Brit Spooks Get Knickers in a Wad by Spying on Yahoo Sex Videos

GCHQ, the American Stasi’s overseas counterparts across the pond have just been busted for their theft and storage of webcam images and videos - including sexually explicit images - from millions of law-abiding Yahoo users. This latest transgression against privacy and basic human dignity from the Norsefire arm of the U.S. Surveillance machine smacks of the type of perverted voyeurism that in most decent societies would have the perps arrested and in more regressive ones have the offenders penises chopped off in a public exhibition of what dirty perverts can expect. Here in the land of lies, woes and high government criminality that is now called The Homeland however and in the U.K.  where the obscene concept of royalty not only exists but is actually embraced such lewdly criminal conduct never results in the lawbreakers being arrested or for that matter fired from their jobs for abuse of power.

The program is codenamed “OPTIC NERVE” [suggested codename of "PENILE-ERECTION"] and is the latest gift delivered to those who still believe in the concept of transparency in government by former government contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden was revealed in a story published by The Guardian entitled “Yahoo webcam images from millions of users intercepted by GCHQ” by Spencer Ackerman and James Ball states that:

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicity state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.

In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery - including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications - from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.

AND

Optic Nerve, the documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden show, began as a prototype in 2008 and was still active in 2012, according to an internal GCHQ page accessed that year.

The system, eerily reminiscent of the telescreens evoked in George Orwell’s 1984, was used for experiments in automated facial recognition, to monitor GCHQ’s existing targets, and to discover new targets of interest.

AND

 The agency did make efforts ot limit analysts’ ability to see webcam images, restricting bulk searches to metadata only.

 However, analysts were shown the faces of people with similar usernames to surveillance targets, potentially dragging in large numbers of innocent people. One document tells agency staff that they were allowed to display “webcam images associated with similar Yahoo identifiers to your known target”

So in essence people who are totally innocent of anything save the indiscretion of posting sexually suggestive or explicit pictures of themselves on the internet and who don’t have a goddamned thing to do with “terrorism” are being spied on and their personal communications stored by a cyber army of government goons. Hell, this is right up there in government abuse with the American taxpayer funded freaks, perverts and pedophiles who work for the TSA. For Christ's sake - why are these people and their online travels, sexual preferences and backgrounds not a matter of public record? Who is it exactly that is watching the watchers?

The Guardian piece also cites Yahoo’s response to the revelations:

“We were not aware of, nor would we condone, this reported activity.” said a spokeswoman. “This report, if true, represents a whole new level of violation of our users’ privact that is completely unacceptable, and we strongly call on the world’s governments to reform surveillance law consistent with the principles we outlined in December.

“We are committed to preserving our  users’ trust and security and continue our efforts to expand encryption across all of our services.”

Well I hate to be the one to burst the bubble of the "spokeswoman" but fat fucking chance lady - do you Silicon Valley types actually think that Obama and his rogue administration nor that of his predecessor George W. Bush give a rat’s ass about what you want? They just farm it out to their fascist cronies across the pond to skirt the laws and provide plausible deniability for their unconstitutional surveillance programs.

Yet another black eye for American tech businesses to go along with that nice dagger in the back that Obama has implanted with his cynical all seeing eye cast upon his damned legacy. It is going to take some time but at some point there will be surely be an accurate figure as to the amount of business dollars that have been lost to U.S. based technology corporations over all of this and it will be in the billions. Any sane person or business will never trust domestic tech corporations with their security and privacy again after all of this nor should they because they an offer no real assurance that the government isn't getting every bit of consumer data in real time. I have said before that the best remedy for the tech giants would be to pool their substantial resources and not only sue the bastards responsible for all of this but also get into the political activism business by plowing money into primaries that target the scum of society like the impenetrable wall of cellulite that is Senator Dianne Feinstein and the uber-fascist lying bastard of a Congressman Mike Rogers, two of the most bloated parasites that have long fed themselves at the public trough while betraying their oaths of office.

While that idea is admittedly just a wild hair up my ass that makes sense to a peon like me  if those who are far smarter and richer than I ever want to stop this crap and engage in some long-term strategic business planning this would be one hell of a damned good place to start.

As for Yahoo users or anyone else for that matter  it is definitely not very wise to engage in the passing back and forth of sexually suggestive and nude pictures and video on the internet there will always be a good number of horny, drunk and lonely people on any given day who choose to engage in such behavior. Really though, as long as such activity is practiced by consenting adults engaged in behavior that does not involve child pornography or other sick forms of sexual exploitation they should be free do do so and fully accept the risk that one day one of those pictures could be a career killer or end up used as ‘revenge porn’. It is however none of the government’s damned business and the data-mining for such content is just the latest in a series of outrages that cannot continue to go unchallenged if we are to remain a 'free' society'.

While it was Queen's subjects at GCHQ that got popped for this one in particular the NSA is most certainly involved in similar if not worse forms of exploitation as they gather up every possible piece of information for yet undefined future usage and store it in massive data warehouses such as the one in Bluffdale, Utah. It is obvious to anyone who has been paying attention to the slow-rolling fascist juggernaut that roared forth from the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center that a new and virulent form of government has used the opportunity of the attacks to imbue itself with unprecedented power that is abetted by influential members of a corrupt Congress and draped in secrecy. These images and videos are to be used for future sexual blackmail and coersion to find and eliminate troublemakers when the shit really does hit the fan.

Per the Guardian story:

In a statement, a GCHQ spokesman said: “It is a longstanding policy that we don not comment on intelligence matters”.

