Seymour Hersh Rips State Media - Questions bin Laden Assassination

“The republic’s in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple.”

-Seymour Hersh

It has been awhile but legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has surfaced and he is back with a vengeance. In comments published by The Guardian Hersh rips the corporate-state U.S. media as pathetic and calls them out for their unwillingness to go after Barack H. Obama who he correctly pegs as being worse than Bush. This is a sentiment that I have had for a good while now because at least Bush never pretended that he was anything other than a bully, a warmonger and a festering wart on the ass of America. Obama being the phony that he has always been, a president as product sold by spin doctors, public relations and advertising pros as some kind of transcendant figure to a willfully ignorant and easily distracted public. Hersh blasts El Presidente - “Do you think Obama’s been judged by rational standards? Has Guantanamo closed? Is a war over? Is anyone paying any attention ot Iraq? Is he seriously talking about going into Syria? We are not doing so well in the 80 wars we are in right now, what the hell does he want to go into another one for?”  Though words and predictably he is being eviscerated by the establishment media attack dogs, so savagely that you would think that he had dared to piss upon their precious “exceptionalism” like Putin did.

The American media is a joke in every country on the planet save one being our deteriorating and soon to implode from within star spangled lemming colony. Hersh is one of the last of a dying breed, an investigative journalist who has never hesitated to question the accumulation and abuse of power whether it be the Mai Lai massacre or the ongoing efforts of the Bush-Cheney regime to start another war in Iran. Hersh also rubbed the establishment’s nose in the blood and shit of the Abu Ghraib prison torture parties, a blight upon this country’s image and reputation that will be indelibly affixed as though it were a scarlet letter of shame. After being a burr up the ass of the Bush regime for years he was exiled to the fringes by the corporate-state media after his 2011 Bridge too far speech where he banished to the fringes for speaking of Dick Cheney’s  JSOC assassination squads and the crusader elements within the military, specifically the Knights of Malta.

It’s nice to see him back kicking ass and taking names, calling out the worthless pressitututes as the betrayers of the First Amendment that they truly are. But Hersh is not content to only kick the corporate media around, he is also calling bullshit on Barry’s greatest foreign policy achievement – the killing of Osama bin Laden. The snuffing of the bad assed bogeyman during that Seal Team Six (which greedball Disney sought to copyright before being rebuffed) raid and the prancing around with the bloody scalp was Barry’s crowning foreign policy achievement, never mind the drone strikes when you can reel in the kingfish. But the question always has been was it staged? Hersh blasphemes the sanctified official story as I excerpt from The Guardian piece:

Don’t even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends “so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would” – or the death of Osama bin Laden. “Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true,” he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.

Hersh is writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says a recent report put out by an “independent” Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. “The Pakistanis put out a report, don’t get me going on it. Let’s put it this way, it was done with considerable American input. It’s a bullshit report,” he says hinting of revelations to come in his book.

If the Knights of Malta crusader speech pissed off the pocket media kingmakers this will send them into a frenzy of retribution, smacking their laptop keys as if they were truncheons with which to ruthlessly bludgeon the infidel Hersh for his blasphemy.

Personally I have always found the official story of the daring Zero Dark Thirty commando raid that resulted in the “death” of bin Laden to be more than a bit suspect. Of course the lack of a body is one thing that would elicit skepticism, the ongoing refusal of the Obama administration and their congressional cronies to release the pictures of the alleged dead man are another reason for doubt. I always thought that the man was already dead and dead long ago, it would have taken a near superhuman being to be able to survive hiding out in remote caves from a relentless U.S. military search and destroy mission while dragging around a dialysis machine.  

He was though a useful monster to be dragged out whenever the political leaders and military needed to scare the sheeple into bleating their consent. Hersh again nails it - “But I don’t know if it’s going to mean anything in the long [run] because the polls I see in America – the president can still say to voters ‘al-Qaida, al-Qaida’ and the public will vote two to one for this kind of surveillance, which is so idiotic,”  - he is speaking of the post Edward Snowden knowledge of Obama's NSA Stasi. In the short term there is some minor outrage being uprooted, the latest that General Keith Alexander's trillion dollar voyeurs are accumulating relational data on American citizens from social networking sites. He is right of course, the scrutiny will eventually peter out and the fascist machine will emerge stronger than ever after erecting the necessary barriers to any future truth telling.

But Hersh will be made to pay for his bin Laden comments, he is already being brutalized by the vicious anti-Muslim bigot and shill for Middle East wars David Horowitz, a wretched troll and former hippie who holds court at  Front Page Magazine, a rag that ranks right up there with Der Stürmer when it comes to hate mongering.  You must be doing something right when one of the inspirations for Norwegian mass murder Anders Breivik is calling you out as a "compulsive liar".  He will of course also be flogged by the standard scum that passes for a mainstream media in this lamentable land of lies, greed and violence - bottom feeders will feast as they circle the wagons to protect their pampered lives of privilege as enablers of criminals. 

But back to Osama bin Laden, whether he was actually snuffed by Obama's military operation or died years ago his entire existence served as a lie to protect U.S. imperialist interests. He was after all quite useful for the Mujahadeen while a part of the CIA backed rebels in 1980's Afghanistan.  Maybe the real truth of the bin Laden story is that his former sponsors and associates within the American establishment finally just wanted to write the end to his story, tie up that last loose end because to do anything else would ensure a demise, sucked under in the quicksand bog of the wars without end. There never would have been an exit from the now twelve years running U.S. presence in the same Afghanistan that chewed up the Brits and Soviets.  Were it to have actually occurred the bin Laden execution always conjured up the scene from the classic film Apocalypse Now  where when finally reaching the river's end Captain Willard is delivered to the compound of Colonel Kurtz who had gone rogue and was as a result marked for death by his own country's military leadership in order to terminate his command:

Kurtz: Did they say why, Willard, why they want to terminate my command?

Willard: I was sent on a classified mission, sir.

Kurtz: It's no longer classified, is it? What did they tell you?

Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.

Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?

Willard: I don't see any method at all, sir.

Kurtz: I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin?

Willard: I'm a soldier.

Kurtz: You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.

Osama bin Laden was never going to stand trial, not in this Empire, not with what he knew and his chits were called in accordingly. Whether it was in that Pakistani safe house or years earlier the man simply knew too much and so it goes.

Really, why should anyone believe one damned thing that comes out of this government where as Hersh so aptly put it - we lie about everything, lying has become the staple

The Shutdown Circus

The crisis du jour is of course the threat to shut down the government barring the passage of a continued funding resolution.  This is the new “fiscal cliff” and makes for a nice distraction in the corporate-state media but in reality is nothing more than . With yesterday’s GOP House vote to attach conditions that will effectively be the dagger in the heart for Obamacare, the grotesque excuse for healthcare/insurance reform that primarily benefits the parasitic insurance industry the countdown clock continued ticking. The coming media swarm will be similar to the Syrian dead children propaganda onslaught or any standard sort of a sordid sex scandal or missing white teenage girl story. But it won’t come to pass, at least in any meaningful form because the corrupt vermin in congress will be sure that any shut down doesn’t affect the crusading military or the fascist police state programs that are the real problems, not Barry’s half-assed corporate giveaway program. I am all for a government shutdown because it is way past time to reign in this out of control monster and end the war on civil liberties, nail shut the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington and send a good many career bureaucrats of our bloated government packing and force them to get real jobs rather than suckling at the taxpayer teat but this is phony baloney.

