The Undeclared War on Muslims is Big Business in America

New York Times Whores Out to Anti-Muslim Fanatics

There has long been a concerted effort to demonize Muslims in the American Homeland as a part of the never-ending big money maker that is the phony war on terror. Big media of course plays a critical role in the dark propaganda campaigns that ensure that millions of Americans will continue to see the menace of al Qaeda and worse lurking in the darkest corner of their closets and under their beds. The connection is never made that the military and security industrial complex need the ongoing Muslim bogeyman to keep those god blessed dollars rolling in and to keep the war machine running on high. The business of America anymore - particularly since September 11, 2001 - is death, as in selling arms, financing repression and peddling surveillance technology against dissidents to friendly tyrants. The wars that drive what is left of the economy must go on as they always will in our own version of Oceania.

There are now ongoing military operations throughout the Middle East and in Africa, the latter is getting much attention in that the storyline is justperfect for the American low-information types and their knee jerk response to all things Muslim in that the radical group Boko Haram that kidnapped over 200 Nigerian schoolgirls represents another opportunity to unleash Team America World Police to delight those who watch far too much television and still buy into the lies of state. Secretary of Skull and Bones John Kerry - after thankfully disappearing for about a week or so after being a subject of much mockery due to his ongoing foreign policy foibles - reemerged at a State Department dinner to tout the latest fleecing of the taxpayer in a US involvement in Nigeria. Kerry oozed sanctimony as he delivered the lines that "Boko Haram, Nigeria, only the United States is there offering the assistance to help find those young women", and "Other countries, not only aren't they invited, but they did not even offer". There is a reason for this - it is a Nigerian problem and should be dealt with by Nigerians but in Murka it serves the purpose of perpetuating the big lie of the devilish Muslim fiend.

Years ago I came across an extremely interesting little book called "American Terminator: Myths, Movies and Global Power" which in a series of essays examines the role of movies in shaping and reinforcing the basis for a mythical American exceptionalism and Empire. The following passage is from that book which I recommend to anybody with an interest in just how popular culture serves as a delivery device that is integral in the American indoctrination process. I excerpt the following:

Fear is essential: 'Be afraid, be very afraid' is the American condition. To live in America is to be beset by fear, anxiety and insecurity, to be surrounded by potential harm, enemies and evil intent. And the wolf is always at the door. A nation of optimists is the more usual self-representation of America. Repetitively, Hollywood films conclude with a resolution, a rescue, and the winners ride off into the sunset or snuggle into a warm embrace that reassures us they will live happily ever after. The formulaic ending, however, is necessary because the plot, the narrative, is founded on and propelled by fear and anxiety, the dark essential underpinning of the American condition. For America fear is an original, natural condition, the inescapable birth rite (and birth right), the inherited condition of a fragile existence that must constantly be defended. Without fear there is no America; constant recourse to fear is the motivating force that determines its actions and reactions.

The fear needs to be of a foreign nature to effectively get the public on board with the murderous wars of aggression and the cool, detached drone strikes that are being carried out in the name of Americans, killing innocent Muslim women and children and turning their surviving loved ones against good old Uncle Scam, therefore providing the justifying factor for even more money stolen from essential social services etc to fund the killing machine. It is a damned good con that the establishment has going and without the assistance of a neocon infested media is one that will go on for the foreseeable future. Jack Bauer, American's favorite Nazi may have cut his television teeth on torturing and killing Muslims in the now updated for the times "24", Showtime's "Homeland"took it to another level with sleeper agents and Iranian terror on US shores and the box office hit "Zero Dark Thirty" further promoted torture but the real damage is done by what far too many still see as honest mainstream media and institutions such as the New York Times.

The Times is the same newspaper that just has come under fire for the sleazy hit piece disguised as a book review of Glenn Greenwald's "No Place to Hide" by notorious presstitute Michael Kinsley (Greenwald's response is here) as well as the retracted Michael Gordon story prominently featured as a basis to blame the hated Vladimir Putin for meddling in East Ukraine. The New York Times is again catching well deserved hell, this time for an insidious full page add that invokes 9/11 in calling for the persecution of Muslims. The ad, sponsored by yet another of those ubiquitous neocon think tanks, this one called "The Investigative Project on Terrorism" has a picture of the twin towers of the original World Trade Center with the menacing verbiage "Stop the Islamist Groups from Undermining America's security, liberty and free speech" with the IPT website address featured as a source for more information.

