AMEN

BURN IT TO SAVE IT

I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes … It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected. - Winston Churchill (1919)

Uncivilized tribes. Offending natives. Inferior races. Lesser-grade stock. Advanced imperial powers have needed to devise creative ways to extirpate these execrable inhabitants. And you thought smallpox infected blankets and slaughtering the buffalo were effective. What about depleted uranium munitions? Poisoning the water supply? The Salvadoran option? Of course, all of these plans have been developed with only the best of intentions. Let's not forget that King Leopold of Belgium’s Central African Empire was originally called the International Association for Philanthropy in the Congo.

Churchill was really keen on using chemical weapons, because in the summer of 1920, more than 100,000 “recalcitrant Arabs” rose up against the British invaders and occupiers of Iraq. In this first Operation Iraqi Freedom, the army gassed Iraqi rebels with “excellent moral effect” while the RAF (led by Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris) relentlessly raided tribal villages. Thousands of civilians were blown apart during these “terror” raids while punitive bombing attacks on Arab villages continued throughout the decade.

In his instructive memoir that reflects on destroying Iraqi villages by “cutting off water power, the area being cleared of the necessaries of life,” British Lieutenant-General Sir Aylmer L. Haldane warned, “Burning a village properly takes a long time, an hour or more according to size.”

Direct British rule of Iraq finally ended in 1932. The Anglo-Iraqi Treaty gave Iraq formal political independence while retaining British control of foreign, defense and economic policy with military bases and a system of advisers. Iraq became “independent” in 1930 and was admitted to the League of Nations as a full member in 1932. But real power remained in British hands.

So it took the world’s most powerful empire twelve years to subjugate and control Iraq back in the day. Twelve years to test new weapons of limited and mass destruction, demoralize the Kurds, Shia, Sunni, Assyrians and Turks, carve up the region, control imperial outposts, establish a semi-colonial monarchy and secure the flow of oil.

By comparison, it’s only been five years since Operation Iraqi Freedom was authorized. Already, millions have died or have fled, the country is gradually being Balkanized, permanent military bases have been built and a puppet, quisling government has been put in place. If the Brit experience is any guide, it will be only a few more years of intensive pacification and this job is done.

I guess we can’t gas all the remaining Hajjis to encourage obedience, but to help quell insurgent attacks and to secure the realm, Pentagon scientists have been hard at work.

In fact, the Active Denial System should be ready to roll in ‘08! Not intended to kill, the weapon emits an invisible beam of high-energy radio waves that rapidly heats up water molecules just under the skin and causes a person to run like hell. It might cause cancer too!

This new tool should go a long way toward helping America defeat the terrorists.That and the robots armed with machine guns complete with Gameboy-style controller and virtual-reality goggles — thank you, Carlyle Group.

While the Wook submerges into the world of pumped breast milk, dirty diapers and kept mothers, he occasionally turns the mantle of AMEN over to The Backstop...necessarily stoned, and furious.

IF INTERESTED IN AVOIDING WORLD WAR III...

There's an old saying in Tennessee... well, it's an old saying in Texas, but I believe also in Tennessee. "Fool me once... shame on you. Fool me...I won't get fooled again."

Everyone’s been trying to guess the next move on the neocon Risk board. Last week, by raising the specter of WWIII, the Smirking Chimp and his Merry Band of Fear-Mongering Fascists may have revealed the ultimate goal in America’s Great Game to remake the Middle East.

Did this venal, twisted Hitlerian freak with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad (thanks HST) really just casually threaten the world with global conflagration if Iran doesn’t stop building a nookular power station? Is Bush’s Big Lie that Iran is actively seeking to “wipe Israel off the map” enough to fool Americans into supporting the invasion, destruction and occupation of another country? Has genocide become part of the official foreign policy of the United States?

Will America or Israel do the deed? A combination of the two? Will they use nukes? What about the blowback? How will Russia react? China? Will Iran close the Straits of Hormuz? How high will oil prices go? Will this lead to a global depression? Massive unemployment? 2008 Elections cancelled? Suspension of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Martial law? Myanmar-style information control? National identification cards? Travel restrictions? Blackwater mercenaries policing America’s streets? Mass arrests and torture? Concentration camps for dissenters?

