News From A Parallel World

“Keep talking,” William Hurt says to Kathleen Turner in “Body Heat,” the brilliant film noir by Lawrence Kasden, “experience has shown that I can be convinced of anything.”

So, will it work, this long-delayed happy horse shit, this rhetorical tour de farce?

The nation, no doubt, pretended to watch. The media, evidently, pretended to parse it. The words and phrases are being examined for nuance, shading, emphasis.

It may even be that a large portion of the public, repeatedly lied to for five years now, will swallow once again the mellifluous cadence, the paternalistic patter, the slick packaging. Why not? Experience has shown that we can be convinced of anything.

For nearly four-and-a-half years, Barack Obama has been conducting the most bloodthirsty, belligerent, cold-hearted foreign policy in American history. You think I’m exaggerating, perhaps wildly exaggerating. After all, there’s Nixon to consider, and Lyndon Baines Johnson. If you want to go back in time, one might even make a case for Andrew Jackson, if you consider his genocidal war against Native Americans to be a foreign policy.

George Bush, the younger, was certainly bloodthirsty, belligerent, and cold-hearted, and if he ever faltered there were the creeps around him, Darth Vader and Wolfie, and little Elliot Abrams, the Prince of Darkness.

But Obama does his work with a dancer’s moves. He does not lurch around like Johnson, speeding through Texas in a Cadillac throwing beer cans out the window. He does not rant about the Jews, like Nixon, and throw in some Christmas bombing of hospitals just to prove his understanding of Jesus. He’s not showy, just ruthlessly efficient.

During his reign, America has hit more countries with missiles than at any other time in our history. We have also dispatched black ops characters, CIA killers and SEALS creeps, to murder local leaders in more territories and on every continent. We have done plenty of killing by remote control, obviating the need for risking the lives of Americans, which has kept the public sleeping and the press stupid, or maybe that should be the other way ‘round.

Obama is the first American President to personally write a death list, a list of human beings, none of whom he knows, to be assassinated on his orders. He probably doesn’t care for the term, though. ‘Death list’ sounds so much like Augusto Pinochet, doesn’t it? He calls it instead a ‘disposition matrix.’

There have been thousands of completely innocent people targeted and murdered by drones on his orders. We don’t have exact numbers because until today the United States has not even admitted we were doing it. And despite Obama’s speech, which one of his predecessors, Richard Nixon, would have called a limited, modified, hangout, we still don’t know.

The President told America that while he regretted having to kill people by remote control, the alternatives were morally worse. I’ve heard this argument from others, the claim that drones kill fewer people than, say a bombing run. “Neither conventional military action nor waiting for attacks to occur, offers moral safe harbor,” he said. I may be out of line here, but I’d say that anyone who blows the limbs off children by raining Hellfire missiles on their villages does not get to talk about morality. Not to me, not ever.

Then Obama explained that the wanton, psychopathic murder of thousands of innocents has been bothering him. He wants us to feel sorry for him. “For me, and for those in the chain of command, these deaths will haunt us as long as we live.” Yes, I’m sure they will. I’m sure that as he watches the NBA finals his enjoyment will be tarnished by images of death and destruction, of parents weeping over their dead children. Probably ruin the half-time show.

On Thursday, the administration released the names of four Americans Obama has killed, trying to soften the blow a little bit, get that out of the way first. One of these, the only one Obama admits to ordering murdered, was a man who spoke frequently about the need for a holy war against America. Under the new rules of Obama, the post-911 rules, the highly convenient new rules, we can kill people for talking if they say the wrong things.

Then we killed the man’s 16-year-old son, a strike Obama eerily claims was an accident. The odds of this being an accident are, well, equal to my odds of winning the U.S. Open this year.

Missing from Obama’s speech was any reference to the repeated use of what are called “double taps,” the targeting of not just a funeral procession or wedding, something numerous international reporters have documented as American practice, but hitting the first responders with another strike. This brutality, this particular use of calculated violence is against international law, which we claim to respect and follow, and is universally condemned.

The President got around to Guantanamo, too. Thing has become an embarrassment, all those inmates, maybe a hundred by now, on a hunger strike, and Obama’s decision to torture them further by force-feeding, jamming tubes down their throats. The process has been described in foreign media but not on MSNBC, where despite the occasional criticism the fake ‘left’ media is still kissing his ass.