Especially when said “intelligence matters” pertain to the flagrant abuse of anti-terrorism laws to conduct fishing expeditions, engage in political vendettas and protect the royal rottenness of a society drunk on power and gone to hell in a bucket. The capture of nudity and sexual content also meshes very well with the yet to be fully revealed blackmail operations of the NSA/GCHQ and other intelligence services of which we have only gotten a small taste of to this point. 

This is an outrage but if you are looking for any coverage in the corrupt American state-corporate media forget about it - the Oscar Pistorius trial is about to get the O.J. Simpson media treatment. 

Move along.... nothing to see here. 

War Pigs Squeal for More Military Intervention

Now that they are riding high over humiliating Russian leader Vladimir Putin with a cluster bombing of disgraceful propaganda related to the Sochi Olympics and feeling their oats after their meddling led to the toppling of the democratically elected president of Ukraine the U.S. establishment war freaks have once again set their sights on Syria. Putin was the fly in the ointment that prevented Obama and Kerry from sending the bombers and cruise missiles into Damascus back in September on the pretense that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad had “gassed his own people” – it worked to perfection when they took out Saddam Hussein and the sheeple swallowed it again hook, line and sinker until Putin’s intervention took the wind out of the war machine’s sails. It is always very easy to dupe the American people into support for more war even while the domestic infrastructure crumbles and as their pensions and retirement benefits are looted so as to not impede the war machine.

The hypocrisy of the American empire  is strutting around like the proverbial cock of the walk today after having engineered the ouster of  Viktor Yanukovich with their typical horseshit about democracy. What happened in Kiev would never have been tolerated in the U.S of A. it would be like if the so-called tea party had taken up arms after being instigated by fascists to march on Washington D.C. to demand the removal of Barack Obama from the presidency, staging street battles with police and setting buildings and cars on fire. Just how long do you think that would have been allowed to go on?  The paramilitary police response to such a thing would have made the defacto imposition of martial law on a large chunk of Beantown during the search for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and that pales in comparison to what would have happened were the Ukraine model were used here in The Homeland. It’s not just Obama either, what would Bush have done? For too long this country’s power elite have relied on mob violence to implement ‘democracy’ which really translates into leaders who will protect the economic interests of American corporations and energy cartels.  But the most important thing to take away from Ukraine and the continually morphing situation on the ground is that it was really an operation that was a part of the larger proxy war against Putin

The dominoes were all set up to fall perfectly for the opening of a new front in Syria before the damned gay-hating Putin interfered, the war porn videos of the Ghouta victims had prepped the public, they were a masterpiece of war propaganda, right up there with Saddam’s soldiers ripping Kuwaiti infants out of incubators back in 1991 (which was a lie) to Saddam having ties to al Qaeda (more bullshit) and last week’s  incredible movie like footage and stills of Kiev alight with fires and clashes between ‘freedom fighters’ clad in improvised Medieval gear and the state police. The Ghouta use of Sarin gas on civilians has never to this day definitively been proven to have been an official act of the Assad regime so the bloodsucking parasites who continue to feed off of the American taxpayer will have to find something new to roll out when justifying an attack on Syria. Don’t worry though, there are billions of dollars of money pumped into a network of state media organizations, public relations firms and other official and underground lie factories to do what the father of modern propaganda Edward Bernays tabbed the “engineering of consent”. They will soon find some other outrage to sell to the schmucks.

While getting the military into Syria is the primary objective the apple of the eye of the neocons, a war with Iran is still possible and a number of renegade Senators continue the relentless push  to sink the P5+1 talks, this time with the language to impose a wave of onerous new sanctions deviously tucked within an unrelated bill as an obvious gift to "King Bibi" when he arrives for his latest visit to D.C. You have to give it to the fuckers, they never give up and a new round of sanctions would almost certainly scuttle the talks and punch the nation’s ticket for yet another ruinous war. This is really on the verge of getting dangerous with Syria and Iran the venues for the next two stops on the PNAC’s world domination tour and the agitation in Ukraine we are getting closer to a nightmarish scenario in which Russia will be sucked in and then we are talking WW III. I know that this would send the neocons, the lunatic right-wing in Israel and their Armageddonist foot soldiers that are the American Christian Zionists who need a global eruption of apocalyptic violence to bring Jesus back but it would bode ill for billions of other humans who don’t have either vested ideological or financial interests in such a conflagration.

My regular morning review of the news always begins with a visit Antiwar.com which is far and away the best foreign and domestic policy information source in regards to our addicted to war nation and the fascist surveillance state that it needs to quash dissent. This morning writer Justin Raimondo delivers his usual excellent commentary in a column entitled “A World of Trouble” from which I excerpt:

Of the above listed trouble spots I would rate Syria as potentially the most worrying. This is true for two reasons: 1) Geography – the country is smack dab in the center of the world’s most contentious region, the Middle East, bordering volatile Lebanon, conflict-torn Palestine, and the shaky regime in Iraq – with US-aligned Jordan adding a base of US operations to the south. Another important factor is: 2) Politics, i.e. domestic US politics, which is always the decisive factor in determining how and when the War Party will strike. The interventionist lobby, concentrated as it is almost exclusively within the political class, doesn’t take defeat easily, and they are running true to form in this case. Prominent voices have called on the President to reconsider his stance, and the pro-Israel lobby in collusion with the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are both stepping up the pressure.

US military intervention in Syria would have serious consequences for the region, first and foremost the derailing of the US-Iranian peace talks. Assad’s Syria is one of the mainstays of Tehran’s defensive alliance, the other leg being Hezbollah: air strikes or other US military moves against Assad would give Iranian hardliners all the excuse they need to call for an end to the negotiations – and the Supreme Leader would be under considerable pressure to take heed.