There hasn't been much outrage in the US state-corporate media as of yet this morning, they are too busy flogging to death the daily government talking points along with Donald Sterling and Miley Cyrus updates but The Guardian is once again on the ball. In a piece entitled "Why would the New York Times stoop to running an Islamophobe's ad?" subtitled"The newspaper delivers an air of legitimacy, even when those words are paid for by xenophobes to spread alarmist messages"by Raya Jalabi I excerpt the following:

By its own admission, the New York Times does not accept advertisements that are "gratuitously offensive on racial, religious or ethnic grounds or that are considered to be in poor taste." So it's difficult to comprehend how a full-screen online ad by a right-wing group warning readers about the"Islamist groups" out to undermine America's security, liberty and free speech passed those allegedly rigorous standards,

But, according to the Times's interpretation, the Investigative Project on Terrorism's plea for readers to "learn more" about the unnamed terror groups wreaking havoc on these United States was nothing more than a sober and warranted distress signal.

"STILL HERE. STILL FREE. BUT FOR HOW LONG?", the all-caps ad read, the words neatly positioned against the haunting backdrop of the smoking twin towers.

Readers who clicked on the ad were taken to a website for the IPT, the group who paid for the prominent space. A non-profit group, it claims to be "recognized as the world's most comprehensive data center on radical Islamic terrorist groups" -- though the metrics by which it measures itself are as-yet unclear. Clicking through its vast troves of "terror data" and "reports", readers could stumble on the Call To Action by the American People, an "educational" pamphlet that urges citizens to fight back against the "campaign of censorship" that the supposedly "main radical Islamic groups" have been waging against the most sacred freedom: free speech.

It is the typical fear porn that is pimped by secretive groups like The Clarion Fund that was behind the 2008 distribution of millions of those nasty little "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West"DVDs in the nation's newspapers in the run up to the presidential election in order to capitalize on the bund rallies being conducted by Sarah Palin that elicited cries of "kill him"against then candidate Obama. The target audience for the coming wave of anti-Muslim slime that will be churned out in this mid-term election year is the same as it ever was and bottom feeding hatemongers such as Pamela Geller, David Horowitz, Robert Spencerand their ilk will be instrumental in fomenting the fear and loathing as November draws closer. It is imperative that the support for the undeclared US war on Muslims continue so that the elected officials most receptive to big military and other special interest cash not be displaced by more rational representation.

Most disturbing though, and I go back to the cultural aspects is the media role in promulgating the anti-Muslim hate that exists today in this country. Fiendish advertisements funded by nefarious front groups in the nation's "paper of record" aside the problem is deeper than that. Take for instance HBO's comic Bill Maher whose popular show gives him a legitimate forum from which to demonize Muslims. Maher, an avowed atheist to his credit delivers deserved pillories to Christianity (at least in the southern-fried US incarnation that has excommunicated Jesus) but when speaking of Islam the millionaire joker takes the sort of edge more in line with the more vitriolic and hateful types who are legion in the extreme right that he hypocritically condemns. Libertarian magazine Reason has published an insightful article entitled "Bill Maher's Un-Cool Muslim Bashing"on their website from which I excerpt:

Maher is an arch atheist who regards all religions as awful. However, he thinks that Islam's inherently violent nature makes it particularly so. And he agrees with American Enterprise Institute's Aayan Hirsi Ali that liberals ought to stop pretending that a moderate form of Islam is even possible right now.

Maher's bold generalization might sound hip and cool--but it is actually false and dangerous (and I say this as an atheist born in the Hindu faith that has historically been at loggerheads with Islam.)

For starters, it ignores the 300 million Muslims--the size of America's population--in the world who are Sufis, a mystical form of Islam that is essentially pacifist and believes that the path to God is through music and dance.

Worse, Maher doesn't understand one can't characterize a whole faith as extremist without also legitimizing the idea that extreme measures are necessary to control it.

That's something even the un-cool George Bush instinctively understood. That's why he took pains to stress that America's beef wasn't with Islam--only the extremists perverting their faith. The upshot was that even though the attack killed 3,000 Americans, America avoided a backlash against Muslims. To be sure, a handful of innocent Asians, some of who weren't even Muslims, suffered random attacks, but there would have been far more bloodshed if Bush had followed Maher-style Muslim bashing.

Contrast this with India, my native country, where Maher-style denunciations of Muslims are part and parcel of the political culture. Barely six months after 9/11, about 2,000 Muslims were butchered in a pogrom in the state of Gujarat. (The governor on whose watch this happened just became the prime minister of India this week.)

India's majority Hindu population has historically had tense relations with the country's Muslim minority so anti-Muslim violence is nothing new. And in this case, the proximate cause of the massacre was retribution for some 50 Hindu pilgrims who died in a train fire that Muslims were rumored to have caused.

