTH AMERICAN PROTECTORATE, GREATER GERMAN REICH–From Honolulu to Portland, Maine, North American citizens of the Greater German Reich gathered on June 6th to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the victory of Axis forces at D-Day, the battle that decided World War II. Fallen heroes of the Wehrmacht and SS were commemorated at solemn ceremonies and Party rallies throughout the Reich, but the day held special meaning in Washington, which until 1945 was the capital of the former United States.

Speaking at the Supreme Kommandatur, which was built at the site of the former American presidential palace, Chancellor Adolf Hitler III said the war against the Western Allies paved the way for the years of peace and prosperity that followed. “It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the 20th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach only six miles long and two miles wide,” he said.

Recollections of the National Socialist triumph at Normandy were clouded by several developments–a severe recession, a war with no apparent end in sight, and continuing concerns over human rights abuses.

Hitler III swept into power last November with a slogan–“change you can believe in”–that charmed members of the Reichstag across the political spectrum from far right to extreme right. Since that time, however, changes have proven either incremental or non-existent. For example, Hitler III promised during the campaign to help national comrades in danger of losing their homes–but instead spent trillions of marks to bail out feckless banks. He promised to withdraw from the Eastern Front, but has extended the pullout timeline by a year, is leaving tens of thousands of troops in place, and even plans to open a new front in South Asia.

Finally, he declared his intent to close Auschwitz (“Germany does not ‘do’ genocide,” he said) only to move the remaining inmates to other camps, which are being expanded.

Despite the lack of action, most people continue to support the charismatic new Leader. “He has a lot on his plate,” says Kristof Mathewsohn, the cable TV commentator. “Give the guy time.”

Indeed, five months into his chancellorship, the Leader remains the most trusted figure in North American politics. A new poll of homeless, recently dispossessed workers found that 72 percent trust Hitler III “to do the right thing.”

“In watching and listening to Hitler III’s press conferences, it’s easy to appreciate why people trust him,” said a man who preferred to remain anonymous because, as a Jew, he could be arrested and murdered by the state. “Sure, I wish he’d shut down the gas chambers and the ovens, but he has a lot of other problems to fix first. I’m sure he’ll get around to investigating the guys in the previous administration for their role in the Holocaust–nothing drastic, maybe a truth and reconciliation commission or something.”

Members of the media remain in thrall to the Leader’s suave persona, which is magnified by the glamour his statuesque wife and adorable daughters have brought to Germania (formerly Berlin). “Finally–parties we can believe in!” quipped a reporter as he slipped into a sold-out Wagner performance where Hitler III and his family appeared for a long-promised “date night.”

Few have forgotten that Hitler III offered the best alternative. “We live in a one-party system,” pointed out Rachel Maddoff, host of “The Rachel Maddoff Show.” “Can you imagine how much worse it would have been had Hitler III lost?”

We will be left with nothing but our mouths to laugh with due to the failures of this latest political administration of charlatans. Not that it wasn’t predictable given the vast amounts of Clinton era toxic waste that has been pumped back into Washington. The laughing may soon stop though as the Obama administration policies continue to totally alienate progressives and liberals by the thousands with each and every betrayal – hell, they seem to come every fucking day don’t they? The fascist Republican hydra is now in full regeneration mode, the blast furnaces of the hatred of the fucked, failed and doomed provide the fuel for the engine of this doomsday machine. Wanna think of something even worse than Obama’s Fozzie Bear Fascism? Imagine a return to power of a full blown fanatic party, boiled down to the purest and most potent form, like black tar heroin returning to power starting next November when progressives and liberals decide that they are finished having the big red, white and blue dick rammed up their poop chutes with a nice jellied red hot habanero pepper sauce for lube.

And the torture state apparatus is only being strengthened and institutionalized every day that Lord Obama and the Vichy Democrats allow it to exist.