The end of the peace talks would set the clock ticking again on the prospect of a US and/or Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. As I wrote here, Iran is the biggest foreign policy issue the US faces in 2014, and the reason is fairly simple: war with Iran, a country twice the size and population of Iraq, would make "Operation Iraqi Freedom" look like a Sunday school picnic. Every nation in the region would be drawn in, with Russia not likely to stand on the sidelines.

War with Tehran would mean economic disaster for the West, with the price of oil skyrocketing, shortages, and real suffering here at home. "Sticker shock" doesn’t even begin to describe the consequences: sticker trauma is more like it.

With the possible exception of Venezuela, none of these multiple crises can be considered in isolation: the key connecting factor is Russia. Vladimir Putin has set himself up as the antipode to the US and its dream of constructing a "new world order" based on unipolarity and America’s undisputed military dominance. Ideologically, Putin has positioned Russia as the conservatizing factor in world affairs, as opposed to the "progressive" and revolutionary character of American influence abroad. In effect, Washington and the Kremlin have switched positions as a new cold war breaks out, with the former leading a global effort to overturn the old order of sovereign nation-states and the latter resisting US-backed revolutionary movements throughout the world.

My fellow Americans – how does it feel to be citizens of the new “Evil Empire”? There has always been that drive to having to be “number one” that we have been indoctrinated to believe as though it is holy gospel. Well rejoice for we are now thanks to our warmongering establishment the “number one” threat to not only the rest of the planet but also to the continuing existence of the human race itself thanks to our elected representatives being corrupt fools with no foresight given to what will happen when their real life war games lead to a scenario where the nukes are unleashed.

Eric Cantor's Perpetual War Doctrine and those Neo-Nazis in Ukraine

When House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the pride of Virginia's 7th Congressional District delivers his annual speech at the 2014 AIPAC Policy Conference next week it will be interesting to see whether he offers up credit where due as  the Ukrainian coup d'etat was accomplished with the help of Neo-Nazis , a group that should be anathema to the audience. When Cantor picked up the PNAC/Clean Break Neocon torch on President's Day after he gave a red meat filled speech to the Virginia Military Institute that made George W. Bush look like Ghandi he also signed on to the longtime doctrine to take down Russia as a world power. The speech delivered to cadets - the same sort that chickenshit bastards like Cantor who never bothered to serve would send to their deaths in wars of their creation - was a cornucopia of repackaged Bush-Cheney era talking points peppered generously with the obligatory references to Hitler, WW II and the Holocaust and then dipped in a vat of American revisionist history swill.

The on a roll Cantor was a major hit that day and it likely marked the launching of his long-awaited move to mount a House of Representatives putsch against the constantly under duress Speaker John Boehner with a longing glance at what is now a wide open race for the GOP presidential bid come 2016. That this on very day there was a meeting to mend fences (and possibly unite against the newly energized neocons menace) between Obama and the orange tinted man from Ohio may not be a simple coincidence. Nothing quite unites like a common enemy and the on the ropes, dry drunk Boehner and the prickly narcissist Obama are both well within the target coordinates of what promises to be a free fire zone as the war pigs squeal over military budget cuts, back the irresponsible swine who have pulled off a hostile takeover in Kiev (including the neo-Nazis) and roll out the red carpet for "King Bibi" as he brings his filthy carnival of perversion to the U.S. As the old saying goes, politics makes for strange bedfellows.

But I digress..

In his heralded foreign policy speech Cantor used the opportunity to blast Russia with both barrels, particularly the hated and demonized leader Vladimir Putin, denouncing Barack Obama for not following through on the Saudi-Israeli backed push for a new war in Syria last fall and paying the standard paeans to the blessed Ronald Reagan. I excerpt from the House Majority Leader's prepared remarks:

“Look no further than Russia, a traditional ally to Leftist regimes in Latin America, to see the consequences of disengagement.

 “When President Obama came to office, he seemed intent on engaging an old adversary and extended a hand to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Secretary Clinton famously pressed a ‘reset button’ to symbolize a new start to a more harmonious relationship with Russia.

 “Well, despite the idyllic pictures from the Olympic coverage at Sochi, Putin is still living in the Cold War. He has demonstrated that he’s neither interested in better relations with the United States nor is he fearful of poking America in the eye.

 “Just in the last year, Putin has blocked U.N. Security Council Resolutions, provided lethal support to Bashar Assad’s Syria, threatened the independence of Russia’s neighbors in Eastern Europe and suppressed dissent at home. He’s even rolled out the red carpet for a traitor- Edward Snowden - whose theft of incredibly sensitive classified information has done incredible damage to America’s security.

 “We should acknowledge the truth about Putin and his government. An America that leads must have policies based on a clear understanding that Russia behaves like an adversary, seeking every opportunity to undermine our interests and push its advantage. We should work with Russia when doing so is in our interest, but we should also speak clearly against Russia’s aggression abroad and its repression at home.

“Recent reports of Russia’s violations of the INF treaty, and the apparent lack of a response from the United States, raise profound concerns about Russia’s trustworthiness as an arms control partner, either with respect to new bilateral reduction treaties such as New START or multilateral negotiations with Iran. Russia’s behavior, and the growing threat posed by proliferation, are a stark reminder that the United States must maintain a credible nuclear deterrent capability, which has been paramount in providing security to allies around the world.

“We could learn a lot from President Ronald Reagan, who understood the value of an America that leads. Reagan’s clarity of vision and strength of purpose in calling for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” inspired millions behind the Iron Curtain. He made clear to Soviet leaders that America would not be pushed around.

“Reagan’s clarity of purpose and commitment to rebuilding America’s strength compelled Soviet leaders to make concessions on ground-breaking arms control agreements which paved the way to end the Cold War. An America that leads must regain its clarity of purpose and commitment to prevail for freedom's sake.