Sorry, I just saw V for Vendetta.

USEFUL IDIOTS

There have been so many traitorous kleptocrats and useful idiots who have enabled and perpetuated the existence of this soul-crushing administration that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly who is to blame for the fact that we still have 15 mendacious months to go.

Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Tobacco. Turd Blossom, Scooter and Condi. Dick. Pat Robertson and John Hagee. Ben Barnes and Harriet Miers. The list of political hacks, religious panderers and career opportunists who have aided and abetted this international disgrace runs long.

But the biggest blame has to go to the mainstream media whores.

In a February 2003 case in which reporters sued the network for forcing them to use false statements from Monsanto representatives in a series they were doing on the health risks associated with bovine growth hormone in milk, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with Fox News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States. There is no “law” to stop anyone from falsifying the news, the court stated — it was simply an FCC “policy.”

So we know about the court’s twisted interpretation of FCC “policies.” We know about Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s program to employ journalists to carry out secret assignments. We know about Hannity, O’Reilly, Limbaugh and Coulter.

But what about Dan Rather?

Three years after he was apparently swiftboated with Rovian brilliance from his anchorman chair, Dan is suing CBS for $70 million for essentially caving in to right-wing pressure to jettison his report that Dubya was too much of a shit-faced incompetent to fly with his Texas Champagne Unit.

But is everything as it appears to be? Considering that he exclusively viewed the Zapruder film in November 1963 and famously reported to a bewildered American television audience that JFK’s head “went forward with considerable violence” Rather has always been a questionable source of information.

In the 1970s, after the Zapruder film which had been locked up for years by Time Warner was finally released, Rather issued an apology, saying he had made an “honest error.” Like “reluctant warrior” Colin Powell, and CIA stooge George Tenet, we are left to assume that this was just a “blot” on his otherwise stellar record.

The truth about “the Decider’s” war-record of protecting Houston from the Viet Cong aside, and beyond Rather’s now supposedly quixotic quest to expose the mainstream news industry, the bigger issue here is a reconfirmation of the grim reality of the collusive relationship between Big Media and Big Government. Better yet, reconfirmation of the strength of the military-industrial-congressional-media complex.

So, does Rather’s CBS lawsuit and current tough talk indicate a death-bed conversion for the revered former teleprompter reader? Is this his Smoking Man, end-of-life confession? Is this the real insider story? Or is this just a well-designed head-fake intended to smear traditional broadcast news while diverting attention from the many mutated versions of Operation Mockingbird that continue to spew domestic propaganda to the masses?

What’s the frequency, Kenneth?

While the Wook re-submerges into reality as a Corporate Loser, he occasionally turns the mantle of AMEN over to The Backstop...necessarily stoned, and furious.

SAME AS THE OLD BOSSES

In the spirit of the Tonkin Gulf and Iraq War Resolutions, the Senate recently passed the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill, which threatens to “combat, contain and [stop]” Iran via “military instruments.” Hillary voted for it. So did Diane Feinstein, Debbie Stabenow, Lisa Murkowski, Mary Landrieu, Susan Collins and Elizabeth Dole.

Eat shit and die, Sally Field.

In all, in this “Sense of the Senate” non-binding resolution, 27 Democrats voted to launch Tomahawks on Tehran.

A related vote last week provided further proof of America’s degeneration into a one-party system. 146 Democrats voted to praise the patriotism of General Petraeus and condemn the MoveOn ad that shredded the credibility of the sainted warrior, who with his Iraq testimony continued the longstanding tradition of U.S. military deceit best exemplified by ass-covering Pentagon prostitutes like General Westmoreland, Lt. Col. Oliver North, and General Colin Powell and career-obsessed bureaucrats like Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld.

Iraq itself appears to be turning into one big Detroit traffic stop. U.S. Army Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval was recently acquitted of killing two unarmed Iraqis, and was also found innocent of planting a gun on one of the dead men. He was, however, convicted of placing a spool of detonation wire on the other victim, a crime that Sandoval’s attorney characterized as nothing more than misplacement of public or private property, which carries a six-month sentence.