Remember the USS Liberty

On June 8, 1967 the USS Liberty was attacked by Israel in international waters during the Six Day War while flying the American flag. This is the type of treatment that our so-called special relationship brings, Christ only knows that may happen now that President Obama has thrown down the gauntlet on the illegal settlements and dared to give a speech in Cairo on the necessity of the creation of a Palestinian state. The treacherous bought and paid for rats in Congress are already in the plotting stages of what will be a determined and blistering counterattack on Mr. Obama on behalf of his Israeli paymasters. The Iran attack clock is also ticking with elections a week away and the fake devil Ahmadinejad quite possibly on his way out, removing the excuse for a massive attack to ensure Israel’s nuclear superiority.

Now of course as is common procedure this blog was called out as anti-Semitic in the past week by a once mighty and still influential liberal blog that shall remain nameless (I dared to call the owner of the blog a cunt so of course that makes me a Jew hater in her eyes) because I dare to speak the unspeakable truths about or ‘allies’. Well I am going to continue to tell the truth and damn all of those who dare to dissuade me from doing so.

Today – REMEMBER THE LIBERTY

USS Liberty Coverup

By James Bamford (excerpted from Body of Secrets)

Early in the morning of Thursday June 8, 1967 the first rays of sun spilled softly over the Sinai’s blond waves of sand. A little more than a dozen miles north, in the choppy eastern Mediterranean, the USS Liberty headed eastward. But the calmness was like quicksand – deceptive, inviting and friendly – until it was too late.

As the Liberty passed the desert town of El Arish, it was being closely watched. About 4,000 feet above was an Israeli reconnaissance aircraft. At 6.05am, the observer on the plane reported back to Israeli naval headquarters: “What we could see were the letters written on that ship and we gave these letters to ground control,” he said. The letters were “GTR-5” – the Liberty’s identification. “GTR” stood for “General Technical Research” – a cover designation for the National Security Agency (NSA)’s fleet of spy ships.

The Liberty was in dangerous waters at a dangerous time. The six-day war, in which Israeli air and ground forces launched a massive attack on Egypt, Syria and Jordan, was raging. Fearing involvement in a Middle East war, the US joint chiefs of staff needed rapid intelligence on the ground situation in Egypt. Ships were considered the best option for the job. They could sail relatively close and pick up the most important signals. Also, unlike aircraft, they could remain on station for weeks at a time, eavesdropping, locating transmitters, and analysing the intelligence. And so the Liberty, which was large, fast and had been stationed relatively close on the Ivory Coast, had been ordered in.

Throughout the morning, the ship sailed on, with reconnaissance repeated at approximately 30-minute intervals. At one point, an Israeli air force Noratlas Nord 2501 circled the ship and headed back towards the Sinai. “It had a big Star of David on it and it was flying just a little bit above our mast,” recalled crew member Larry Weaver. “I was actually able to wave to the co-pilot. He waved back and actually smiled at me – I could see him that well. There’s no question about it. They had seen the ship’s markings and the American flag. They could damn near see my rank. The underway flag was definitely flying, especially when you’re that close to a war zone.”

By 9:50 am, the minaret at El Arish could be seen with the naked eye like a solitary mast in a sea of sand. Although no one on the ship knew it at the time, the Liberty had suddenly trespassed into a private horror. At that very moment, near the minaret, Israeli forces were engaged in a criminal slaughter.

Three days after Israel had launched the six- day war, Egyptian prisoners in the Sinai had become a nuisance. There was no place to house them, not enough Israelis to watch them, and few vehicles to transport them to prison camps. But there was another way to deal with them.

As the Liberty sat within eyeshot of El Arish, eavesdropping on surrounding communications, Israeli soldiers turned the town into a slaughterhouse, systematically butchering their prisoners. An eyewitness recounted how in the shadow of the El Arish mosque, they lined up about 60 unarmed Egyptian prisoners, hands tied behind their backs, and then opened fire with machine guns until the pale desert sand turned red.