That Cantor has the audacity to call out Putin for "still living in the Cold War" is a testament to his accomplished ascent to the hall of fame for pathological liars in American political history - there has been no group that has been more desperate to reignite that sick period in our national saga than the neocons. As for the invoking of Saint Ronald it was that doddering old fool who openly backed some of the most ruthless atrocities practiced since the real Nazis when he sang the praises of Latin American paramilitary groups that tortured and murdered tens if not hundreds of thousands of people whose only 'crime' was to desire to rid themselves of the yoke of U.S. imperialism goes unmentioned. Reagan had the gall to actually compare them to the Founding Fathers despite the grisly accounts of mass slaughters such as the one at El Mozote.  Reagan also revered the militant Islamic "freedom fighters" who were waging a costly war of attrition against the Soviets in Afghanistan, this support would come home to roost on the pristine morning of September 11, 2001 'the day when everything changed'. To a seasoned grifter like Cantor, a man who has already hit it big by landing one of those well paying 'big gubmint' jobs on the taxpayer dole  it matters nothing when it comes to throwing in with savages and scum as long as there is personal political gain to be reaped.

So no, I don't imagine that even someone with the shameless gall of Mr. Cantor who despite his ongoing exploiting of them for political gain would dare to stand up in front of an audience of Zionist Jews praise the critical contributions of Neo-Nazi terrorists to support the violent instigation to facilitate the removal of a democratically elected leader in a dangerous proxy war against Putin and Russia. That would be a bridge too far for even the conniving Eric 'Iranium' Cantor who is the walking embodiment of that great quote by the legendary American writer H.L. Mencken: “Imagine a gentleman, and you have imagined everything that he was not.”

Congressman Cantor is about the worst of the worsth that this most tainted and lamentable current political class has to offer which when considering his competition says one hell of a lot about this amoral lying jackal. Hopefully the voters in Virginia's 7th Congressional district will have a collective road to Damascus moment and do their patriotic duty in November to lance this boil on the ass of the American body politic.

After Instigating Coup U.S. Needs to Stay the Hell Out of Ukraine

The U.S. warmongers are still drunk off of the magic elixir of their joyous weekend coup d'etat of the democratically elected government of Ukraine and the accompanying delight of sticking it to the hated Vladimir Putin during his international Olympic showcase at Sochi. The bloodlust of vampires like the deranged Senator John McCain and his ilk albeit temporarily slaked by a week of mayhem in the streets of Kiev will be back soon as there will be the imminent demands that the Obama administration engage in backing a rogue occupying force that is ready to engage in some serious pogroms against their hated enemies. While the corrupt media was exulting in such raw propagandizing as the replacement of a statue of Vladimir Lenin with a golden toilet - reminiscent of the military psyops exercise of hauling down the statue of Saddam Hussein during the early days of the Iraq 'Shock and Awe" invasion. There was also a bit of a lurid tale making the rounds about a golden toilet that looked like a throne in the palace of ousted president Viktor Yanukovich but that was exposed early on as a hoax before it ended up on Rachel Maddow and Bill O'Reilly's shows on Monday night cable television's electronic cesspool.

That the at least temporarily in power western backed group that is in the orbit of the sleazy Yulia Tymoshenko, a woman who is the celebrated head of the media cult of personality and who has her own history of corruption relied on vicious goons including neo-Nazis to oust Yanukovich is lost on the cheerleaders masturbating over the latest episode of the "two-minutes hate".  Hell, it was only a few short months ago when President Barack Obama and Secretary of Skull and Bones John Kerry were ready to scramble the bombers to attack Damascus targets in a war against the regime of Bashar al-Assad that they and the war pigs who run the establishment were throwing in with fiendish Islamist militants affiliated with al Qaeda and a taste for human flesh. Despite the best efforts of the American war machine and the chronic meddling of one Saudi prince who goes by the nickname of "Bandar Bush" we managed to avoid getting dragged into that morass thanks to none other than Putin himself who pounced on a typical  Kerry diarrhea of the mouth moment to ride to the rescue and spare us all another disastrous Middle East war. The reigning war freaks within the Washington 'consensus' of the elite have been itching to feed Putin to the pigs ever since and inciting a civil war on Russia's borders does exactly that - at least in their eyes.

Today, after managing to get through the closing ceremonies at Sochi without going ballistic over blatant meddling in Ukraine by Washington and Europe Putin let it rip correctly denouncing the west for backing "terrorists" and "extremists" to oust a democratically elected leader - he didn't mention the Nazis though but the images from Kiev and the manhunt for the on the run Yanukovich speak for themselves. The U.S. is once again exposed as nothing more than a criminal state which it has been since the end of WW II when the hellspawn that is the CIA was created and one of the first things that Allen Dulles and his fellow treacherous scum did was enter into a pact with Nazi war criminals including General Reinhard Gehlen to form an alliance against the Soviets. This shit is getting old and the Cold War should be in the past and the current flock of red-baiters including McCain and the rest of the Neocons have been so discredited that in a sane country they would have long ago been exiled from any sort of legitimacy. But as with the Arizona legislature and their attempt to turn gays into the new 'niggers' (or Juden) under their white supremacist Jim Crow II jihad against decent civilization it is apparent that we are never going to get past any of this and will remain necklaced by the heinous prejudices of that much hyped but truly mediocre "greatest generation". Sure they are dying out but their policies are resurgent and in continuing to push for the destabilization with Russia they may yet incinerate the rest of us.