But the larger cause was that post-9/11, Maher-type talk of rising Islamofascism raised anti-Muslim sentiment in the country to a fevered pitch. It legitimized the ongoing demonization of India's Muslims, leaving the country with few inner resources to contain the violence against them.

The new leader of India, Narendra Modi who is referenced by the writer, Shikha Dalmia was the overwhelming choice of big business interests and rode into power on a wave of nationalism bears the stain of the 2002 pogrom unleashed on Muslims at Gujarat. Not that I give the Bush administration much credit for anything and they do have a huge share of culpability of exploiting anti-Muslim animosity for political points but they did deny Modi a visa in 2005. In a telling sign of the times the triumphant strongman of India has been invited to visit with President Barack Obama at the White House. The unifying factor of anti-Muslim fanaticism washes away many a sin, especially when there is a boatload of money riding on providing the military hardware, surveillance power and ideological clout of the bought and paid for media that promotes it.

Shame on the New York Times, Shame on them All!

Biden Goes to Kiev as America Goes to Hell

Vice President Joe Biden made a highly publicized trip to Kiev on Monday in a show of support to the unelected, coup installed government of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk or “Yats” as he has become affectionately referred to by the US regime changers. The Easter “truce” was shattered when what was likely US backed neo-Nazi militias (or mercenaries ) engaged in a gunfight near Slavyansk resulting in at least three deaths. The corrupt US state-corporate media had the backs of the occupying junta in Kiev though and blamed it on Russia and that horrible, horrible man Vladimir Putin. By now anyone with an inkling of sense can fully see that just about everything that comes out in the US media are the lies of neocon propagandists itching to put some American boots on the ground in East Ukraine – just not theirs. When it comes to a cowardly lot of bitches and bastards who are always foaming at the mouth to send the sons and daughters of others to murder, torture and be killed or maimed themselves there are none more adept than the embedded neoconservatives who have like termites eaten their way into what was once an admired and honorable democracy. The neocons have company now in the liberal interventionists and their “improve or we’ll kill you” crusade to make the world into a ‘better’ place – according to their vision. Together they are a  toxic and volatile mix that may prove to be fatal barring the miraculous backing down by a renegade US government led by the petulant narcissist Barack Obama.

The poisonous hydra of the US media is doing their damned level best to continue to agitate for the confrontation – and eventual toppling of Putin which is a fantasy and the provocations continue, now there is the tale that the sanction twins Obama and the stammering goon John Kerry are going to go after $40 billion of Putin’s own dough. It is ridiculous that the parasitical global finance mafia and their military arm in Washington would go so far as to steal the money that Putin allegedly skimmed from his own people. Recall after the fall of the Soviet Union that there was a US sanctioned looting of Russia by chosen oligarchs under the cartoon figure of the drunken Boris Yeltsin. It is truly a symptom of the now cancerous late stage of looter capitalism as exemplified by the ruling class of the US of A that everything has to be monetized, including revenge.

Hell, with the way that the lies continue to pile up – including that debunked story of forced registration of Jews in East Ukraine that keeps popping up in the US media – it is questionable whether Putin even has the money in that Swiss bank account or it will be created out of thin air or otherwise temporarily shifted from the black budget to provide the illusion that will drive the media coverage. Personally, I don’t think that Putin is that fucking stupid to stash the money where it could be easily found by the jackals in Washington, London and New York. There is also once again the serious hypocrisy of the US, which has one of the most corrupt political systems that now exists with a millionaire occupied Congress having the moral high ground to wag that big red, white and blue finger at anyone. 

While Biden breaks bread with "Yats" and his neo-Nazis and fascists in Kiev the job of selling what may well be the coming slaughter by extremist right-wing militias, some who lionize the fiendish WW II Nazi collaborator and mass murderer Stepan Bandera the disinformation machine in The Homeland continues to be set on high. In the most recent whopper, the New York Times, our nation's 'paper of record' has now reached back into the Judith Miller days to sell the war on Russia via Ukraine.  Michael Gordon, a collaborator of the disgraced Miller whose work on behalf of Dick Cheney and the neocons in spreading the lies that led to the ongoing blood soaked attack on Iraq is at it again. I regularly read the work of Robert Parry of Consortium News who is a true investigative reporter of the likes that are no longer tolerated in the debased domestic media. I excerpt from his latest piece which calls into question the NYT and Gordon for what for all intents and purposes is yet another bullshit story. The Parry piece is entitled "Another NYT-Michael Gordon Special?" from which I excerpt:

There is now a pattern to New York Times “investigative” stories that seek to pin the blame on some nefarious foreign enemy, as in the 2002 article on Iraq buying aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges; the 2013 “vector analysis” tracing sarin-laden rockets to a Syrian military base; and now a photographic analysis proving that Russian soldiers are behind unrest in eastern Ukraine.

