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)

Invoking Hitler Cantor Calls for Eternal War

With Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner now mortally wounded after once again throwing the so-called tea party caucus under the bus on the latest debt ceiling deal he will need to watch his back carefully as his ambitious underling Eric Cantor is readying the dagger.  Eric Ivan Cantor, the pride of Virginia’s 7th congressional district is ready to pounce now having just delivered a major foreign policy address which coincides with a renewed push for an attack on Iran that is picking up steam. The P5+1 talks to relax economic sanctions in return for concessions from Tehran on their alleged military nuclear program have amazingly not been sabotaged (at least yet) by a renegade Senate that not that long ago was working toward a veto-proof majority to hit the Iranians with a new wave of crushing sanctions and put the U.S. on the path to what will inevitably be a war that could escalate into a global conflagration.

It was less than two weeks ago that AIPAC, the dominant organization in the Israel Lobby actually backed down and stopped their full court press for the bill sponsored by Senators Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Mark Kirk of Illinois that would have set the nation on the course for war. The caveat being that efforts would resume once the political climate is able to ensures  "bipartisan" agreement on the next national disaster of a war.  The defection of several key Democrats would have looked bad and left the usual assortment of Republican warmongers, defense industry pimps and stone cold Armageddonists holding that particular flaming bag of dogshit. It is however an election year and with the GOP still far too dependent on the dregs of society that constitute the religious right there is nothing like the possibility of a war to end all wars, triggering The Rapture and sending the saved flying dirty, nasty, naked up into the sky to watch Jesus return to kick some serious ass to get voters mobilized.

Cantor is a cunning political animal, he knows that his window of opportunity is now open and in a President's Day speech at the Virginia Military Institute the House Majority Leader delivered chunks of bloody red meat by the shovelful. Picking up the torch for the American global hegemony and its enforcement by military might Cantor eagerly picked up the torch for the Neocons and the reestablishment of the PNAC/Clean Break doctrine. Peppering his stemwinder with the standard World War II references - Iran as Hitler and shamelessly invoking The Holocaust for political gain he made his move. Seizing the day to pummel Obama for not bowing to Israeli/Saudi pressure to sink more American blood and treasure into the Middle East Cantor had something for everyone with killer sound bites and crusading rhetoric. “Hope is not a strategy” is so dopey that it should be a winner with the Sarah Palin/Duck Dynasty demographic whose support he will badly need as he pursues his ambitions. Following that one up with a crowd pleaser that probably gave William Kristol a boner 'Iranium' Cantor decreed: “Instead, it should be driven by clear principles: protect the homeland, defend our allies, and advance freedom, democracy and human rights abroad, while maintaining a military superiority that cannot be matched” and  “Make no mistake: Iran is a brutal theocracy. Its leaders violently repress dissent at home and support conflict and chaos abroad”. Just once I would like to see the bloodthirsty war freaks just pick up a gun and march their own asses into harm's way rather than just feed others into the meatgrinders of their own creation. Perhaps a taste of actual combat and the horrors of it all would cause them to rethink their positions.

I suppose that being Bibi Netanyahu’s top lickspittle in Congress somehow qualifies a turd like Cantor as foreign policy guru, that and all of the military industrial complex money that sluices through his gerrymandered district like Subic Bay’s infamous “shit river”. Cantor’s speech was also aimed at the growing libertarian influence in his own party particularly Rand Paul and Justin Amash with his denouncement of WW II style "isolationism". With the 2016 Republican ticket wide open now that Porky Soprano in Jersey is up to his fat ass in an abuse of power scandal over the George Washington Bridge the serpentine Cantor has to be asking himself ‘why not me?’  Nothing would possibly make Netanyahu happier than having Cantor being the messiah who can once and all eliminate the stench of that terrible Shvartze from the White House so Americans can get back to business fighting the wars of the far right Israeli regime and their decadent cronies in Riyadh.