The ongoing Republican jihad against Obamacare simply is good politics for a base that has been fed shovels of bloody red meat straight out of the John Birch Society Blue Book ever since the run up to the 2010 mid-terms and next year is an election year.  The so-called tea party, originally a libertarian movement was hijacked by GOP high-rollers back in 2009, cleansed of the Ron Paul supporters in a purge similar to the night of the long knives and then used as an exoskeleton for a rebranded post-Bush GOP establishment. The political shock troops who were bussed into town hall meetings was comprised largely of the religious right party base, kooks, racists and bluehairs whose sheer gullibility was exploited by a cynical political party. This latest staged attack on Obamacare is just more rabble rousing because quite frankly the law is in the books and it is not going to be defunded or repealed after the penultimate corporate stooge, Chief Justice John Roberts provided the  big business seal of approval with last summer’s SCOTUS verdict to uphold the program. Greedy corporations are already drooling at the prospect of soon jettisoning dependents and employees from those costly employer subsidized insurance programs and into the feeding troughs of the insurance industry.  The GOP is just taking advantage of people whose support can only be ensured by continued lying and demagoguery. The term "socialism" which is most often used to mobilize the masses to agitate against Obamacare is ridiculous nonsense given that there seems to be no such objections to real socialist programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, the military, the police and fire departments, those who build the roads and keep the water running etc. But it sells well with the rubes.

Republican senator Ted Cruz, a slicker than spit on a griddle McCarthyist type is the flavor of the day with the easily duped who are always looking for the man on the white horse.  The Harvard educated former Supreme Court clerk is a dyed in the wool elitist with an ambitious streak who has mined the cultural populism for all that it is worth. Cruz is a freshman senator from Texas whose remember the Alamo style of belligerent rhetoric has earned him a following while he engages in the sort of relentless self-promotion that means only one thing – that he has eyes on assuming the keys to the war machine from Barry in January 2017. His staged 21 hour pseudo filibuster last week where he railed against Obamacare was a publicity stunt but one that endeared him to the always scummy David Gregory to the degree that he was the guest of honor on Press the Meet this morning.  Cruz has that potential star power that the Sabbath morning mental masturbation fests just adore, he may even be able to dislodge McCain and Graham if he continues to parlay his shtick. But Cruz also represents something very special to that certain twenty percent or so of the populace who have an authoritarian bent. As Eric Hoffer wrote in The True Believer:

No matter how vital we think the role of leadership in the rise of a mass movement, there is no doubt that the leader cannot create the conditions which make the rise of a movement possible. He cannot conjure a movement out of the void. There has to be an eagerness to follow and obey, and an intense dissatisfaction with things as they are, before movement and leader can make their appearance.

This element, which is anathema to a functional free society should be shunned and exiled to the fringes because they are as dangerous as hell. Cruz represents that most important thing that those with a predisposition to fascism have lacked – a Führer.  As thoroughly rotten as the regime of the narcissist Obama has been do you really want to see the now fully constructed and integrated police/surveillance state placed in the hands of a demagogic fanatic? It is imperative that those better elements of the so-called tea party join with libertarians and principled progressives (NOT liberals) and lead a movement to restore civil liberties, the rule of law and truly free market principles to this country before conditions allow a calculating lunatic to seize the reins of power. Perhaps a man like Rand Paul could be one to rally around, at least he seems to have a somewhat consistent set of principles and is not afraid to buck the system.
Even a former New York Times employed liberal is showing signs of warming to Paul. In his latest column for New York Magazine entitled “It’s Hard to Hate Rand Paul” Rich writes the following:

What separates Paul from many of his tea-party peers is his meticulous insistence on blaming Republicans and Democrats alike for the outrages he finds in every tentacle of the federal Leviathan. He also takes a moderate rhetorical tone, far removed from that of the other right-wing politicians, Fox News talking heads, and radio bloviators who share his views. “I believe no one has the right to pollute another person’s property, and if it occurs the polluter should be made to pay for cleanup and damages,” he writes in one typical passage. “I am not against all regulation. I am against overzealous regulation.” There’s no “Don’t Tread on Me” overkill in his public preachments. He harbors no impeachment fantasies and not so much as a scintilla of Obama hatred even as he leads the charge against what he sees as the oppressive government nightmare of Obamacare. This has been the case from the start. When Paul began running for the Senate, it was during the red-hot tea-party year of 2009, with its tsunami of raucous town-hall meetings and death threats to the president. Paul gladly accepted Palin’s endorsement, but never succumbed to those swamp fevers. Though the liberal editorial page of the Louisville Courier-Journal was dismissive of his views during his Senate race, it went out of its way to observe that the man himself was “neither an angry nor resentful person” and was instead “thoughtful and witty in an elfin sort of way.”

While Rich’s piece could be said to be the damnation of faint praise given some of the other statements on Paul in reference to a  number of things but that this could be written previously was not that long ago unthinkable and perhaps it offers signs of a breakthrough given the exposure of the NSA Stasi and the permanent warfare state. While I have never really thought that much of Senator Rand Paul, I did admire his father a great deal for his courageous stance during the darkest years of the Bush-Cheney regime - especially when he whipped out a reading list at one of those debates for the benefit of Rudy "Mr. 9/11" Giuliani. I must admit that I am slowly warming to Rand Paul because the next president of this country needs to reign in decades of abuses and begin holding criminals accountable for their actions. Given the rotten array of choices to succeed Obama – Hillary, that loudmouthed fat slob from New Jersey and the Texas Zamboni it would seem that Rand Paul is the cream of the crop. He needs no stronger endorsement than this comment from the virulent neocon propagandist William Kristol, a coward who never served in the military yet whose blood lust to feed American men and women into the meat grinder of combat knows no bounds sneered that Paul was the “spokesman for the Code Pink faction of the Republican Party.”

While Cruz and the House GOP continue to milk this ridiculous shutdown threat for all it’s worth, one yahoo – a back bencher who goes by the name of John Culberson and is of course from Texas invoked the holiest of post-democracy American folklore in exclaiming “I said, like 9/11, ‘Let’s roll!’.  That there are idiots like this guy who are equating their silly little political snit to the event that has justified the ongoing fascist crackdown on civil liberties, NSA mass surveillance and wars without end is a perfect example of the authoritarian element that I spoke of a couple of paragraphs ago. When the whole thing blows up soon and the shutdown is exposed as a confidence game Culberson and his ilk will only become more embittered and hell bent at doing whatever possible to escalate our collapse.

Christ knows that Obama isn’t doing a good enough job of destroying the country without the help of useful idiots.

