Yawning at the Airport? You Just Might Be a Terrorist

The absurd and arbitrary nature of the decade and a half running phony war on terror gets some needed exposure in a report on the TSA checklist used to identify “suspicious” behavior.  The online magazine The Intercept has published a story on a confidential document that serves as a guideline for the government goons manning the Soviet style checkpoints in the nation’s airports. You could find yourself singled out for additional scrutiny for such things as yawning, clearing your throat or God forbid, complaining about the intrusive security procedures. Like there is nothing to bitch about regarding practices that are used to humiliate and condition law abiding Americans to bow down to uniformed big government thugs.

The website The Verge reports on the checklist in the story “The TSA thinks it can catch terrorists by watching people yawn”:

Next time you're making your way through airport security, you should probably avoid whistling. Definitely don't give anyone a "cold, penetrating stare." And go easy on the yawning. The Intercept has gotten a hold of the TSA's guide for spotting terrorists, and true to the complaints that've been lobbed at the agency for years, the list is incredibly generic; just about anyone boarding a flight could be labeled an evildoer in the eyes of the TSA.

Agents look for the indicators and tally up every traveler's total "suspicious behavior" score to decide if it's worth flagging down a law enforcement officer. Former TSA employees who spoke with The Intercept said that the SPOT (Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques) sheet is catch-all by design and gives the agency freedom to finger anyone as a potential threat to passenger safety. "Taxpayer dollars would be better spent funding real police at TSA checkpoints," a former manager said.

This is exactly the type of thing that happens in a society headed from freedom to fascism and no one dared to complain about it back when it still could have been stopped. The whole TSA program was justified by selling the public on being afraid in the aftermath of 9/11 and morphed into what is essentially a trial program for the national imposition of a police state. It didn’t take long before helpless travelers were forced to take off their shoes and made to walk upon a carpet of the foot fungus of others, old women were stripped of their medical diapers and children were felt up by leering perverts who operated with the full authority of the federal government. For those who remember the ‘old days’, the TSA embodies something that was never supposed to exist in America.

Some of the other things that are scrutinized are “arriving late for flight”, “strong body odor”, “widely open staring eyes”, appearing to be “confused or disoriented”, “rubbing or wringing of hands”, "bag does not suit the individuals appearance" and “trembling”.  None of these can be the results of travel fatigue, missed connections, normal behavior or general incompetence of the airlines – but of course I am being sarcastic here. The unspoken objective is to turn the definition of "terrorist" into something as vague as humanly possible so as to apply it against anyone, particularly those critical of the government.

The full 92 point TSA screening checklist document can be found here. Upon reading it I suspect that anyone who is rational will concur with the unnamed TSA Behavior Detection Office Manager quoted in the Intercept story that it is “complete bullshit”.

Congress just had a chance to defund and dismantle this Homeland Security monstrosity too and could have done so until the Republican “leadership” caved in to Emperor Obama and his fearmongers in the media. Now it will just keep growing until the opportunity presents itself for the government to start putting it’s Gestapo into stadiums, arenas and shopping malls across the fruited plain.

Jihadi John Says Fund the Department of Homeland Security

It has been a week filled with ludicrous, over the top fear mongering as the clock ticks down on fully funding the Department of Homeland Security. First it was the alleged terrorist plot to attack the Mall of America, a danger to the public that was pimped across all five Sunday morning McNews shows by DHS boss Jeh Johnson. Then there was yet another busting of domestic ISIS "recruits" who ended up being a few pathetic losers who were entrapped by the Feds. But the granddaddy of them all just happens to conveniently pop up on the day prior to the expiration of funding DHS. Anyone who sees the way that this government operates has to be shaking their heads over the formal identification of Jihadi John, the baddest Muslim motherfucker of them all.

The network and cable TV McNews shows and internet ‘news’ sites are filled to the brim today with tales of the hideous head chopping ISIS Übermensch tabbed as Jihadi John and his henchmen "the Beatles". The Department of Homeland Security could not have possibly asked for a better pitchman to finally close the deal on continued funding for the American Gestapo than the British beheading machine. This may finally be what it takes for Speaker John Boehner to crack and sign onto the trickery of the splitting off Obama's amnesty decree from the DHS funding which is a farce. The entire mainstream media is selling it hard today as though they were starving used car salesmen hustling their asses off in the waning days of the week before Christmas. In a way that is exactly what they are but a pack of whores trying to rake it in the day before the naval fleet leaves their port may be a more apropos metaphor.