The timing of the great Cantor foreign policy speech nicely meshes with the latest escalation in Netanyahu's war rhetoric and lately the demagogic leader has been in rare form. The Iranians are fomenting unrest in Latin America plays nicely into the strange and likely U.S. orchestrated uprising in Venezuela, the Iranians are non compliant liars and critics of Israeli policy are anti-Semites (groan, not again). Throw in the recent change in language used by Secretary of Skull and Bones John Kerry that Iran and Russia are meddling in Syria along with the possibility that the U.S./E.U. are covertly funding the Ukranian insurgency and mix in Bibi's agitation and once again we are careening towards the brink of war.

The collapse can't be far behind.

(Image: J.Dashiell-WDBJ7)

Curveball Redux: Iran War Propaganda Escalates

The  anti-Iran war propaganda is setting new standards of what constitutes hogwash with each passing news cycle. one of the most recent lurid tales comes courtesy of Reuters which devoted major space last week to a series on the assets of the ruling Ayatollah Khamenei conjures up memories of the great Neocon hope that was Iraqi dissident “Curveball”. The story is told in an article entitled Iranian dissidents say Iran has built a secret new nuclear site plumbs the depths of credibility although it will sell well to the usual low information mouth-breathers who still to this day believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11, 2001 attacks. The propaganda piece cites the source for the latest sinister effort by the Iranians to conquer the world, destroy Israel and reestablish the Caliphate as being an organization that calls itself “The National Council of Resistance of Iran” that is - get this - based in Paris. This will further bolster the French (formerly known as cheese eating surrender monkeys) in the esteem of the Neocon warmongers.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi a defector who was given the code name of “Curveball” by U.S. and German intelligence officials regaled Bush administration figures with with tales of Saddam’s mobile bioweapons labs, stating that he was a former chemical engineer with insider knowledge. This led in turn to then Secretary of State Colin Powell’s testimony at the United Nations that made the case for attacking Iraq and George W. Bush's infamous 2003 State of the Union address. While the eventual discovery that “Curveball” was full of bullshit and was probably making it all up to curry favorable treatment In the words of a former CIA official at the time he was “a guy trying to get his green card essentially in Germany, and playing the system for what it was worth” the attack and invasion commenced. The Bush administration eventually created an investigative commission and unsurprisingly the revelations included comments such as “crazy”, “out of control”, a “congenital liar” and a man who just “might be an alcoholic”. There was also some speculation that “Curveball” may have been a relative of Neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi . Mr. Alwan al-Janabi finally  fessed up in a 2011 Guardian interview and expressed shock that his lies were used to bolster the case for the disastrous shock and awe military campaign and that he just had an ax to grind with Saddam - pick a number and stand in line buddy.

The exposure of the lies of “Curveball” came far too late to prevent the murder, torture and displacement of tens to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians caught up in the military strikes and the sectarian skirmishing and score-settling in the aftermath. Not that they really matter though, they were dark complected non-Christians or what a good many exceptional Americans consider subhumans and the military and political leadership considers acceptable collateral damage. Now over ten and a half years after the bombing of Baghdad was commenced, televised with all the flag-draped hoopla by U.S. state-corporate news arms the place is still a disaster and the domestic economy has been so gutted by the preference of guns over butter that without the Federal Reserve providing a heroin fix of 85 billion dollars per month it would all collapse. The war was a hot seller in the early days and Americans cheered the exploits of the invaders and the saving of private Jessica Lynch, late exposed as a total hoax right up there with the toppling of Saddam's statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square which was also a lie. The Iraq war was the manual on how to lie the nation into wars of choice and a precursor of what has been seen in recent months, from Syria to Iran to the thoroughly rotten CBS 60 Minutes fake story on Benghazi just a few weeks back. In an interesting bit of trivia CBS's Lara Logan also reported on the Saddam statue psy-op.

The main reason for bringing up “Curveball” is that with the relentless propaganda campaign to start yet another unnecessary and evil war in the Middle East there seems to be much agitation and propaganda that is culled from the same playbook that was used to lie this country into Iraq. The Obama-Kerry push for attacking Syria over a gassing of civilians including children was a rehashed version of the “he gassed his own people” meme that was invoked against Saddam (although he probably obtained the chemicals from American corporations) but fortunately that one blew up on Barry and the boys. The Ghouta gassings have still to this day not been convincingly proven to the the acts of the Assad regime and quite frankly, even if they were (which is unlikely) why do a little over a thousand who were victims of sarin gas matter in the greater scheme of things more than the tens of thousands otherwise slaughtered in Syria? Dead is after all dead and the outrage of the Obama regime, especially Secretary of Skull and Bones John Kerry over ANY use of chemical weapons given the U.S. history of depleted uranium, white phosphorus, Napalm and Agent Orange is as laughable as it is hypocritical.