Warmongers Continue to Cast Lustful Eyes on Syria

Despite the agreement on the U.N. Security Council resolution "legally obligating" the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to surrender all chemical weapons stocks, it being nothing more than window dressing and diplomatic cover as the attacks are creeping closer. While the world body produced the hyped report that sarin gas was indeed used on civilians at Ghouta it did nothing to produce the smoking gun so desperately desired by Obama, Kerry and the war machine.  While it is reported that the resolution does not include the threat of specific military action make no mistake that Barry’s speech before the General Assembly, which easily could have been written by William Kristol or any number of other on call neocon propagandist over at the American Enterprise Institute was a virtual promise that it will only be a matter of time until the bombs, missiles and drone strikes are dialed up. This was just emphasized by Obama himself as he confirmed the military option while expressing skepticism that the Syrian government would follow through on it’s “commitments”. In a nice little bit of serendipity today the U.N. has also disclosed that the inspectors would also be investigating more chemical weapons attacks, you can be certain that these will soon be used as a new justification for the attacks. Barry laid the groundwork well in his aforementioned speech - "The Syrian government took a first step by giving an accounting of its stockpiles.  Now there must be a strong Security Council resolution to verify that the Assad regime is keeping its commitments, and there must be consequences if they fail to do so.  If we cannot agree even on this, then it will show that the United Nations is incapable of enforcing the most basic of international laws." . Yes there will be consequences aplenty especially once the blame is affixed for those new chemical weapons attacks that just materialized.

While waiting for the event that will lock down the strikes, the U.S. leadership is still going forward with plans to arm the rebels, now in the process of becoming even more radicalized by an influx of die hard, murderous Islamic extremists on a mission from Allah. Obama recently waived the ban on the arming of terrorist groups to allow for the arming of the Syrian rebels and further destabilizing the country. While there is much official blather about the many different factions there should be no illusions that this government, which is competent only in the ability to ensure that the most violent of foreign insurgents are getting the taxpayer dough in their typical short-sighted manner is not going to create another blowback type situation such as when the brilliant idea to arm Osama bin Laden and the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan against the Russians won't eventually turn into another catastrophe like September 11.2001 . These are really nice people these rebels, when they aren't (allegedly) gassing women and children and blaming it on Assad's forces they are engaging in barbaric acts of cannibalism, ransacking Christian churches and desecrating Jewish burial grounds. This latest bit of idiocy is going to assuredly one day come back to bite this country in the ass as so many of these things do, they are still trying to mitigate the damage of the CIA backed 1953 overthrow of Iranian leader Mohammad Mossadeq.

In a somewhat interesting development related to the administration and it’s foreign allies trying to downplay rebel involvement in the Ghouta gas attacks have scored a hit on one of the sources casting alleged aspersions upon our Al-Qaeda backed chums potentially being responsible ror the atrocity.  The freelancer whose work is frequently published by AP, a woman named Dale Gavlak was credited for contributing to a story on the fledgling alternative media site Mint Press News that got some legs for a brief period when the war drums were at their most deafening. The story attributed the attack to rebels and on the ground sources who contributed accounts to the the piece in question had alleged Saudi involvement, perhaps even that none other than Bandar Bush himself was involved.

I am sure that the pressure was enormous and that Gavlak was provided with the proverbial  offer she just couldn’t refuse to distance herself from the piece. While Gavlak’s MPN story didn’t garner much corporate-state media attention when Barry and Kerry were making their case for bombing the bejesus out of Damascus it managed to garner some attention, primarily in a McClatchy story and a New York TImes affiliated blog hit piece over the weekend. The lackey packed establishment media generally shits all over anything even remotely related to alternative news sites (unless  of course it is some useful tripe that serves state interests and is floated on the Drudge Report) so the story debunking Gavlak’s Mint Press News piece is a bit suspect. There have been reports of intimidation and career threats and per the aforementioned hit piece - “Ms. Gavlak told The Lede that she has been suspended by The A.P. as a result of the article.” I suppose that it is always better to back off a hot story rather to end up perishing due to some sort of mysterious flaming vehicle ‘accident’ ala Michael Hastings so who can blame her?

While I can’t and won’t personally vouch for the credibility of the Mint Press News story or website itself, I did link to and reference the piece a few weeks ago I can state that to me it carries at least the same amount of credibility of the Obama administration’s ongoing Assad blame game. That may set the bar pretty low but  in the fog of bullshit that was the Obama-Kerry led blind sprinting into another idiotic war and dragging the rest of us who have zero say in matters along like we were their lapdogs it was imperative that other stories be told.  Were this not the case there would be far more than the Ghouta victims already dead by the “collateral damage” inflicted by U.S. military strikes.  It may be inconsequential to the majority of the lemmings in the United States of Dancing With the Stars but at some point there needs to be a case, and a legitimate one made for these Middle East actions outside of the lies of the warmongers. I did see that Antiwar.com issued a retraction and apology for featuring the piece and I have found  the stuff that they put out over there to be pretty solid on a consistent basis over the years. Given how hot the accusations in the MPN story were and the obvious push back by the establishment against Gavlak  it was probably a good business move on their part. Best to just get the live grenade out of the bunker and move onward with the reportage and editorializing that they do best.

As for the alleged involvement of the Saudis and Prince Bandar bin Sultan (Bandar Bush) is there really any question that they engage in deception, game-playing and double-dealing? This just happens to be the very land where fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers hailed from and the to this day yet to be satisfactorily explained  evacuation of planeloads of Saudi high-rollers including those with ties to Osama bin Laden by the Bush administration while the national airspace was closed down. The Saudi monarchy is a disgusting, bigoted, corrupt regime of despots, misogynists (when they aren’t chasing whores) and despotic oppressors of human rights yet an ally of the U.S. It is the utmost of hypocrisy to see the likes of Obama and the rest of the poitical elite wagging their fingers at other countries for the abhorrent treatment of women or in the new hot item that appeases the Democratic party base - persecution of gays when at the same time backing pigs like the Saudi royals.

Robert Parry over at Consortium News just published a very nice article entitled Should Cruise Missiles Target Saudis?. Parry is a respectable journalist who along with a other real reporters was run out of the media years ago by hordes of careerists, shills, stenographers, ass-kissers and chirping Kewpie dolls with big tits who could read their teleprompters and deliver that thousand yard stare just perfectly. In the piece he calls out the Saudi frauds for their overt sponsorship of Jihadists, particularly the worst of the worst of the rebels in Syria. I excerpt the following:

Since the only way to stop the bloodletting that has reportedly claimed more than 100,000 lives is to arrange a ceasefire and a political settlement, the calculation of the rebels must change or at least the calculation of their chief sponsors must change. In that light, perhaps a warning is in order to Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan that cruise missiles could be aimed at his offices in Riyadh if Saudi intelligence doesn’t stop arming the most extreme factions fighting in Syria.

Besides supporting the brutal jihadists  in Syria, there’s another inconvenient truth: the history of Saudi Arabia’s support for Islamic terrorism across the region and around the world, a point that Prince Bandar reportedly raised during a tense meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on July 31, in connection with the rebellious Russian province of Chechnya.

