CNN Refusing to Own Up to "ISIS" Butt-Plug Flag Faux Pas

The self-proclaimed most trusted name in news – CNN – has descended into the sleazy tabloid muck of milking airline disasters and fear mongering about terrorism to grab ratings and it came back to bite the network in the ass over the weekend. During coverage of one of this weekend’s many gay pride fests a dimwit CNN McNews bimbo got her panties in a twist over what was hysterically hyped as an ISIS flag being flown in the middle of the hoopla. The extremist Islamist group isn’t exactly friendly to gay folks – or anyone else for that matter – but leave it to CNN to blindly sound the “be afraid” alarm. Much to the network’s chagrin, the flag that was spotted in London was actually a display of a number of anal sex toys including dildos and butt plugs on a black and white banner that somewhat resembled that of the so called Islamic State. Whoops!

Normally a retraction and apology would be issued from any self-respecting news network but not CNN. This should not surprise anyone who realizes how putrid and corrupt that the mainstream media has become in Obamastan. As of early Monday the network is refusing to cop to the error. As Washington Post media blogger Eric Wemple asks in his column “Will CNN address Islamic State-sex-toy-flag screw-up?”:

John Oliver added his name and HBO franchise (“Last Week Tonight“) to the group hammering CNN for its Saturday “exclusive” on the alarming appearance of an Islamic State flag at London’s Pride parade. Based on reporting from international assignment editor Lucy Pawle, the network claimed that no one but CNN had taken notice of this “unnerving sight.”

Turns out some clever individual had pocked an Islamic State lookalike flag with images of sex toys.

In his sendup of the situation, Oliver said, “The greatest moment in global pride celebrations actually had nothing to do with gay marriage and everything to do with the idiocy of CNN.” After running through the dynamics of the screw-up, Oliver noted that one day after the embarrassment, “They’ve still not addressed that mistake on air, probably because it would be just too embarrassing to have a professional journalist say, ‘I’m sorry, despite working at CNN, I still don’t know what a [phallic sex toy] looks like.”

Nor will CNN be addressing the matter. When asked whether it would issue a statement or otherwise do any interviews on the flag mess, a CNN spokeswoman e-mailed, “no.”

CNN should be quite familiar with dildos considering their so-called ace ‘journalists’ like Peter Bergen, Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper among others, so it is just plain sloppy sensationalism and if nothing else, it should at least be acknowledged by the network that they fucked up. After all, the crackerjack staff at CNN is quick to pounce on the sheer outrage of a Confederate flag cake but that is just pandering to schmucks and currying favor with the Obama regime as well as liberal political correctness Nazis and ginning up emotion to draw eyes and web clicks.

I suppose that we shouldn’t expect anything better from a network so desperate for ratings that it spent so much time airing crackpot theories of the disappearance of that Malaysian jetliner last Spring as well as exploiting the grief of suffering loved ones that it should have renamed itself as the Missing Airplane Network. I was actually somewhat surprised that they didn't find a way to pitch a Natalee Holloway tie in to MH370 but it still may happen. Anyway, I wouldn't worry about spending much time waiting for CNN to apologize for their latest screw up because they have no shame.

Hey, At Least Charlie Sheen Has Got Brian Williams' Back

Disgraced NBC News anchorman Brian Williams has been pilloried nonstop over his embarrassing and possibly career killing series of lies but at least one big name celebrity has his back. The unstable, Coke shorting, tiger blood drinking, porn star banging, rehab hopping madman Charlie Sheen has come out in defense of his “hero”. It is a sign of just how truly tough that times are for Williams when a guy like Sheen and all of his scandal drenched baggage is his most prominent advocate.

As is being reported by a number of sources including the New York Daily News in the story entitled “Charlie Sheen defends Brian Williams, calls him ‘victim of a transparent vile witch hunt’ during Twitter rant”:

It looks like Brian Williams has at least one person still behind him.

Charlie Sheen proved to be a big fan of the NBC anchor who was suspended Tuesday night without pay for six months.

Sheen took to Twitter and tweeted, what seems to be some sort of letter in poem form beginning with, "Dear Mr. Williams."

His tweet, which he had to use the app "TwitLonger" because of its length, thanked the "Nightly News" anchor for his "24 years of inimitable professionalism and top shelf brilliance, as a stone cold passion drive and perfectly fact based journalist."

"You good sir, are a hero in my "Entire Library," the actor added.

Maybe the strangest part of the tweet was when he called Williams a "victim of a transparent and vile witch hunt."

At the end of the message to the host he offered his protection "if you need it."

"I remain humbly and on dangerous standby at your service," he added.

Possibly the former "Two and a Half Men" actor feels he can relate to Williams after he too was sacked from the CBS sitcom in 2011.

Sheen has since taken the tweet off his Twitter page.

Good time Charlie must have tumbled off of the wagon again with that Twitter blast that is right up there with his infamous “strafing runs in my underwear” comment that was even too bizarre for the Alex Jones Show. Sheen’s entire rambling defense of lyin’ Brian can be found in stories at the Wall Street Journal online and the conservative blog Breitbart.com.

The Washington Post did an extended piece over the weekend that was a bit kinder on Williams entitled “Storytelling ability connected Brian Williams with viewers but also led to his downfall” from which I excerpt the following:

On camera, Williams was preternaturally gifted, cutting a handsome figure with a serious but easygoing manner. His prominent chin skewed slightly to his left, giving his face a kind of permanent complexity and expressiveness. He could play it straight delivering the news in a rich baritone. He could stick to the facts.