But I digress..

The spigots of the lie factory are fully open pumping out the anti-Iran propaganda in a frantic effort to once and for all sink the P5+1 talks that are set to resume now seem to be headed towards some sort of an agreement despite all of the best efforts of those who have been meddlesome. Even the right-wing regime of Israeli boss Benjamin Netanyahu now appear to be resigned to some sort of accord and are focusing on other ways to start the war. So the onslaught of Iran agitprop will continue unabated. Some of it is actually pretty amusing in a sick sort of way. I particularly enjoyed the one that told a story that longtime Obama intimate from the Windy City Valerie Jarrett has been engaged in back channel negotiations with Iran in order to circumvent Secretary of State John Kerry. Not that would ever be a bad idea to get that stammering ass of a Massachusetts liberal loser out of the process but Valerie Jarrett? The story has likely been planted to sow the seeds of divisiveness and confusion in the White House - as they don't already do a good enough job of themselves. Considering that it is largely being floated on right-wing blogs and news agrregator websites notorious for being Neocon/GOP disinformation mills it is highly likely to be bullshit.  The sheer magnitude of the garbage that is put out is astounding and that many actually believe it is yet another example of how close that this country is coming to fulfilling its destiny as a historical example of what not do be, for hundreds of years into the future historians will be hauling the carcass of the U.S. empire onto an autopsy table and carving away for exactly what caused the collapse that is looming. It could be that the greed, exceptionalism, lust for power and war and the dumbing down all were just too much. The prophecy of the movie Idiocracy will soon be fulfilled here in what was once a land of plenty but thanks to decades of decay and a total abdication of adult leadership has become a pox upon the planet.

So grab some popcorn and enjoy the show, it would all be hysterical if the possibility of being turned into a cinder once the nukes start flying weren't so real. As the late George Carlin once put it - 'When you're born into this world, you're given a ticket to the freak show. If you're born in America you get a front row seat.'

Foreign War Agitators: A Very Bad Deal for Americans

Once again the state-corporate Sunday morning propaganda shows featured more war-mongering as the joint efforts to undermine talks to roll back economic sanctions on Iran in order to induce nuclear compliance pick up steam. It does the United States no good to exist in a state of perpetual war, mired in a Middle East quagmire where ancient hatreds still burn with incandescence, there are far too many problems at home and the nation has now been at war in the region for over twelve years. To remain in a state of perpetual war only ensures that more money is squandered abroad when there are serious problems that need to be addressed here such a a crumbling and obsolete infrastructure. With the massive failures in leadership, the systemic government corruption and the sheer incompetence of the Obama administration coming generations face a very bleak future indeed and while ending the state of war will not resolve all problems it could mitigate the suffering. The problem is that a craven, bought and paid for and otherwise lunatic fringe in Congress are chafing at the bit to escalate tensions with Iran and a vile disinformation machine that is the state-corporate media is providing cover for foreign powers that are fiercely pushing this country into yet another war for their own interests.

The foreign "allies" who are leading the relentless charge are of course Saudia Arabia and the right-wing Israeli regime of Benjamin Netanyahu. Both are furious that the bombs did not fall on Syria a couple of months ago and have taken their anger and influence to another level to thwart any normalizing of relations with Iran since the departure of the fanatical anti-Semitic leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Netanyahu in particular has been pushing for a U.S. attack on Iran for well over a decade now, he practically danced a jig in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks which he proclaimed were good for Israel. Now after a regime change in Tehran and more moderate leadership there is a willingness to engage in GASP diplomacy to ratchet down tensions but Bibi and Bandar can't have that, it threatens the regional supremacy of both and for some reason it is incumbent on this country to fight the wars that they do not have the stones to enter into on their own. God forbid that the U.S. mends fences with Iran who in the new globalized world could be a trading partner especially with their abundance of oil, this alone is what steams Prince Bandar and the reprobate Saudi regime. There is never any context provided on why there have been hostilities with Iran either, never does the crooked American media reference the 1953 CIA backed overthrow of elected leader Mohammad Mossadegh leading to the installation of the puppet Shah's torture state. This in turn lead to the storming of the U.S. embassy and the Ayatollah Khomeini led Islamic revolution. Perhaps given the dimness of the average American news consumer it would be useless to reference history, pearls cast before swine but considering that the media has been completely contaminated it pays to engage in the omission of crucial facts.

