U.S. Senator Uses Bogus Photos to Make the Case For Arming Ukraine

Despite the fragile ceasefire that emerged from the peace talks between leaders of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine there is still an ongoing push by defense industry pimps to supply weapons to Kiev backed forces.  The top two proponents – as well as the most noisy – are of course the dynamic duo of John McCain and Lindsey Graham which comes as no surprise. Since it is Sunday at least one them will be appearing on the morning propaganda shows today to howl for pissing away American tax dollars in a civil war that we have no business meddling in. Neither one of the two - who have never met a foreign conflict that they would not send Americans off to die for - has ever done anything remotely as shameless as what Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe just did.

Inhofe, who sits elbow to elbow with McCain and Graham on the Senate Armed Services Committee has been doing his damned level best to poke the nuclear armed bear. This gaggle, and a multitude of supporting propagandists, State Department figures and Obama administration hacks seem to believe that it is in the best interests of America to get into a proxy war halfway across the planet over events in Ukraine. We can’t even secure our own freaking borders and it is largely thanks to the likes of Inhofe and his ilk who only seem to be interested in waging Cold War era ideological battles and shilling for the defense industrial complex.

The senator is taking heavy flak now for making his case to arm the Ukrainian regime against Russian backed insurgents and using phony photos to back his claims about a Russian invasion.  As reported by Michael Krieger of the website Liberty Blitzkrieg in the piece “In His Thirst for War, Senator Jim Inhofe Releases Fake Photos of Russian Troops in the Ukraine”:

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee first viewed the graphic pictures in December. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.) then obtained the photos and worked to independently verify and confirm the authenticity of the photos, before providing them exclusively to the Free Beacon.

Inhofe said he hopes the images act as a wake up call to the Obama administration and American people, who largely have been spared from seeing the graphic violence inflicted upon Ukraine by the Russian-backed separatists…

Following publication of this story, serious questions have been raised about the authenticity of some of the photographs provided by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.). Several images of the Russian convoys appear to have been taken in 2008, during Russia’s conflict with Georgia. Given the similarities between the earlier images and those provided by the senator’s office, the Washington Free Beacon is investigating further and will update as necessary.

The providing of the pics to the Washington Free Beacon is a tried and true tactic for the establishment propaganda machine. First a fake story is put out by a lesser known website and then breathlessly hyped until one of the mainstream McNews outlets picks it up and then it becomes a talking point. Call me a cynic but it would be very advantageous to have "proof" of a massive Russian invasion that could be cited by McCain on Meet the Press. Inhofe is frantically backing away from the photos now and blaming the whole mess on the members of parliament in Kiev who provided him with the material.

Even conservative websites can see through this transparent bullshit, the Daily Caller provides an update on the pictures in a story entitled "Sen. Inhofe Blames Ukrainian Parliament For Falsified Photo":

Washington Free Beacon published a story Thursday that included several photographs offered to the publication exclusively by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.). Well, “exclusive” was a bit of a stretch. Both the publication and the senator soon learned that at least one of the gruesome pictures came from the AP in 2008. Two others were easily spotted elsewhere online.

Washington Free Beacon walked back its story with a severe update as well as a second update up top.

Inhofe issued a statement late Thursday saying he was furious. But he claimed one falsified photo doesn’t change the gist of the story, which is that pro-Russia separatists have been murdering Ukranians and the U.S. government, in his view, needs to step in and militarily aid the Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian parliament members who gave us these photos in print form as if it came directly from a camera really did themselves a disservice,” Inhofe said in a statement sent to The Mirror by his office. “We felt confident to release these photos because the images match the reporting of what is going on in the region. I was furious to learn one of the photos provided now appears to be falsified from an AP photo taken in 2008. This doesn’t change the fact that there is plenty of evidence Russia has made advances into the country with T-72 tanks and that pro-Russian separatists have been killing Ukrainians in cold blood.”

But lying comes as naturally to a member of congress as breathing water does to a fish and the corrupt media never calls any of these swine out for their bullshit. Inhofe can huff and puff and blame it all on being suckered but it rings hollow because he is not walking back his statements on a Russian invasion of Ukraine one bit. This line of hogwash has been invoked so often over the past year that one wonders why Putin himself isn't already sitting behind Petro "the Chocolate King" Poroshenko's desk and sipping his aged cognac from a snifter.

I don't buy it that Inhofe didn't know that the pictures were a hoax but even if he was duped would that make you feel any better as to the level of competence of our government? And this is Russia that these morons are provoking not some dipshit Middle East hellhole that doesn't possess a huge nuclear arsenal which makes Inhofe's actions recklessly stupid.

Looks like Brian Williams may just have a career in politics after all.

It’s Like 2002-2003 All Over Again With Crazed Rush to War

If the strident and dishonest nature of the rhetoric and behavior emanating out of the kingdom of Mordor that sits along the Potomac with the incessant propaganda campaign against Russia seems familiar all one has to do is to recall early 2003 while the Bushreich was building the case for the "Shock and Awe" attack on Iraq. While the daily onslaught of lies don't include references to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, trans-Atlantic chemical weapon spewing gliders, mobile chemical weapons labs or apocalyptic conjecture the likes of war criminal Condoleezza Rice's "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" it is every bit the equal. By the time that President George W. Bush ascended the dais to lie to the American people during his 2003 State of the Union address about that yellow cake Uranium that the "New Hitler" of that time had purchased from Africa the coming attack and invasion of that country which did not even remotely threaten the US was already a done deal.