All these stories draw hard conclusions from very murky evidence while ignoring or brushing aside alternative explanations. They also pile up supportive acclamations for their conclusions from self-interested sources while treating any doubters as rubes. And, these three articles all involved reporter Michael R. Gordon.

The infamous aluminum tube story of Sept. 8, 2002, which Gordon co-wrote with Judith Miller, relied on U.S. intelligence sources and Iraqi defectors to frighten Americans with images of “mushroom clouds” if they didn’t support President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. The timing played perfectly into the administration’s advertising “rollout” for the Iraq War.

Of course, the story turned out to be false and to have unfairly downplayed skeptics of the nuclear-centrifuge scenario. The aluminum tubes actually were meant for artillery, not for centrifuges. But the article provided a great impetus toward the Iraq War, which ended up killing nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Gordon’s co-author, Judith Miller, became the only U.S. journalist known to have lost a job over the reckless and shoddy reporting that contributed to the Iraq disaster. For his part, Gordon continued serving as a respected Pentagon correspondent.

Gordon’s name also showed up in a supporting role on the Times’ botched “vector analysis” of Sept. 17, 2013, which nearly helped get the United States into another Mideast war, with Syria. That story traced the flight paths of two rockets, recovered in suburbs of Damascus after the Aug. 21 sarin gas attack, back to a Syrian military base 9.5 kilometers away.

The article became the “slam-dunk” evidence that the Syrian government was lying when it denied launching the sarin attack that killed several hundred people.

AND

The Times reported, “Now, photographs and descriptions from eastern Ukraine endorsed by the Obama administration on Sunday suggest that many of the green men are indeed Russian military and intelligence forces — equipped in the same fashion as Russian special operations troops involved in annexing the Crimea region in February. Some of the men photographed in Ukraine have been identified in other photos clearly taken among Russian troops in other settings.”

The Times apparently accepts the photos as legitimate in terms of where and when they were taken, but that requires first trusting the source, the post-coup regime in Kiev which has a strong motive for making this argument as a prelude to violently crushing the eastern Ukrainian protests.

Secondly, one has to believe that the fuzzy photographs of the circled faces are the same individuals. They may be, but it is difficult to be sure from what is displayed. The principal figure shown is a man with a long beard and a cap sometimes pulled down over his forehead. He could be a Russian special forces soldier or a character from “Duck Dynasty.”

And the resemblance of some uniforms to those worn by Russian soldiers is also circumstantial, since military gear often looks similar or it could have been sold to civilians, or the men could be veterans who kept their old uniforms after leaving the military. The fact that these men are adept at handling weapons also could mean that they have prior military experience, not that they are still active.

For the Times to cite the Obama administration’s endorsement of the Kiev regime’s claims as some kind of verification is also silly. Anyone who has followed the Ukraine crisis knows that the U.S. government is wholeheartedly on the side of the post-coup regime, trumpeting its propaganda and dismissing any counterclaims from the Yanukovych camp or from Moscow.

The rest of the piece can be read here and I would strongly recommend the fine work at Consortium News as an invaluable resource to those seeking to understand where it all went wrong in the US of A, particularly in the huge archives section which is filled with must read stories. From the CIA assimilating Nazi war criminals after WW II to The October Surprise to Iran-Contra to the present this is an essential source of information that you will not find in establishment organs such as the New York Times or Washington Post.

Despite it's venerable reputation, The New York Times cannot be trusted and it is not because of any sort of phony "liberal" bias but an establishment bias that supports the American war machine no matter which criminal party is technically in power, allowing Gordon to continue to prostitute himself out as a mouthpiece is as damning as any bullshit on it's editorial page inhabited by the likes of set for life country clubber elite insiders the likes of Thomas Friedman, David Brooks and Nicholas Kristof.  Gordon has joined the pantheon of professional imperial bullshitters with his latest, right up there with NBC's insipid David Gregory who on Easter Sunday continued to push the hoax that was the Donetsk Jew registration leaflets after they had pretty much been exposed as a fraud. In an interesting and revealing footnote a story came out that the network had hired a "psychological consultant" for the host of their sinking Sunday morning flagship. 

The presstitutes continue to do their job in squealing like war pigs although it has yet to be seen as to how effective this latest pack of lies will resonate. Regarding Ukraine, according to a poll (that is if you can believe such things) a whopping 84 percent of Americans don’t know where the hell that it is even located on a map. I think that is way too high though, I  personally wouldn’t put it much above 70 percent or so.

Finally in a bit of great news the 2014 Boston Marathon was run today and nothing blew up, now can we just get over the whole “Boston Strong” thing?