It’s the fault of those damned Republicans, you know, who just wouldn’t let him close the place, except that he didn’t get into the details, how what he asked for was permission to bring them to a maximum security installation in Illinois. He promised to close the place on the campaign trail but evidently only to shift the prisoners to a different facility.

More than a hundred innocent men have been held for more than a decade, all of them tortured in violation of treaties to which the United States is a signatory, and Obama neglects to mention that these people have been adjudged innocent not only by the International Red Cross but by the Pentagon’s own investigation. The problem with releasing them is that he can’t figure out where to send them, and there are, according to an article in the Guardian UK, “classification concerns, security concerns, (and) the use of torture in interrogations.”

Recent public opinion surveys suggest that Obama can pull the tongues out of Guantanamo prisoners and a majority of Americans won’t give a damn. Nor are they interested in drones. So long as America’s wars are fought against people in other lands, Americans don’t much care. Right now, according to the Gallup Poll, only a third want to close Guantanamo and most never think about it.

A majority apparently buy Obama’s transparently false rationale that if we weren’t raining terror on people from the skies, we’d have to invade their countries or bomb them indiscriminately. Nowhere is anybody wondering whether we have the right to do any of this. Yemen has not attacked us, nor Somalia, nor Mali, nor Pakistan, nor Afghanistan.

Shifting the death lists from the CIA to the Pentagon is not exactly a reform, though we’re told that it is. Nor should we be becalmed by the soothing promises of transparency and no permanent war. We’ve heard these things before. They’re likely as true now as ever.

This President talks about terrorists but is himself responsible for more innocent deaths than any ‘terrorist’ leader whose name appears on his ‘disposition matrix.’ That is without serious dispute. Yet, as he more than once points to the flag and speaks of its meaning and enduring legacy, it never dawns on him, nor on the mass media, nor on the vast majority of people in America, that to anyone whose country, whose village or township, whose church or wedding reception or funeral procession, whose school is leveled by fire from the sky, it America which is the terrorist, America whom the rest of the world fears.

Obama is far too intelligent to believe what he’s preaching. He knows that America is not defending itself overseas, nor freedom, nor self-determination. He knows that we are sending troops to dozens of countries in Africa and the Middle East to secure oil reserves and natural gas pipelines, steal resources, establish military forward bases, and scare everybody into complying with our will. He knows this.

He made reference, briefly, to Mali. Mali is a country where there is a civil war. Much of that war is the product of an oppressive regime which ousted a democratic government and which is now fighting rebels who include people forced out of Libya by America’s bloody overthrow of Moammar Ghaddafi, which was itself done to get rid of a strong pan-African voice and a highly-successful economy in preparation for our own move into Africa. Obama knows this. Yet, he says that in Mali we are assisting the fight against al-Qaida, and not only do nearly all Americans listening to him believe it but nearly all journalists will report this uncritically.

One more thing. The President told us that “the future of terrorism” is homegrown, not elsewhere. Homegrown ‘extremists’ are the most dangerous threat we now face, he said, pointing to the Marathon bombing in Boston. This statement is the most alarming thing he said.

Placed in the context of all the other domestic changes Obama has overseen, from total electronic surveillance of the population to the construction of ‘detention centers,’ from the militarization of urban police forces to the inexplicably enormous purchases of bullets by Homeland Security, from the ‘new’ policy in which the military has authority inside the country in place of civilian authority to the NDAA and the assertion by Obama that the government may lock up without trial or even charges, indefinitely, any person deemed to be an ‘imminent threat,’ the definition of which is not only missing but possessed of a totalitarian vagueness, the 'future of terrorism' remark is chilling. He's bringing it all back home, folks.

We have heard for more than a year from crazy Senators such as Lindsey Graham saying that ‘the homeland is now part of the battlefield,’ which, when combined with the claims the government makes about what it has the right to do on any such ‘battlefield,’ ought to make any patriot’s blood run cold.

We are in trouble here, and Obama’s carefully prepared bullshit presentation scares me more than ever. And it ought to scare you, too.

One of my favorite escape mechanisms, when I’m done with the day’s column and my head, often stuffed with political detritus, needs a little flushing out, is the very long series of novels and novellas written by Rex Stout over a forty year period ending in 1975, and featuring his mammoth, sedentary detective Nero Wolfe.