Barack Obama has now like Colonel Walter Kurtz reached the end of the river with his ongoing jihad against Russian leader Vladimir Putin, the indignity of having NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden snatched from the talons of his henchman Attorney General Eric Holder and subsequent granting of asylum in Russia was the first injury to the great one's massive ego. Putin's sweeping in to derail what was an all but imminent beginning of bombing and missile strikes against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad on the basis of nothing more than lies about the gassing of civilians was a running dropkick in the nuts and that September 11th New York Times editorial that denounced the mockery that is American exceptionalism was a burning ember embedded in the craw of Obama and the neocons. The annexation of Crimea after an obviously US instigated overthrow of the democratically elected leader of Ukraine in which the west backed a tool of the global finance mafia installed with the assistance of neo-Nazi thugs despite warnings from the narcissist in chief was too much. Now Obama has going completely off the rails and has like the stammering moron Secretary of State John Kerry resorted to revisionist history to attack Putin. It was a stunning and unbelievable thing to hear the other day when El Presidente actually invoked Bush's illegal war in Iraq, widely acknowledged as perhaps the greatest military blunder in US history in a positive manner to make a point during a speech in Brussels.

Obama, who is as notoriously thin-skinned as he is incompetent has been goaded and egged on every step of the way by the neocons both within his administration and without. Nowhere has the hectoring of Obama been more constant nor as loud as at the Washington Post, now having shed the cloak of being a journalistic entity and exposing itself as a propaganda organ of the Deep State the WaPo has led the charge damning Obama for his failure to crush Putin and as the Ukraine debacle drags on I seriously expect to see an editorial board demand for the nuking of Moscow. Those are the times in which we live, yesterday the criminal Congress stole away from economically disadvantaged citizens of the United States who they deny appropriate levels for food stamps and refuse to extend long term unemployment to bestow billions upon the neo-Nazi infested occupying government in Ukraine. Still it is now good enough for the neocons nor their flagship beltway megaphone.

The latest mouthy coward to launch a jeremiad from the WaPo bunker is none other than Robert Kagan, the arch neocon and the husband of Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland with this breathtaking battery of bullshit from which I excerpt:

Whether one likes President Obama’s conduct of foreign policy or not, the common assumption is that the administration is at least giving the American people the foreign policy they want. The majority of Americans have opposed any meaningful U.S. role in Syria, have wanted to lessen U.S. involvement in the Middle East generally, are eager to see the “tide of war” recede and would like to focus on “nation-building at home.” Until now, the president generally has catered to and encouraged this public mood, so one presumes that he has succeeded, if nothing else, in gaining the public’s approval.

Yet, surprisingly, he hasn’t. The president’s approval ratings on foreign policy are dismal. According to the most recent CBS News poll, only 36 percent of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing on foreign policy, while 49 percent disapprove. This was consistent with other polls over the past year. A November poll by the Pew Research Center showed 34 percent approval on foreign policy vs. 56 percent disapproval. The CBS poll showed a higher percentage of Americans approving of Obama’s economic policies (39 percent) and a higher percentage approving his handling of health care (41 percent). Foreign policy is the most unpopular thing Obama is doing right now. And lest one think that foreign policy is never a winner, Bill Clinton’s foreign policy ratings at roughly the same point in his second term were quite good — 57 percent approval; 34 percent disapproval — and Ronald Reagan’s rating was more than 50 percent at a similar point in his presidency. That leaves Obama in the company of George W. Bush — not the first-term Bush whose ratings were consistently high but the second-term Bush mired in the worst phase of the Iraq war.

AND

For many decades Americans thought of their nation as special. They were the self-proclaimed “leader of the free world,” the “indispensable nation,” the No. 1 superpower. It was a source of pride. Now, pundits and prognosticators are telling them that those days are over, that it is time for the United States to seek more modest goals commensurate with its declining power. And they have a president committed to this task. He has shown little nostalgia for the days of U.S. leadership and at times seems to conceive it as his job to deal with the “reality” of decline.

Perhaps this is what they want from him. But it is not something they will thank him for. To follow a leader to triumph inspires loyalty, gratitude and affection. Following a leader in retreat inspires no such emotions.

Now THAT is the definition of shamelessness. Invoking George W. Bush’s unpopularity for a war that Kagan himself was instrumental in selling to the bad seed of President George Herbert Walker Bush, a man who understood that the neocons were “crazies” despite his destined for historical infamy Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. In the typical haughty and sneering manner of the elitist neocons Kagan also considers the average American views towards war to be contemptible and not worth considering, his fellow neocon ideologue William Kristol recently bashed a "war weary" America in similar fashion. Kagan's condescension is at least somewhat justified in that the vast majority of Americans are idiots - the lofty status afforded to the neocons who are now resurgent as well as their failure to resist any of the corruption, surveillance and now the giveaway of billions to an unelected gaggle of puppets of the global finance mafia in Ukraine is a testament to that.

Kagan also falsely spins Obama's rapidly sinking approval rating to suit the needs of the neocons while omitting that the man is a duplicitous flip-flopper who stands for nothing but burnishing his own legacy, presides over the most intrusive surveillance apparatus in the history of the planet and has from day one been in over his head. Throw in the five years of racist animosity over a black man being elected president that is prevalent within the dregs of society and has been stoked relentlessly by dog whistle politics and outside big money groups as well as the worst Congress in history and you can see that Kagan like all of the neocons is full of bullshit.

There are many reasons why Obama's popularity rating is sinking faster than whale shit and his spinning of the attack and invasion of Iraq to fit the false narrative that has been constructed about Putin and Ukraine is but one of them. Mr. Kagan can just go and fuck himself, like all of the other cowards who constantly advocate for wars in which the children of American mothers will be fed into the meat grinder in order to satisfy their own arrogance and as serious systemic error in affording scum like the neocons the legitimacy that the do not deserve.

A Narcissist Scorned: Obama Throws Another Tantrum

Despite weeks of saber rattling and threats from our dear leader Barack the Feckless and his bull in a China shop Secretary of State John Kerry, the Skull and Bones pedigreed stammering ass whose brief tenure has now put the US on a path to a war with Russia the referendum in Crimea that they had so desperately wanted to avoid went down on Sunday. With the third body blow to dwindling US prestige now having landed – the first two being Russia’s offer of asylum to former government whistleblower turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden followed by the humiliation of Russian leader Vladimir Putin intervening to prevent the neocon’s splendid little war on Syria the vote in Crimea has assholes puckering this morning. The poor aggrieved star bellied Sneetches in their mighty kingdom inside the DC beltway are apoplectic that the people of Crimea have given Obama the middle finger and voted to rejoin Russia. How is that coup d’etat going for you today Mr. President?