Sandoval and his colleagues testified they were merely acting on orders — perhaps the Bushies in addition to eviscerating the Geneva Conventions have revalidated the Nuremberg Defense? Sandoval seems to have been responding to a “baiting program” in which orders were given to place suspicious materials such as detonation cords on street corners and to shoot any unsuspecting Hajjis who happened to pick them up.

Of course, competing hard with their lesser-paid back-door draftees in indiscriminate slaughter are private mercenaries like Blackwater, which thanks to Viceroy Bremer’s Order 17 enjoys complete immunity from "local criminal, civil and administrative jurisdiction and from any form of arrest or detention other than by persons acting on behalf of their parent states".

Despite last week’s civilian slaughter in what is being called Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday, this Bush-bankrolling right-wing evangelical-owned corporation is back on the streets to protect Condi and her crew when she stops by the Green Zone to give Maliki his orders.

Having earned $700 million from State Department contracts alone and apparently doing well with their gun-running side business, Blackwater is to Iraq what the opium-running British East India Company was to China in the 19th century. At that time the British Empire imposed their own version of Order 17 on the Chinese after the Opium Wars — the subsequent loss of sovereignty was the most humiliating defeat in China’s history.

While the Wook re-submerges into reality as a Corporate Loser, he occasionally turns the mantle of AMEN over to The Backstop...necessarily stoned, and furious.

FUCK YOU, GEORGE

An extreme, almost panicky decision by the Fed this week, and more than enough to provide a temporary boost to the stock market.

However, with this move and the continuing unraveling of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the dollar is pretty much toast — while the Euro is setting daily new highs against the dollar, the Canadian loonie is now worth about the same as a buck for the first time since 1976. Canada’s economy is apparently booming. You’d think that with their albatross national health care system, they’d really be struggling right now.

Maybe this means that Canadians are soon going to start hiring from the large labor pool of Americans formerly employed at Michigan auto plants to work as nannies, gardeners and fast-food chefs. They’d probably come pretty cheap. It must be great living beside a second-rate democracy.

Speaking of second-rate, George W. Bush is second-rate.

No need to get into this national embarrassment’s latest mangling of the English language. Pronouncing Mandela dead in a press conference full of unscripted gibberish is bad enough, but consciously manipulating Mandela’s name and legacy to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq proves once again that there is no limit to this administration’s lies and that they seem determined to destroy the very concept of objective truth.

Not a day goes by without the release of some nasty shitstorm of mind-melting spin from behind the neocon curtain. But in the Mandela case, the freedom-loving patriot saving the world’s greatest democracy from evil Islamofascists reached stunningly high levels of hypocrisy.

Bush was the first world leader in history to snub Mandela when he visited South Africa in 2003. Mandela came to the White House to support Bush after 9/11, but the two world leaders had a falling-out after Mandela blasted Chicken George after he invaded Iraq.

Mandela said:

"It is a tragedy, what is happening, what Bush is doing… undermining the United Nations. He is acting outside…I hope that one day [he will] understand that he has made the greatest mistake of his life in trying to bring about carnage and to police the world without any authority of the international body. It is something we have to condemn without reservation.”

And don’t forget that evil bastard Cheney voted against a 1986 resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela and recognition of the African National Congress. To Dick, Mandela was a terrorist who should rot in jail for the rest of his life.

No doubt that any Bush-conjured Iraqi Mandelas who might have emerged in the 1980s to challenge the U.S.-supported Hussein would have met a similar fate.

While the Wook re-submerges into reality as a Corporate Loser, he occasionally turns the mantle of AMEN over to The Backstop...necessarily stoned, and furious.

STEAL THIS NUKE

So, the ranking minority member of the House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit fell down and will not be getting up again.

According to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia, Paul Gillmor (R-OH) died last week from “accidental blunt head and neck trauma” from a tumble down the stairs at his Arlington, VA townhouse.

At first, two medical examiners determined that the 68-year old Gillmor had died of a heart attack, a version of events that the mainstream media dutifully printed in their SCREAM the headline, bury the disclaimer style.

Of course, there was no evidence of foul play in the congressman’s death, but according to Jamie Nixon, an acquaintance of Gillmor’s, the 10-term lawmaker was investigating some serious shit.