According to a diplomatic account of that bilateral confrontation, Bandar sought Russian support for ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while offering various economic inducements to Russia along with a pledge to protect next year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi from terrorist attack.

Putin apparently was offended by Bandar’s blend of bribery and threats, especially his allusion to Saudi longstanding support for Chechen terrorism, a sore point for Russians who have suffered numerous attacks by Chechen terrorists against Russian civilian targets. I’m told Putin also viewed the reference to Sochi as something akin to a Mafia don shaking down a shopkeeper for protection money by saying, “nice little business you got here, I’d hate to see anything happen to it.”

He makes excellent points, a good question would be why weren’t the cruise missiles (or ICBMs for that matter) given the target coordinates to the Saudi royal palace the minute that it was determined that over three quarters of the 9/11 hijackers hailed from The Kingdom? The answer of course being what it always is in this sordid rotting empire in the early stages of terminal collapse and that is MONEY. There is never a shortage of that when it comes to the Saudis, especially a snake like Prince Bandar who during his tenure as ambassador was quite the connoisseur of western decadence as he schmoozed with the upper crust of the very elitists of same Great Satan that the terrorist groups that royal money funded denounced. His Epicurean delights and charming personality endeared him to the wealthy and powerful in the U.S., he threw great parties, had a palatial home in Aspen and hung with celebrities while the leaders of his own country nurtured primitive religious hatred that could and would be directed back at the west as a distraction from their own grossly perverse regime.

So now we wait as the game goes on, it is like playing musical chairs and when the music stops it won't be the asses of the well connected who hit the deck.  It never is and it never will be.

American Exceptionalism: The Last Refuge of Scoundrels

During his address before the U.N. General Assembly, the  the air still bearing a slight whiff of the sulfur of the devilish lies of George W. Bush and Colin Powell a decade ago it was Barack Hussein Obama seizing the pulpit from which to deliver a lecture to those less exceptional than Americans. Mr. Obama piled on the standard imperial teleprompter boilerplate to justify the eternal wars of Oceania. He also continued to push for his belated strike on Syria and invoke once again the Ghouta gas attacks which he and the Skull and Bones member who is the  Secretary of State despite their efforts have never proven to be the actions of the Assad regime.  While it wasn’t quite the in your face lies about Saddam’s mobile chemical weapons labs Barry wrapped it all up in lofty language that means only one thing - the business of the United States is war and only war.

Obama pontificated - transcript courtesy of the New York Times, [bracketed verbiage is the writer’s]:
Assad’s traditional allies [TRANSLATION: RUSSIA] have propped him up, citing principles of sovereignty to shield his regime. And on August 21st, the regime used chemical weapons in an attack that killed more than 1,000 people including hundreds of children. [As is always left out is what makes hundreds of children gassed by a still unknown culprit different from the thousands of dead children who fall victim to U.S. iron fragmentation bombs, white phosphorous, napalm and errant drone strikes]

The crisis in Syria, and the destabilization of the region, goes to the heart of broader challenges that the international community must now confront. How should we respond to conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa - conflicts between countries but also conflicts within them [Africa here we come]? How do we address the choice of standing callously by while children [whom slimy politicians like Barry never hesitate to use as human shields for their lies be they dead from the bullets of a lunatic in a grade school classroom or gassed by an undetermined party on the outskirts of Damascus] are subjected to nervr gas, or embroiling ourselves in someone else’s civil war? What is the role of the United Nations, and international law [which Barry and the boys wouldn’t know if it sneaked up behind them and bit them in the ass], in meeting cries for justice?

Today, I want to outline where the United States of America stands on these issues. With respect to Syria, we believe that as a starting point [the bombers are being scrambled soon], the international community must enforce the ban on chemical weapons [excepting those that are in the arsenals of the U.S. and Israel]. When I stated my willingness to order a limited strike against the Assad regime in response to the brazen use of chemical weapons, I did not do so lightly. I did so because it is in the security interest of the United States [Hogwash] and the world to enforce a prohibition whose origins are older than the U.N. itself [again U.S. chemical weapons stocks are excluded]. The ban against the use of chemical weapons [Agent Orange?], even in war, has been agreed to by 98 percent of humanity. It is strengthened by the searing memories of soldiers suffocated in the trenches; Jews slaughtered in gas chambers [obligatory mention of the poor Holocaust victims to sell more murder and curry favor with AIPAC]; and Iranians poisoned in the many tens of thousands [see recent report on CIA knowledge of Saddam’s chemical weapons program].

I could go on but why bother? Obama is a pathological liar, a war criminal and when it really gets right down it a terrorist for his administration's killing of civilians, those are the unspoken qualifications to get the POTUS gig and he has adapted well. The man composes kill lists over this Cheerios and orange juice and is second to none when it comes to racking up the body count of innocent civilians killed by drone strikes. He is also itching for a proxy war with Vlad Putin who served him up a triple-decker shit sandwich with a vodka chaser, first over the granting of asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and then for pouncing on the buffoonish John Kerry’s gaffe by getting Assad to offer up a listing of his chemical weapons to prevent an imminent attack. Yet Barry just keeps repackaging the same crap and selling it to the masses and the primary reason that he is able to get away with any of these horrendous falsehoods is thanks to that wonderful little thing that is  American exceptionalism.

American exceptionalism is the one unassailable remaining powerful talisman that protects the agenda of the elite and Barry just played that card at the U.N. with all the deftness of a seasoned riverboat card cheat. "Some may disagree, but I believe that America is exceptional,...In part because we have shown a willingness, through the sacrifice of blood and treasure, to stand up not only for our own narrow self-interest, but for the interests of all" dear leader explained.  The wound to national pride has been laid open over the Russian slights and Obama and his ilk have hastily poured on the salt after Putin had the audacity to have a column published in the New York Times calling out the warmongering cowboy state and its self-proclaimed, some may perceive even god-kissed greatness:

“it is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”

Putin was of course roundly denounced by the American political classes and masses of asses alike, if as the saying goes that “God created all men equal” then it is what it is and there are really no exclusions or caveats that we here on the star spangled lemming farm are any goddamned better than anyone else. Putin was of course pilloried for it by the pocket press, our rancid politicians and now Barry himself but he is correct, at least when referencing the U.S. Declaration of Independence that – “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” You would figure that a former community organizer and constitutional law professor would get this but in 2013 George Orwell is much more accurate source on all things American than George Washington. In Orwell's novel  Animal Farm it is laid out in more realistic language befitting the country that we currently live in -   "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".

As if an invocation of John Wayne’s America given by Barry at the U.N. actually means anything. That is other than yet another example to the civilized world that America stands for one thing and one thing only – the ability to kick the hell out of anyone who disagrees with this silly, childish fantasy of national greatness. American exceptionalism is like the belief in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or some other fictional entity.  We are exceptional in the manner to which so much of the population continues to be hoodwinked by that biggest lie of all – that we are better than everyone on the planet because we will eagerly feed our young military men and women into the meat grinder of wars, invasions and occupations as a blood sacrifice to the defense industry and the big banks to hoard more treasure. Obama has made some unbelievably stupid statements during his tenure in office (red line anyone?) but this immediately rockets to the top of the list.

