Blame Obama for the Shooting Down of MH17

As one of the heroes of the neocons, President Harry Truman famously put it: "the buck stops here" and in the frenzy to blame the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over a freaking war zone on Thursday (what the hell was it doing there?) on the reviled and demonized Vladimir Putin our pathetic excuse for a media is blaming the wrong president. The responsibility for the loss of the lives of the passengers of that ill-fated jetliner can be parked directly at the foot of US President Barack H. Obama for it was he who signed off on the series of events that culminated in the disaster in the first place. Were the prince of petulance not so intent at avenging his wounded pride over Russia's saving Edward Snowden from being waterboarded more times than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Putin's pissing on the parade of bombing Damascus last September there would be no civil war in Ukraine in the first place.

Libertarian icon Ron Paul sums it up very nicely in his piece "What the Media Won’t Report About Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17" that is available at Antiwar.com and I excerpt from the good doctor:

While western media outlets rush to repeat government propaganda on the event, there are a few things they will not report.

They will not report that the crisis in Ukraine started late last year, when EU and US-supported protesters plotted the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Without US-sponsored “regime change,” it is unlikely that hundreds would have been killed in the unrest that followed. Nor would the Malaysian Airlines crash have happened.

The media has reported that the plane must have been shot down by Russian forces or Russian-backed separatists, because the missile that reportedly brought down the plane was Russian made. But they will not report that the Ukrainian government also uses the exact same Russian-made weapons.

They will not report that the post-coup government in Kiev has, according to OSCE monitors, killed 250 people in the breakaway Lugansk region since June, including 20 killed as government forces bombed the city center the day after the plane crash! Most of these are civilians and together they roughly equal the number killed in the plane crash. By contrast, Russia has killed no one in Ukraine, and the separatists have struck largely military, not civilian, targets.

They will not report that the US has strongly backed the Ukrainian government in these attacks on civilians, which a State Department spokeswoman called “measured and moderate.”

They will not report that neither Russia nor the separatists in eastern Ukraine have anything to gain but everything to lose by shooting down a passenger liner full of civilians.

They will not report that the Ukrainian government has much to gain by pinning the attack on Russia, and that the Ukrainian prime minister has already expressed his pleasure that Russia is being blamed for the attack.

I have admired the former Congressman for his principled stance against the evils of the warfare state and his set of stones for daring to speak out against Bush and Cheney's wars of aggression back when critics were branded as "traitors", "terrorist sympathizers" and worse and would face the equivalent of being "necklaced" for daring to stand up and be counted when it mattered the most. I will never forget Ron Paul's brutal smackdown of Mr. 9/11 himself, Rudy Giuliani in that Republican debate and then assigning the fascist former Big Apple mayor, a neocon favorite a reading list. Congressman Paul was vilified by the same scum-infested, corrupt, warmongering media types that are busily selling the latest load of Obama's horse manure about Ukraine - all the while covering up the war crimes of the US backed Israeli despot Bibi Netanyahu and his wanton slaughter of civilians in Gaza.

The propaganda is shameless, from the loud-mouthed lout of a Vice President Joe Biden - a fucking embarrassment to decent Americans - and his juvenile attacks on Putin as "not having a soul" to the endless proclamations of the pope of hope and change and his evidence-deficient charges that Russia's president was personally responsible for the attack despite the unspeakable fact that Obama is the one backing ruthless neo-Nazi death squad filth engaged in ethnic cleansing while the Kiev junta uses the military against civilians. 

This is what it is to be an American during a time of rampant corruption, imperial hubris, national blindness (as well as stupidity) and an addiction to the drug of American exceptionalism that is as potent as black tar heroin. It is sick and shameful to watch these scumbags in the Obama regime and the neocon rats nest at Foggy Bottom continue to lie with zero regard to the long-term consequences even if those consequences end up leading willfully ignorant and brainwashed Americans into the flaming abyss of World War III and imminent nuclear catastrophe.

Obama is a punk but the office of the presidency seems to attract that type like flies to a pile of rotting corpses these days and unlike when Harry Truman took responsibility the serpentine, conniving, Teflon coated bullshit salesman Obama does anything but adhere to the "buck stops here" principle.

Two and a half years left until we can be rid of this most loathsome of leaders, that is if he doesn't succeed in getting us all incinerated in a nuclear apocalypse first.

Is the Foolhardy Obama About to Start World War III?