Not that you can blame Crimea considering that the western orchestrated overthrow of democratically elected Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych set the country on a course towards corporate exploitation by the global finance mafia and that fascists and neo-Nazis had key roles in the puppet government. It is not an argument that Putin is any kind of great humanitarian figure but better the devil you know than to be beggared as the new world order carves up your homeland like a Thanksgiving turkey and the US corporate mercenaries such as Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland turn a blind eye to packs of marauding neo-Nazi militias. They got out while the getting was good making the world safe for McDonalds and at a larger level for Monsanto, Cargill and Chevron has nothing to do with that exalted horseshit of “spreading democracy” that is always invoked when it comes to raping an overseas country for its natural resources. Just look at what is going on in Iraq – the neocons were going to bring “democracy” to those who were under the boot of once reliable US puppet Saddam Hussein  and it is a charnel house that far exceeds the worst days of Saddam. Don’t look for any of this in the corrupt US state-corporate media though although there has been some small leakages of the real story as of late.

So what is the pope of hope to do but stamp his feet, hold his breath and launch a wave of economic sanctions against Russia which is as Ron Paul recently said is an "act of war" and this is not going to end well considering the hubris of the arrogant cancer on the Potomac, the think skin of Obama and the imperial hubris of a rapidly declining world power. Russia is not Iraq, Iran or any of the other shitty little countries that can be kicked around by the militarized to the teeth global bully, it is a large nation with a long history and a sense of pride unlike anything that exists in the United States of Dancing With the Stars and it's borderline moron population. This too is going to end up blowing up in the face of the titular President Obama, defacto President John McCain and all of the holier than thou dumbasses and dipshits in their orbit. It is only a matter of how much damage will be done, all of it of the self-inflicted nature that The Homeland has become accustomed to.

Whoever got the idea of a ridiculously conceived overthrow of a democratically elected leader, backed by corrupt western interests and carried out with the help of ruthless gangs of right-wing extremists, fascists and neo-Nazis (from which likely came that sniper fire that provided the impetus for the ouster) during the Sochi Winter Olympic games all to stick it to Putin should just do the honorable thing and perform harakiri. Ritual suicide is an act of honor in Japanese culture and the ongoing clusterfuck in the aftermath of the botched coup demands that there be people held accountable before the weakling Obama and the neocons get all of us incinerated. The way that this thing is unfolding I wouldn't put the ultimate act of stupidity of starting a nuclear war past these imbeciles. Those responsible should just do the right thing and do so quickly. 

Too bad there is neither honor nor accountability in this collapsing house of cards that is The Homeland. 

NSA Programs Real Purpose is Targeting of Dissent

These programs were never about terrorism: they’re about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power.

 -Edward Snowden

When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia briefly let the mask slip during recent comments to University of Hawaii law students it was a rare moment of openness as to reveal the pathology of the leadership class here in The Homeland.  During an exchange over a World War II era case involving Japanese Americans who were rounded up and placed in internment camps such as the infamous Manzanar Scalia stated that  “…you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again” and "In times of war, the laws fall silent." Times of war such as the permanent war on terror that is now in its thirteenth year running and still picking up steam, especially so with the rampage towards a newly rebooted Cold War. With the ultimatums of Kerry and Obama, goaded on by a corrupt media with an insatiable thirst for blood and a resurgent neocon menace we now stand on the edge of great peril as the oppressive apparatus of the power of Leviathan that has been exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden will find refuge in the climate of paranoia and fear that will be triggered anew. Time is short and we all must do our part to now apply immense pressure to ensure that the illegal programs of the surveillance state are exposed before the hydra is allowed to reconfigure behind the looming war to end all wars.

The ongoing flow of revelations provided by the documents that Snowden appropriated as a public service to an America that has ever since the 'day when everything changed' on September 11, 2001 been bludgeoned by fear into a state of meek acceptance and submission to their own enslavement continue to emerge. What is starting to come out now is even worse than just the massive unconstitutional warrantless surveillance, data-mining and mass storage of all of the communications and financial information of millions of law-abiding citizens that has been a constant nuisance to the Obama administration. Now we get the real stuff, first there was the trolling of porn sites for incriminating data, the obvious involvement in economic trickery and industrial espionage, blackmail of political officials and now thanks to Polk Award winner Glenn Greenwald - targeting political dissent.

In a story that broke last month by Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher on First Look Media's new online magazine The Intercept entitled “Snowden Documents Reveal Covert Surveillance and Pressure Tactics Aimed at WikiLeaks and Its Supporters” it was revealed that the NSA and its foreign partners went after supporters of Wikileaks as well as other activist groups. The greatest enemy of the secret state is transparency and the relentless manner in which the US government and its Norsefire lackeys across the pond have gone after Assange, Snowden and Greenwald is an indication of just how much it fears the truth about the real intent of the surveillance programs ever getting out. The list of those who have run afoul of the secret state is long and the vengeance has often been of the most severe nature.

Some targets of note with the exception of the aforementioned three are free lance journalist Danny Casolaro who was investigating high crimes involving government officials when his body was found in a West Virginia hotel room back in 1991 in a blood filled bathtub. It could be speculated that he was on to something big involving the surveillance state, particularly the CIA and NSA as well as foreign intelligence services as his research included matters associated with the now forgotten PROMIS software, a powerful and advanced precursor to today's NSA surveillance and data-mining programs. He could have been the first casualty in the war on journalism and as it was the era before the internet it was much easier to simply 'shut down' a dangerous line of inquiry by eliminating a 'nuisance' than it is in 2014. More recently there was journalist Michael Hastings whose reporting brought down General Stanley McChrystal formerly of JSOC and whose uncompromising style had led to him having amassed a large list of enemies. His mysterious and fiery death in an automobile 'accident' has been relegated to the memory hole just months afterwards, it is of note that according to some reports that he was also onto something big and was allegedly in contact with Wikileaks lawyers shortly before his new Mercedes was engulfed in a ball of fire.