As being reported by Reuters in the story entitled “'Jihadi John' killer from Islamic State beheading videos unmasked as Londoner”:

The masked "Jihadi John" killer who fronted Islamic State beheading videos has been identified as Mohammed Emwazi, a British computer programming graduate from a well-to-do London family.

The black-clad militant brandishing a knife and speaking with an English accent was shown in videos released by Islamic State (IS) apparently decapitating hostages including Americans, Britons and Syrians.

The 26-year-old militant used the videos to threaten the West, admonish its Arab allies and taunt President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron before petrified hostages cowering in orange jump suits.

Emwazi's name was first disclosed by the Washington Post, citing unidentified former associates, but two U.S. government sources who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed to Reuters that investigators believed Jihadi John was Emwazi.

Dressed entirely in black, a balaclava covering all but his eyes and the bridge of his nose and a holster under his left arm, Jihadi John became a menacing symbol of Islamic State brutality and one of the world's most wanted men.

Hostages called him John as he and other Britons in Islamic State had been nicknamed the Beatles.

The Washington Post took credit for the journalistic coup of identifying Jihadi John in the piece “‘Jihadi John’: Islamic State killer is identified as Londoner Mohammed Emwazi”. The scoop likely had tens if not hundreds of thousands of people dependent on the Washington centered war on terror industry jumping for joy as the money spigots can’t possibly be turned off while a fiend like him is at large. If you happen to be inclined to do such things go and bet the mortgage money on a renewal of Homeland Security funding before time officially runs out on Friday.

While I don’t at all dismiss the very serious threat of Islamist fanatics with a huge scimitar to grind going on the rampage and plotting to attack America, it is also advantageous for a trillion dollar industry to have an ample supply of bogeymen to trot out whenever the need arises.  Like everything else this week the timing and saturation coverage of Jihadi John has a rather pungent smell emanating from it.  Kind of like money mixed with bullshit and really, who but a compete sucker can believe anything that comes out of a government that lies about everything as a first resort. The media only serves as it's propaganda arm.

It's the timing that gives it away which shows more than anything how much that the government and the Obama regime have come to see Americans as chumps ripe for the taking.

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.

Obama Embraces Fear as the Coin of the Realm

Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.

-Roy Batty

Under fire for his NSA Stasi’s trolling and compiling of the phone and internet records of law-abiding Americans and smarting over being humiliated by Russia’s granting of asylum to Edward Snowden, El Presidente reached into his predecessor’s playbook and played the fear card. Since September 11, 2001 hyping the threat of terrorism has been the most kick ass club in the bag. The Obama regime for the most part has largely refrained from using it until this week. With the administration seething over being rebuked by Russia after weeks of bullying it was finally time to bring the back the invocation of the threat of the other as a distraction and to justify the unconstitutional mass surveillance programs.  

The state media has been in rare form the last two days, hyping an imminent threat to American citizens abroad due to a reputed threat from Al-Qaeda. Excuse me if this all sets off my overly sensitive personal B.S. detector. After all, I do remember the years when the Bush administration was riding tall the saddle, largely because they knew full well that in post 9/11 America that FEAR had become the coin of the realm. Unlike most TV addled and forgetful Americans I remember with crystal clarity the multi-colored terror alert charts that Tom Ridge would trot out whenever the Bush-Cheney junta needed political cover. Ridge to his credit came out and admitted that the threat levels were manipulated for political purposes but the color coded alert system became an albatross and was eventually discarded. Now that Obama’s insipid regime is cornered like rats it is no surprise that they are now going to the well by conjuring up the Muslim bogeyman.

