Obama Regime to Begin Selling Arms to Vietnam

After nearly six years of living in the existential Hell of Obamastan it should be pretty obvious to all by now that there is nothing sacred to this villainous administration. With Mr. Hope and Change signing off on yet another war in the Middle East that most certainly is going to need American "boots on the ground" at some point, the dirty hidden dealings within his administration are ongoing. Now according to Reuters the Obama regime is about to lift the arms embargo and begin selling weapons to Vietnam.

The Reuters piece which is entitled "Courting Vietnam, U.S. prepares to ease arms embargo" reports:

Nearly 40 years after the United States helicoptered its last soldiers out of Vietnam in an 

ignominious retreat, Washington is moving closer to lifting an arms embargo on its former enemy, with initial sales likely to help Hanoi deal with growing naval challenges from China.

Senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the initiative said Washington wants to support Vietnam by strengthening its ability to monitor and defend its coastline, and said unarmed P-3 surveillance planes could be one of the first sales.

Such aircraft would also allow Vietnam to keep track of China's increasingly assertive activities in the South China Sea, a potential flash point because of interlocking claims from many countries to its islands and reefs.

Two senior Obama administration officials said discussions on easing the embargo are taking place in Washington and could result in a decision later this year.

"The mood is changing, and it is something we're looking at seriously," said one of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. "What we have found is a partner in which our interests are converging."

I suppose that this was going to happen sooner or later, after all corporations have long been salivating over the potential of exploiting Vietnam's cheap labor force for more offshoring, but this is just a dagger in the back from Obama. He may pay lip service to Vietnam war veterans during his many public relations ceremonies awarding Medals of Honor (I am surprised that he didn't find a way to give one to Oprah) but it is all political shtick. The truth is that he has been working toward "normalizing" relations with Vietnam for quite some time now. Last year Mr. Obama hosted the president of Vietnam, Truong Tan Sang at the White House and earlier this year signed off on a civilian nuclear deal with the country.

Obama is one slippery devil, the same can be said for media appointed head of the Republican party, Senator John McCain. The former prisoner of war who spent time in the infamous Hanoi Hilton is reported by the Reuters story to be an instrumental assistant in facilitating the lifting of the arms embargo:

U.S. Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who led the charge to normalize ties with Vietnam in the early 1990s, said he would shortly present a bipartisan proposal to lift some of the restrictions on arms sales.

McCain was one of four U.S. senators to meet the Hanoi leadership and discuss the arms embargo this summer at a time when Sino-Vietnamese ties were at their lowest ebb in decades.

 In August, six days after the senators' visit, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, made the first trip to Vietnam by America's top soldier since 1971. Vietnam People's Navy Commander-in-Chief Admiral Nguyen Van Hien traveled to the United States last week and discussed joint naval exercises with Navy Secretary Ray Mabus.

 Vietnam's foreign minister, Pham Binh Minh, will visit Washington in early October for talks with Secretary of State John Kerry, and U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is expected to go to Vietnam before the end of the year.

But that is just McCain, a world class hypocrite whose primary purpose in life seems to be acting as a pimp for the Pentagon and who constantly shows up in conflict zones helping to open lucrative markets for the defense industry. McCain is reportedly going to be assisted  by two high ranking Obama regime scumbags who have long used their status as Vietnam veterans to cynically bolster their political careers in Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John "Skull and Bones" Kerry. Unlike the families and former vets who have vowed to "never forget" when it comes to Vietnam, particularly POWS and MIA's, McCain has no such qualms. A total charlatan, just like Obama.

This is totally disgusting on every level and I can only imagine how real Vietnam veterans must feel. Obama brings to mind a quote from the late counterculture writer Hunter S. Thompson on Richard M. Nixon in that "he could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time". 

By lifting the arms embargo Obama might as well just walk on down to that black granite wall upon which the names of over 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam are inscribed, whip out his weasel and piss all over it.

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!

Obama Plays Identity Politics Card for Winter Olympics

You have to give it to the man, he has absolutely no capacity for shame. In a move that was as inevitable as it is cynical Barack Obama has dipped into the bag of dirty tricks to shame Russian President Vladimir Putin on the global stage. In appointing two openly gay members including former tennis star Billie Jean King to the Olympic delegation for the upcoming games in Sochi. Now let me say that I am a fervent supporter of gay rights, marriage equality and despise the too often state sanctioned discrimination of any particular demographic group. This stuff just simply has no place in a modern society that is at least technically advertised as ‘free’ and as more corporations continue to accept diversity because after all, why would a business go about alienating potential customers laws will eventually be changed to move towards a more inclusive land.

While Putin’s record on gay rights is abysmal it is just more of the same U.S. hypocrisy in that Obama and his miscreant administration condemn Putin yet a good many of allies have repressive regimes in which homosexuality is not tolerated and gays are brutalized. Take for one example our buddies over in Saudi Arabia whose anti-gay mania can lead to imprisonment or execution. They don’t exactly have the best record with women either yet before Prince Bandar and the House of Saud’s recent snit over Barry and the boys not attacking Syria on their behalf they were long considered a regional ally as important as Israel which has tolerance problems of its own.  I might interject that any society in which the primitive and simplistic belief system that is religion is predominant that there will be the persecution of gays including right here in the U.S.A.