But l digress...

Greenwald's expose was a damning indictment of just how out of control that the rogue elements of the deep state have become in their relentless drive to forever lock down their power and the targeting of dissenters is the most critical component of their long term strategy. I excerpt from the piece:

The efforts – detailed in documents provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – included a broad campaign of international pressure aimed not only at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, but at what the U.S. government calls “the human network that supports WikiLeaks.” The documents also contain internal discussions about targeting the file-sharing site Pirate Bay and hacktivist collectives such as Anonymous.

 One classified document from Government Communications Headquarters, Britain’s top spy agency, shows that GCHQ used its surveillance system to secretly monitor visitors to a WikiLeaks site. By exploiting its ability to tap into the fiber-optic cables that make up the backbone of the Internet, the agency confided to allies in 2012, it was able to collect the IP addresses of visitors in real time, as well as the search terms that visitors used to reach the site from search engines like Google.

Another classified document from the U.S. intelligence community, dated August 2010, recounts how the Obama administration urged foreign allies to file criminal charges against Assange over the group’s publication of the Afghanistan war logs.

 A third document, from July 2011, contains a summary of an internal discussion in which officials from two NSA offices – including the agency’s general counsel and an arm of its Threat Operations Center – considered designating WikiLeaks as “a ‘malicious foreign actor’ for the purpose of targeting.” Such a designation would have allowed the group to be targeted with extensive electronic surveillance – without the need to exclude U.S. persons from the surveillance searches.

 In 2008, not long after WikiLeaks was formed, the U.S. Army prepared a report that identified the organization as an enemy, and plotted how it could be destroyed. The new documents provide a window into how the U.S. and British governments appear to have shared the view that WikiLeaks represented a serious threat, and reveal the controversial measures they were willing to take to combat it.

Two quick things to take away from the excerpt is that the rogue agency as well as the U.S. military is not only speaking of designating WikiLeaks as a "malicious foreign actor" which would make it subject to the anti-terror (anti-dissent) secret system of laws jammed down Americans' throats after 9/11 but that it is also going after those who are even supportive of the organization - including domestic targets. This is the key component of the entire piece in my personal opinion in that all of that data-mining that will take up residence at the massive NSA Utah facility and other locations for vague future purposes has now become a little clearer. The data will be perused for going after 'enemies of the state' and the oppression will not be limited to dissenters and sympathizers but also to all of their known acquaintances, family members, friends and other associates past and present so as to intimidate, bully, threaten and extort in order to build a case against the targets.

NSA whistleblower William Binney perfectly sums it up in a recent interview with Rob Kall of the progressive website OpEd News available here:

R.K.: Anything that we haven't covered yet?  We have got to wrap this up.  Anything that we haven't covered that's really important that you would like the listeners to know about?

W.B.: Just that my major concern isn't with NSA having access to this data or having this data, it's the use of it and once they get it and store it, being used by law enforcement and our law enforcement is spreading that around the world to other law enforcement and so it's corrupting not just our democracy, we're becoming a police state because of this but it's also corrupting the countries around the world so it's really endangering the democratic process and the court systems that we have established.  That is really destroying our society.  We may not know it yet but eventually it'll get to all of us.

R.K.: Bad news.  So you told me that you're going to spend the rest of your life on this. 

W.B.: Yes.  Until my government basically starts to do the right thing, and that means become a constitutionally based operating government.

R.K.: Do you see any ideological or party differences in the way this is being handled?

W.B.: Actually no.  I think they're all basically the same.  They've been, I mean for example you know Bush would refer to have acquired the terrorists, captured them, put them in to torture them to get information; whereas Obama would kill them with a drone.  So it's the same principle, I mean they're just doing whatever they want, there are no limits to what they want to do.  Especially the latest NDAA that talks about giving the president the power to declare anybody, any US Citizen even in this country a terrorist and have the military pick them up, take them off the street, incarcerate them indefinitely, and give them no due process. 

That to me is executing something very similar to what the Nazis did in 1933, Special Order 48, that did exactly the same thing.  And that's how they got rid of all of their opposition.  All the communists and anybody else that opposed them.  But I mean they sent them to the concentration camps.  So far we have not been sending them to the concentration camps but they'll do things like send the FBI after you or maybe attempt to put you in jail like they tried to do with a number of us. 

So they're not as radical yet but the problem is that when you give people that kind of power or they hold that kind of power, sooner or later, they're going to use it. One way or another. 

R.K.: You know it seems to me that the same applies to technology.  If the technology is available or if it can be developed they're going to develop it and they're going to use it.  

The elimination of political opponents and crushing of dissent is essential for authoritarian regimes, it is notable that it was Justice Scalia, a Ronald Reagan appointee who brought up the internment camps in American's future for it was another former Reagan official, Lt. Colonel Oliver North whose REX 84 program was similarly targeting political dissidents and using the aforementioned PROMIS software to do so. I excerpt from a 1990s WIRED magazine piece "The Inslaw Octopus" by Richard Fricker:

 Lt. Col. Oliver North also may have been using the program. According to several intelligence community sources, PROMIS was in use at a 6,100-square-foot command center built on the sixth floor of the Justice Department. According to both a contractor who helped design the center and information disclosed during the Iran-Contra hearings, Oliver North had a similar, but smaller, White House operations room that was connected by computer link to the DOJ's command center.

 Using the computers in his command center, North tracked dissidents and potential troublemakers within the United States as part of a domestic emergency preparedness program, commissioned under Reagan's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), according to sources and published reports. Using PROMIS, sources point out, North could have drawn up lists of anyone ever arrested for a political protest, for example, or anyone who had ever refused to pay their taxes. Compared to PROMIS, Richard Nixon's enemies list or Sen. Joe McCarthy's blacklist look downright crude. This operation was so sensitive that when Rep. Jack Brooks asked North about it during the Iran-Contra hearings, the hearing was immediately suspended pending an executive (secret) conference. When the hearings were reconvened, the issue of North's FEMA dealings was dropped.