This brings me to the question of why is it that American media programs, in this case CNN's State of the Union are always willing to provide a forum for dishonest foreigners seeking to manipulate American opinion into backing their wars.  Netanyahu was trotted out yesterday morning to spew his lies, pander to the poor dupes whose worldview is shaped by end times eschatology as promulgated by pulp pimps the likes of Timothy LaHaye and his multi-million dollar Left Behind industry and agitate for war on Iran. The rapture ready zealots are overly represented in congress and the cunning Bibi is calling for their activism in not only sinking the negotiations with Iran but in applying more crushing economic sanctions. On CNN the Israeli hardliner delivered the dog whistle line that "We've been around for about 4,000 years, the Jewish people, and we are not about to let ayatollahs armed with nuclear weapons threaten that" it is arguable that he actually believes this rather than just uses it to further a geopolitical agenda, perhaps a combination. But this is a big problem in that once again we find ourselves being held hostage in the Middle East due to a primitive religious squabble. As long as religion is involved there will never be an opportunity for reasonable solutions. Whether it be Netanyahu’s invocations of the destiny of the Jewish people or of militant Islam it is all based on the superstitions and the generationally passed down stories of primitive societies before the age of science and enlightenment.

The world is rapidly changing for better and for worse with the advent of the technological age and religion is both a millstone that impedes progress as well as a serious existential threat to human life on earth. In the days of which Netanyahu frames his relentless push to destroy Iran the primary forms of weaponry were sticks, rocks and slings, arrows, spears and swords. In the Twenty First century there are thermonuclear weapons and while this may play well with a certain Armageddonist mentality that is entrenched here in America and exploited by the Israeli far-right there will be no return of Christ come the nuclear cataclysm. In short the skies will not be filled with the chosen flying dirty nasty naked to sit at the foot of God’s throne while the rest of us are left suffer miserably for their entertainment. One thing that Bibi never mentions to the American Jews to whom he seeks to influence is that the Christian Zionist shocktroops believe that come that day of judgment that all Jews will be forced to convert to Christianity or be killed. You won’t hear any of that in AIPAC planning committees although the Anti Defamation League’s Abe Foxman came out and criticized former president George W. Bush for appearing at a rally promoting the conversion of Jews to Christians just last week.

Note that Netanyahu always chooses to invoke a biblical perspective when talking about Iran, this is largely directed towards the American Religious Right where much of the Israeli strongman’s domestic support is concentrated. Much like the PNAC Neocons with their Leo Strauss inspired philosophy of using religion to manipulate the masses casting the narrative into the great, centuries old ongoing war of civilizations it is always necessary to demonize the Muslims to mobilize support for military action. It works very well for them and it also works well for the House of Saud whose funding of militant Islamist groups hostile to Israel and America keep them away from the real Great Satan of the ruling monarchy. In order to drag America into eternal hostility in that particular region it is imperative that something larger than the national interest be at stake, and that would be God or at least God as defined by the charlatans, false prophets, the kings, priests and world leaders who have always benefited from wrapping their wars, murder and exploitation in proclamations of a divine mandate.