The coming weeks will see more saber-rattling, neocon lies on what should be publicly owned media airwaves but have been hijacked by the fascist fifth column and will surely embolden those like McCain to continue to instigate and raise funds for the same type of murdering psychopaths that are typically supported by the empire. Note the Latin American death squads of the hallowed Ronald Reagan. There are however voices of sanity although they will continue to be mocked and marginalized by the venal, ass-kissing careerists in the so-called mainstream media. The libertarian icon Ron Paul has already spoken out against U.S. intervention in a ginned up civil war:

The usual interventionists in the US have long meddled in the internal affairs of Ukraine. In 2004 it was US government money that helped finance the Orange Revolution, as US-funded NGOs favoring one political group over the other were able to change the regime. These same people have not given up on Ukraine. They keep pushing their own agenda for Ukraine behind the scenes, even as they ridicule anyone who claims US involvement.

A recent leaked telephone conversation between two senior government officials made it clear that not only was the US involved in the Ukrainian unrest, the US was actually seeking to determine who should make up the next Ukrainian government!

Senator John McCain, who has made several trips to Ukraine recently to meet with the opposition, wrote last week that the US must stand up to support the territorial integrity of Ukraine, including Crimea.

Why are US government officials so eager to tell the Ukrainians what they should do? Has anyone bothered to ask the Ukrainians? What if might help alleviate the ongoing violence and bloodshed if the Ukrainians decide to remake the country as a looser confederation of regions rather than one tightly controlled by a central government? Perhaps Ukraine engaged in peaceful trade with countries both to the west and east would benefit all sides. But outside powers seem to be fighting a proxy war, with Ukraine suffering the most because of it.

If you asked most Americans how they feel, my bet is that you would discover they are sick and tired of the US government getting involved in every crisis that arises. Certainly the American people want none of of this intervention in Ukraine. They understand, as recent polls have shown, that our interventionist foreign policy is only creating more enemies overseas. And they also understand that we are out of money. We could not afford to be the policemen of world even if we wanted to be.

While widely ridiculed by the presstitutes former Congressman Paul has been nothing if not consistent against the cancer that is the American warfare state. It took a lot of balls to oppose wars and interventionism when Paul did, back in the days when the alternative internet media was  in its infancy and the PNAC dominated Bushreich was embarked on a world domination tour abroad and a relentless attack on civil liberties in The Homeland. Paul rose to the occasion repeatedly, never more so when he took over the stage at the ridiculous Republican presidential 'debate' back in 2007 to assign a reading list to at the time front-runner Rudy "Mr. 9/11" Giuliani. The blowhard former Big Apple mayor never recovered and has become a punchline today.

It is up to those whose bullshit detectors are always on high, fully understand that the domestic media does nothing but distort, obscure and spin that which is true in order to push the big business of war and military expenditures and wrap it all up in the star-spangled Hitlerian 'Big Lie' of spreading "democracy" to take a stand against this latest and very dangerous provocation of Russia. 

You won't find the truth on CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, MSNBC, CNN or any of the other propaganda arms of a criminal empire but you will find it here and in the alternative media. There is a reason why the state wants to use their vast unconstitutional spying apparatus,  their rigged courts and their bought and paid for Congress to destroy freedom of speech on the internet and that the legitimacy of their coup in Ukraine has already been already come into question only makes them more intent at doing so. 

Neocons Crow Over Ukraine Coup d'Etat

With the cherry on top of cake of the epic spree of Russian bashing that the U.S. establishment spewed forth for months during the lead up to the Sochi Winter Olympic games being the weekend coup d'etat that took place in Ukraine the Obama administration and American Neocons engaged in an obscene victory celebration. Returning to his normal Sunday morning bloviation circuit perch Senator John McCain railed against the hated Vladimir Putin from the bully pulpit of CBS's Face the Nation. McCain who has had a burr up his ass since he was shot down over Vietnam and ended up as a guest at the Hanoi Hilton but especially since Putin's September 11, 2013 New York Times Op Ed where he mocked the very concept of American exceptionalism was on the attack this morning as he gleefully contemplated Cold War V.2. Delivering a veiled threat that a cowardly bastard like McCain who can comfortably be assured that he will never have to back it up the venerated Arizona warmonger chortled "If I were Vladimir Putin, I would be little bit nervous" which is probably the case. With the lunatics running the U.S. war machine and their foaming at the mouth NATO toadies itching for the good old days Putin can't be pleased that the west is slowly but methodically encircling Russia, a large country that DOES have nukes.

There was obviously U.S. and European meddling in Ukraine and the timing so that it all fortuitously blew up right before the closing ceremonies of Putin's showcase event calls into question whether it was a coincidence. This is what the CIA and other intelligence agencies do for a living and McCain himself was in Kiev schmoozing with the 'rebels' in December so his glee from pissing in Putin's Olympic party punch bowl comes despite the blood that is on his own hands. Not that such a thing bothers the bloodthirsty old bastard, he has never met a violent situation that he didn't revel in, he may not have been as good when it came to dropping jellied fire from the skies on Vietnamese women and children but he is hell on wheels when it comes to being a professional provocateur. That a prolonged period of civil war and carnage may be coming to Ukraine is all the better for McCain and his connected military industrial complex cronies like Senator Kelly Ayotte who also slithered around on FOX News Sunday to decree that Obama needs to "up his game" in delivering retribution to Putin. What goes unsaid by any of these taxpayer funded psychopaths is that this is all payback first for granting asylum to government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and then sinking their grand war on Syria. Once again we have glaring evidence of exactly why this country is rotten to the core and on the verge of the great collapse - the media never calls bullshit on these professional liars.