Tom Bettag, a veteran producer who worked with Williams on the short-lived news magazine “Rock Center With Brian Williams” and has held top positions at all of the major networks, called him one of the “most meticulous anchors” in the business.

“His insistence on fact-checking approached being a pain in the butt,” Bettag said. “That side of Brian is largely being lost as he faces what I consider to be an appropriate punishment.”

But when Williams was talking about himself outside the confines of his anchor’s desk, he seemed to want to make his experiences more dramatic, colleagues said. He was the biggest news anchor in the country, the undisputed ratings champ, but he often pushed stories to their limit — and sometimes beyond.

“That’s Brian being Brian” became the newsroom shorthand.

“Brian’s not a liar,” said an “NBC Nightly News” journalist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because network management has strongly discouraged staffers from speaking publicly about Williams. “He’s a guy who gets caught up in the story. He’s a great storyteller. But sometimes storytellers embellish. But you don’t embellish about getting hit by an RPG.”

You just have to love the “Brian’s not a liar” quote that attempts to downplay Williams’ fibbing and the massive breach of trust with the public. It’s like Slick Willie wagging that finger and claiming that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” and we all know how that turned out. I realize that the American language has taken some pretty severe hits in the Orwellian wasteland of the post 9/11 era but a lie not being a lie is right up there with 2+2 = 5.

So as he sweats out his six month suspension while Comcast/NBC executives drool over the prospect of landing Jon Stewart as his replacement, Williams may be so toxic that he will only be left with Charlie Sheen in his corner. It's like a perverse modern Greek tragedy.

It is an American story that serves as a brilliant example of how poorly served that the public has been by the merger of the news with the cult of celebrity.

Cowardly U.S. Media Refuses to Publish Inflammatory Charlie Hebdo Cartoons

The audacious and savage attack on the Paris offices of a satiric newspaper yesterday by radical Islamists sent shockwaves throughout the civilized world. Two heavily armed gunmen stormed the Paris offices of the French publication Charlie Hebdo and proceeded to single out and execute writers and cartoonists. Their "crime" was publishing  images and stories that offended Muslims by showing rude caricatures of the prophet Mohammed. It was a major escalation in the ongoing conflict between violent religious primitivism and decent society and it is a certainty that the gunmen will be hailed as heroes by millions of Muslims and quietly praised by other interested parties. The domestic media was on it like gravy on rice to amplify the fear factor but they are self-censoring the actual cartoons.

While it is appropriate to be outraged over the attack and murder at the Charlie Hebdo offices it is more than a bit hypocritical to milk the tragic slaughter for maximum ratings but not show the controversial material produced by the magazine. The old newspaper maxim of “if it bleeds it leads” is certainly in effect as well as the saturation coverage that likely pleases the government to no end by serving to further justify the domestic surveillance state that is the greatest threat to freedom that we currently face. But why not show the cartoons? If nothing else it would be a big middle finger in the face of religious fanatics and Islamist extremists who believe that sprees of cold-blooded murder will intimidate westerners.

As reported by a story from the CNN Money website “The Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoons: Media outlets shy away or take a stand”:

In the wake of Wednesday's killings at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, most major media outlets are choosing not to republish the French magazine's satirical but highly controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

The news instinct to show the cartoons and express support for the slain journalists is countered by concerns about safety and sensitivity. Depictions of Mohammed are a strict taboo within Islam.

It's brought forth a fierce debate among journalists.

What some are calling sensitivity, others are calling censorship -- an acquiescence to terrorists. There has been widespread speculation that Wednesday's attack was motivated by the publication's criticism of religion.

CNN is among the news outlets that verbally described the cartoons but refrained from showing them on Wednesday. The network has made similar decisions about depictions of Mohammed in the past.

"We are actively discussing the best way of addressing the key issues and images across all of our platforms," a CNN spokeswoman said. "Those conversations will continue throughout the day and beyond as the story develops."

The Associated Press, the world's largest news gathering operation, has a "longstanding policy" to "not move deliberately provocative images on the wire," according to a spokesman. This includes depictions of Mohammed.

Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial page editor for the Washington Post, announced on Twitter that the newspaper will publish a Charlie Hebdo cartoon on the op-ed page on Thursday, though he didn't specify which one. The cartoon, Diehl said, will "help readers understand the story" and serve as a show of solidarity.

The New York Times, "after careful consideration," also decided that "describing the cartoons" would suffice, according to a spokeswoman.

NBC News said that the network will not be showing "headlines or cartoons that could be viewed as insensitive or offensive," and that guidance also applies to CNBC and MSNBC.

Another major network, ABC News, has taken the same position. A CBS News executive, meanwhile, said the network had implemented no explicit ban on the Mohammed cartoons, but had instructed its producers to exercise judgment. "CBS Evening News" showed some of the magazine's provocative cartoons, but none that depicted the prophet. Other outlets took a similar approach, showing covers that did not feature Mohammed.

Fox News told Mediaite it has "no plans to air" the Mohammed cartoons.