The TRUE version of our exceptionalism is embodied in this snippet from the late Hunter S. Thompson –

The New Hammerhead was a perfect cowboy. He was vicious & stupid & ignorant of everything except his own fears and appetites. He beat the mortal shit out of anything that made him uneasy, for any reason at all. The Hammerhead was a perfect warrior. He defended the flag. Any flag. He learned to understand words like “orders” and “patriotism”, but the secret of his success was an animal taste for blood. He thrived on motion. But he was brainless; he had to be aimed.

The leadership of this country long ago ceded the moral high ground to the gods of war and high finance and in sacrificing their very people as nothing more than grist for the military-banking money mills the state is all too happy to grind their bones to make their bread and to keep them placated with the lie of American exceptionalism. I suppose that it is all that is left to offer now since the mythical American dream was already debunked by our brand of flag-draped vulture capitalism and just doesn’t resonate in tent cities, soup lines, sacrifice zones and ghettos.  Millions are deprived of their ability to earn a decent living because millions of good jobs were offshored to third world countries, their homes foreclosed upon by racketeer big banks in bed with big government and the star-bellied Sneetches living large in The Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard and other posh enclaves of the filthy rich who want it all.  So let them eat war and take pride in just how exceptionally we can drop billions of dollars of weaponry on their counterparts in countries deemed to be enemies of this one.

A bit of recommended reading for those who understand the horrors of the unleashed, crony capitalist, government backed corporate state is the book by former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges and artist Joe Sacco entitled Days Of Destruction, Days of Revolt. A damning look at how the machine chews up the lives those who find themselves defenseless and in it's path. I excerpt the following statistical references from the prelude that are testament to our exceptionalism. Note that the book was published in 2012 so these may not still be accurate – they could be even worse:

AMONG INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS, THE UNITED STATES HAS THE

Highest poverty rate, both generally and for children
Greatest inequality of incomes
Lowest average number of days for paid holiday, annual leaves, and maternity leaves
Lowest social mobility
Highest infant mortality rate
Highest prevalence of mental-health problems
Highest obesity rate
Highest consumption of antidepressants per capita
Highest military spending as a percentage of GDP
Largest international arms sales
Highest homicide Rate
Largest prison population per capita.

To add to the list let us not forget a  government that is both morally and fiscally bankrupt thanks to the folks that George Washington once referred to as “squadrons of corrupt paper dealers”.
A legacy of shame that gestated in the torture chambers of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison as well as a network of black sites.

A good chunk of a national population that is comprised with electronically lobotomized, willfully ignorant television addicted zombies.

A nation of functional illiterates who if they even bother to read at all only bother with the comics and sports sections and bizarre interpretations of the bible as revised by Elmer Gantry style tent preachers, false prophets and televangelist phonies.

A political system that is a mockery of any serious concept of democracy so thoroughly corrupted it has become by big money.

A for-profit prison gulag system that blows away anything that Stalin could have imagined.

And Christ knows how many more lamentable illustrations at just how rotten that this place has become thanks to decades of corrupt ‘leadership’ as we move rapidly into full collapse.

RUN THAT UP THE EXCEPTIONAL FLAGPOLE AND SALUTE IT!!!

The Government Shutdown Dog and Pony Show

The distractions are mounting as Barry and the boys seek to divert public attention from their mounting heap of failed policies and he has plenty of company with both parties of a lousy, failed and corrupt congress pitching in .  The crisis of the week are the ludicrous threats to shut down the government over the standard elephants vs. jackasses pissing contest. This dance is an ongoing hoax that is intended to dupe clueless Americans into thinking that they actually have a two party political system - they don't. The sturm and drang emanating outside of  the D.C. sewers occupied by an insane, out of control government will end just as the last 'crisis did the last time that the  clicking time clocks of the budget wars, hysterically hyped by the state-corporate media did when the so-called “fiscal cliff” was averted back in January. Let’s get one thing straight - the U.S. government as it is currently configured only exists for two real reasons - 1) to wage war and make billions for the weapons industry and 2) to serve the interests of the plutocrats who have the dough to buy influence, this second group includes the high finance jackals and hedge fund hyenas. The parasitical looter class (#2) already got theirs last week when Chairman Ben decreed that the ongoing taxpayer supplied narcotic of free money would continue to be indefinitely delivered to the junkie banks. In true capitalism these recklessly run and cancerous institutions would have simply been allowed to go under as the failures that they are, the criminals in charge should have done the perp walk and gone to prison where they belong  and the banks placed into receivership, cleaned up and then turned back over to responsible private hands. But here in the 21st century banana republic that we live in they are deemed “too big to fail” and the rest of society continues to be shaken down to keep the financial crack heads on their permanent buzz and screw anyone else, they have absolutely no say in the matter.

Then there is the warfare state (#1) while  temporarily laying back in the weeds it continues to scheme and play the angles for the coming attack on Syria and with a bit of luck Iran as well.  There is no way that the government is going to be shut down given the dependency of these two abhorrent bloodsucking entities on the never ending flow of  state largess that they would be unable to function without.  All of the hand-wringing, caterwauling and weeping and gnashing of teeth of the presstitute media and the court jesting political elitists is admittedly a sardonically amusing show but at the end of the day there will inevitably be some sort of miraculous bi-partisan ‘deal’ struck in order to avoid disaster and keep the money spigots flowing into our national murder and gambling cartels.  The only thing that is definite is that when the armistice is struck that we being the average law-abiding Americans who are not connected and thereby given access to suckle the teats of the beast will once again be left holding a flaming bag of dogshit while the band strikes up hail to the chief.

The threatened shutdown (I just wish that they actually had the balls to do it) is but one of the puppet shows casting shadows upon the wall for the slaves. Obama is of course milking the latest mass shooting for political gain while the ghoulish Wayne LaPierre (an insult to any rational law-abiding gun owner) is given prime Sunday morning airtime to engage in histrionics on Press the Meat while continuing to dispense his hogwash about “not enough good guys with guns” about the shootings. The gun industry gets their pop whenever LaPierre is trotted out, a pimp’s pimp and a lobbyist with few peers but doesn’t it all seem just a bit ridiculous when the “not enough good guys with guns” argument is used about a Navy yard? I mean this isn’t a grade school where the most powerful weapon to combat an out of control armed menace is a squirt gun. But for all of LaPierre’s contortions you have to give it to Barry for the sheer chutzpah of invoking our fallen ‘heroes’ to fire up his base and to feed the fires of the type of gun owners who are so easily duped into thinking that he is going to take them all away. As for the invocation of ‘heroes’,  do you recall a day when every dead soldier, cop and first responder wasn’t a hero?  The term " hero" has no real meaning anymore so much has it been abused for political gain at every opportunity since September 11, 2001 by the political elite. Obama gave a speech on Sunday that was a textbook example of the audacity of shamelessness, invoking the names of victims of last week’s shooting as well as the Sandy Hook dead while calling for that most bipartisan of things - assigning more power to the rogue government to keep you safe, don’t ask questions, they will use the power wisely - just look at the NSA.