This and other war crimes were just some of the secrets Israel had sought to conceal since the start of the conflict. An essential element in the Israeli battle plan seemed to have been to hide much of the war behind a carefully constructed curtain of lies: lies about the Egyptian threat, lies about who started the war, lies to the US president, lies to the UN Security Council, lies to the press, lies to the public. Thus, as the American naval historian Dr Richard K Smith noted, “any instrument which sought to penetrate this smoke screen so carefully thrown around the normal ‘fog of war’ would have to be frustrated”.

Into this sea of deception and slaughter sailed the USS Liberty, an enormous spy factory loaded with the latest eavesdropping gear.

About noon, as the Liberty was again in sight of El Arish, and while the massacres were taking place, an army commander there reported that a ship was shelling them from the sea. But that was impossible. The only ship in the vicinity was the Liberty, and she was eavesdropping, not shooting. As any observer would have recognised, the ship was a tired old Second World War vessel crawling with antennae, and unthreatening to anyone – unless it was their secrets, not their lives, they wanted to protect.

By then the Israeli navy and air force had conducted more than six hours of close surveillance of the Liberty off the Sinai and must have positively identified it as an American electronic spy ship. They knew she was the only military ship in the area. Nevertheless, the order was given to kill her and at 12:05pm, three motor torpedo boats from the port of Ashdod, about 50 miles away, departed. Israeli air force fighters, loaded with 50mm cannon ammunition, rockets and napalm, followed.

Without warning, the Israeli jets – swept-wing Dassault Mirage IIICs – struck. On board Liberty, Lieutenant Painter observed that the aircraft had “absolutely no markings”, their identity unclear. He then attempted to reach the men manning the gun mounts, but it was too late. “I was trying to contact these two kids,” he recalled, “and I saw them both; well, I didn’t exactly see them as such. They were blown apart, but I saw the whole area go up in smoke and scattered metal. At about the same time, the aircraft strafed the bridge area. The quarter-master, Petty Officer Third Class Pollard, was standing right next to me, and he was hit.”

The Mirages raked the ship from bow to stern with armour-piercing lead. A bomb exploded near the whaleboat aft of the bridge, and those in the pilothouse and the bridge were thrown from their feet. Commander William L McGonagle grabbed for the engine order annunciator and rang up all ahead flank.

In the communications spaces, radiomen James Halman and Joseph Ward had patched together enough equipment and broken antennae to get a distress call off to the Sixth Fleet, despite intense jamming by the Israelis. “Any station, this is Rockstar,” Halman shouted, using the Liberty’s voice call sign. “We are under attack by unidentified jet aircraft and require immediate assistance.”

“Great, wonderful, she’s burning, she’s burning,” said an Israeli pilot.

At 2:09 pm, the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, operating near Crete, acknowledged Liberty’s cry for help. “I am standing by for further traffic,” it signalled.

After taking out the gun mounts, the Israeli fighter pilots turned their attention to the antennae so the ship could not call for help or pick up any more revealing interceptions. Then the planes attacked the bridge, killing instantly the ship’s executive officer. With the Liberty now deaf, blind, and silenced, unable to call for help or move, the Israeli pilots proceeded to kill her. Designed to punch holes in the toughest tanks, their shells tore through the Liberty’s steel plating like hot nails through butter, exploding into jagged bits of shrapnel and butchering men deep in their living quarters.

As the slaughter continued, neither the Israelis nor the Liberty crew had any idea that witnesses were present high above. Until now, that is. According to information, interviews and documents obtained, for nearly 35 years the NSA has hidden the fact that one of its planes – a Navy EC-121 ferret – was overhead at the time of the incident, eavesdropping on what was going on below. The interceptions from that plane, which answer some of the key questions about the attack, are among the NSA’s deepest secrets.