The fear-mongering of which I refer to is the hysteria over an Al-Qaeda overseas threat to Americans issued by Obama’s State Department. Not that crazy things do not happen, when you are an empire, occupying countries, supporting torturers and murders and murdering innocent civilians with bombs and drones people tend to become upset and fight back. The definition of terrorism has become so skewed so as to become virtually meaningless in the 21st Century United States of Orwell. Guerrilla warfare or attacks by those with no power against foreign symbols and institutions in lands being colonized by corporations, using the U.S. military as their henchmen and ruthless private mercenaries for the real wet work are common. In fact this has been the norm rather than the exception throughout history. The technical term for such incidents is blowback and it is insane or stupid to not believe that becoming oppressors of people in foreign lands for the sake of plundering their natural resources, installing hand-picked despots as their leaders and keeping the money rolling in for the defense industry will not result in blows against the empire. Terrorism is more of a political term, it worked like a dream for Hitler as his enemies were slaughtered, imprisoned and worse and it worked like a dream for Bush and Cheney in launching their ruinous adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars of choice that have done more to bankrupt this once great country than anything else and Obama and the establishment are practically wetting their pants to go into Syria and if crazed Senator Lindsey Graham gets his way Iran. 

The establishment is putting a lot into this weekend's alert, closing many U.S. embassies on Sunday and hoping for violence that would serve up some breathing room on the calls for reigning in the NSA. I suspect that something will happen too, such is the pattern of serendipity when the imperial police state has a need to justify further crackdowns on civil liberties. Now there is the insertion into the narrative of impending doom of the fanatical  Peter King, the porcine anti-Muslim bigot who on Friday stated:

“We’re not certain exactly where something might happen but it’s very specific as to when and it’s also very specific as to the fact that it is going to happen, so we have to be on alert everywhere”

King, who should be an expert on real terrorists given his ardent support for the civilian murdering IRA will undoubtedly show up on at least one of the Sunday morning masturbatory fests to defend Obama's NSA and to call for further restrictions on American freedoms. With a bit of luck he can even gather up another of his anti-Muslim inquisitions where he will whore himself out to the media and set more precedent for such kangaroo courts when it becomes policy to start hauling other Americans in front of them as well. 

But I digress...

The very definition of "terrorist" has been deliberately rendered vague here in Der Homeland, prior to this week there has been an ongoing effort to begin to shift the threat of surveillance justifying 'terrorism' inward. I reference this very recent story about Michele Catalano, a Long Island woman whose home was stormed by government goons after unconstitutional spying on her household's internet activity found that she was looking up information on a pressure cooker. Her son was using the internet to research the Boston Marathon bombings and her husband was looking for a backpack. This is absolutely true and is yet more evidence of how out of control Obama's Stasi is. I excerpt the following from the story via The Guardian: 

I felt a sense of creeping dread take over. What else had I looked up? What kind of searches did I do that alone seemed innocent enough but put together could make someone suspicious? Were they judging me because my house was a mess (Oh my god, the joint terrorism task force was in my house and there were dirty dishes in my sink!). Mostly I felt a great sense of anxiety. This is where we are at. Where you have no expectation of privacy. Where trying to learn how to cook some lentils could possibly land you on a watch list. Where you have to watch every little thing you do because someone else is watching every little thing you do.
 All I know is if I'm going to buy a pressure cooker in the near future, I'm not doing it online.
 I'm scared. And not of the right things.

I myself must wonder whether a paramilitary goon squad is going to visit me now that I have done queries on pressure cookers, terrorism and other red-flag terms while writing this today, in this sorry husk of what used to be a free country anything is possible anymore. With the bar now lowered so as to turn even such normal behavior as the Catalano family doing web searches for household cooking items into suspected 'terrorist' activity what can't be considered as such? The entire system is being tweaked so as to allow for the future roundup of Americans whose data will be stored in that massive NSA facility in Utah. We already know that there exists the capability to do three-hop queries and that there are indeed plans in place to abduct and detain American citizens. This will likely happen when the big collapse comes, the economic collapse that has been so deftly covered up and put off by Obama's financial alchemists and state media propagandists and is a ticking time bomb that could detonate at any time  It is simply unsustainable and when it blows it is going to be a society killer. 

It could be two days, two months or two years but the day to pay the piper is coming and it won't be the culprits who will have to shell out their pound of flesh. 