When Americans who have already surrendered to fear and the imposition of mass domestic snooping and data-mining programs as well as a de facto police state in the aftermath of 9/11 also engage in stifling themselves then the terrorists have already won. If halting the spread of the anti-Mohammad cartoons was the goal of the fiends who assassinated Charlie Hebdo staffers yesterday then having the majority of the domestic media censor the cartoons is a huge victory for their cause. Have we really become that much of a cowardly nation in the new American century?

Or perhaps not publishing the cartoons – particularly the most graphic ones – is a way to dance around the fact that Charlie Hebdo also published more than it’s share of material offensive to other religions. There are images that portray Jews negatively, Catholics take a beating and the magazine even had the gall to feature an image of Jesus Christ engaged in an act of anal sex. The failure to show the cartoons is not only a disservice to Americans by media corporations that have come to fancy themselves as the ultimate moral arbiters in our slowly closing society but also sheer cowardice of the worst type. God only knows how much further that American McNews would be dumbed-down and dummied up if something similar to what went down in Paris would happen here in The Homeland.

There is nothing quite as offensive as surrendering to the terrorists and the failure to provide the proper context by showing the cartoons in their entirety is exactly that.

Would You Buy a Car From This Man?

As an American would you put your full faith and trust in not only an agent of the US Government but one of President Barack Obama's hand-picked best and brightest, a man who will never simply be thrown under the bus in an election year like the freshly jettisoned Eric Shinseki? This is no ordinary man but one of mighty power who presides over the national intelligence apparatus, the Big Kahuna who is able to lie to Congress with impunity and as Director of National Intelligence presides over the red, white and blue Orwellian security state that is beyond reproach and despite the damage done by the leaks of patriotic whistleblower Edward Snowden the hyrda is already re-configuring with the sneering, bald head of James Clapper erupting from it's scaled, winged body in all of his hissing, forked-tongue resplendence.

The Obama administration and the United States Government itself is asking all Americans to place their blind faith in the behemoth of the surveillance state as though it were almighty God himself and swallow the tale hook, line and sinker that Snowden lied about ever escalating his concerns through the appropriate channels before performing his act of great service and exposing that the bastards are engaged in mass surveillance, data-mining and Christ only knows what else. Put your faith in James Clapper and others just like him because that is exactly what is being requested by Leviathan.

The inevitable counter-attack against Snowden after his Wednesday night blockbuster interview with the big state ass-kisser and establishment media mouthpiece Brian Williams is on and the NSA is wailing "LIAR" as it has released a lone email from Snowden that it claims is the only one that it can find that provides proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the erstwhile contractor did not adhere to the proper protocol in following the chain of command. While making hay out of Snowden's "I was trained as a spy" statement - which by any reasonable definition of what exactly a "spy" does is true the tactics have shifted. I excerpt the following from ABC News but similar cookie-cutter attacks can be found pretty much everywhere today.

Edward Snowden said in a recent interview he tried to go through internal channels to raise his concerns about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs before he slipped out of the country with a trove of secret documents. The NSA disagrees and says it has the email exchange to prove it.

“I actually did go through channels, and that is documented. The NSA has records, they have copies of emails right now to their Office of General Counsel, to their oversight and compliance folks from me raising concerns about the NSA’s interpretations of it – legal authorities,” Snowden told NBC News in a wide-ranging interview. “I reported that there were real problems with the way the NSA was interpreting its legal authorities. And I went even further in this, to say that they could be unconstitutional, that they were sort of abrogating our model of government in a way that empowered presidents to override our statutory laws. And this was made very clear. And the response was, more or less, in bureaucratic language, was, ‘You should stop asking questions.’”

In the interview, Snowden called on Congress to verify that the communications exist.

Today the NSA posted online the email exchange to which the government agency says it believes Snowden is referring. The exchange released by the NSA took place in early April, months after Snowden reportedly contacted journalists in preparation to expose the secret programs.

According to the documents posted online, Snowden wrote to the NSA’s Office of General Counsel on Friday, April 5, 2013 asking for legal clarification about whether Presidential executive orders can supersede federal statute, and whether Department of Defense (DOD) or Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) regulations get “greater precedence.”

The response from the General Counsel’s office, dated Monday, April 8, says that while executive orders have the “force and effect of law,” they cannot override a statute. The response also said that DOD and ODNI regulations are afforded “similar precedence” and one may have more depending on subject matter or date. The respondent invites Snowden to “give [him or her] a call if [he] would like to discuss further.”

The NSA said in statement that Snowden’s email “did not raise allegations or concerns about wrongdoing or abuse, but posed a legal question that the Office of General Counsel addressed.”

“There was no additional follow-up noted,” the NSA said. “There are numerous avenues that Mr. Snowden could have used to raise other concerns or whistleblower allegations. We have searched for additional indications of outreach from him in those areas and to date have not discovered any engagements related to his claims.”

For what it's worth which isn't much in the treacherous US state media Snowden offered a rebuttal to the NSA's Sgt. Schultz "I know nothing" treatment of his attempt to bring the actions of the run amok American Stasi to light but really, the man has already been judged in NBC's kangaroo court by the set for life power suckler Brian Williams. I just did a quick Google search and every fake media and opinion outlet from "conservative" to "liberal" is running with the Snowden lied narrative. 

Who are you going to believe?