The greatest yet to be asked question about the ongoing surveillance programs, given the comments by Scalia is not how much has yet to be revealed but when did it all begin in the first place? 

This is a relevant question indeed since the legal foundation for the current NSA surveillance and data-collection operations were cemented into place by Reagan's own Executive Order 12333 issued back in 1981. That particular administration served as an incubator for many of the same neocons who would later reemerge during the Bushreich and with the drug-running, arms-dealing uber-patriot Ollie North having been using a mysterious and powerful advanced  computer program to dabble in martial law it could serve as a historical point of reference for all that is being exposed now. The Reagan administration, with the Gipper's anti-Communist mania and backing of rogue armies of thugs and murders in Latin America, the deep state/shadow government that birthed Iran-Contra and the order to justify all of what was to come haunts us all to this day. Particularly with the newly invigorated neocons now having what appears to be firm control of foreign policy with the fascist, and neo-Nazi assisted coup d'etat in Kiev and the renewed hostilities with 'the bear' surely providing a gateway to upcoming wars in Iran and Syria. That will provide the perfect climate for the crackdown and crushing of dissent in The Homeland. Thanks to Barack Obama's historic failure to roll back the evisceration of the constitution under his predecessor there is now the infrastructure to permanently render obsolete any concept of freedom that ever existed in this country.

The data-mining and and storage of everything in facilities such as that one that sits in Bluffdale, Utah and the ability to selectively target political opponents of the war machine for silencing would have been Ollie North's wet dream, or Stalin's or to invoke the favorite bogeyman of the neocons- Hitler.

Hillary Surfaces and Compares Putin to Hitler

With the restoration of the corrupt Clinton family dynasty looming the likely successor to Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham-Clinton has played the obligatory Nazi card in joining in on the Putin pile on.  Mrss Clinton made her remarks comparing Russian leader Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler during a private appearance in California, taken along with similar off the cuff statements in non-public settings by SCOTUS Justice Antonin Scalia (internment camps) and former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney (screw half of the country) it is a window into the very deranged mindset of the American elite. The invocation of the long dead fanatical Nazi dictator is a winner whenever it is time for the rogue American war machine to crank up for another illegal intervention into the affairs of another country. It is always a must to ensure that the leader of an enemy country be thoroughly demonized so more meddling in foreign lands can be sold to the star-spangled lemming flock who are slowly being beggared by the money directed at world domination by the government agents of a rapacious, degenerate looter class - this case being the global financial mafia that Clinton serves and will continue to serve as she takes up residence in the White House come January 2017.

The neocons truly cherish the WW II references, especially those invoking Der Führer or the sainted Sir Winston when making their case for the ongoing series of blatant acts of raw aggression and subversion of democratically elected governments that have become as American as apple pie over the last sixty or so years but why not Stalin? It is really not arguable that Russian tyrant Joseph Stalin was responsible for more dead bodies than Hitler ever was but with a deep seated aversion to real history thanks to willful ignorance, the effects of incessant propaganda, the state indoctrination of an America centric glorified revisionist history and the ongoing dumbing down process it would be a tough sell. I would imagine that the majority of Americans have absolutely no idea who Stalin was but thanks to the neocons and their media lie factories everyone understands Hitler - actually some dumbass had a letter published in yesterdays edition of my local paper entitled "Adolph Putin".  Still it is a cheap political gimmick to constantly play the Nazi card and far more than a bit hypocritical considering that the U.S. backed putsch in Ukraine has relied on neo-Nazi militias to back the hostile takeover in Kiev.

Conveniently absent from any of the American establishment media's ongoing shock and awe carpet bombing of raw propaganda demonizing Putin and lying about the nature of what happened in Ukraine has been any mention at all of the fascists, extreme right-wing nationalists and neo-Nazis that were essential to the ouster of the elected president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych . That is until Wednesday when the truth that was managing to seep out thanks largely to the internet and alternative media and the Ukranian neo-Nazis were finally acknowledged - in a smear piece by none other than Fox News where it was dismissed as Putin propaganda. It is highly likely that given the revelations on NSA mass surveillance provided by former government contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden that those who converse in such things are being monitored along with supporters of the BDS Movement which the ever more out of touch Israeli despot Bibi Netanyahyu invoked 18 times in his stemwinder at Tuesday's AIPAC 'do you have sufficient loyalty to Israel' litmus test soiree.  The pickup list for when the shit hits the fan will continue to grow as more and more people begin to wise up to the big con that has been played on them by criminals in high places.

Clinton's belated entry into the game comes at a crucial time and is likely a harbinger of her official announcement of the bid for the 2016 Democratic party nomination. She will then roll largely unopposed to the highest office in the land as the Republican party has continued to self-immolate by pandering to the ideological domestic counterparts of Ukraine's Svoboda and Right Sector who with their relentless defense of taking over the powers of the state to enforce a bigoted and insane religious doctrine upon America have rendered them incapable of winning a national election. She is after all the chosen one by the global elite financial syndicate that controls both U.S. political parties but has particularly become entrenched with the Democrats. In an interesting excerpt from Rolling Stone magazine, in a Matt Taibbi piece on the ongoing commodities racketeering by Goldman Sachs and others an old Clinton friend resurfaces. From "The Vampire Squid Strikes Again":

The sudden turning on of this huge faucet of free money seems to have been a factor in an ensuing commodities shopping spree undertaken by all three firms. Morgan Stanley, for instance, claimed to have just $2.5 billion in commodity assets in March 2009. By September 2011, those holdings had nearly quadrupled, to $10.3 billion.

Goldman and Chase – along with Glencore and Trafigura, a pair of giant Swiss-based conglomerates that were offshoots of a firm founded by notorious deceased commodities trader and known market manipulator Marc Rich – all made notably coincidental purchases of metals-warehousing companies in 2010.

The presence of these Marc Rich entities is particularly noteworthy. According to famed Forbes reporter Paul Klebnikov, who was assassinated in 2004 after years of reports on Russian corruption, Rich made a fortune in the early Nineties striking crooked deals with the Soviet bosses who controlled the U.S.S.R.'s supplies of raw materials – in particular commodities like zinc and aluminum. These deals helped create a fledgling class of profiteers among the bosses of the crumbling Soviet empire, a class that would go on years later to help push Russia out of its communist past into its kleptocratic present.