It’s not just another age and another era, it’s another reality in America, a time when people had rights. Seriously.

Mostly, the appeal of the books to me is the wit and humor. Narrated by Wolfe’s aide, Archie Goodman, we get the view of a couple of detectives who are always clashing with the cops, sometimes in a friendly way, sometimes at odds, always with the sardonic overlay which identifies them as smart-ass citizens entirely sure of their constitutional rights and happy to remind Inspector Cramer and his minions of them, regardless of threats to take their licenses or lock them up.

In virtually every story, Wolfe is called upon to remind Cramer and others carrying badges that he is not obligated to share his thoughts with them, that withholding evidence depends on whether something IS evidence and, in the event, it is subject to Wolfe’s better judgment, and that a police officer needs to justify it if he –– it’s nearly always a ‘he’ –– wishes to get answers to his questions.

Cramer will ring the bell and Archie will ask Wolfe whether he wants to see him. Wolfe, sometimes out of boredom, will admit the man who will then fire a question or two at him, such as ‘What did Bill Jones tell you yesterday,’ whereupon Wolfe will admonish him. “You know better, Mr. Cramer. Justify it.”

Cops, Rex Stout liked to remind his readers, had limits to what they could do and to what they could demand of citizens. For example, one could not stop you on the street and demand identification, not without a good reason. If one did, you were within your rights to refuse to provide it. On occasion, Archie would have to remind a cop that he was, depending on the year, not in Germany or Russia.

I’ve been reading the Nero Wolfe books for more than thirty years, ever since Beverly Galley turned me on to them. There are forty or fifty and I’ve read each at least four or five times. Reading them now, in the new century, in the new world created by decades of neglect by Americans of the governance of their own country, is bittersweet.

We don’t have those rights anymore, the ones Wolfe could and did recite to the cops, reminding them of their subservience to the people. The President has arbitrarily thrown out the Fourth Amendment, and the Sixth. The Congress has dispensed with the First and several others. The courts don’t defend them. The cops don’t honor them.

Until recent years, a motorist, stopped and cited for a driving infraction, could refuse to sign the ticket. Not signing might get you into more hot water, but you were certainly within your rights. Likewise, the plain fact that a cop ordered you to do something did not confer upon that cop the right to force you to obey. Cops were not regarded as God in the American system.

That has evidently changed. In my college city of Berkeley, as a matter of fact, where thousands of students rallied to protect their constitutional rights once upon a time, the cops can now beat you nearly to death if you don’t kiss their ass.

Two years ago, a truck driver named Oleg Kozacenko, who declined to sign a traffic ticket issued to him because he could not understand the writing on it, was beaten by two members of the California Highway Patrol on the side of the highway in Berkeley. They crushed his left orbital eye socket, broke his left arm and several ribs, smashed some bones in his face, and sent him to the hospital unconscious. Kozacenko apparently suffered brain damage, as well, since his injuries caused a deprivation of oxygen for a substantial time and he is no longer able to work.

Toxicology tests confirmed that Kozacenko had no alcohol in his system.

The cops who nearly killed him for the crime of not understanding the ticket they were telling him to sign, Andrew P. Murrill and Jim Sherman, one of them a trained fist-boxer, claimed the force they used against the victim was not excessive. They are still on the payroll.

Acting Chief Ken Hill said this: “The public if they get stopped and simply comply with what they are asked to do have nothing to fear, nothing to fear at all.”

Translation: do what we tell you or we will smash the bones in your face and send you to the hospital.

This was two years ago. Nothing was done to the cops who crushed this man’s eye socket and wrecked his life. The California Highway Patrol is a state agency and is under the jurisdiction of the State Attorney General, Kamala Harris.

Two weeks ago, a man was beaten to death by nine cops in Bakersfield, Kern County. Two of the cops were CHP members. This made it a state matter. Despite numerous letters to Harris demanding some action, nothing is being done. She has not had even the basic courtesy to respond to e-mails.

Maybe if this ambitious Attorney General had gotten off her ass two years ago and disciplined these psycho cops of hers, the word would have filtered down through the ranks and saved the life of David Silva in Kern County. Maybe if she did her job instead of spent her time preening for the camera and going to fund raisers for the President, it might avert the next murder by officers of the law. Maybe I’m expecting too much.