2014 is the one-hundred year anniversary of the beginning of World War I, a conflict of such savagery, really the first time in history that mass slaughter was industrialized and the resulting carnage was unprecedented. The war itself was the result of a series of events that rapidly careened out of control. The spark that ignited the whole conflagration being the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria that was followed by a cascading series of events that led to a conflict of empires that forever changed the world. WW I in particular leading to the rise of the Nazis and the resultant post-World War II global structure that is still playing out although now in it's latter stages. There have been many who have written of similarities between 1914 and 2014 and the increasingly unstable regime in Washington, with ongoing hostilities with Syria, Iran, Russia-Ukraine and now Iraq again is dragging the world, and billions of people closer to the brink of what could be history's next great disaster.

President Barack Obama, his fanatic packed State Department and the neocons in the state-corporate media who keep up the pressure in instigating him to launch another war in Ukraine, Syria or the opportune location of the week - right now it is Iraq are recklessly lurching towards an Archduke Ferdinand moment. It is only a matter of what exactly it will be. While the hew and cry of the chattering classes with their preying upon the fears of timid Americans of the new "caliphate" being established by the mysterious ISIS it would seem that a reentry into Iraq could be the catalyst. This will be the topic of of choice during the Sunday morning circle jerk where neocon war criminal after war criminal will inevitably be trotted out to make their case for war. My money however is on Obama doing something historically stupid over the ongoing resistance to the US installed junta in Kiev and his colossal inferiority complex over being punked repeatedly by Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

While nearly completely overwhelmed in the US media by the necessity to push the ISIS story Ukraine is on the brink of something extremely ugly. The recently crowned US puppet Petro Poroshenko aka "the Chocolate King" has indicated that the violence in the east is about to be be unleashed after his phony cease fire, basically a call for complete surrender of anti-austerity, anti-fascist rebels was rejected. In an article at Russia Today Porshenko is quoted as being ready to go to "plan B" which inevitably will lead to an increased use of the Kiev junta's military forces against civilians. Russia has responded to the Poroshenko's  cease-fire offer and implied threat with both an acknowledgement as well as a huge one of those military exercises that are so often utilized by the USA!, USA! USA! and NATO who are predictably crying foul. According to a story in The Guardian entitled  "Vladimir Putin backs Ukraine ceasefire but orders huge military exercise":

Putin’s qualified backing for Poroshenko's effort to halt the conflict was another in a series of shifting moves and statements by the Kremlin that still leave unclear Moscow's level of commitment to de-escalating the conflict.

Putin's conciliatory words on Saturday were made on the same day as he ordered large-scale military exercises that NATO criticised as likely to raise tensions. United States officials also accused Russian troops of moving back into positions near the border with Ukraine's troubled east.

AND

On Saturday, a NATO spokeswoman, Oana Lungescu, lamented Moscow’s military exercises, saying that “it can be seen as a further escalation of the crisis with Ukraine”.

The insanity isn't just limited to Washington and the Obama gang and that only increases the danger of some massive fuckup by some lunatic - for example NATO boss Anders Fogh Rasmussen delusional assertion that the Russians have infiltrated the anti-fracking movement. Per a story in The Guardian entitled "Russia 'secretly working with environmentalists to oppose fracking'" from which I excerpt:

The head of one of the world’s leading groups of democratic nations has accused Russia of undermining projects using hydraulic fracturing technology in Europe.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), and former premier of Denmark, told the Chatham House thinktank in London on Thursday that Vladimir Putin’s government was behind attempts to discredit fracking, according to reports.

Rasmussen said: “I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations - environmental organisations working against shale gas - to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.”

He declined to give details of those operations, saying: “That is my interpretation.”

This is the man in charge of fucking NATO for Christ's sake - and with the ongoing provocation of Russia over the fiasco in Ukraine this is a man who could start World War III - why isn't this insane accusation of not only Russia but the accusation of US environmental groups as being essentially "terrorists" an illustration of his manifest unfitness for his job? It is like Dr. Strangelove is now our reality in 2014 and Rasmussen could be General Jack D. Ripper.

This is serious foray into John Birch Society tin-foil hatter territory for Rasmussen although with the masturbatory glee with which big US energy companies have seized upon the potential disruption in Russian gas supplies to Europe to continue to frack away in America in the orgasmic quest for energy export profits while pushing similar horseshit propaganda designed to transform anti-fracking activists into the increasingly catch-all category of "terrorists" it is just another indicator of how rotten that the entire system is. Rasmussen, the former Danish Prime Minister was an outspoken supporter of Bush's Iraq adventure and the descent into frenzied Cold War conspiracy theories (remember back when the Russians were accused of infiltrating the Civil Rights Movement to sow discontent?) shows why he got the gig with NATO in the first place.