While I am a libertarian I generally shun Ayn Rand and the holy gospel of Atlas Shrugged that has become so influential to so many. In my opinion it is a particularly cruel belief system that has as its basis amorality and a callously cruel vision of the poor. While not to belabor my comments on Ms. Rand I do have to say that her most redeeming quality is that she was an unapologetic atheist. While this does not mesh with the true compassion of Christ for the poor and downtrodden neither toes the Armageddonist bastardization of Christianity to advocate war and intolerance and were Rand’s atheism embraced it would eliminate one of the particularly nasty rationales for war, the other being of course the profits of the military industrial complex. In a true libertarian sense one can never be “free” when reason is easily surrendered to an ancient belief system that can never be proven and that has for centuries suited the needs of power very, very nicely. In addition to the invocation of religion Bibi very slyly works to include all of the world’s Jews in his pronouncements while nothing could be a bigger fib, there is much opposition to the blowhard in Israel but given the always one-sided coverage afforded to what is a complex geopolitical issue it doesn’t get reported in The Homeland. I would recommend that any who may find this statement astounding subscribe to the mailing list for Haaretz.

I really don’t see why these shows are given a free pass when they provide a national forum to a foreign leader to push for Americans to sacrifice blood and treasure for no good reason. It only serves to further reinforce their irrelevance when it comes to anything other than hustling the political agendas of dueling establishment factions. In the aftermath of the 60 Minutes Benghazi hoax being blown up any sort of reasonable expectation that the state-corporate media would be a bit more judicious in pushing their war propaganda goes right out the window when Netanyahu is allowed to agitate for a war that will only benefit his country and selective regional allies like the insipidly debauched House of Saud.

As the pride of the Palmetto State Senator Lindsey Graham promulgated the Iran sanctions push last Sunday morning by squealing “thank God for France” on the same program, CNN’s State of the Union with the bovine Candy Crowley. It is notable that after sinking the P5+1 talks thanks to being bribed by a Saudi weapons deal that the former “cheese eating surrender monkeys” are taking full advantage of the Saudi-Bibi war with Obama. The socialist French leader Francois Hollande made a pilgrimage to Tel Aviv this week, one wonders what sort of goodies were offered to induce support for escalating hostilities with Iran. The Neocons, warmonger Republicans and Bibi Netanyahu all revel in conjuring up the mythology of WW II aka “the good war” in justifying the push for what could escalate into World War III. I just find it a bit difficult to reconcile the reverence and worship for Sir Winston Churchill with the Vichy French, politics indeed make for strange bedfellows.

The day when the state-corporate media must be held accountable for their actions in shilling for war needs to come and preferably before they succeed in instigating one that may rapidly escalate out of control. China is a key trading partner of the Iranians and unlikely to stand by while yet another ill-conceived and likely catastrophic war is unleashed.  Perhaps when media shills for aggression are called out as the traitors that they are rather than serving as mouthpieces to demonize and threaten truth tellers it could start a trend. They should be held as guilty as the leaders for the death and destruction, the suffering and the loathing that they have been so very helpful in promoting. It is notable that Julius Streicher was convicted of crimes against humanity Nuremberg back when there was adherence to international law and while he did not personally murder anyone his propaganda was instrumental in producing the climate that tolerated if not encouraged the slaughter of millions including six million Jews. When will Americans finally get it that the real enemies lie within rather than outside of our borders, a suckup careerist fifth column of disinformation artists with no loyalty to the country.

Finally Netanyahu is a  huge bully as well. Considering  the amount of state-corporate media attention bestowed upon the evils of “bullying” in reference to a couple of overpaid, immature asshole jocks on the Miami Dolphins NFL football team it is an illustration of the level of corruption and hypocrisy that is endemic that a global bully isn’t called out as such.  Just another contradiction in a land that has been overrun by such things.

With Economy Still in the Toilet there is Always Money for Another War

As the WW I era writer Randolph Bourne once summed it up "war is the health of the state" and the drums were beating over the week yet another one. This will be the granddaddy of them all, the long-promoted but oft-preempted attack on Iran, the country that represents the crown jewel for the Neocons.  With the French sabotage of the past weekend's Iranian talks about the hotly disputed nuclear program delivering yet another humiliation to the bumbling, bloviating fool that is Secretary of State John Kerry there is now an opening into which every effort will be poured on pushing an on the ropes, on the verge of bankruptcy country into yet another ruinous war. This one will be the big one, if there was a good possibility that the aborted Syrian attack of August would have turned into WW III it is a dead certainty that attacking Iran, one of China's top trade partners will do exactly that.