First off anyone who has ever worked for a large corporation knows that reporting any type of malfeasance through the "appropriate channels" is bullshit and that human resources departments exist solely to protect the interests of upper management, functioning as a de facto sort of Gestapo in ensuring that valid complaints are quashed and that those making them are punished and usually escorted out of the building. To believe that this would NOT be the practice in the climes of big government and especially American taxpayer dollar devouring leeches like national security contractors is asinine. One wonders just how fucking dumb that the American sheeple are to constantly gobble down the bullshit biscuits fed to them by their corrupt government and it's media propaganda machine - I mean do any of them actually bother to use logic by applying the same rules that their employers use writ large? Not that I would expect any sort of an  answer to that one after the last thirteen and a half years of living as a peasant in  The Homeland under constant surveillance. Americans just line up to salute whatever horseshit that is run up the flagpole by their benevolent leaders. 

The late, great Hunter S. Thompson had it right in his short diatribe "Hey Rube":

“Hey, Rube” is an old-timey phrase, coined in the merciless culture of the traveling carnival gangs that roamed from town to town in the early 20^th century.

Every stop on the circuit was just another chance to fleece another crowd of free-spending Rubes – Suckers, Hicks, Yokels, Johns, Fish, Marks, Bums, Losers, Day Traders in Portland, fools who buy diamonds from gypsies, and anyone over the age of nine in this country who still believes in his heart that all cops are honest and would never lie in a courtroom.

These people are everywhere. They are Legion, soon to be a majority, and 10,000 more are being born every day. It was P.T. Barnum, the Circus man, who explained the real secret of his vast commercial success by repeating his now-famous motto, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” in this country, ahd his job was to keep them amused, with a zeal that has never been equaled in the history of American show business.

Barnum knew what people wanted: Freaks, Clowns, and Wild Animals. The Barnum & Bailey Circus came to town only once a year, and those days were marked as sacred holidays on the John Deere calendars of every Rube in America…. Those dates were special; many schools closed when the Circus came to town, and not every student returned when the public frenzy was over. “Running away with the Circus” was the dream of every schoolboy and the nightmare of every mother with a bored and beautiful daughter. 

Whoever believes the official government fairy tales on Snowden, whether it be that he is a liar, a low level hacker, a narcissist (like Obama), a man living in a James Bond-Jason Bourne style fantasy world or a Chinese-Russian agent is a sucker and a chump and one who should wise up before it is too late. Unfortunately such types breed like rabbits here in the land of the sheep and the home of the slaves.

Clapper is only the figurehead, the barker outside of the geek tent at the local fair selling tickets to the feces eating context but he represents the US establishment itself - just go to Photoshop and cut and paste any of their heads onto his body, they are all the same beneath the surface. 

Hey Rube, wanna hear something......

Biden Shamelessly Exploits Boston Marathon Bombing Tribute

Tuesday, on the one year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing allegedly to be the work of two lone wolf Muslim “terrorists”, both of whom managed to slip through the NSA’s “collect it all” net of total national surveillance was either commemorated or celebrated, probably a combination of both across the fruited plain of The Homeland. The incident, a heinous criminal act consisting of the planting of two shrapnel filled pressure cooker bombs at the finish line permanently altered forever the livesof hundreds of innocent people, a good number of who lost limbs was allegedly perpetrated by two young Muslim men the Tsarnaev brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan. The older brother,Tamerlan who had a mysterious background that seems to have included trips abroad and possible involvement in acts of violence domestically was killed in a shootout. The younger Dzokhar was the target of what was the rollout of a state of martial law and went on to gain national infamy when a flattering picture of him adorned the cover of Rolling Stone magazine – not to bother with the hypocrisy that a similar picture was published in the establishment New York Times and other papers without similar ginned up outrage.

Vice President Joe Biden, still a potential 2016 Democratic party presidential contender until the unstoppable juggernaut that is Hillary Clinton formally announces that she is running (if she is) showed up in Beantown on Tuesday to like the state-corporate media milk the anniversary of the tragedy for all that it was worth. In a soaring and often inspirational speech at the tribute Biden mixed platitudes and Tony Robbins style motivational with the standard demagoguery of the post September 11, 2001 permanent warfare state. The media prepped the masses with the constant reminder that the 3 actual deaths and 264 injured was the WORST TERRORIST ATTACK ON AMERICAN SOIL SINCE 9/11 and the Vice President seized upon that to hammer home his message of hope and American exceptionalism all nice and tightly bound up and then dipped in a coating of pure bullshit to keep it together.

The city of Boston, unified in grief, outrage and I would imagine a good deal of shame after their neighborhoods were swarmed by legions of black clad paramilitary police forces conducting house to house searches at gun point in what for all intents and purposes looked like martial law. The nifty bumper sticker slogan “Boston Strong” was rolled out in the aftermath of the bombing and it was seized upon by locals, the national baseball league Red Sox who used it as a motivator for their World Series run and most of ally by self-serving authoritarian types to push for their police state as well as to use for cheap politics.

Vice President Joseph Biden was one of them. According to a Reuters story Biden thundered:

"We refuse to bend, refuse to change, refuse to yield to fear"... "that is what makes us so proud of this city and this state, what makes me be so proud to be an American. It's that we have never, ever yielded to fear. Never"

While it wasn't exactly George W. Bush standing on the smoldering debris of the World Trade Center the point was made that under the existing poisoned and compromised political class that The Homeland that was birthed on 'the day that everything changed' is here to stay. Biden though is full of crap because FEAR is exactly what Americans yielded to after that pristine Tuesday morning back in 2001  turned into a horror show.  Biden is a liar though because yielding to fear is exactly what Americans did after that day. 