The ferret had taken off from Athens for its regular patrol of the eastern Mediterranean, and at about the time that the air attack was getting underway, Navy Chief Petty Officer Marvin Nowicki heard one of the other Hebrew linguists on the plane excitedly trying to get his attention on the secure intercom. “Hey, chief,” he shouted, “I’ve got really odd activity on UHF. They mentioned an American flag. I don’t know what’s going on.” Nowicki asked the linguist for the frequency and “rolled up to it”. “Sure as the devil,” said Nowicki, “Israeli aircraft were completing an attack on some object. I alerted the evaluator, giving him sparse details, adding that we had no idea what was taking place.”

Deep down in Liberty, Terry McFarland, head encased in earphones, was vaguely aware of flickers of light coming through the bulkhead. He had no idea that they were armour-piercing tracer bullets slicing through the ship’s skin. Larry Weaver had run to his general quarters station but it was located on an old helicopter pad that left him exposed and vulnerable. He grabbed a dazed shipmate and pushed him into a safe corner. “I said, ‘Fred, stay here, you’ve just got to because he’s coming up the center’,” Weaver recalled. “I got in the fetal position,” he said, “and before I closed my eyes I looked up and I saw the American flag and that was the last thing I saw before I was hit. I closed my eyes, just waiting for hell’s horror to hit me. And I was hit by rocket and cannon fire that blew two and a half feet of my colon out and I received over 100 shrapnel wounds. It blew me up in the air about four and a half, five feet. And just blood everywhere.”

Stan White raced through the sick bay for the enclosed NSA spaces. “Torn and mutilated bodies were everywhere,” he said. “Horrible sight!”

As soon as the Mirages pulled away, they were replaced by Super Mystere fighters which raked the ship. A later analysis would show 821 separate hits on the hull and superstructure. Now, in addition to rocket, cannon, and machine-gun fire, the Mysteres attacked with 1,000lb bombs and napalm. Deafening explosions tore through the ship and the bridge disappeared in an orange-and-black ball. Lying wounded by shrapnel, his blood draining into his shoe, was Commander McGonagle. Seconds later the fighters were back. Flesh fused with iron as more strafing was followed by more rockets, followed by napalm.

As the last fighter departed, having emptied out its onboard armoury, turning the Liberty’s hull into a flaming mass of grey Swiss cheese, sailors lifted mutilated shipmates on to makeshift stretchers of pipe frame and chicken wire. Damage control crews pushed through passageways of suffocating smoke and blistering heat, and the chief petty officer’s lounge was converted into a macabre sea of blood-soaked mattresses and shattered bodies.

After landing back at Athens airport, Nowicki and the intercept crew were brought directly to the processing centre. “By the time we arrived at the USA-512J compound,” he said, “collateral reports were coming in to the station about the attack on the USS Liberty. The NSA civilians took our tapes and began transcribing. It was pretty clear that Israeli aircraft and motor torpedo boats attacked a ship in the east Med. Although the attackers never gave a name or a hull number, the ship was identified as flying an American flag. We logically concluded that the ship was the USS Liberty.”

At 2.50 pm (Liberty time), 50 minutes after the first shells tore into the ship and as the attack was still going on, the aircraft carrier USS America, cruising near Crete, was ordered to launch four armed A-4 Skyhawks. At the same time, the carrier USS Saratoga was also told to send four armed A-1 attack planes to defend the ship. “Sending aircraft to cover you,” the Sixth Fleet told the Liberty at 3:05pm (9:05am in Washington). “Surface units on the way.”

At that moment in Washington, President Johnson was at his desk, on the phone, alternately shouting at congressional leaders and coaxing them to support his position on several pieces of pending legislation. But four minutes later he was interrupted by Walt Rostow, national security adviser, on the other line. “The Liberty has been torpedoed in the Mediterranean,” Rostow told Johnson excitedly.