Keep in mind that China holds a good deal of U.S. debt and has the ability to pretty much destroy American dominance as well as the military machine by calling it in. If this happens there is nothing that either Helicopter Ben Bernanke nor Janet Yellen will be able to do to stop it, they can run the printing presses at the Marriner S. Eccles Building until the melt but the era of the dollar will be over. Hell, it's not like we aren't on the way there anyway because even the Fed's schemes have their eventual end point but living in a tent city and foraging for scraps to eat is one thing, doing it while basking in the nuclear fallout of a war to end all wars is another.

Kerry, a lifelong member of Yale's infamous Skull and Bones society was riding high last weekend as he arrived in Geneva to along with the rest of the P5+1 gang put the finishing touches on the deal with Iran to limit its nuclear program and begin lifting economic sanctions was knee capped as the French contingent led by Laurent Fabius after what was reported to be a Saudi bribe from Prince Bandar bin Sultan aka Bandar Bush led to the scuttling of the talks.  The buffoonish Kerry, his latest humiliation sealed his place as the most inept head of the State Department in recent memory, Kerry went into full retreat mode just like the guy who parlayed his opposition to the Vietnam War into a political career who went from antiwar icon to pusher of more wars.  The neocons and right-wing Israeli warmongers then poured it on, using what was announced to be a "delay" in talks to mount a relentless propaganda campaign that would mobilize the craven and bought on the cheap U.S. Congress, specifically the House which is chock a block with the type of lunatics who want a Middle Eastern conflagration so Jesus can come back. On the Sunday morning circuit while South Carolina's Lindsey Graham was pushing for even more crippling sanctions on Iran, at one point lisping "thank God for France" Kerry was being mocked by establishment lickspittle David Gregory.  Kerry at one point in his life dared to utter the blasphemy that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't the lone nut that was able to circumvent the tight security of a presidential protection detail and deliver a shot to the head to President John F. Kennedy that crack snipers would have difficulty pulling off and then escaping before being cornered like a rat and eventually murdered by a mob connected loon before he could be tried. There are certain things in this land that just cannot be questioned if you are to remain a political figure of any influence.

But the talks were torpedoed and the march to war is once again on and with Barry in desperation mode after his historic debacle of an abomination of a health care reform program designed solely to keep the insurance parasites supplied with new bodies to milk for profit the man just may finally be ready to go along with it as a distraction. If if wasn't for Putin the lying bastards Obama and Kerry be into the third month of bombings of Damascus and Raytheon stock would be trading at an all time high but they just couldn't close the deal with the American sheeple. Now with the formerly vilified French "cheese eating surrender monkeys" being hailed by the neocons as though they were the second coming of Sir Winston himself, Netanyahu's mustering of his American shocktroops and Kerry's flip-flopping this could finally be the time when the stars are in alignment for what will be the mass suicide of the western world. Obama is clearly screwed now thanks to his own incompetence, the vilified community organizer who has been turned into a fake devil by on the payroll  right-wing stooges seeking to compare him to the great leftist manipulator  Saul Alinsky, a man who Barry isn't fit to carry his coffee cup.  Ironically Alinsky's tactics have been adopted by the right who in their typical asinine, self centered way pay the man no credit. Old Saul must be rolling over in his grave over Obama, he mocked such phonies as Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin as not being capable of organizing a lunch counter.

But I digress...

Obama's fraudulence has now brought us to a very dangerous point, with the House of representatives smelling the scent of blood as they haven't since Bubba Clinton made the critical error of blowing his wad onto Monica Lewinsky's  infamous blue dress the tribunals are looming. With Darrell Issa aka Congressman Grand Theft Auto convening his stupid little "kangaroo courts" over everything but the NSA Stasi's unconstitutional spying on Americans the subpoenas are already being printed for the Obama impeachment hearings. The furor of partisan vendettas and settling political scores  is now coalescing with the House Armageddon caucus, take for example the deranged freak that is Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois who is already shilling for Netanyahu's war as are many others in the corrupted and contemptible legislature where 30 pieces of silver buys loyalty to a country other than the one what they swore an oath to.  Justin Raimondo of the FBI targeted Antiwar.com pegged it in his latest column Showdown at the Geneva Corral:

Does Senator Mark Kirk know whom he is supposed to be representing?