There are distractions aplenty, take crazy John McCain’s letter published in the Russian tabloid media calling out Putin who is riding high after making an ass of Obama and Kerry, or that diligent, always on the beat cop Darrell Issa on his silly choreographed trip to Libya trying to rekindle media attention for his ridiculous ongoing Benghazi farce. I have yet to hear the news that  Congressman Grand Theft Auto will be convening hearings on the crimes of the NSA Stasi but the slimy bastard knows well to not shit where he eats. There is the rank idiocy of the GOP’s crusade against Obamacare but that massive fraud also happens to benefit the insurance parasites and their Wall Street brethren, it isn’t going away - EVER. So it is no matter what the Texas Zamboni Ted Cruz may grandstand about to enthrall the low hanging fruit of his base nor Senator Lindsay Graham pandering to the conservative tea party voters in South Carolina who know he's full of crap by squealing that the ACA (aka Obamacare) bill "sucks" while on Fox News it is all a scam. Not to infer that the fair senator from the palmetto state isn't an authority on vacuum theory, I have long suspected that he could suck a golf ball through a fifty foot garden hose.  These people are the same immoral, perverted, cheating, on the take, psychopathic, lying gangsters who are along with the assclown in chief over at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have us all on the brink of collapse thanks to their arrogance and hubris. It is all a bipartisan effort too because truthfully, the average American Joe or Jane are viewed by all of these weasels as schmucks, marks and rubes. We have only two species in America today and that is cattle and vampires. The vampires of course have the money with which to keep the cattle around for feeding purposes only.

But in the background, behind the rotting bunting draped across the center stage of the grand three ring circus the neocons and their propagandists and foreign allies are relentlessly repackaging their plot to attack Syria and start WW III. Now they are looking to influence an already in the bag United Nations to put into place an authorization for military action to jump start their war efforts after their silly poison gas stunt failed abysmally to gin up the public outrage. I would imagine some sort of new narrative emerging over the Kenyan shopping mall tragedy, that porcine terrorist supporter Peter King is already hyping the involvement of several "Americans" in the savage plot. With the holiday shopping season upon us there is nothing quite as persuasive as swarthy men in turbans stealthily invading malls in a town near you. The war freaks are going to get a good amount of mileage out of Al-Shabob's killing spree. Too bad that there weren't enough good guys with guns in that Nairobi shopping emporium.  The fanatical bigot Peter King's inevitable new round of anti-Muslim hearings in which every convenience store owner across the land of Middle Eastern descent could be dragged in by state goons is a perfect example of why this government should be shut down.

The one argument that I would have against it is that there is no way that it could ever be as entertaining as the oversexed adulterer Bubba Clinton chasing that chubby little thong clad trollop Monica Lewinski around the digs that we all pay for. Let's face it, Barry is just plain boring and video footage of a narcissist whiling away the time of a closed government eating taxpayer funded pizza and watching his 100 greatest teleprompter hits to while away the time just doesn't cut it.

WHOOPS

Perhaps I was a bit overly dismissive about John McCain’s little bitch Lindsey Graham’s hysterics about the possible nuking of Charleston harbor while they were pushing the case for attacking Syria. Graham’s rhetoric  has at least some basis in history although it was the idiotic government of the United States that nearly nuked his state’s northern neighbor back in 1961. In an amazing exclusive story that just came out in The Guardian it was reported that two four-megaton bombs were accidentally dropped near Goldsboro, NC back on January 23, 1961. three days after the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. The Guardian story is based upon a once secret document obtained by writer Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act while researching his new book Command and Control.  The book is about the history of the U.S. nuclear program and documents a number of close calls that could have were they to have going the other way resulted in the real version of those smoking guns as mushroom clouds that were used to sell the Iraq disaster. The North Carolina incident would have been devastating for the Eastern seaboard had the last of four safety switches did what it was supposed to do after the other three failed.

The bombs were onboard a B-52 that underwent some sort of structural failure in mid-air therefore dumping the bombs – each of which was 260 times more powerful than the one that was dropped on Hiroshima - onto North Carolina. It is a very fortunate thing  for all of us today that the disaster was averted because the war-mongering freaks in the defense establishment would certainly have blamed it on the Russians setting off a global nuclear holocaust. These were the days when the legendary General Curtis ‘Bombs  Away’  LeMay, a man who had an absolute hard-on for a first strike on the Soviet Union and had the self-inflicted nuclear wound actually manifested itself he and his fellow hawks would have surely used the opportunity to send in the bombers. LeMay was the basis for the George C. Scott character, General Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove and the prototype for the militarist maniacs of the future including of course a certain crazed Senator from Arizona who currently has his panties in a twist over starting a bombing campaign in Syria. Russian and China would eventually be dragged in and we would have WW III and the Rapture clock would strike midnight with McCain riding the bomb down into the center of Damascus Square.

Schlosser, an outstanding investigative journalist whose gut-churning book Fast Food Nation convinced me years ago to change my eating habits seems to have found a winning topic for his long awaited follow-up.  Command and Control reportedly details a number of serious close calls where a nuclear weapon could have ended up going off in America out of happenstance, bad luck, poor planning and just some of that good old fashioned big government idiocy that never fails to fail in planning for contingencies. One of the incidents in the book is the so called “Damascus Incident” where a dropped tool happened to breach the skin of a Titan II missile armed with a thermonuclear warhead.  This happened in Arkansas back in 1980 when none other than Slick Willie was the sitting governor. I don’t know whether Schlosser gives any space in his book to the bizarre 2007 incident when six nuclear missiles were somehow without any authorization loaded onto a Stratofortress bomber and flown out of Minot, North Dakota. This which came at the time when the Cheney faction of the George W. Bush administration was pushing for a war on Iran has never been adequately explained and there are tales of a number of strange deaths involving personnel of both Minot and Barksdale A.F.B. Just another of those ugly little situations where there never is a satisfactory explanation and all doubters of the official government story are rapidly sent off to sit in the corner wearing tin foil dunce hats. Somehow I doubt that that gets much if any play in Command and Control but after reading the Guardian story as well as a few other reviews my interest has been piqued to the extent that I just ordered a copy of the book.

As all of us who are able to see already are fully aware – the collapse is coming. While it is even money that it will be triggered either by an implosion of the financial house of cards economy  that has been meticulously constructed by Wall Street gangsters, their Don at the Federal Reserve and the ever changing lineup of insiders in government or by another ruinously botched war it is coming.  What may end up setting it off though would be one of those “black swan” events or in layman’s terms a “wild card”.  Perhaps some sort of nuclear negligence such as Schlosser writes of or an even larger threat would be that one of our own shoddily constructed and maintained nuclear facilities would do the full Fukushima.  Either would immediately be pounced on by the neocon war freaks and their army of propagandists and armchair bombardiers, such as Senator Graham to use as a bogus ‘terrorist’ plot justifying their final escalation.