When it comes to media bullshit I must admit that I am a bit perplexed over what all of the uproar is about over the FCC’s “newsroom study”. The Obama administration and the corrupt state-corporate media propaganda machine  already do their bidding.  The evidence is overwhelming, especially in light of the shameful anti-Putin jihad that was obviously orchestrated to taint the games and provide ample opportunity to launch a multi-faceted public relations blitz in the domestic media to mount the devil horns on the Russian leader. I excerpt the following from an essay from the liberal weekly The Nation by Stephen F. Cohen entitled "Distorting Russia: How the media represent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine":

The degradation of mainstream American press coverage of Russia, a country still vital to US national security, has been under way for many years. If the recent tsunami of shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles in leading newspapers and magazines—particularly about the Sochi Olympics, Ukraine and, unfailingly, President Vladimir Putin—is an indication, this media malpractice is now pervasive and the new norm.

There are notable exceptions, but a general pattern has developed. Even in the venerable New York Times and Washington Post, news reports, editorials and commentaries no longer adhere rigorously to traditional journalistic standards, often failing to provide essential facts and context; to make a clear distinction between reporting and analysis; to require at least two different political or “expert” views on major developments; or to publish opposing opinions on their op-ed pages. As a result, American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War.

The history of this degradation is also clear. It began in the early 1990s, following the end of the Soviet Union, when the US media adopted Washington’s narrative that almost everything President Boris Yeltsin did was a “transition from communism to democracy” and thus in America’s best interests. This included his economic “shock therapy” and oligarchic looting of essential state assets, which destroyed tens of millions of Russian lives; armed destruction of a popularly elected Parliament and imposition of a “presidential” Constitution, which dealt a crippling blow to democratization and now empowers Putin; brutal war in tiny Chechnya, which gave rise to terrorists in Russia’s North Caucasus; rigging of his own re-election in 1996; and leaving behind, in 1999, his approval ratings in single digits, a disintegrating country laden with weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, most American journalists still give the impression that Yeltsin was an ideal Russian leader.

Since the early 2000s, the media have followed a different leader-centric narrative, also consistent with US policy, that devalues multifaceted analysis for a relentless demonization of Putin, with little regard for facts. (Was any Soviet Communist leader after Stalin ever so personally villainized?) If Russia under Yeltsin was presented as having legitimate politics and national interests, we are now made to believe that Putin’s Russia has none at all, at home or abroad—even on its own borders, as in Ukraine.

Cohen hits the target on several fronts in that short excerpt primarily that Boris Yeltsin was a filthy, drunken pig who enabled corruption on such a grand scale that he could be a CEO for Goldman Sachs yet the turd of his legacy has regularly been polished by the lickspittle press. He is also on the spot in that Putin has been vilified in a manner not seen since Stalin walked the planet, I am hard pressed to remember another Russian leader being so savagely trashed throughout the Cold War, not even Nikita Kruschev had so much shit thrown at him. Cohen who is a professor emeritus of Russian  studies at New York University as well as Princeton gives some well needed context on the true nature of the problems in Ukraine in this interview on the liberal Democracy Now  Such context is lacking in the establishment media.

Now that the Olympics are finally over at least that particular dead horse can no longer be flogged by mouthpieces for the empire but McCain and Ayotte represent the tip of the spear for the official talking points.  

In a fitting epitaph the "Miracle on Ice II" of the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team...well it sucks to be them as they were whacked by Finland 5-0 thereby depriving them of even a bronze medal for their troubles. Hell, at this time last week practically the entire media was proclaiming that the shootout win over what was a pretty lousy Russian team was the second coming of fucking Lake Placid. Not that the game would have even made it to the ridiculous bush league shootout had U.S. goalie Jonathan Quick of the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings not cheated by kicking the net off of its moorings during a Russian flurry. Fans of the team were understandably pissed and not only accused the U.S. referee of deliberately assisting to rig the game but even after it was over with when some reportedly chanted “make soap out of the ref” at a protest outside of the U.S. embassy.

One could only wish that someone would do such a thing to Senator McCain and rid us all once and forever of that most troublesome man. 

(Image: patdollard.com)

Barry Goldwater Rolls in His Grave as Arizona Pushes to Legalize Bigotry

With last week’s crowning achievement of the Arizona legislature in passing a bill that would provide the official state seal of approval to business owners seeking to deny service to those who are gay or are perceived to be gay under the guise of protecting their religious freedom there was the satisfaction of going on up in the culture wars. Similar legislation is being pushed in other states by big time religious right groups to pander to flocks of ignoramuses and dinosaurs who refuse to be peacefully sucked into the tar pits of history. Arizona has become quite a symbol for the sick form of delegitimizing individual rights as well as a parody of itself in recent years and this is just the latest example. There is of course the attention seeking media whore Sheriff Joe Arpaio who delights in hamming it up as a modern day Bull Connor when the cameras are rolling and the draconian anti-immigration laws that he serves as a national spokesman for. For added humorous value the state Republican party just censured longtime Senator John McCain over his “liberal” voting record (as if the constant calls for war and mayhem have anything to do with liberalism) but considering that even Nixon and Reagan would be subject to one of the Khmer Rouge style ideological purity purges of today going after McCain is no big surprise.  Now as the state pushes to deny an entire class of decent citizens their basic rights in order to pander to an extremely whiny, vocal and well organized minority labeled “social conservatives” (translation: ignorant bigots) you can practically hear old Barry Goldwater spinning in his grave.

Senator Barry Goldwater was as conservative as they came for a long time in this country but he unlike those who have seized the mantle of “conservatism” today he had principles and standards. While some of his views were unacceptable, particularly on the civil rights movement he moderated as he aged and the tumult of the 1960's receded into history. Back in that era though when he was given a copy of the John Birch Society’s infamous 'Black Book' formally entitled "The Politician" in which WW II hero and President Dwight Eisenhower was accused of being a communist agent he famously advised JBS leader Robert Welch: “I want no part in this. ... If you were smart, you'd burn every copy you have”. Mr. Conservative also warned early on of the coming of the malevolence that is the religious right:

On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.