This is just more of the same changing the subject for Obama, nothing to whip up the emotions like bashing the Russian bear over the intolerance of gay people, this whips up the Democratic base, a gaggle of identity groups jockeying for position and aligns them with the neocons as the propaganda war on Russia’s leader gets ratcheted up. El Presidente is probably still reeling after his botched attempts to turn yesterday’s White House visit by Silicon Valley executives demanding that he get his NSA Stasi under control into a public relations showcase for the risen from the dead Obamacare website. The change of subject to wagging his finger at Putin for human rights abuses (at least Putin isn’t dialing up drone attacks) is a winner, whipping shovels of bloody red meat to the base. It is no different than the all too familiar Republican “culture war” to mobilize the rabble and both are disgusting, stupid and only serve to distract from the real problems that have this country on the brink of full blown fascism and collapse.

Obama began his ridiculous tantrum over the Russian Olympics months ago when he lowered the prestige of the office to Idiocracy levels in showing up on the Tonight Show with celebrity Jay Leno. In his nationally televised tantrum he pounced on a meatball of a pitch by the host invoking – sigh – the Nazis over Putin’s recently passed anti-gay laws:

"I've been very clear that when it comes to universal rights, when it comes to people's basic freedoms, that whether you are discriminating on the basis of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, you are violating the basic morality that I think should transcend every country, and I have no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgender persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them"

Barry was in full campaign mode. I happen to have many gay friends, a good amount of who detest Obama for his craven manipulation of them as a voting bloc whenever it comes time to run for election, LGBTs are  like other groups that are similarly used as political footballs and then quickly forgotten after the votes have been cast. Some of the most virulently anti-Obama

Now with the formal announcement of the Olympic delegates Obama has not only played the gay card but has dealt it from the bottom of the deck.

Obama Should Be Impeached for NSA Run Amok

“I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency and that if the cancer was not removed the president himself would be killed by it”

Nixon aide John Dean

I continue to look for the outrage within the political establishment, especially with the diehard Obama haters in the Republican party over the rampaging run amok NSA and the global surveillance. Not only have our civil liberties as Americans been desecrated but the Constitution has become, exactly as George W. Bush so famously tabbed it “just a goddamned piece of paper”. We essentially have no privacy rights and the government has been lying for years about the invasive data-mining and storage for ominous future usage of personal communications, credit and websites visited by law abiding Americans. Again where the hell is the outrage? If the GOP wants a real reason to finally mount Barry’s head on a pike here it is, Slick Willie was impeached for far less. Congressman Grand Theft Auto, Darrell Issa made the following remark on Obama's NSA in this piece in the Guardian - "Remember, the NSA works for the president. Through his national security advisers he knew or should have known" - but he is all talk and no action, nowhere to be found conducting one of his inquisitions when it isn't for show. Darrell could be a star if he started the impeachment hearings over Obama's NSA - but he won't. He is part of the club.

Obama is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors for allowing the NSA surveillance to continue and grow exponentially on his watch, hell he constantly lies about it to protect the criminals within the system. This is not some bullshit Benghazi conspiracy mongering, nor more political carping over a disastrous rollout of an abominable corporate insurance parasite friendly health care “reform” scam. This is real, not only are the rights of American citizens being trampled but ongoing revelations of the extent of our fascist deep state operations monitoring the communications of world leaders - our freaking allies for God’s sake is doing enormous damage to the national image and squandering whatever credibility had been accumulated, earned hard by those who gave their lives in past wars all for naught.  Hard core American fascists such as House Intelligence honcho Mike Rogers can primp and pontificate for the cameras spewing nonsense like this for CNN per the above linked Guardian piece -

"I would argue by the way, if the French citizens knew exactly what that was about, they would be applauding and popping champagne corks," he said. "It's a good thing – it keeps the French safe."

Going further, Rogers claimed that the emergence of fascism in Europe in the early 20th century could be partly explained by a conscious decision by the US not to monitor its allies.

"We said: 'We're not going to do any kinds of those things, that would not be appropriate," he said. "Look what happened in the 30s: the rise of fascism, the rise of communism, the rise of imperialism. We didn't see any of it. And it resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people."

Godwin’s Law aside because it was brought up by Rogers who never bothers to mention that the rise of Hitler’s Nazis did not exactly take place in a vacuum hidden away from public view. There were years of warning signs of what was coming, pogroms, demagogic rallies and the man did after all write a book entitled Mein Kampf in which he laid out exactly what was to become of the Jews. Rogers is a liar and a delusional paranoid authoritarian at that. Invoking the European fascist regimes of the past as justification for the current domestic fascism is hogwash. My grandfather risked his life fighting against scum like Rogers and his ilk and so did the grandfathers and great grandfathers of millions of Americans who are having that for which they sacrificed all stolen away by men like him. And men like Obama for that matter, a war criminal who has nicely grown into all of the vileness that the men who occupy that office have come to stand for.  He should be impeached and removed from office because in any society where the rule of law actually meant something other than to borrow from the late Hunter S. Thompson allow the establishment to push for  ”.. the systematic destruction of everything this country claims to stand for except the rights of the rich to put saddles on the backs of the poor and use public funds to build jails for anybody who complained about it.”

Bill Clinton was impeached over lying about a blow job yet Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid failed to use their majority to do likewise to Bush for the torture state and illegal wars of aggression nor was there any support for such a thing from all of the elitists on either side of the proverbial aisle. By failing to impeach Bush a climate of lawlessness and unaccountable crooked conduct was established and it has served to embolden Obama. The abuses will be far worse under his successor who might do more than just spy upon the population, his replacement may act upon that information that has been gathered and is just sitting out in a monster data storage facility in the Utah desert.

None of this is going to stop until the day that these high officials are brought under control and held accountable by the law – whatever remains of it and Obama would be damned good start, as the old Democrat Harry Truman was famous for saying “the buck stops here” and the top offender is sitting in Harry’s old office.

This is neither liberal nor conservative, those labels lose more meaning by the minute given the level of systemic corruption - this is about right or wrong.