It is a very American phenomenon, putting the most dangerous weapons in the history of mankind into the hands of the least responsible and completely stupid individuals running the most powerful institutions on the planet.  They are freaks who dig playing Russian roulette with millions of other people’s lives in the balance, so far the chamber has always been empty when the trigger was pulled but our luck will eventually run out.  Sooner rather than later too.

QE-UPHORIA

In a move that has been reported as shocking on a level right up there with Breaking Bad's classic just aired episode Ozymandias our esteemed top central bank racketeer eschewed the long predicted "tapering" of his Quantitative Easing lunacy. In a last shot to the gut of the American economic diaspora living in tent cities from sea to shining sea Helicopter Ben Bernanke made damned sure that his precious subsidizing of the same gamblers, con artists and ivory tower dwelling grifters who destroyed the economy in 2008 would have a very Merry Christmas again this holiday season. While the usual idiots in the state-corporate media gasped it was sure as hell not a surprise to me, nor to anyone else who has been onto this ongoing hustle for years.  Chairman Ben has presided over an unprecedented transfer of wealth upwards to the looter class that he and his private Federal Reserve have always served the interests of. In pre-collapse America the usurious bastards hold all of the cards and will not be satisfied until they own absolutely everything. It is the logical extension of the “ownership society” in that at the end of the day the banksters and their Washington embedded lackeys own all of our asses.

The ongoing Quantitative Easing under Bernanke is only allowing for the continuation of the ongoing thievery until he has safely left office and handed the keys to the printing presses over to Janet Yellen or some other establishment stooge - maybe Turbotax Timmy Geithner can be brought back for an encore performance. Rest assured that Chairman Ben will be have left the Marriner S. Eccles building and will be sequestered in some gated enclave of an elitist pig pen protected by the best mercenaries that money can buy when the shit does finally hit the fan and the economy implodes for good.  Ben knows very well that he is a “made man” and has nothing to fear while  once the streets erupt with violence when the monetary system has been rendered worthless and it will take the equivalent of the proverbial wheelbarrow full of Riechmarks to buy a bag of Doritos.

And ugly it will be, consider that a good many of the citizens of this giant lemming colony don't have more than a day or so of food on hand at any given time. When the ATMs are no longer functioning watch out because the absolute last place that you want to be would be anywhere the local supermarket which will be overrun with looters within a day or so. It will take complete martial law to prevent the total disintegration of society when Bernanke's financial WMD detonates but that after all is the inevitable endgame in a number of scenarios that would seal the fascist transformation of this once great country.

In the classic 1980's Bruce Willis movie Die Hard an international group of thugs invade and take over Nakatomi Plaza, holding hostages and all under the pretense of terrorism for political reasons. The real truth is that the terrorist ploy was designed to provide cover for a massive robbery and in the end all the hostages would be marched up to the roof of the building which mined with C4 explosives would be blown up, killing all of the hostages and allowing the perpetratorss to escape to their beaches of choice where they could bask in the sun collecting interest on their plundered loot.  It is a fitting metaphor for what Bernanke, Geither, Hank Paulson, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, Vikram 'the bandit' Pandit and a cast of tens of dozens of other sordid miscreants are in the process of successfully pulling off in America.

It is all abetted by the gross incompetence of a certain Barry H. Obama over at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who has not only the ticking down time bomb of the ruined American economy on his tab but also myriad other abortions including the NSA Stasi, another war that is currently in the gestation stage and of course Obamacare. His crowning achievement is a so-called health care ‘reform’ rip-off that will one day rank in the top ten in the bunco artists hall of fame. Not only does this law allow for the insurance parasites to feed off of millions of new customers who are forced by the police state to purchase the overpriced policies but it allows already bloated and greedy corporations to begin to kick family members off of insurance plans and into the arms of the bloodsuckers. Soon it will be all employees currently covered by employer provided insurance plans who will be sold down the river into bondage with the proverbial big government gun pointed at their heads and Obama will have his finger on the trigger. Welcome to modern day American, the land of ‘f**k you, I got mine”.

There is today much hullabaloo over the Republican led House bill to defund Obamacare as a condition to not shut down the government but don't pay attention it because it is total horseshit and only more political chicanery that provides cheap fodder for the talking heads and distracts from the real problems. Both parties are in on the con because the oligarchy owns both teams lock stock and barrel. Jimmy Carter had it right when he recently lamented the demise of a functioning democracy in America but he being shunned like a leper by the rulers can just be shushed like the drunken crazy old uncle who shows up once a year to ruin Thanksgiving and vomit into the sweet potato pie. Move along, nothing to see here.

But as to the travesty of the Federal Reserve’s continuation of bailing out the bankers and rigging the markets. Bernanke’s ‘unexpected’ move to continue full Q.E. had the pigs squealing with glee as they will continue to have their criminal schemes underwritten by the taxpayer and protected by the Obama administration. According to St. Louis Federal Reserve President Fred Bullard “While I expect to see inflation rise during the coming quarters, I want to see evidence of such an increase before endorsing less accommodative policy action by the FOMC”. This statement regarding inflation is as asinine as it is dishonest. One of the primary reasons that the criminals who run the big con are continually able to base their ongoing crack-ho economic policy of buying garbage mortgage backed securities it is due to this Hitlerian whopper. What is never mentioned is that core inflation rates conveniently omit food and energy prices, exactly the two areas where Americans are getting the screws put to them the hardest by the scum that runs the system. Just take a look at what you have been paying at the grocery store since this Q.E. game began, the prices are higher and the packages smaller and it is only going to get worse because this is the "new normal".

It is hard to hold the currently configured system in anything less than utter contempt - that is unless you are one of the TV addled, low-info drones who still believes what they tell you on cable news shows. As the late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson once so brilliantly put it the rulers only stand for - ".. the systematic destruction of everything this country claims to stand for except the rights of the rich to put saddles on the backs of the poor and use public funds to build jails for anybody who complained about it.”  He was of course referring to his personal bête noire Richard M. Nixon but as we have seen with his paranoid streak, use of government agencies such as the IRS and DOJ to go after political foes and support of an all seeing surveillance state Barack Hussein Obama has left Tricky Dick in the dust.

And so it goes on, the tightening of the screws....

It Just Keeps Getting Creepier at the NSA

With the national crisis of the moment being the rush to enter into yet another illegal war in Syria our most serious problem, at least from a civil liberties standpoint has not received much attention as of late.  The deafening beating of the war drums, the state media propagandizing for an attack and the Putin problem have served to distract from the mounting evidence of just how far out of control that Obama’s NSA Stasi has become. We have recently learned that the NSA has undermined American free enterprise by intentionally destroying the effectiveness of internet encryption codes, you know those allegedly secure payment methods? Well thanks to the rogue surveillance state they are no more. The same big government agency has also been outed for spying on customers of credit card companies and providing the purloined data on law abiding American citizens to a FOREIGN country. Let’s just face it, the NSA and it’s tentacles are the greatest threat to this country since it’s inception, worse than King George’s Brits, the commies, Hitler and yes even al Qaeda. There is no way that even in his juiciest of 72 virgins wet dreams Osama bin Laden could never have even fantasized about doing this much damage the now defunct free and democratic society that we used to enjoy in the United States of America.