Print the Legend: The Official Death of Osama bin Laden

The man who boasts that he habitually tells the truth is simply a man with no respect for it. It is not a thing to be thrown about loosely, like small change; it is something to be cherished and hoarded and disbursed only when absolutely necessary. The smallest atom of truth represents some man's bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in Hell

 H. L. Mencken

I would have to say that in my opinion the greatest thing about the officially announced death of our very own Emanuel Goldstein, Osama bin Laden is the sheer joy of watching the Republicans having to eat their own shit. There is something wonderful about the super-sized helping of humble pie served up with one of those nice little toothpick American flaggie things planted in the middle of their slab now that the rotten fascist fifth columnists and neocons have been robbed of the most kick ass club in the bag, their shameless exploitation of the ‘terrorist’ attacks of 9/11/01 for political gain. The GOP has utterly terrorized the rubes, suckers and suburban Sally soccer moms for nearly a decade now, fundamentally altering the country in the process. You can bet the house on it that the fear and terror cards along with the inevitable Obama is a secret Muslim who along with buddies Bill Ayers and Louis Farrakhan attended wild drug fueled orgies where satanic ritual sacrifices were held were key components of their 2012 strategy. Remember the wild rumors about Hillary's secret lesbian trysts in the White House and the Christmas tree adorned with crackpipes and dildos? That one was a children's bedtime story compared to the volcanic eruption of lies, filth and toxic spew that the Koch Brothers money was funding this time around. The narratives were already well under way and likely were very costly, direct mailings, whisper campaigns, retainers for think tank scum like Dinesh D'Souza and his ilk for their libelous bulk purchased books all are going to have to be scrapped because in  less than a week it is all gone, it went up like a bag of flaming dogshit. To all those who have been justifiably revolted by this all too predictable heinous tactic of assassination though black propaganda and a corrupt media that amplifies and disseminates it just enjoy the sweet schadenfreude along with a side of delicious irony. 

Bin Laden is dead! The release of this week's latest edition of Time Magazine, the official 'news' magazine for the establishment with the evil one's stock picture with the traditional red X though it ensures that despite the caterwauling of the squealing little swine birthers, degenerate America hating pigs like Orly Taitz, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the neocon propagandists the official account is now locked down by the impenetrable firewall of conventional wisdom. Sure they can warble about having to see the pictures like the hilariously desperate Sarah Palin (perhaps she can finagle some sort of trade bartering beaver shots of Bristol for the pics of the now dead bin Laden) who still doesn't understand that her political career is over and that she is well into her next phase of being a gross parody of herself, not that she wasn't always a parody from the git go. Yes, they are going totally batshit over in the big carnival tent of the Republican party, barker in chief Donald T.Rump can now focus on selling tickets to the feces eating contest in the geek section. It is astonishing to behold, the party of shoot first ask questions later is bemoaning the capping of the unarmed uber terrorist and in what is the most hilarious thing of all the corporate media is now suddenly concerned about international law and did the execution of Osama violate it. Hell, that one is hilarious, nearly spit coffee on the keyboard when I read that. Just where in the fuck was the corporate media and the concern for international law when George W. Bush launched his illegal wars, bombed the shit out of civilians, presided over a vile and sadistic regime that made torture an official U.S. policy or for that matter when Obama continued to endorse predator drone strikes on civilian weddings? Double standards and it shows just how rotten to the core that the consolidated and interlocking media in this country has become. Oh, and now here's a real knee-slapper, the Republican whiners, continuing with their well-established culture of victimhood are pissy that none of the credit for taking out bin Laden is being given to Dubya or to his immoral and illegal torture programs. But at least it's consistent since they never saw fit that there should have been any of the blame  assigned to him despite the damned inconvenient fact that the 9/11 events occurred during his watch. Perhaps there can be a commemorative edition of My Pet Goat issued in order to honor Bush for his heroism on that morning. 

God Dammit, they cut into Celebrity Apprentice!