We used to have rights in this country. Now we just have the right to do as we’re told.

This little column is about rich people. If you are a veteran reader here, you may recall other expositions in which I revealed a particular bias. For example, one I’m especially proud of of is ‘A Carnivore’s Tax Proposal,’ http://lookingglass.blog.co.uk/2010/08/01/a-carnivore-s-tax-proposal-9081071/.

I may have lost my sense of humor in the three years since I wrote ‘Carnivore,’ because this one isn’t going to be nearly as amusing. You want laughs, reread that one. I’m evidently angrier now than I was then.

We’ve had a couple of years of the Obama ‘recovery,’ and the White House is not shy about proclaiming it. More jobs all the time, a record high for the stock market, what could be the problem?

Growing up in Marin County in the early- and mid-’sixties, and being politically inclined, I made the acquaintance of some pretty rich people. Elizabeth Gatov was the Treasurer of the U.S. Roger Kent ran the Democratic Party in California. They lived on estates in Ross and Kent Woodlands, and yes, the latter was named after the family. I went to a few parties on those estates and enjoyed the ambiance.

The rich I knew had a kind of easy grace. Never, in any circumstances, did I get the impression that they thought themselves better than other people. Never.

I’m still in Marin but the old families are mostly gone. In their place are the new rich, scumbag executives and the spawn of such from eastern states and a few foreign addresses, driving around in Porsche SUVs, the reason for which cannot be lucidly explained, and other displays of wealth, enormous vehicles missing only the artillery mounts. Future models will need them.

Do you know that the rich have created categories of wealth which enable them to differentiate between the stuffed-pig variety and the lesser strains? Do you know what a ‘Henry’ is? Sounds not quite right, doesn’t it? A ‘Henry’ is a Higher Earner Not Rich Yet. Yet. These are people sucking in over a quarter of a million a year.

Henrys are in the top 20% but that is a cruel blight on their aspirations. I’ve met some of these people. They are young and have young children. They live in multi-million-dollar homes with views of Mt. Tamalpais or Angel Island but feel a little cramped. They have nannies for the kids because, well, who wants to spend all that valuable time with kids?

According to an article in the business section of Sunday’s Chronicle, the Henrys are having to make changes in their lifestyle choices, the economy being what it is.

“The rich have lost their exuberance,” says Pam Danziger, president of the luxury research firm, Unity Marketing. “They do not feel as wealthy. They increasingly feel that their wealth is threatened...”

The article, by Cotten Timberlake, a Bloomberg reporter, then informs us that “An increasing share of America’s ‘ultra-affluent’ consumers (now) view themselves as middle-class.”

The “2-percenters” have become wary due to “the recent recession,” and are “trading down” to less expensive products. Timberlake notes that one rich creep, a medical-equipment saleswoman from Minneapolis once “had no qualms about dropping $600 or more for Gucci purses” but now spends only $300 for Coach bags and is actually “filling in her Burberry wardrobe with pieces from J. Crew.” Oh, the ignominy. Oh, the disgrace.

What Timberlake refers to as the “bottom end” of the rich, those making a quarter of a million smackers or more each year, are retrenching. They are buying luxury items still, but perhaps fewer of them. Plus, with the housing market beginning to rebound, many of the “bottom end” who aspire to be even more stinking rich are investing in real estate. Why not? They’ll forego the latest Hermes handbag if it means greater luxury down the road.

Timberlake cites an attorney from Basking Ridge, New Jersey, in her 40s, who says she is no longer buying six new outfits every season. She says that she “continues to make purchases on an as-needed basis without being extravagant.”

Two days before the Chronicle article, the House of Representatives Agriculture Committee passed a farm bill for 2013 which cuts more than $20 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program over the next ten years. Of course, this House committee, as well as the lower chamber itself, is dominated by Republicans. It’ll never pass the Democratic Senate. Except...

The bill coming out of the Senate Agriculture Committee also cuts food stamps, just not quite as badly. The Democratic majority plans to snip a mere $4.1 billion. The differences will be ironed out in the conference committee before final approval in June.

In 2009, the Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which, in part, temporarily increased benefits for food stamp recipients. Those benefits are about to expire. When the additional cuts, probably somewhere between four and twenty billion in a classic Republican-Democrat compromise, are added, food stamp recipients, the poorest people in the world’s richest country, will suffer real privation.