I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?

And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism."

Goldwater nailed it dead on. The infiltration and hijacking  of the Republican party by the “preachers” has taken place incrementally over the last forty or so years and they currently exercise a disproportionate amount of control over policy. The party encouraged out of the necessity for harvesting the low-hanging fruit come election time the ongoing appeasement of the lunatic fringe but in essence have created their own Frankenstein monster. They are hemorrhaging voters in an increasingly tolerant society as well as losing ground to their own libertarian wing and  they have no choice but to double down by becoming increasingly held prisoner by the most extremist elements that comprise the party base.

I can at some level understand Arizona’s anti-immigrant laws although they do tend to skirt the edge of Nazism with the ‘papers please’ law. The pushing of laws to cofify anti-gay discrimination though is just pandering to the worst sort of bigots of modern times and they should be widely denounced as the social dregs that they are. This is all really going to be very ‘helpful’ (sardonic laughter) to small businesses in the Grand Canyon State because if Governor Jan Brewer formally rubber stamps this despicable piece of anti-American trash then the corporate chains, who actually value the concept of profits over bigotry will further advance their dominance over the vanishing ‘mom and pop’ outfits. You can pretty much write it in stone that the national retailers and restaurant chains are not going to accept this blatant attempt to turn paying customers and loyal Americans into second class citizens with the possible exception of Chick fil-A and that is even unlikely given the times.

There will also be boycotts, international condemnation and public shaming that will hit the state’s economy hard and some Arizona businesses are wisely calling for Brewer to veto the bill. But you can’t stop arsonists from playing with matches any more than you can stop mean-spirited authoritarian bigots from hiding behind their bastardized version of Christianity as a shield while proceeding to destroy everything that this country and at a larger level Jesus Christ himself stood for.  In a true libertarian sense religion is the ultimate enemy of individuality for it is collectivism backed by ancient superstition espoused in a book that was written by virtual primates and then adapted through history by popes and kings in order to justify their repression and slaughter of others. There is a reason why the founders included the separation of church and state when they wrote the Constitution, being from Europe a country that engaged in centuries of atrocities, rape and pillage all in the name of their own interpreted version of God.

The Arizona effort to discriminate against gays serves as a text book example of the complete bankruptcy of the modern Republican party. In a country with a rapidly changing social fabric particularly in recognizing the right of gay people to marry and the heretofore unthinkable legalization of marijuana in two states they are chained to a base that is chock a block with racists, bigots, grumpy old people and cultural jihadists. The coming demographic tsunami is going to wipe out what is an increasingly southern political party that has nothing to offer other than white supremacy and religious repression thanks to their alliances with the extremist religious right as well as the neo-confederates. Look at the lionization of a guy like Ted Nugent, a washed up 1970's rock and roller who in some quarters has come to be a sort of beloved elder statesman. Nugent as the with rest of the worst elements of that particular party is a toxic mix of hypocrisy and convictions that just are not applicable in 2014. He appeals to the pro-gun crowd with his strident and dishonest defense of the Second Amendment, is a board member of the gun manufacturer lobby group the NRA yet when it came time to brandish a gun against someone who might have actually shot back he showed up at his draft board and shit in his pants to get out of going to Vietnam to serve his country. This is a guy who should be shunned by the so-called ‘values’ voters for his earlier sexual perversion filled life on the road as a rock star as well as his fathering of multiple children out of wedlock. Yet he is adored to the point that he was trotted out as a mascot for Texas gubernatorial Republican candidate Greg Abbott's campaign - until he crossed the line with his most recent racist slur of Obama as a "subhuman mongrel" and became an embarrassment who will be packed off temporarily until Abbott needs entertainment for his state political tour this summer.

On a much larger level one of the greatest problems with our corrupt and failed political system is that it is dominated by two parties between in which at least in establishment consensus terms (war, support for the surveillance state and ongoing subsidizing of the Wall Street casinos) there is not really any serious difference to begin with other than that one is just more overtly fascist than the other. This is already a rigged game in that the deck is so prohibitively stacked against third parties or outsiders that over the years it has been transformed into nothing more than two criminal gangs working opposite sides of the street. In the words of historian Carroll Quigley who in his 1966 book “Tragedy and Hope” wrote:

"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy."

However with the infiltration of the Republican party by what can only be referred to as the American Taliban and its increasing marginalization due to the embracing of such idiotic policies as the Arizona anti-gay law even the two party scam is about finished for all intents and purposes.  We will then be left with one party dominant and totally in control of the spoils system and the full power of the state that will further enslave besieged Americans to corporate interests. The Republicans thanks to the necessity to pander to religious extremists and bigots will not win another national election until they stand for something other than war, unconstitutional data-mining, building prisons and passing laws at the state level to deprive Americans of their basic human rights. The only candidate that they have who actually stands for anything that actually matters is Rand Paul (who denounced the scumbag Nugent) and he has as many enemies within his own party as outside of it.

Next up, eight years of Hillary Clinton and the looming replacement of a number of aging Supreme Court justices including judicial activists Clarence ‘Long Dong Silver’ Thomas and Antonin ‘Internment Camps’ Scalia not to mention the lower courts. In an ironic way the religious right is changing American society only not in any way that they could have imagined.

I will close with another Barry Goldwater quote:

"Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism."