FEAR allowed for the rollback of civil liberties

FEAR provided the basis for an illegal invasion of Iraq, a country that did not threaten America

FEAR unleashed the fully militarized police state on America, as seen in action in Beantown last year two days after the bombing as thousands of black clad paramilitary types ransacked neighborhoods to hunt down one punk. 

FEAR provided the excuse for the NSA and it's private and foreign collaborators to usurp the Constitution and to conduct massive data-mining and warrantless surveillance on millions of law abiding citizens.

FEAR allowed for the redirection of trillions of taxpayer dollars into a monstrous surveillance machine, a Top Secret America that became a Surveillance State Gomorrah and continues to grow daily. 

FEAR allowed the Bush administration to turn the USA into a torture state and Obama is still covering up conduct that was so over the line that it rivaled that of Nazi war criminals hanged at Nuremberg. 

I could continue but I don't have the time...

 Biden also paid tribute to the arrogant form of American imperialism that currently has the world on the brink of a war to end all wars thanks to the hubris, moral rot and bloodlust that permeates from the administration which he is a member of.  The applause line that "We are America, we own the finish line" is ironically appropriate in more ways than one, the real finish line is coming as the Empire is on a collision course with nuclear power Russia as well as economic power that is China, both of whom our neocon infested policy establishment is hellbent at confronting.

The reference to the "finish line" is also fitting for Boston in that after the triumphant World Series win of the Red Sox who rode "Boston Strong" like a gravy train there was a pilgrimage of revelers who actually showed up at that exact same finish line to kiss the street - they had better get used to doing exactly that if and when the martial law drill conducted last year goes live.

FEAR has a twin brother named SHAME and Americans should be ashamed of ourselves for allowing charlatans the likes of Biden and his ilk to have exploited the former without any semblance of the latter. 

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)

U.S. Rejoices as Olympic Hockey Team Spanks Russians

The ceaseless U.S. propaganda campaign that has relentlessly smeared Russia and particularly Vladimir Putin since he granted asylum to former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and then derailed the big push for a war on Syria scored big time on Saturday. The 2014 edition of the U.S. Olympic men's hockey team beat their Russian counterparts setting off a wave of raw nationalist fervor and conjuring up memories of the Cold War era. One of the greatest propaganda triumphs of the latter part of the 20th Century was when the 1980 team defied all odds and beat the big red machine at Lake Placid, NY in what was proclaimed as the "Miracle on Ice" sending a reeling nation into jubilation and pride and creating a cottage industry. In the typical unstuck in time, lacking historical context and politically motivated fashion the state-corporate media seized on the win - the final result cemented in one of those ridiculous bush league shootouts that the National Hockey League has adopted to market the sport domestically - to poke a star spangled middle finger into Putin's eye.

It was a tight, hard fought game before a raucous crowd at the Bolshoi Ice Dome including the Russian leader himself in which the U.S. squad benefited hugely from a disallowed goal late in the third period that led to the shootout. St. Louis Blues forward T.J. Oshie then scored four times in the shootout for the final 3-2 tally. Being a hockey fan of sorts there are two things that I despise one being poor officiating and two being those ridiculous shootouts, how better to wreck a good game than ending it in a silly skills contest? In the NHL playoffs there is a thing called overtime and the teams play until one actually wins in honest fashion. The disallowed Russian goal was one of the former, the net was moved off of its moorings by U.S. goalie Jonathan Quick of the Los Angeles Kings. The problem is not that the net was moved, by a look at the video it clearly was but went unnoticed by anyone until Quick himself pointed it out after he was beaten for the likely winning goal. As in all sports contests fans tend to go off over lousy officiating, a Russian politician's tweet was grabbed and featured in the Washington Post under "Russian Politician Smells a Rat" a propaganda coup.

The post-game results were predictable, the comparisons to the 1980 team and the "Miracle on Ice" were used early and often despite that none of the current members of the U.S. team had even been born yet when Mike Eruzione punched his squad's ticket with destiny. That there is no comparison whatsoever between the teams, in 1980 there were no professional athletes unlike now when every member plays in the NHL which takes a nearly three week mid-season hiatus for the Olympics. The Russian team at that time was an awesome global powerhouse while the U.S. bunch was a scrappy, well-coached collection of amateurs with plenty of heart, it was a historic sports upset that was well deserving of the adoration for a tremendous achievement. It's just hard to get too revved over a collection of highly paid mercenaries who will be back on their own teams come next week. None of this matters though to the pathetic excuse for a media, one of the more nauseating pieces comes from Sports Illustrated:

On the first day of the rest of his life, T. J. Oshie, shootout god, had gained some 50,000 Twitter followers and at least one nickname:

“Now he can talk about his (goals) for the next 30 years,” defenseman Ryan Suter said of Oshie, a comment that also served as a sly dig at the man who scored the game winner in the 1980 Miracle against the Soviet Union and has been dining out on it ever since. “We’ve been giving (T.J.) a hard time in the room. I even told my Dad that. (Bob Suter played on the 1980 Olympic team.) He said that maybe now we can talk about something else for a while.”