One wonders. After an administration briefing to the Senate Banking Committee, held to persuade members to hold off on new Iran sanctions, Kirk had this to say:

"’It was fairly anti-Israeli. I was supposed to disbelieve everything the Israelis had just told me, and I think the Israelis probably have a pretty good intelligence service.’ He said the Israelis had told him that the ‘total changes proposed set back the program by 24 days.’ A Senate aide familiar with the meeting said that ‘every time anybody would say anything about ‘what would the Israelis say,’ they’d get cut off and Kerry would say, ‘You have to ignore what they’re telling you, stop listening to the Israelis on this. They had no details,’ the aide said. ‘They had no ability to verify anything, to describe anything, to answer basic questions.’"

Why is "what would the Israelis say" the first thing out of Sen. Kirk’s mouth? He is supposed to represent the state of Illinois in the US Senate – not the state of Israel. But you’d never know it from his public pronouncements on this issue. Yes, the Israelis do indeed "have a pretty good intelligence service," one devoted to relentlessly pursuing Israeli interests. Those interests are not always aligned with American policy objectives – indeed, these days the two are rather frequently in conflict. And it is telling that Sen. Kirk doesn’t recognize this, or, if he does, chooses to listen to the Israelis rather than what our own intelligence services have been telling us regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

The official National Intelligence Estimate states "with high confidence" Tehran gave up its weapons program way back in 2003. Yet Sen. Kirk chooses to take the Israeli side in an increasingly public and acrimonious dispute between the government of the United States and a foreign entity with a long history of crying wolf over the alleged imminence of Iranian nukes.

Now that Obama's balls are in a sling and the vultures are circling I would imagine that the coming days will bring a new willingness and an increased level of bellicosity towards the regime in Tehran.  It won't save him from the lynch mob that has been restful for the past five years but it could prove to doom us all once the Commander in Chief is able to channel his inane football metaphors from "fumbling" on Obamacare to a "Hail Mary" in the Middle East and lending U.S. backing to the doomsday strike on Iran.

The Chinese curse of "may you live in interesting times" is a bit of hysterical irony coming home to roost in The Homeland.

The Push to Attack Iran Continues

“Real men go to Tehran"

-Anonymous Bush Administration Official

With the Syrian attack relegated to the back burner for the immediate future thanks to Putin’s brilliant humiliation of Barry and Kerry it has become incumbent for the warmongers to once again try to sell an attack on Iran. This has been ongoing for at least a decade now, it ebbs and flows but is always the apple of the eye of neocons, the weapons industry, oil and natural gas cartels and the entourage of millions on their payroll to push for this most lucrative and ultimately disastrous of wars.  While the strikes on Syria despite weeks of political class hysteria over the gassing of civilians at Ghouta was a deal that Barry and the boys just could not close and one that could have potentially lead to WW III at least Assad had no real ability to militarily threaten the Empire. With Iran that is not the case, it would be an unbelievably stupid, ugly and rapidly escalating series of reactions and counter-reactions that only a lunatic would risk. The bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities would lead to attacks on U.S. ships in the Straits of Hormuz that could effectively close down that key transit point and quadruple oil prices virtually overnight - futures traders would love this. There would be the radioactive fallout from the strikes as well, poisoning thousands of Iranian civilians in ways that would make the still mysterious sarin gassings at Ghouta seem humanitarian by comparison. There is nothing like the damage wrought by radiation poisoning and it lasts, does not dissipate and causes deformations upon the as yet unborn. The Muslim world would immediately be galvanized against the west and Russia and China would not likely be bystanders. Only a lunatic would risk something like this.