(Image: The National Review)

The Madness of King Bibi

To use one of those wonderful Hitler analogies that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu so cherishes the increasingly unstable leader of our most influential ally is now like Der Führer hunkered down in his Berlin bunker wailing at phantoms as the Russian army closed in. While the rumblings that plague Bibi aren’t so much the sound of tank treads pulverizing Berlin into rubble they are much more ominous, they are the sounds of shifting world opinion. With the state of Israel methodically being reduced to a racist, war addicted doppelganger of the very land whose heinous crimes allowed for its creation primarily due to the Netanyahu regime’s increasing reliability on the most fanatical religious right-wing elements of his society to hold onto power what he really fears is economic isolation. With the momentum building for the BDS Movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) which unlike the U.N. and the leaders of official governments (ours in particular) is pushing to hold Israel accountable for gross human rights abuses including the ongoing land theft from Palestinians to build settlements for religious zealots in a region that is incapable of discarding ancient hatred and superstition in favor of modern, progressive thinking.

With the economic pressure slowly being raised on Netanyahu's rogue regime and the cunning and manipulative strongman backed into a corner he has come out swinging. Netanyahu has now formally denounced the BDS movement and by extension ANY who question the repressive policies of his regime as "anti-Semites". This is the desperate act of a bully who is on the brink of getting his long-deserved comeuppance and only serves as one more example of how he is always willing to exploit the historical persecution of Jews, particularly those who were murdered by Hitler for political gain. Netanyahu's shtick is getting old and the playing of the at one time most kick ass club in the bag that is the "anti-Semitism" card has lost its power due to overuse as a standard smear term for any criticism of Israeli policy, particularly in the United States.  It jumped the shark about the time when the very inflammatory accusation was used to kick around poor old decrepit Jimmy Carter over his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" and has been increasingly ineffective as anything but a badge of honor to legitimate critics of right-wing Israeli policies ever since.

The paranoid and ill-considered outbursts of King Bibi have contributed  and now rapidly declining star of King Bibi who is finding his iron-fisted rule now threatened by young turk Danny Danon who just made a power play to loosen his elder's control over the Likud party. While the crazed Netanyahu was busily denouncing BDS and supporters as though they personally were in charge of running the showers at Auschwitz and meeting with the Mossad  in order to formulate a strategy for retaliation Danon was sizing up the Prime Minister's chair just as top domestic lickspittle Eric Cantor has been doing as he has plotted his overthrow of Republican Speaker John Boehner. Cantor is leading the charge to push anew for a war with Iran - something not in the best interests of the country that he is supposedly elected to represent - as was evident in his red-meat filled speech at the Virginia Military Institute on Monday.

Bibi is now once again scrambling his winged monkeys in the U.S Congress (an institution that Pat Buchanan once referred to as "Israeli occupied territory") to save him from his own self-destructive tendencies. While the push for Iran sanctions has temporarily been derailed largely due to AIPAC getting squeamish over the overly partisan support of the Menendez-Kirk bill that would set the country on the course for yet another disastrous war there is a concerted effort within the Congress being made to deliver the bacon for Bibi. Israeli interests have spent millions to pander and manipulate the Christian Zionists in this country and our elected officials routinely are flown to the holy land on vacation/brainwashing junkets to secure their support for the Likudnik right-wing policies that have been so ruinous to the people of that land.

Israel is viewed with much positively by a majority of Americans according to a recent Jerusalem Post poll but what the poll omits is the extremely one-sided view of Middle East events that the domestic media offers up, choosing to self-censor in order to avoid boycotts and protests by it's embedded fifth-column. It is impossible to understand anything that comes out of the state-corporate media largely due to omission, the Palestinian side of the story is rarely if ever offered and if it were to be the offending entity would be set upon fiercely by the same sort of lunatics who were inspirations to Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik. The normal anti-Muslim bigots such as Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, David Horowitz and their ilk as well as the more 'respectable' enforcers of Israeli propaganda and institutional harassment such as Alan Dershowitz, Abe Foxman, Joe Lieberman, Jennifer Rubin etc. I find it ironically hilarious that Bibi is caterwauling over being force fed a nice big taste of his own medicine with the BDS movement but bullies never seem to have much of a taste for conflict then someone fights back.

The coming wave of official condemnation of the Israeli regime's repressive policies has already sparked Illinois congressmen Peter Roskam and Dan Lipinski to push a bill that will strip academic institutions of federal funding if they support in any way whatsoever the BDS Mmovement. The bill, with the obligatory Orwellian title of "The Protect Academic Freedom Act" shows just how much contempt that a good many members of the U.S. Congress have for the concept of freedom of speech and is in clear violation of the First Amendment. But it is after all an election year and nobody wants to find themselves targeted for removal from the publicly funded gravy train. I would personally like to see someone with a set of stones come up with legislation stripping for life federal funding and benefits from any member of Congress who puts the interests of a foreign country over those of his/her own constituents. The list can be compiled during Netanyahu's next visit to speak to Congress likely in March, according to the Times of Israel there is already a letter being circulated by nearly a hundred of the rats who should be rapidly divested from the taxpayer dole come November. 

While it would be too much to ask for our elected representatives who continue to prove daily that their loyalty lies elsewhere be it it the military industrial complex, Wall Street scammers, energy cartels and in this case foreign despots they would be wise to start looking past Netanyahu. With ambitious sorts like Danon already plotting against his old and tired ways he is a goner, it is only a matter of time and whose fingerprints will be on the hatchet that he will one day find embedded in his back. Our sanctimonious frauds in Congress would be well advised to save the standing ovations this time and keep an eye on the future as they break out their kneepads.

If Mr. Netanyahu wants to see who is truly responsible for "deligitimizing" Israel and turning it into a pariah as well as diminishing real anti-Semitism by his constant invocation of it as a political tool he needs only to look into his own mirror.

(Image: Israel Hayom)