Because jibes are the currency of the dressing room, Oshie is now the richest man in Sochi - an American hockey oligarch. He heard the chirping the second he walked into the room after the Russian game on Saturday because, really, no good deed should go unpunished. There are other nicknames floating around – Team USA captain Zach Parise apparently has a beauty – but Oshie is trying to squash them before they leak. Or worse, trend.

“More Twitter followers, that’s about it,” Oshie said when asked about how his life had changed after Team USA’s 5-1 victory over Slovenia on Sunday, a win that gave the Americans a direct berth into the quarterfinals on Wednesday. “I’m still the same guy, the same hockey player, just out here having fun. 

Oshie keeps it in perspective, his St. Louis Blues are in the thick of the race in the Western Conference and the most coveted hardware to a professional hockey player is the Stanley Cup. Besides, the win over the Russians was only in the preliminary round, there is the possibility that they will meet again this week but even if the U.S. wins again it will be no "Miracle on Ice". The duel for the gold will probably be between the U.S. and Canada, the Russians are not in the same league as the 1980 big red machine and are saddled with both the perennial choker Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals and vicious woman abuser Semyon Varlamov of the Colorado Avalanche.

The real winner of the Olympic gold medal, at least in the propaganda slalom would be the ever abysmal domestic media in The Homeland, they continue to plumb the depths with their ongoing hatchet job on all things Russian. You have to be a serious cynic to find as much humor in it all but how do you not laugh when reading something as idiotic as this from the Washington Post "In Russia, World War II is suddenly everywhere again" that unbelievably slams the Russians for invoking WWII:

The pageant of Russian history presented in the Olympic Opening Ceremonies passed over the Soviet victory in World War II to the consternation of more than a few patriots. But the war seems to be making the news these days more than ever nonetheless.

Russian sacrifices in the fight against the Nazis 70 years ago were stupendous, and feelings still run deep. Every family paid a price, and the war haunts everyday life here in a way that short-memory Americans would find startling. But there’s another side to its legacy: For decades after the war, Soviet leaders sought to reinforce their legitimacy by exploiting the memory of the titanic struggle.

And today the Russian government appears to be turning in the same direction.

President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin has portrayed Russia as being under ideological attack. The West, it says, wants to impose a different and alien value system on the Russian people. Critics say Putin has been warning against demons abroad as a way of shoring up his own standing during uncertain times.

And there could be no more potent denunciation of the West’s alleged motives than to compare them to those of Nazi Germany.

I don't know where to start on this one. It is lost on the writer that World War II references are often used to justify everything in the Homeland, each new war is spun by invoking the “good war” and every foreign leader with which the U.S. establishment has an ax to grind with is the “new Hitler”. As for the west (translation: the U.S. of A.) and comparisons to Nazi Germany I wonder where one would get a crazy idea like that. After all, it's not like our media has become the greatest propaganda machine since the Goebbels era, nor do we engage in illegal invasions of foreign countries, we sure as hell don't have a massive Gestapo like surveillance apparatus spying on our every conversation, text, purchase and email and it's not like we will ever have internment camps here. Those goddamned Russians are totally batshit!

But when it comes down to the theater of the absurd it is hard to beat the surfacing of the political cadaver that is Mitt Romney who joined the Russian bashing on NBC’s Meet the Press with David Gregory on Sunday morning.  Mr. ‘47 percent’ being a self-proclaimed authority on all things Olympic after his involvement with the 2002 winter games in Salt Lake City, Utah smacked Putin around for -get this- spending too much money to “cynically, to show off the politicians in a country”. I excerpt the following from The Guardian:

Mitt Romney has condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin for spending billions on the Sochi Winter Olympics, as part of an “unsavoury” vanity project.

However Romney, who made his name turning around the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002 before running unsuccessfully for president as a Republican in 2008 and 2012, risks being accused of hypocrisy. Several officials who worked alongside Romney in Salt Lake City have gone on record accusing him of using the Games for his own political gain.

Romney famously approved a series of Olympic pins bearing his own face, including one in which he was surrounded by official Games mascots beneath the slogan: “Hey Mitt, We Love You!”

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Romney complained that public funds for Olympics were being used “cynically, to show off the politicians in a country”, and said the International Olympic Committee should cap the amount spent on the Games.

“You don’t need to spend $50bn as Russia has or as China did [for the 2008 summer Games], to put on Olympic sport. Olympic sport can be demonstrated at $2-3bn, and all that extra money could be used to do some very important things in terms of fighting poverty and fighting disease around the world.”

He added: “To take money from some people so that politicians can be puffed up and can be shown around the world is, I think, something that is very distasteful at a time when there is so much poverty and so much need.”

What a stunning bit of hypocrisy given the wealthy elitist's on the record contempt towards the little people. Hell, I suppose if they could exhume Ronald Reagan’s corpse and haul it around the country like some bizarre sequel to Weekend at Bernie's that even the Gipper would be in on the new national pastime of kicking Putin in the nuts. I mean can it get any more absurd than trotting out Mitt Romney who crapped his magic Mormon underwear somewhere between the gross celebration of national ignorance during the endless series of GOP primaries and the fulfillment of the White Horse Prophesy?  The guy is a loser and his even his great wealth couldn’t buy enough credibility with the party base (that never trusted the guy in the first place) to take out the vulnerable Obama. So what if Romney was the Big Kahuna at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, what the hell has he done to keep the unconstitutional and illegal NSA out of Utah? Why is it that the LOSERS of U.S. elections can’t just do the dignified thing and go away? John Kerry, John McCain and now Romney all make Al Gore look like a veritable recluse.