It is pretty obvious that the story of bin Laden's assassination by Seal Team 6 is the official story of the state and it is already being reinforced with the same type of groupthink promulgated by the corporate media that followed the original attacks. While the release of any actual photos of the body have been nixed by Obama on the grounds of national security the government has released bin Laden home videos that are making their way about the internet and media megaphones today. The post death storyline goes to great lengths to play down the mythic capacity of the man once built up to be the baddest motherfucker in the valley of the shadow of death. There have been stories describing bin Laden as "unkempt", "bored", "shabby", "frail" and "weary". There have been stories on the contents of his medicine cabinet, did he have eczema or some other skin condition? Was he using a form of Viagra? Xanax? Interestingly enough nothing seems to have been found that would indicate treatments for kidney failure. The official propaganda gains new layers by the day, this from an article in Time's Special Report issue:

Living the Good Live

So he wasn't in a cave after all. Osama bin Laden, master marketer of mass murder, loved to traffic in the image of the ascetic warrior-prophet. In one of his most famous videotapes, he chose gray rocks for a background, a rough camo jacket for a costume and a rifle for a prop. He portrayed a hard, pure alternative to the decadent weakness of the modern world. Soft Westerners and their corrupt puppet princes reclined in luxury and sin while he wanted nothing but a gun and a prayer rug. The zealot travels light, his bloodred thoughts so pure that even stones are as cushions for his troubled sleep.

Now we know otherwise. Bin Laden was not the stoic soldier that he played onscreen. The exiled son of a Saudi construction mogul was living in a million-dollar home in a wealthy town nestled among green hills. He apparently slept in a king-size bed with a much younger wife. He had satellite TV. This, most of all, was fitting, because no matter how many hours he spent talking nostalgically of the 12th century and the glory of the islamic caliphate, bin laden was a master of the 21st century image machine.

The deconstruction of the uber-fiend, peddled for years, most relentlessly by the insidious Bush regime to hold political power and justify their wars and associated criminality was well under way. The Republican party owned 9/11, wielded it as a trusty bludgeon and used it without mercy as they eviscerated the United States Constitution, turned torture into the guiding principle of national policy, looted the treasury and doled out ever more lucrative contracts to mercenaries and private war profiteers on the taxpayer dime. Whenever it was questioned one of those timely bin Laden videos or tapes just happened to pop up, up went the color-coded terror alert and the nuisance of having to come up with answers went away. For example when Osama bin Laden just happened to pop up on a video four days or so before the 2004 elections it provided a ringing endorsement for the terrorism of Bush and Cheney and with a bit of help in Ohio courtesy of Karl Rove's election stealing machine the king was coronated anew for four more years of hell. The Republicans seized bin Laden and along with him the mythic menace of the destroyer of worlds, it was as though George W. Bush had pulled the magical sword Excalibur from the stone of the smoking rubble of the World Trade Center and the use of the tragedy for political expedience was already official policy while the rotting flesh of the victims still hung heavy in the lower Manhattan air.

Later in the Time piece there is this:

No Hollywood filmmaker ever staged a more terrifying spectacle than 9/11, which bin Laden conjured from a few box cutters and 19 misguided martyrs. When the Twin Towers collapsed, he became the real-life answer to the ruthless, stateless and seemingly unstoppable villains of James Bond fantasy. It was necessary then, to find him and render him mortal again, reduce him to mere humanity - not just as a matter of justice but as a matter of self-defense. 

And it has been done, Barack Hussein Obama has stolen away the mighty sword while at the same time the Mighty Wurlitzer of the pocket media not only ensures that the truth of the death of the evil one will be that of the official story of the state but that the original dogma of the attacks themselves would be reinforced for all time. With the establishment of the official historical account (which as the maxim goes, written by the victors and sanitized to omit the dirt) not only does the questioning of any part of the 9/11 story become intolerable by bin Laden himself is being body scrubbed with his past CIA association being denied by think tank hacks like Peter Bergen in his prominent WaPo piece entitled Five Myths about Osama bin Laden. The usual gaggle of reliable neocon stooges like Charles Kraüthammer patting themselves on the back while trumpeting the great success of the phony war on terror, the sadists and authoritarian freaks on the right-wing decrying any criticism of torture, in Time's case making apologies for the ugly Americans celebrating the demise of the bogeyman with their idiot "USA,USA,USA" chants and viciously cracking down on those who happen to wander off the star spangled lemming farm. Take for example Pittsburgh Steelers running back whose most recent claim to fame was a key fumble during the Super Bowl that pretty much sealed his team's doom. Both barrels were turned on Mendenhall this week for his daring to use TWITter to weigh in on the orgy of glee during the national barbecuing of bin Laden's ass - "those of you who said you want to see Bin Laden burn in hell and piss on his ashes, I ask how would God feel about your heart?... What kind of person celebrates death?". For this the man was descended upon as if by a biblical plague of flesh-eating bats by the pocket media kingmakers, flag-sucking drones and assorted other imbecilic dwellers of the most befouled gutters of the mind. Were this a more primitive (or in our case futuristic) society, Mendenhall would have been quickly an ruthlessly hunted down, his tongue ripped out with fire heated iron tongs and his wayward fingers chopped off so as to never again engage in such heresy as well as to sent an example for others. 