"He'd strike a deal with the local party boss, or the director of a state-owned company," Klebnikov said back in 2001. "He'd say, 'OK, you will sell me the [commodity] at five to 10 percent of the world-market price . . . and in return, I will deposit some of the profit I make by reselling it 10 times higher on the world market, and put the kickback in a Swiss bank account.'"

Rich made these reported deals while in exile from the United States, which he fled in 1983 after the U.S. government charged him with tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering and trading with the enemy after being caught trading with rogue states like Iran, among other things. The state filed enough counts to put him away for life, and he remained a fugitive until January 2001, when a little-known Clinton administration Justice Department official named Eric Holder recommended Rich be pardoned. A report by the House Committee on Government Reform later concluded that Holder had not provided a credible explanation for supporting Rich's pardon and that he must have had "other motivations" that he didn't share with Congress. Among other things, the committee speculated that Holder had designs on the attorney general's office in a potential Al Gore administration.

In any case, in 2010, a decade after the Rich pardon, Holder was attorney general, but under Barack Obama, and two Rich-created firms, along with two banks that have been major donors to the Democratic Party, all made moves to buy up metals warehouses. In near simultaneous fashion, Goldman, Chase, Glencore and Trafigura bought companies that control warehouses all over the world for the LME, or London Metals Exchange. The LME is a privately owned exchange for world metals trading. It's the world's primary hub for determining metals prices and also for trading metals-based futures, options, swaps and other instruments.

Clinton family intimate Marc Rich? With that being Taibbi's last piece for Rolling Stone as he is moving on to First Look Media to work along with real journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Jeremy Scahill, Marcy Wheeler and others who will push the envelope in challenging the rogue American government I can hardly wait for the followup. Mr. Rich along with others looted the former Soviet Union after the collapse and the actions ongoing in Ukraine with the full support of the U.S. government to apply the economic austerity shock doctrine so that the pigs can feast must have his ghost beaming with approval.

Palling Around with Neo-Nazis

Senator McCain with neo-Nazi buddy Oleh Tyahnybok 

 During today's Sunday morning state-corporate media slimefest where anti-Putin hysteria will be the topic du jour there will likely be no questions whatsoever asked as to why the U.S. has backed neo-Nazis in what was obviously a western orchestrated coup against the democratically elected leader of Ukraine.  One of the ‘guests’ will probably be the fiendish Arizona Senator John McCain, a crazed warmonger and longtime Russia hater who is foaming at the mouth for another opportunity to send American military men and women into harm’s way as blood sacrifices for eternal war. McCain’s garbage and the state media embrace of a deranged old man as some sort of elder statesman illustrates the now complete rot of the American political system.

The neocons were barely finished jacking each other off over their devious plot to strike back at their personal bogeyman Russian leader Vladimir Putin while he was distracted with the Sochi Olympic games by backing a fascist coup in Ukraine when Putin obtained permission from the Russian parliament to send military forces into the border country which he understandably did. The latest scheme from the PNAC gang has just gone up like a flaming bag of dogshit in their bloodstained hands just like the invasion of Iraq did. You would figure that such a motley collection of pseudo intellectuals, rank weasels, fools, chickenhawks and cheapjack Machiavellian wannabes would at some point face the mockery that they deserve, an exile from their media spokesperson gigs and a purge from every institution in which they can have any influence over U.S. policy. But as has been painfully evident for years now this once great country has gone insane, and criminally so therefore the usual scum will be making the rounds on Meet the Press, Fox News Sunday, Face the Nation, State of the Union and This Week with George Stephanopoulos on the rancid ‘news’ shows from which the weekly spin is launched.

                                                                   Tyahnybok in more comfortable surroundings

The entire establishment media has yet to bother mentioning that the coup d’etat that sent Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing in fear of his life was heavily dependent on the support of extremist neo-Nazi elements that western agitators not only embraced but supported. None other than Senator John McCain made a pilgrimage to Kiev to rub elbows with the rabble that dressed up in Medieval garb, set the streets on fire, murdered police officers and executed the putsch. One of McCain’s neo-Nazi chums was Svoboda party member Oleh Tyahnybok with whom the globe-trotting epitome of the ‘ugly American’ was photographed with during his visit to throw his support behind the insurrectionists. This is not the first time that McCain has made an ass out himself in such a manner, having recently been embarrassed by a photo with criminal elements of the anti-Assad Syrian rebel forces. Just a hint to the Sunday morning mouthpieces of imperial conquest and that is when the United States of America finds itself supporting neo-Nazis, full blown fascists and al Qaeda affiliated militants in the push for planetary domination it has officially lost any last vestige of moral high ground.

But it is not as though the best and the brightest in our most exceptional of nations has had an aversion to dealing with Nazis in the past - real ones at that. A new book by Annie Jacobson "Operation Paperclip" chronicles the post-war importation of Nazi scientists including serious war criminals into the U.S. where they would continue their research but would be collecting their paychecks from the American taxpayer instead of the Third Reich. There was also the matter of the Gehlen Org. where U.S. intelligence assimilated Hitler's commander of Eastern intelligence, General Reinhard Gehlen and his Nazi cohorts to lead the crusade against the red menace. Gehlen was grateful to the extent that he consistently supplied the inflated intel and cooked numbers that ensured that the big money would continue to roll in for the permanent armaments industry. There is also the matter of Wall Street firms including the venerable Sullivan & Cromwell where the Dulles brothers schemed as well as Prescott Bush whose Union Banking Corporation which was actually shut down under the Trading With the Enemy Act - that Allen Dulles was instrumental in creating the CIA as well as supporting Nazis and that Bush was the father and grandfather of two future U.S. Presidents is indicative of the abdication of any type of morality that one must assume to rise to the top in the American establishment.