The Sochi Olympics can't end soon enough, the state-corporate media needs to get back to covering really important matters like the Kardashians and the Oscar Pistorius trial.

Princeton Snob Sean Wilentz's Epic Snowden-Greenwald-Assange Hit Piece

The establishment is bringing in the big guns to escalate the propaganda war on former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. In a massive hit piece just published by liberal establishment magazine The New Republic Princeton historian and writer Sean Wilentz empties the dirty trick bag in a deranged and rambling knee-capping. In addition to Snowden - who is likely rising to the top of Obama’s kill list after El Presidente nixed NSA reforms on Friday –the author also delivers shots to journalist Glenn Greenwald as well as Wikileaks’ Julian Assange.  I must admit that I have never read such an obviously over the top effort by an elitist shill whose Ivy League snobbery has earned him a who’s who of swinish friends, two of whom are Bill and Hillary Clinton.  While chock full of dastardly spin, ad hominem attacks, guilt by association ploys and enough toxic slime to float a battleship the author’s sleaziest tactic is to denounce both Snowden and Greenwald as GASP - libertarians.

If there is anything that puts a burr up the asses of the warfare, surveillance, crony-capitalist , prison industrial complex elitist state and the thoroughly corrupt two-party criminal syndicate that serves it that would be the damned libertarians.  Christ knows that it is just plain wrong and quite likely borders on treason to expect that this country would stay out of foreign wars of choice, stop spying on its own citizens, stop pumping 85 billion dollars a month into Wall Street gambling casinos and shut down our gulag system that in any normal society would be shameful. Libertarians watch out because the Wilentz piece is the harbinger of things to come, now that the hated Snowden and Greenwald have now been labeled as such it is only a matter of time until the next step in the logical progression of a fascist state is taken in that libertarians will soon begin to be deemed “terrorists”. This is the way that it happens in any totalitarian system and once that label begins to gain traction and enough of the sheeple through their television delivered propaganda systems begin to make the connection it will be time for the yellow and pink badges to start getting passed out.  If you find that to be hysterical and paranoid I would strongly suggest that you take a better look around.

The hit piece, entitled “Understanding the real motivations of Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, and Julian Assange” is a doozy, clocking in at a whopping 6,000+ words and is filled with nastiness designed to impugn the credibility of Snowden and Greenwald in particular with Assange as a throw in. The drive by shooting on the Wikileaks leader settles a score by proxy for Wilentz's pals the Clintons. Hillary suffered no small amount of embarrassment when the organization leaked thousands of classified U.S. State Department cables sending the entitled one on a global tour to kiss the asses of offended heads of state and Mrs. Rodham-Clinton is notorious for her mean streak and penchant for vendettas. Assange was the top enemy of the establishment before Snowden took his place, set up on bogus sex charges that would have him extradited to The Homeland where he would be tortured, tried (a secret indictment may exist) and possibly executed. He is currently holed up in Ecuador's London embassy but still remains a highly influential global figure for exposing the high crimes of a rogue state.

The primary target is of course Snowden as well as those who support him. The patriot and whistleblower has been receiving far too much positive press for the evil empire’s tastes and now that Obama has extended his middle finger to the American people on NSA reforms the Mighty Wurlitzer is whirring into action. It will be Orwell’s “two-minute hate” 24/7 as the fascists who run the U.S. work desperately to erode his credibility and demonize him. The escalation in the rhetoric of scum like House Intelligence Committee boss Mike Rogers who just announced that he is conducting a Darrell Issa/Peter King style inquisition on whether Snowden was working on behalf of the Russians will lead to the next phase which will be targeting the man for termination with extreme prejudice. It is essential to break down his levels of support and to paint those sympathetic to his cause as enemies of the state and there are bonus points for taking out “libertarians” as well, they are the greatest threat to the system as it is currently configured and their targeting is a bipartisan endeavor.

The opening salvo alone pretty much trumpets the intention of the entire thing:

By exposing the secrets of the government, they claim to have revealed its systematic disregard for individual freedom and privacy. Theirs are not the politics of left against right, or liberals against conservatives, or Democrats against Republicans, but of the individual against the state. To oppose them is to side with power against liberty, surveillance against freedom, tyrannical secrecy against democratic openness.

What’s astonishing about their ascent to heroism is the breadth of their support. The embrace of the antiwar left and the libertarian right was to be expected. But effusions of praise for the leakers can also be found throughout the liberal establishment. The New York Times, which has come to rely on the leakers as prize sources, is now crusading on Snowden’s behalf. Its editorial page has celebrated him for having “done his country a great service” and supports clemency for the crimes he has committed. A stellar array of liberal intellectuals and pundits, from David Bromwich and Robert Kuttner to Richard Cohen and Ezra Klein, have hailed Snowden, as have elected officials, including Senators Bernie Sanders and Ron Wyden. To criticize the leakers, as the legal journalist Jeffrey Toobin and a few other writers have done, is to invite moral condemnation. Even mild objections to their methods are dismissed as damning proof of either corruption—“principle-free, hackish, and opportunistic,” in Greenwald’s words—or outright complicity with Big Brother.