We have been here before, any dissent from the Bush administration's blatant usage of the 9/11 event for reasons of politics and settling an old score with Saddam Hussein were affixed with the scarlet letters of traitor and anti-American. This is just the reverse form of the same primitive defense of the official religions. When it comes to doubts about the ceremonies, false idols and totems any who dare to utter the blasphemies must be dealt with summarily and with extreme prejudice. Any really serious examination of the scaly underbelly of the angry beast with millions of electronic eyes that is the Homeland in the new American century must be taken with a familiarity of the allegory of Plato's cave. Once you have been outside don't even bother to venture back to try to enlighten the other slaves for ye shalt be damned for your efforts if not drawn and quartered by a team of Clydesdales. 

Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared.

- Colonel Walter E. Kurtz

Maybe the real truth of the bin Laden story is that his former sponsors and associates within the American establishment finally just wanted to write the end to his story, tie up that last loose end because to do anything else would ensure a demise, sucked under in the quicksand bog of the wars without end. Obviously spooked by the recent Standard and Poor downgrade of the U.S. debt perhaps it was just an acknowledgement of that which is obvious in that the wars, especially the bottomless money pit in Afghanistan are destroying the country in ways that bin Laden or any other foreign enemy ever could. The bin Laden execution brings to mind the scene from the classic film Apocalypse Now when finally reaching the river's end Captain Willard is delivered to the compound of Colonel Kurtz who had gone rogue and was as a result marked for death by his own country's military leadership in order to terminate his command:

Kurtz: Did they say why, Willard, why they want to terminate my command?

Willard: I was sent on a classified mission, sir.

Kurtz: It's no longer classified, is it? What did they tell you?

Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.

Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?

Willard: I don't see any method at all, sir.

Kurtz: I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin?

Willard: I'm a soldier.

Kurtz: You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.

Osama bin Laden was never going to stand trial, not in this Empire, not with what he knew. Despite the best efforts of the professional propagandists and spin doctors to downplay his longtime involvement as a valuable instrument of U.S. policy, most notably with the Mujahadeen in the proxy war against the Soviets back in the Reagan years in Afghanistan. What is now existent in popular culture as a noble effort, Charlie Wilson's War for example with the all-American Tom Hanks playing the flamboyant Texan Republican who used his seat in the U.S. Congress to promote arming Islamic radicals, a Reagan pet project right up there with letting good ole Ollie North run guns and drugs to fund arming the Latin American death squads. Were bin Laden to have a forum the potential revealing of such a duplicitous history could prove to be immensely embarrassing and in our sugar-coated, sanitized and flag-draped narrative we couldn't possibly admit to colluding with criminals, dictators, Nazi war criminals or Muslim fanatics in order to further an agenda largely dictated by corporations and plutocrats. Best to just send in the hit squad and be done with it, if that's what actually happened. 

Media analyst Danny Schecter puts it well in his piece Nailing Osama Bin Laden: Was it a military or amedia operation? Why now?

They could have captured him, but that would lead to the hassle of putting him on trial. Besides, what if he revealed his long connection with the CIA and US officials? Can't have that. So the kill order was given, along with a quick disposal of the body, mafia-style (as in “sleeping with the fishes)."

But we will never really know will we?