Apparently, Gillmor was looking into some questionable market activity.

“Within the past two weeks there have been extremely unusual options contracts offered for sale on more than $6 billion of stock being traded on certain stock markets,” Nixon explained. “I believe my friend uncovered a large banking and stock scandal, which had the potential to crush the U.S. economy.”

Some people are betting the stock market will drop up to 50 percent in value before September 21. If a crash does not happen, they will lose billions.

Nixon said that Gillmor told him he discovered a “type of swindle set to take place in the stock markets later this month — and he was planning to go public with the information.”

Now, it could be that the crusty old congressman lost his balance, fell down a flight of stairs and smashed his skull.

And his demise could all be unrelated to his investigation of questionable market activity.

And this Nixon guy might be a compulsive liar. Seems about right.

And it could be that at the same time someone is betting huge that the markets are going to tank that the world’s largest and most powerful military force “mishandled” six (some reports say 5) nuclear weapons, placed them on board a B-52 and flew them from Minot, North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force base in Louisiana — the first time in 40 years that a nuclear armed plane had been allowed to fly in the U.S.

And it could just be a coincidence that this plane landed at Barksdale Air Force base, which just happens to be a jumping off point for Middle East operations...

And all this could be happening just as a credit crisis has seized the global financial system.

Of course, it was all just circumstantial that before 9/11, according to Bloomberg News, put options (bets stocks will fall) on United and American airlines (not other airlines) surged to the phenomenal high of 285 times their average. United Airlines fell from $30.82 to $17.50 and American went from $29.70 to $18.00 when the markets reopened after the attacks.

And it’s probably not worth mentioning that banking and insurance companies also had similarly unusual high put options trading in the days leading up to 9/11.

Also unrelated is that purchases of call options (bets stocks will rise) on Raytheon (maker of Patriot and Tomahawk missiles) increased six-fold on the day before 9/11. Raytheon soared 37% when the market reopened.

All of these random, unconnected events are just that and any attempt to suggest that they are linked in some bizarre Neocon plot designed to provide cover for impending global financial turmoil and help perpetuate the war on terror is solely the result of some twisted, anti-American conspiracy thinking.

Is there really a plan to do another 9/11, blame Iran for it and then turn the country into a glass parking lot?

Maybe the fact that any of this information is even out there is evidence that elements within the military have succeeded in exposing a sinister plot that has the Vice President’s office written all over it.

Maybe so, but Blue Horse Shoe loves shorting the S&P 500.

While the Wook re-submerges into reality as a Corporate Loser, he occasionally turns the mantle of AMEN over to The Backstop...necessarily stoned, and furious.

GENERAL BETRAY-U.S.

After ranking Armed Services Committee member Duncan Hunter, R-California used his opening remarks to spin a protective layer of credibility around the capable, intelligent, forthright, candid and most importantly, “independent” General Petraeus, the honorable General spoke:

“At the outset, I would like to note that this is my testimony. Although I have briefed my assessment and recommendations to my chain of command, I wrote this testimony myself. It has not been cleared by, shared with, anyone in the Pentagon, the White House, or Congress.”

Hmmm, isn’t the Commander-in-Chief part of your chain of command, General?

Seems that Ray McGovern, ex-CIA man and fierce administration critic, who noted the above doublespeak was thrown out of Petraeus’ staged performance before the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees last week.

McGovern was removed from the proceedings for suggesting that the good general be sworn in.

McGovern writes:

“It had dawned on me that when House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Missouri, invited Gen. Petraeus to make his presentation, Skelton forgot to ask him to take the customary oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I had no idea that would be enough to get me thrown out of the hearing. I had a flashback to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in early 2006, when Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, reminded chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, that Specter had forgotten to swear in the witness, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; and how Specter insisted that that would not be necessary.”

We know how well that worked out.

Petraeus’ testimony ranks up there with General Westmoreland’s, who lied under oath to Congress about how great things were going in Vietnam, later sued CBS for pointing out that he had lied, then quickly dropped the suit when his subordinates came clean that the military had basically participated in a conspiracy to defraud the American public about progress in the Vietnam War.