But while the NATO militarists with their 20th century European worldviews and their itchy trigger fingers ready to shoot at anything Russian represent a grave threat to order the real danger is Obama himself. There has been more talk of economic sanctions against Russia due to the Empire's fury that the Russian leader will neither back down and lick Uncle Scam's red, white and blue jackboots nor take the bait by invading eastern Ukraine to stop the atrocities. This could very well be the week that Obama green-lights the dropping of that "financial neutron bomb" that the Wall Street swine who are embedded within the US Treasury have been working on. I excerpt the following from The Telegraph article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard entitled  "US financial showdown with Russia is more dangerous than it looks, for both sides":

The United States has constructed a financial neutron bomb. For the past 12 years an elite cell at the US Treasury has been sharpening the tools of economic warfare, designing ways to bring almost any country to its knees without firing a shot.

The strategy relies on hegemonic control over the global banking system, buttressed by a network of allies and the reluctant acquiescence of neutral states. Let us call this the Manhattan Project of the early 21st century.

"It is a new kind of war, like a creeping financial insurgency, intended to constrict our enemies' financial lifeblood, unprecedented in its reach and effectiveness," says Juan Zarate, the Treasury and White House official who helped spearhead policy after 9/11.

“The new geo-economic game may be more efficient and subtle than past geopolitical competitions, but it is no less ruthless and destructive,” he writes in his book Treasury's War: the Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare.

Bear this in mind as Washington tightens the noose on Vladimir Putin's Russia, slowly shutting off market access for Russian banks, companies and state bodies with $714bn of dollar debt (Sberbank data).

The stealth weapon is a "scarlet letter", devised under Section 311 of the US Patriot Act. Once a bank is tainted in this way - accused of money-laundering or underwriting terrorist activities, a suitably loose offence - it becomes radioactive, caught in the "boa constrictor's lethal embrace", as Mr Zarate puts it.

This can be a death sentence even if the lender has no operations in the US. European banks do not dare to defy US regulators. They sever all dealings with the victim.

AND

The US Treasury faces a more formidable prey with Russia, the world's biggest producer of energy with a $2 trillion economy, superb scientists and a first-strike nuclear arsenal. It is also tightly linked to the German and east European economies. The US risks endangering its own alliance system if it runs roughshod over friends. It is in much the same situation as Britain in the mid-19th century when it enforced naval supremacy, boarding alleged slave ships anywhere in the world, under any flag, ruffling everybody's feathers.

President Putin knows exactly what the US can do with its financial weapons. Russia was brought into the loop when the two countries were for a while "allies" in the fight against Jihadi terrorism. Mr Putin appointed loyalist Viktor Zubkov - later prime minister - to handle dealings with the US Treasury.

Mr Zarate said the Obama White House has waited too long to strike in earnest, clinging to the hope that Putin would stop short of tearing up the global rule book. "They should take the gloves off. The longer the wait, the more maximalist they may have to be," he said.

This would be a calibrated escalation, issuing the scarlet letter to Russian banks that help Syria's regime

This would seem to be a perfect time for Obama to issue a devastating strike against Russia's economy by the use of what Zarate is referring to - it would likely be justified by finding some bogus tie between Putin and ISIS in Syria and the corrupt media will eagerly provide cover for it. Such a move however will like everything that Barry and the boys have touched blow up in their faces when Russia inevitably retaliates. Such a strike against the Russian financial system, largely based on Obama's petty narcissistic tantrums and a festering grudge against Putin (who is not a stupid man and understands exactly what this is all about) would be an act of war and as history has shown, the act of a desperate man like Gavrilo Princip busting a cap into the Archduke's ass things can spiral out of control very, very quickly.

Unless Obama gets a grip we are all about to fine out exactly how bad that things can really get when fools, lunatics and charlatans have a monopoly on power. 

The Benghazi "Ringleader" Capture Diversion

In a very conveniently timed announcement the story was launched that US Special Forces troops have captured a man named Ahmed Abu Khattala, described as the “ringleader” of the September 11, 2012 attacks on the Benghazi embassy compound that resulted in the death of four Americans including US Ambassador Christopher Stephens and millions of dollars burned in political partisan witch hunts. The news of the capture of Khattala brings back memories of how all of those al Qaeda number three men were either caught or killed whenever the Bush administration needed media cover or to score cheap political points and this comes at a rather nice time for President Barack Obama who has just sent troops back into Iraq despite his having said only days prior that it was not an option. Score another one for Team America World Police, after that World Cup beat down of international powerhouse Ghana by the USA!, USA!, USA! the exceptionalism oozes from patriotic pores this morning.