Enter one Benjamin Netanyahu, current ruler of Israel and a megalomaniac paranoid with an eye on history and visions of Sir Winston Churchill dancing in his head.  Bibi spent last week engaged in a public relations campaign on American soil to pander to the political foot soldiers who could make that attack on Iran a reality. While difficult to follow up last year's United Nations speech with that ridiculous cartoon bomb the Israeli leader denounced newly minted Iranian president Hassan Rouhani as a "wolf in sheep's clothing" before the world body. Never mind that Rouhani has toned down the incendiary Holocaust denial rhetoric that his predecessor, the freakish Mahmoud Ahmadinejad  used to bait Bibi and which the big man never failed to bite on while in the process legitimizing Ahmadinejad with large percentage of Islamics.  The greatest fear of Netanyahu, a man who relies on the threat of war for his own political survival is that there would be a more moderate approach towards Iran under the new leadership. Obama and Rouhani's much hyped phone call scared the hell of Netanyahu and the tantrum toward's Barry's failure to adequately condemn Iran royally pissed off Israeli officials who have along with their boss spent years trying to get the U.S. to do the heavy lifting as well as bear the burden of any of the blowback of the attack.  Obama's waffling has resulted in the Netanyahu regime's attempt to line up support for an attack by creating an alliance of other Gulf countries, a first strike that would inevitably suck the U.S. into the conflict and trigger the global conflagration that was avoided thanks to Putin's intervention last month.

I would imagine that any such alliance would of course include the aforementioned Bandar Bush and the House of Saud who were reportedly apoplectic that they were unable to goad Obama into attacking the Assad regime in Damascus and are also chafing at a moderated stance towards Iran. The propagandizing will continue in the U.S. corporate-state media which never calls Netanyahu on his horseshit, such as this whopper that Iran is building ICBM's to launch nukes at the American Homeland - this is about as credible as Saddam's trans-Atlantic fleet of chemical weapon spewing drones. There was the rare column this time that Bibi had finally overreached, notably columnist Roger Cohen in the New York Times in the piece entitled Bibi's Tired Iranian Lines from which I excerpt:

Never has it been more difficult for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to convince the world that, as he put it in 2006: “It’s 1938. Iran is Germany.” He tried again at the United Nations this week. In a speech that strained for effect, he likened Iran to a 20th-century “radical regime” of “awesome power.” That would be the Third Reich.

Among those who question this approach is David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee. Referring to the new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, he wrote in the Israeli daily Haaretz that, “Simply implying, for instance, that anyone who sits down with Rouhani is a modern-day Neville Chamberlain or Édouard Daladier won’t do the trick. To the contrary, it will only give offense and alienate.”

When Netanyahu’s staunchest supporters — the leaders of the American Jewish community — question his approach to Iran, the Israeli prime minister needs to stop calling Rouhani “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” his favored epithet, and start worrying about crying wolf.

I suppose that it's at least something but the disproportionate amount of coverage to non-Israeli regime friendly reportage in this country is astounding - I read Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post quite regularly and there is no shortage of reporting and viewpoints that aren't in lockstep with the extreme right-wing Netanyahu government. I am also pretty sure that the New York Times ombudsman will be getting a call from Alan Dershowitz or some other deranged war pimp threatening boycotts and smearing for Cohen's intransigence. This is yet one more example of the shameful enabling of the dumbing down of America that the mass media has been culpable in and it really isn't getting any better considering that as of this afternoon some of the top 'stories' being promoted are Tiger at Zoo Bites Woman's Arm, 9 Year Old Boy Sneaks onto Flight to Vegas and 2,000 Lashes For Nude Dancing. The last one is of interest only because it took place in Saudi Arabia, our 'partners in peace' and the paragon for a tolerant society as well as the recipient of billions of dollars in U.S. weapons deals. With friends like these who needs enemies?

And of course the genesis of the entire U.S.-Iran problem as it actually exists is that 1953 coup d'etat that the CIA and the Brits engineered to overthrow democratically elected leader Mohammad Mosaddegh giving way to decades of tyranny by the U.S. backed despot the Shah of Iran and his SAVAK goon squads. Despite the CIA itself's recent copping to this and the subsequent documentation released it is always through the lens of the 1978-1980 Iranian hostage crisis that is used to portray Iran as an enemy of American freedom (not that we actually have any), mom and apple pie. The Ayatollah Khomeini is a scary looking guy, just like Ahmadinejad and it is always easier to boil down historical and geopolitical issues of enormous complexity into easily digested gruel to feed to the sheeple when you have that ready made devil that can be trotted out.  

The business of America after all is war, we are addicted to it but like all doomed junkies the only endgame is sorrow and self-destruction.