Like fake Osama videos, or contrived terror alerts, Petraeus seems to pop up at all the right times. Right before the ’04 election, he wrote an optimistic assessment on Iraq published in the Washington Post claiming that “tangible progress” was being made and that “momentum has gathered in recent months.” “Training (of Iraqi forces) is on track and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired. Command and control structures and institutions are being reestablished.”

Petraeus’ rosy spin in ‘04 helped perpetuate the military industrial complex’s ongoing campaign of national self-delusion. It helped buy us three more years in Iraq and four more years of Bush.

His recent Iraq surge assessment in which he asserts that the “evidence is very, very clear” that Iran is to blame for the deaths of many U.S. soldiers and was seeking to “create a Hezbollah-like force” in Iraq may buy us a few more years of intense Middle East birth pangs.

While the Wook re-submerges into reality as a Corporate Loser, he occasionally turns the mantle of AMEN over to The Backstop...necessarily stoned, and furious.

IRAQ WITH AN N

The Bushies may have something big cooked up for the new fall ratings season. “Operation Blow Iran the Fuck Up” may just be the popularity boost the President’s sagging Neocon Network needs.

It will also help tie the hands of whichever media-creation takes office in 17 months.

On August 31, the New Yorker reported that:

Barnett Rubin, an Afghan expert at NYU, has written an account about a conversation a friend of his had with some D.C. neocon claiming that Cheney has “instructed” the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox Noise and others from the Ministry of Truth to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day.

According to the article, “It will be a heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this—they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is “plenty.”

It’s clear that the propaganda campaign is already underway, as Iran has become a major scapegoat for the Iraq quagmire, which will continue to be a quagmire to justify America’s ongoing presence until the flippin’puppet Parliament gets off its collective Hajji ass and officially hands over control of our oil spoils.

On August 28, Bush, in a speech to the American Legion, called Iran “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” whose “active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of nuclear holocaust… We will confront this danger before it is too late.”

Seems plausible that now would be the time for the evil doers to kick off their next Strangelovian scenario.

Don’t forget Andrew Card’s statement to the New York Times in 2002 about why the Administration waited until September to makes its case against Iraq:

“From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.''

At that time, White House officials said that a centerpiece of the strategy was to use Bush’s 9/11 speech to help move Americans towards support of action against Iraq.

This September 11, we will have Petraeus’ report (will it further implicate Iran?) combined with yet another stirring message from our Dear Leader and Protector about how we all still face imminent destruction at the hands of the scary cave-dwelling death cult people.

While the Wook re-submerges into reality as a Corporate Loser, he occasionally turns the mantle of AMEN over to The Backstop...necessarily stoned, and furious.

SUMMER OF LOVE

The Washington, D.C.-based Carlyle Group has been making it rain on Wall Street. The ex-president’s club - featured prominently in Fahrenheit 9/11 - has been on a buying spree lately, converting their war profits into more mainstream businesses. The company now has $60 billion in assets under management, up from a mere $12 billion in 2001. Think Papa Bush, Big Jim Baker and the looch, Frank Carlucci, next time you stop into Dunkin’ Donuts, Baskin Robbins or Hertz Rental Car. That’s right, Carlyle owns them all. They also just bought Manor Care, a nursing home operator for $6 billion. So you might want to consider rescuing Grandma, if a Manor “condo” is where you’ve parked her bony ass.

BAD MEMRI

Local Faux news teased its 10PM broadcast the other night by promising its viewers the latest updates on the “toe-sucking bandit.” I didn’t follow up, but kudos to local journalists for their hard-hitting scoop.

But it’s not just the professional liars in the MSM that are falling prey to the ratings lure of sensationalism.  Ignorant, lazy, baseless reporting also pops up on outlets that many have acclaimed for their insightful commentary.  For instance, Jon Stewart recently opened The Daily Show with footage from a Hamas television program featuring a faux Mickey Mouse in a kind of call and response madrases moment with a young Arab phone caller. The “joke” was that the little girl on the phone was spouting vicious anti-Semitic rhetoric following Mickey’s promptings, a scenario that fits snugly with the anti-Western, clash of civilizations, terrorist, culture of death, "they hate us because of our freedoms" worldview that has come to be accepted by most Americans.

However, as usual, everything is not what it seems.