The political elite are desperate to reboot the days of the aftermath of 9/11 to get Americans back onboard with the latest involvement in Iraq and the fearmongering is ratcheting up. US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, the wife of the slimy authoritarian Cass Sunstein has claimed that Khatalla aka "the ringleader" had been planning attacks on Americans in presenting her case for the incursion into Libya to rendition him. In more strident rhetoric than what Power was engaged in the neocons in The Homeland have spent the last several days since the mysterious emergency of the perfect new bogeyman ISIS making the case for a return to the Mesopotamian meat grinder and widespread US military involvement across the Middle East by claiming that the "new caliphate" in Iraq and Syria would be the birthplace of the next 9/11. Leading the charge of course is the Palmetto state princess Senator Lindsey Graham who appeared on the Sunday morning propaganda circuit to claim that:

"I think it's inevitable. The seeds of 9/11 are being planted all over Iraq and Syria. You don't have to believe me, this is what they're telling you they're gonna do. They're not hiding their agenda. They want an Islamic caliphate….They plan to drive us out of the Mideast by attacking us here at home" 

Just more of the same garbage from one of the nation's preeminent demagogues and liars, the ongoing trotting out of Senator Graham as some sort of great authority on the geopolitics of the era of the phony war on terror shows the  deep  and endemic rot of the domestic state-corporate media in that he is never once called on any of his bullshit. The media is nothing more than a fully functional propaganda arm of the Deep State and nothing that they say should be believed - for information go to selected foreign press outlets and only use the US stuff for context on the daily government spin.

Libertarian Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com is his usual ass-kicking self in today's column entitled  "Iraq: Will the Neocons Get Away With It Again?", subtitled "They lied us into war, and now they're back on television" from which I excerpt:

The "BS" in CBS is well-earned by this CBS News story speculating on the alleged near certainty of a terrorist attack launched by ISIS – the Islamist group now rampaging across Iraq – against the continental US. Headlined "Will ISIS Plan a 9/11-style Terror Plot Against the US?", it is filled with the opinions of various "experts" and habitual warmongers whose exhalation of hot air is no doubt contributing to global warming.

The usual suspects are cited: Sen. Lindsey Graham, the War Party’s answer to Richard Simmons, shrieks "the seeds of 9/11s are being planted all over Iraq and Syria," while Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Oceania), who is giving up his seat in Congress for the right-wing radio talk show circuit, is honing his demagogy by declaring "I guarantee you: this is a problem that we will have to face, and we’re either going to have to face it in New York City or we’re going to face it here."

The same neocons who succeeded in lying the nation into the war in Iraq to begin with are still being allowed to do exactly what with total impunity armed with updated versions of the same stale talking points. That CBS is leading point in pushing the next 9/11 narrative should not be surprising given the network's role in the Benghazi hoax that was pushed later last year on the embassy attack by their ace 'journalist' Lara Logan (who is the wife of a former military psyops expert involved in Iraq) and then using 60 Minutes, their flagship program to air a story that provided cover for unconstitutional NSA mass surveillance and data-mining programs that was an insider delivered infomercial. As Raimondo puts it there is no doubt as exactly what the "BS" stands for in CBS.

While Obama enjoys some political cover for the rendition of "ringleader" Khatalla and a temporary feel good hit of the potent narcotic of  exceptionalism it will only be hours until torture loving Republicans are swarming the usual state-corporate media outlets to decry the plans to try him in the US Court system. While our now fully decimated judicial system is nothing more than a franchise of kangaroo courts where the state and the police who serve it are the winners of a rigged game even that is too good for the more overtly fascist of our two party crime syndicate. It is already being demanded that Khatalla be sent to our offshore torture/concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, so desperate are they to keep that heinous blight on our squandered moral standing long enough to take advantage of the day when the constantly morphing definition of "terrorist" is expanded to include their political foes and critics of the warfare state.

You would think that rank and file Americans would have wised up by now but they are still the biggest suckers on the planet, mesmerized by snake oil salesmen like Obama and Graham, terrified of their own shadows and incapable of critical thinking having long ago been electronically lobotomized by the bullshit that comes from their televisions.