The NSA’s worst fears had come true. “After considerations of personnel safety,” said deputy director Tordella, “one of my immediate concerns, considering the depth of the water and the distance of the ship off shore, had to do with the classified materials on board.” Tordella got on the phone to the Joint Reconnaissance Center (JCS) and spoke to the deputy director, a Navy captain named Vineyard. “I expressed my concern that the written material be burned if at all possible, and that the electronic equipment be salvaged if that were possible,” he said.

But Tordella was not prepared for what he heard. According to NSA documents – classified top secret – he was told that some senior officials in Washington wanted above all to protect Israel from embarrassment. “Captain Vineyard had mentioned during this conversation,” wrote Tordella, “that consideration was then being given by some unnamed Washington authorities to sink[ing] the Liberty in order that newspaper men would be unable to photograph her and thus inflame public opinion against the Israelis. I made an impolite comment about the idea.” Almost immediately, Tordella wrote a memorandum for the record, describing the conversation, and then locked it away.

A cover story for the Liberty was then quickly devised. “She was a communications research ship that was diverted from her research assignment,” it said, “to provide improved communication-relay links with the several US embassies around the entire Mediterranean during the current troubles.”

On the Liberty, black smoke was still escaping through more than 800 holes in the hull, and the effort to hush up the incident had already begun. Within hours of the attack, which left 34 men dead and two-thirds of the rest of the crew wounded, Israel asked President Johnson to quietly bury the incident. “Embassy Tel Aviv,” said a highly secret, very limited distribution message to the state department, “urged de-emphasis on publicity since proximity of vessel to scene of conflict was fuel for Arab suspicions that the US was aiding Israel.” Shortly thereafter, a total news ban was ordered by the Pentagon. No one in the field was allowed to say anything about the attack. All information was to come only from a few senior Washington officials.

Later that morning, Johnson took the unusual step of ordering the JCS to recall its fighters while the Liberty still lay smouldering, sinking, fearful of another attack and with its decks covered with the dead, dying and wounded. On board the flagship of the Sixth Fleet, Rear Admiral Lawrence R Geis, who commanded the carrier force in the Mediterranean, was angry and puzzled at the recall and protested to the secretary of defense, Robert S. McNamara.

Geis was shocked by what he heard next. “President Lyndon Johnson came on with a comment that he didn’t care if the ship sunk, he would not embarrass his allies.” Geis told Lieutenant Commander David Lewis, head of the NSA group on the Liberty, about the comment but asked him to keep it secret until after Geis died. It was a promise that Lewis kept.

In the days following the attack, the Israeli government gave the US government a classified report that attempted to justify the claim that the attack was a mistake. On the basis of that same report, an Israeli court of inquiry completely exonerated the government and all those involved. No one was ever court-martialled, reduced in rank or even reprimanded. On the contrary, Israel chose instead to honor motor torpedo boat 203, which fired the deadly torpedo at the Liberty. The ship’s wheel and bell were placed on prominent display at the naval museum, among the maritime artifacts of which the Israeli navy was most proud.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that Israel had attacked the ship and killed the American servicemen deliberately, the Johnson administration and Congress covered up the entire incident. Johnson was planning to run for president the following year and needed the support of pro-Israel voters.

A mistake or mass murder? It was a question Congress never bothered to address in public hearings at the time. Among those who have long called for an in-depth congressional investigation is Admiral Thomas Moorer, who went on to become chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. “Congress to this day,” he said, “has failed to hold formal hearings for the record on the Liberty affair. This is unprecedented and a national disgrace.” Perhaps it is not too late.

If Mr. Bamford’s information is correct the USS Liberty was attacked in order to suppress what is another Nazi style (think Lidice) slaughter by the folks who burned babies in Gaza. Cowards, swine and vicious vermin whose bloodlust now has the world on the brink of apocalypse. Note that none other than Hillary Rodham Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State and the top snake in the Obama tent has now come out and announced on national television that Iran is subject to an American led Iraq style first strike.