The disturbing thing about the neo-Nazis in Ukraine is not so much that the state-corporate media will not bother to acknowledge it but that very few people would likely care thanks to the effectiveness of the brainwashing that has gone on since Putin intervened to halt the war on Syria. When it gets so bad that even the highly respected sports commentator Bob Costas uses the Olympics as a forum for launching into an anti-Putin diatribe you can see how much effort has gone into this costly and all-encompassing propaganda campaign. 

Goebbels shrugged. 

Mendacious Meddler Obama Warns Putin Not to Meddle in Ukraine

Those groaning, creaking and popping noises that were barely audible during  Barack Obama’s hastily announced  Friday afternoon White House statement was the sound of an empire of lies on the verge of collapsing under the weight of its own bullshit. The President of the most exceptional, god-kissed, special nation in the history of the planet warned the reviled Russian leader Vladimir Putin not to dare to intervene in Ukraine after a joint US-EU instigated coup d’etat that effectively ousted democratically elected Viktor Yanukovych. While Obama’s lies are dutifully and unquestionably communicated by a corrupt, careerist state media for domestic consumption one has to wonder just how much longer that the American war machine will have any credibility whatsoever abroad. The propaganda blitzkrieg touting the ‘freedom fighters’ whose mob violence led to the chasing of Yanukovicych from power only to be replaced by some of the most vile thugs and neo-Nazis in Eastern Europe has been as withering as it is dishonest. Months of shrill and egregious demonizing of Putin after he dared to offer asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and then swept to the rescue to keep the American political class and their expensive toy the military from another Middle Eastern war in Syria had Barry and the boys itching for payback.

It was revenge of the dish served cold nature that they extracted from Putin during his national showcase of the Sochi Winter Olympic games by pulling off the coup in Kiev, an embarrassment for the Russian boss of which the timing was critical to the deal going down. The neocons could barely control their glee, boasting about 'democracy' that was nothing more than mob rule. But America has long been based on a passel of lies, hypocrisy and imperial meddling all sold by being (to quote Sinclair Lewis) “wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross” at least since the end of World War II and the creation of the CIA. With the German Nazis and Japanese defeated, Europe in ruins and America essentially taking control of the old British Empire this country has done nothing but meddle in the affairs of others,  planning and staging coups, backing murderous torturing despots to protect western business interests, assassinations, proxy wars, economic sabotage, full blown wars under our own flag and now with the advent of communications technology spying on the private communications of foreign leaders and engaging in economic espionage.

While Obama may have been a Constitutional law professor – although given his ongoing assistance in nullifying it while in office it has to be considered that maybe that is the reason he got the gig in the first place – he doesn’t bother much with history, unless of course it is the state sanctioned version of a moral and triumphant nation and champion of human rights that promotes John Wayne whup-ass diplomacy. Not that a petulant narcissist like Obama actually gives a rat’s ass about anything remotely resembling the truth but here is a short list of places where his great government of ours has meddled in over the past several decades including official military involvement as well as CIA operations (listed in alphabetic not chronological order and not all inclusive):

Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Chile, Columbia, Congo, Cuba, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Egypt, El Salvador, Georgia, Greece, Grenada, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Korea, Laos, Liberia, Libya, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Uganda, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen…

..and of course Ukraine.

The state-corporate media is of course complicit but with the Clinton era wave of consolidations and a history of CIA/government meddling such as Operation Mockingbird, the revocation of the Fairness Doctrine, the revolving door between the Pentagon and defense contractors and the ex-generals who are trotted out as “experts” without any mention of glaring conflicts of interest it is more like the media and the government have now merged with the former serving as nothing more than a propaganda arm, Pravda on the Potomac. Having a dumbed-down, steeped in superstition, brainwashed and quite frankly stupid populace that is more concerned with the exploits of the Kardashians and Justin Bieber than what it is that truly affects their lives on a larger level doesn’t hurt the efforts of the rogue government to impose their big lie of democracy at gunpoint on the majority of the world. The level of willful ignorance in what is at least theoretically an advanced society is stunning and we are well on our way to the land that was prophesied in the biting social satire “Idiocracy”. The absence of any questioning of exactly why it is that this impetuous ass of a president and the neocon embeds within the system are so hellbent on risking a serious conflict with a powerful, nuclear armed nation such as Russia over a situation that is spinning out of control in one of the countries that sits on its border. Does anyone ever bother to think of what Obama or any US president would do if meddlers from another country would foment a civil war in Mexico or Canada? But we already know the answer to that for it is we who are the exceptional and the reverence of all things military in this land of fear and woe borders on the fanaticism of a cult.

Since the end of the ‘good war’ the bulk of the meddling was justified by having to fight the hyped and blown out of proportion menace of global communism emanating from the Soviet Union, when that long needed Manichean devil justify a permanent state of war. The manufacture and sale of bullets, bombs, aircraft, tanks etcetera was just too big of a moneymaker to ever beat those swords back into plowshares and set about building a just society and President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned of the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex in his farewell address way back in 1961. So we had well in excess of sixty years of meddling in foreign lands to defeat a trumped up menace that justified the whole bloody business of death and destruction. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and crackup of the USSR the gravy train risked derailment but thanks to Poppy Bush with his meddling in Iraq and Bubba Clinton with his bombing the shit out of Belgrade and other misadventures the warfare state managed to lurch along until September 11, 2001. The war machine hit the jackpot that day with their War on Terror (translation: Muslims) that thanks to that “New Pearl Harbor” that the neocons  so desired allowed for the fleecing of a terrified nation therefore a new series of wars/meddling and an unprecedented redistribution of wealth to finance the full blown cancer of a massive and bloated surveillance machine that thanks to Snowden’s revelations we now can see that it is not about “terrorism” at all.  So with the phony War on Terror now belatedly being exposed as a fraud what would be better to justify increased looting of the Treasury, beggaring Americans and finishing the job of destroying the middle class once and for all but a resurgent Red Menace?