So far, the adulatory treatment the leakers have received closely mirrors their own self-presentation. But important caches of evidence have gone largely unexamined by the media. Documents are, of course, the leakers’ stock-in-trade—and they have produced quite a few documents of their own. The Internet houses a variety of their writings for message boards, blogs, and magazines. Much of this writing was produced before the leakers entertained the possibility of a global audience. They are documents in which one can glimpse their deepest beliefs and true motives. What they reveal is at odds with the flattering coverage the leakers have received, and goes beyond personal eccentricities or dubious activities in the service of noble goals. They reveal an agenda that even the leakers’ most dedicated admirers should question.

The piece gets a lot of mileage out of attacking Snowden as a supporter of Ron Paul who is trashed by the Princeton elitist as a kook, racist and supporter of the John Birch Society. The author digs up a good many of comments made in chat rooms etc. allegedly made by Snowden (or maybe NSA sock puppets) here are some of them:

“I have a Walther P22,” he wrote. “It’s my only gun, but I love it to death.”  (obviously a reference to the fictional Brit superspy James Bond - probably GCHQ's contribution to Wilentz)

“See, that’s why I’m goddamned glad for the second amendment”…Me and all my lunatic, gun-toting NRA compatriots would be on the steps of Congress before the C-Span feed finished” (that will peel off a few of the gun control advocates who sympathize with Snowden)

… the elderly “wouldn’t be fucking helpless if you weren’t sending them fucking checks to sit on their ass and lay in hospitals all day.” (perhaps we have the 2016 Republican presidential nominee)

Why bother with any more, bits and pieces of Wilentz’s screed will be popping up throughout the state media for the next several weeks and has surely already been sent out as NSA approved talking points.

Glenn Greenwald, whose new media venture First Look Media founded on a stake of reportedly $ 50 million by EBay founder Pierre Omidyar is flogged mercilessly by Wilentz simply because any sort of honest and critical investigative journalism will render rags like The New Republic obsolete.  The writer airs a litany of grievances against Greenwald that is a textbook example of the old ‘throw as much shit at the wall as possible to see what sticks’ tactic. Wilentz brings up everything from his job history, the fact that as a private attorney that he once defended white-supremacist Nathan Hale (consistent with the now established state contempt for the Constitution), visited right-wing websites and has at times expressed views that could make him a closet right-winger including comments about illegal immigrants blah, blah, blah.  This should all sell well with the liberal elite snobs and their vicious political correctness jihads that are conducted in the name of protecting identity based demographic segments while supporting a president whose policies are fascistic, warmongering and encourage a culture of elitist corruption while punishing those economic entrapment in the underclass render them voiceless while Barry and the boys continue to shovel money into big banks that fail to lend it out. Greenwald is also denounced as a Ron Paul supporter.

In tying it all into the new overarching narrative launched by the Über fascist Rogers on Sunday morning Wilentz also invokes Putin and Russia

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The payoff of the Snowden affair for Putin and the Russians thus far has been substantial. Just as the Kremlin’s human rights reputation, already woeful under Putin has spiraled downward, it is able to swoop in to rescue an American political outlaw, supposedly persecuted by the Obama administration. The dissident journalist Masha Gessen has observed, “The Russian propaganda machine has not gotten this much mileage out of a U.S. citizen since Angela Davis’s murder trial in 1971.”

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Admittedly the Obama regime as well as the entire hypocritical U.S. establishment has been smarting over Putin’s granting of amnesty to Snowden served up a nice shit sandwich with a vodka chaser last summer. Putin also had the gall to pounce on a gaffe by the stammering goon that is Secretary of Skull and Bones John Kerry to prevent the entry of the country into yet another Middle East war, largely through the instigation of the House of Saud and based on the predictable lie. The whopper being that the Bashar al Assad regime used Sarin gas on civilians including women and children at Ghouta. Putin brokered the deal to have Assad surrender his chemical weapons stocks and prevent yet another costly and disastrous war of choice. Putin then rubbed the faces of The Homeland into a big steaming pile of American exceptionalism with a scathing New York Times Op Ed piece where he not only reminded those ignorant of history that Russia was a crucial World War II ally and that:

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

That the Putin smackdown was served up on September 11^th was the equivalent of a running drop kick in the balls for Obama and the rest of the swine who run this place. While Putin’s human rights record is nothing to write home about let us not forget that we now reside in a torture state where there exist secret courts, the Constitution has been disemboweled by the Bush and Obama administrations and there is no way on God’s green earth that Snowden will ever get a fair trial in the U.S.  The more likely result would be a hell of torture, sexual humiliation, mental cruelty and sadism followed by a the public spectacle of a show trial and then disappearance into a prison cell for the rest of his days where he will be tortured on a daily basis. Give some credit to Putin in this regard, he doesn’t hide the fact that he is a cruel mean bastard behind a flag and a largely false history.

The smug and sanctimonious hypocrisy of this country when it comes to pretending that it something that is the exact polar opposite of that which it truly is plumbs the depths of perversion.

The Wilentz manifesto is at The New Republic but can also be found at The New Statesman if you don’t want to give them the benefit of web traffic which is understandable. Read it if you will but be advised that a strong stomach is necessary.

(Image: AFP/Getty Images)