I have always personally believed that he was dead, at least since shortly after the towers fell and I have never been convinced that he played anything more than an ancillary role in the 9/11 attacks. The attacks as they occurred couldn’t have been carried out by anything less than a multi-national alliance of serious and I mean stone cold professional military personnel, intelligence pros, mole networks largely compartmentalized to provide plausible denial and government officials with the clout to influence both the behind the scenes preparatory work as well as the following cover-up. The weakest part of the entire story to me has always been Osama bin Laden and his flight-simulator trained Islamic fundamentalist fanatics like Mohammad Atta, Ninjas with box-cutters who could overwhelm a multi-trillion dollar intelligence colossus, circumvent the entire national air defense command, dupe U.S. allies and their intelligence services and then pull off with crackerjack precision three daredevil direct hits on U.S. buildings with such damage being done to the structures as to defy the basic laws of physics. Americans are stupid though and swallowed it all, rolled over and gave up their rights and begged for more tyrannical enslavement as their tax dollars were funneled to private military contractors (mercenaries) and private   intelligence firms operating with impunity, zero oversight and no loyalty except to the bottom line. Maybe in the movies Bruce Willis can assemble a crew of losers, party freaks, misunderstood geniuses and hard-assed oil patch roughnecks who could be trained by NASA in less than two weeks to go into space and destroy a killer asteroid but this is reality and when something smells like bullshit there is a 99.9 % chance that it IS bullshit.

The entire official story of 9/11 is one big lie but it is now a lie that like the assassination of President Kennedy will live on while any naysayers will be stigmatized and ghettoized in the predictable manner that "conspiracy theorists" are always treated by a corrupt state seeking to keep its skeletons in the closet with the doors nailed shut. What is now occurring is the death of the 9/11 Truth Movement, as the national wound that was ripped open on that Tuesday morning in 2001 begins to scab over there will be no tolerance for those who continue to pick at it. Already in the days after the big announcement there is a real chill in the air and the establishment is in all likelihood implement the Cass Sunstein plan to "cognitively infiltrate" groups that question the official government fairy tale of 9/11. Personalities who had previously done much good work in investigating 9/11, for example alternative media firebrand Alex Jones has essentially discredited himself through his willingness to feast upon the fruit of the poisoned tree that was the finally and hopefully permanently discredited Birther movement (which smelled like an Israeli black propaganda campaign from the get go) and as a result of this been immersed in a vat of horseshit. While playing fast and loose with themes friendly to the Council For National Policy like global warming denial and pandering to bigots for ratings by demonizing Meskins any of Jones' skepticism at the serendipitous death of bin Laden is easily mocked despite the legitimacy of such questions. There are others as well calling bullshit on the bin Laden murder and they will surely face immense difficulty and much scorn in pursuing this line of skepticism. My personal advice is that it just isn't worth it, there are too many other areas that are in more need of serious attention than wailing away at the tar baby that is Osama bin Laden. Again, where is the body? Why the changes of story? Why now? I defer to recent work by Paul Craig Roberts The Agendas Behind the bin Laden News Event and Russ Baker More Questions on bin Laden for provocative reading and unlike Alex Jones they have not self-immolated. 

This may sound like a cop out but as far as I am concerned an official admission that the man is dead works fine for me, whether it happened last weekend or nine years ago is at this point moot to me. In the end what is most important is that we are able to exit the bizarre, down the rabbit hole because it just may end up being a grave, parallel universe that we were catapulted into when the planes hit the building on September 11, 2001. That will have to suffice right now for nothing will ever have even the remotest chance of returning to a state of semi-normality or what is going to pass for that unless we are able to get some closure and an escape from the neocon Republican fear mongering that has mired us in unwinnable, bankrupting and immoral wars of occupation based on lies. Barring a real investigation into the 9/11 attacks, which by the way is NEVER going to happen, I personally think that it is best to just accept the official story of Osama bin Laden’s death as it has been put forth by the state and it’s organs. Face it, the story may have that now familiar rottenness about it but it’s just time to move on beyond the horrors of the last decade. 

I recall that one great line from the famous western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance :

“when the legend becomes fact, print the legend”

So it goes....