(Image: AP/Charles Dharapak)

Eric Cantor's Perpetual War Doctrine and those Neo-Nazis in Ukraine

When House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the pride of Virginia's 7th Congressional District delivers his annual speech at the 2014 AIPAC Policy Conference next week it will be interesting to see whether he offers up credit where due as  the Ukrainian coup d'etat was accomplished with the help of Neo-Nazis , a group that should be anathema to the audience. When Cantor picked up the PNAC/Clean Break Neocon torch on President's Day after he gave a red meat filled speech to the Virginia Military Institute that made George W. Bush look like Ghandi he also signed on to the longtime doctrine to take down Russia as a world power. The speech delivered to cadets - the same sort that chickenshit bastards like Cantor who never bothered to serve would send to their deaths in wars of their creation - was a cornucopia of repackaged Bush-Cheney era talking points peppered generously with the obligatory references to Hitler, WW II and the Holocaust and then dipped in a vat of American revisionist history swill.

The on a roll Cantor was a major hit that day and it likely marked the launching of his long-awaited move to mount a House of Representatives putsch against the constantly under duress Speaker John Boehner with a longing glance at what is now a wide open race for the GOP presidential bid come 2016. That this on very day there was a meeting to mend fences (and possibly unite against the newly energized neocons menace) between Obama and the orange tinted man from Ohio may not be a simple coincidence. Nothing quite unites like a common enemy and the on the ropes, dry drunk Boehner and the prickly narcissist Obama are both well within the target coordinates of what promises to be a free fire zone as the war pigs squeal over military budget cuts, back the irresponsible swine who have pulled off a hostile takeover in Kiev (including the neo-Nazis) and roll out the red carpet for "King Bibi" as he brings his filthy carnival of perversion to the U.S. As the old saying goes, politics makes for strange bedfellows.

But I digress..

In his heralded foreign policy speech Cantor used the opportunity to blast Russia with both barrels, particularly the hated and demonized leader Vladimir Putin, denouncing Barack Obama for not following through on the Saudi-Israeli backed push for a new war in Syria last fall and paying the standard paeans to the blessed Ronald Reagan. I excerpt from the House Majority Leader's prepared remarks:

“Look no further than Russia, a traditional ally to Leftist regimes in Latin America, to see the consequences of disengagement.

 “When President Obama came to office, he seemed intent on engaging an old adversary and extended a hand to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Secretary Clinton famously pressed a ‘reset button’ to symbolize a new start to a more harmonious relationship with Russia.

 “Well, despite the idyllic pictures from the Olympic coverage at Sochi, Putin is still living in the Cold War. He has demonstrated that he’s neither interested in better relations with the United States nor is he fearful of poking America in the eye.

 “Just in the last year, Putin has blocked U.N. Security Council Resolutions, provided lethal support to Bashar Assad’s Syria, threatened the independence of Russia’s neighbors in Eastern Europe and suppressed dissent at home. He’s even rolled out the red carpet for a traitor- Edward Snowden - whose theft of incredibly sensitive classified information has done incredible damage to America’s security.

 “We should acknowledge the truth about Putin and his government. An America that leads must have policies based on a clear understanding that Russia behaves like an adversary, seeking every opportunity to undermine our interests and push its advantage. We should work with Russia when doing so is in our interest, but we should also speak clearly against Russia’s aggression abroad and its repression at home.

“Recent reports of Russia’s violations of the INF treaty, and the apparent lack of a response from the United States, raise profound concerns about Russia’s trustworthiness as an arms control partner, either with respect to new bilateral reduction treaties such as New START or multilateral negotiations with Iran. Russia’s behavior, and the growing threat posed by proliferation, are a stark reminder that the United States must maintain a credible nuclear deterrent capability, which has been paramount in providing security to allies around the world.

“We could learn a lot from President Ronald Reagan, who understood the value of an America that leads. Reagan’s clarity of vision and strength of purpose in calling for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” inspired millions behind the Iron Curtain. He made clear to Soviet leaders that America would not be pushed around.

“Reagan’s clarity of purpose and commitment to rebuilding America’s strength compelled Soviet leaders to make concessions on ground-breaking arms control agreements which paved the way to end the Cold War. An America that leads must regain its clarity of purpose and commitment to prevail for freedom's sake.

That Cantor has the audacity to call out Putin for "still living in the Cold War" is a testament to his accomplished ascent to the hall of fame for pathological liars in American political history - there has been no group that has been more desperate to reignite that sick period in our national saga than the neocons. As for the invoking of Saint Ronald it was that doddering old fool who openly backed some of the most ruthless atrocities practiced since the real Nazis when he sang the praises of Latin American paramilitary groups that tortured and murdered tens if not hundreds of thousands of people whose only 'crime' was to desire to rid themselves of the yoke of U.S. imperialism goes unmentioned. Reagan had the gall to actually compare them to the Founding Fathers despite the grisly accounts of mass slaughters such as the one at El Mozote.  Reagan also revered the militant Islamic "freedom fighters" who were waging a costly war of attrition against the Soviets in Afghanistan, this support would come home to roost on the pristine morning of September 11, 2001 'the day when everything changed'. To a seasoned grifter like Cantor, a man who has already hit it big by landing one of those well paying 'big gubmint' jobs on the taxpayer dole  it matters nothing when it comes to throwing in with savages and scum as long as there is personal political gain to be reaped.

So no, I don't imagine that even someone with the shameless gall of Mr. Cantor who despite his ongoing exploiting of them for political gain would dare to stand up in front of an audience of Zionist Jews praise the critical contributions of Neo-Nazi terrorists to support the violent instigation to facilitate the removal of a democratically elected leader in a dangerous proxy war against Putin and Russia. That would be a bridge too far for even the conniving Eric 'Iranium' Cantor who is the walking embodiment of that great quote by the legendary American writer H.L. Mencken: “Imagine a gentleman, and you have imagined everything that he was not.”

Congressman Cantor is about the worst of the worsth that this most tainted and lamentable current political class has to offer which when considering his competition says one hell of a lot about this amoral lying jackal. Hopefully the voters in Virginia's 7th Congressional district will have a collective road to Damascus moment and do their patriotic duty in November to lance this boil on the ass of the American body politic.