The rapacious carnivores in the surveillance/intelligence deep state have eradicated any form of privacy that exists outside of our heads and you can damned sure bet that they are at this very minute secretly working on a way to mind rape the citizenry as well. They have destroyed whatever vestiges of what was left of capitalism that the Wall Street looters were unable to take down with their schemes that waere aided and abetted by their moles in the government. Do you really believe that in the sane world that exists outside the borders of what can adequately now be called the United States of Dancing With the Stars is going to do business with American based tech companies? It is a real tragedy thanks to big government run amok and especially those who have spent countless millions on building the cloud based infrastructure that has been sold as the future of commerce. Think again because the rest of the civilized world actually bothers to read, is not already born half-stupid and given their lack of exposure to the corrupt corporate state media here in Der Homeland are well informed. They will be building their own cloud computing companies and the biggest selling factor of all will be that they will actually be SECURE and not subject to the whims of corrupt authoritarian power freaks who happen to also be bureaucratic drones and military voyeurs. We still do not know exactly what else that all of that data is being used for. There are already reports of probable industrial espionage out of Brazil and you can sure as hell bet the farm that much of this data is being provided to political cronies and their corporate backers to provide that competitive advantage that just can’t be gleaned from actually creating a better product. So much for that global economy, it shows just how badly that our once great American business ethic and all of the brilliant entrepreneurs that it created have given way to a corrupt elitist class that only cares about winning and to which cheating, bribery and subterfuge are the tools of doing business.

It is also pretty much a certainty although yet to officially come out that the NSA and it’s private contractors along with God knows how many other  foreign countries (one of which we already know about) are using this data for more nefarious reasons. Think about blackmail, the best way to ensure that the game stays rigged is to snag those with predispositions to perversion in utterly shameful (and likely illegal) sexual forays. This especially works well with politicians. One could imagine that the programs are being used for silencing those who are deemed to be threats, certain journalists who have perished in strange accidents or mysterious ‘suicides’ come to mind. It is no secret that big banks, lacking even the scruples of a crack whore engage in the laundering of drug money, just imagine how much juice that access to the most monstrous and powerful spy machine in the universe could bring to the bottom line. Again, these are speculative comments at the current time but truly, given what we already know is it going to be any surprise when the other shoe finally does drop?

But wait…

As horrifying that it already is it gets worse. In possibly the most disturbing and bizarre tale of the gross perversions of the NSA Stasi yet it has now been revealed that General Keith Alexander, the head of the surveillance colossus is living in a fantasy world with the Tribbles and Hobbits.  According to a recent story in the Guardian (where else?) by Glenn Greenwald that extensively references other sources and is entitled Inside the mind of NSA chief Gen Keith Alexander we may be more screwed than even the doomsayers are espousing. Because this story about arguably the most powerful man in America is about as batshit as it gets – what was only suspected, that a psychopath was running this entire spying machine is pretty much confirmed.

To excerpt from the material, in this case a reference to a PBS piece which has now mysteriously (or not so) been disappeared down the memory hole:

“When he was running the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a ‘whoosh’ sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather ‘captain’s chair’ in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.

 ”‘Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard,’ says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits.”

Jesus, this guy is not only section eight material but to quote Kevin Costner’s title character in the post-apocalyptic film The Postman – “The General is a fucking lunatic”.  I would wonder just how much money was the average hard working taxpayer shaken down for so that this freak could get his rocks off by building his Captain Kirk command chair? Where the hell is the accountability? With all of the idiotic politial theater between Obama and the House Republicans over shutting the government down in order to defund Obamacare (and it is theater) it is pretty obvious that there is a REAL reason to close it all down and it is in charge of the NSA. I still anxiously await the great Darrell Issa (the John Stossel) of politics to convene hearings on the NSA’s unconstitutional and fascist usurping of the right to privacy. Again to place a bit of emphasis on this we aren’t talking about some dork who frequents Star Trek conventions, names his dogs “Tiberius” and “Khan” and gets his kicks by prancing around while wearing a set of waxen Spock ears but arguably the most powerful man in the country if not the world. This is no laughing matter!

Anyway, according to the Foreign Policy Magazine piece,The Cowboy of the NSA that is referenced in the Greenwald story Alexander is indeed quite the “cowboy” who plays fast and loose with the law. This a real understatement about our self-appointed guardian of the galaxy given the torrent of stories that have emerged over the last several months chronicling his agency’s flouting of the laws.  But here is where it really gets twisted – Federation Commandant Keith Alexander may not even be the worst of the NSA Stasi capos. According to a Washington Post story,  during a speech the uber-creepy General Michael Hayden, the personification of what Hannah Arendt once referred to the “banality of evil”not only defended the Constitution shredding NSA programs but took a foray into the same bizarre territory that Alexander exists in when lounging in his command chair. Among other delusional dispensations of his perfect fascist utopia Hayden proclaimed that there are terrorists on Gmail (and under the bed, behind the curtains etc..) which means that by now if you have managed to read this far you are now within my own personal NSA 3 hop query network. Congratulations.

Excerpts from  the piece which reveals the very troubling contents of a very troubled mind – a necessity for holding any sort of leadership position in Obama’s NSA Stasi:

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Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden stood on the pulpit of a church across from the White House on Sunday and declared Gmail the preferred online service of terrorists. As part of an adult education forum at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Hayden gave a wide ranging speech on “the tension between security and liberty.”

 During the speech, he specifically defended Section 702 of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA), which provides the legal basis for the PRISM program. In doing so, Hayden claimed “Gmail is the preferred Internet service provider of terrorists worldwide,” presumably meaning online service rather than the actual provider of Internet service. He added: “I don’t think you’re going to see that in a Google commercial, but it’s free, it’s ubiquitous, so of course it is.”

Asked whether the United States’s promiscuous surveillance was setting a harmful example for other nations, Hayden suggested that the Internet’s origins in the United States partially justifies the NSA’s conduct. If the Web lasts another 500 years, he said, it may be the thing the United States is remembered for “the way the Romans are remembered for their roads.”

“We built it here, and it was quintessentially American,” he said, adding that partially due to that, much of traffic goes through American servers where the government “takes a picture of it for intelligence purposes.”

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Rest assured that we WILL be remembered by history and the analogy of Rome is a bit more fitting than the dirty little fiend Hayden may otherwise have intended.  Not that the planet will last for anywhere near 500 more years given the bent for destruction of the elites but if it manages to beat the odds historians will marvel over how the greatest empire since Rome rotted from within abetted by the same forms of moral decay, bloodlust, greed and perversion as well as bread and circuses that destroyed that which was at one time indestructable. Like Rome the proverbial Senate baths are filled with naked little boys greased up with olive oil, our ‘leaders’ drunkenly frolic unimpeded by shame while our imperial overlords have the starship coordinates set for the center of Hoth the ice planet with the controls at ramming speed.