Even if the House capitulated to the Democrats’ version of the bill, estimates by field experts are that about 400,000 people will lose these benefits. In addition, more than 50,000 children will no longer be eligible for school lunches their families can’t afford to provide.

Any compromise version will send these numbers higher. It is likely that at least one million people, those last able to bear this burden, will suffer real loss. Obama will sign the bill.

As I’ve written recently, The President’s ‘chained CPI reform’ of the Social Security System will literally kill people, probably in large numbers. Millions of older Americans will be forced to choose between medicine and food. Now, the the imminent cuts to food stamps and school lunches will expand the misery to millions more.

Ironically, the stupid, punitive, cowardly goals of the Simpson-Bowles benchmarks have already been reached. Those, as you may know, were phony to begin with. But even if we accepted them, these further cuts to the programs most critical to help the poor are nothing short of wanton cruelty, enacted by millionaires without a thought to those deeply hurt.

I’m sorry the rich have lost their exuberance. I’d like to swing them by their tails, all of them, and throw them out the fucking windows. That might cause them substantial inconvenience but it would do my exuberance a world of good.

Okay, you’re going to think I’m inventing this story, really, you are. That’s because if it’s true, the education system in the State of Connecticut is being run by psychopaths, and we all know that professional educators are mature, wise, decent people.

Well, of course there are exceptions. For example, the governing system in my local high school district is controlled by cretins and liars, but this is Marin County and wealth often attracts such types. Don’t blame me; I grew up here and it wasn’t like that in the 1960s.

Anyhow, Connecticut.

I came across this material because I spend a lot of time poking around on the web. That’s where you have to be today if you want any news or reliable information. Sure ain’t gonna get it on MSNBC or Fixed News.

As a journalist, one of my many jobs is to pass along information people are otherwise unlikely to find because they have other jobs which don’t involve crawling all over the internet.

So, Connecticut.

The educational leaders in Connecticut have determined that the best way to educate children is to enforce a kind of ‘zero tolerance’ policy. School is serious and you’re not entitled to fool around. Only terrorists fool around, or their militant sympathizers, and we know where that leads.

Eight years ago, close to 500 kindergarten students in the state were suspended or expelled. We’re talking about six-year-olds. That seemed like a lot. I mean, what’s involved here? What does it take to kick a 6-year-old kid out of school? Bringing a firearm in a lunch box? Trying to stab a teacher? Setting off roadside bombs in the parking lot?

It’s not as though Connecticut is China. There are not millions of kids running around and posing a danger to themselves and others. But it gets better.

Over the intervening years, the number of suspended or expelled six-year-olds has increased nearly four hundred percent. Last year, 1,967 kids, six and under, were suspended or expelled. For those of you slow with math, that’s close to two thousand kids.

Most of them are nonwhite. Actually, that’s not clear enough. According to a report from the Connecticut Department of Education, and the follow-up in the Connecticut Mirror, “almost all of them black or Hispanic.”

I had to read that passage more than once. Almost all of the two thousand little kids suspended or expelled in Connecticut were black or Hispanic.

See, you learn something new every day. I’d always assumed that Connecticut was largely a white state, a bedroom state where rich people lived. I mean, this is the state which kept electing that miserable sack of shit Joe Lieberman to the Senate. You can’t get much whiter than that. But apparently the vast majority of kids in the schools are black or Hispanic.

Because if they’re not, if in fact the majority of school children are not black or Hispanic, then something really creepy is happening in Connecticut, even more so than usual.

In some schools, those booted out or otherwise disciplined made up almost half of the student population. One of these is a charter school much praised for its advanced curriculum.

The ‘experts’ consulted by the press did what experts often do: they passed around the blame. The kids were ‘acting out’ because they had been ‘traumatized at home,’ or because ‘something else’ was not being ‘attended to in their lives.’ Translated, it comes down to this: blacks and Hispanic families are failures in properly raising their kids.

This is how I translate it: the white power structure, like the power structure in education around the country, from Obama’s idiot Education Secretary Arne Duncan to the dipshits in the Tamalpais Union District in my county, is trying harder than ever to cram kids into the packages big business wants them in, and they're starting early.

George Carlin was, as usual, right. They don’t want critical thinkers. They want people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough not to question the fact that they’re getting hosed every day of their lives. I’m paraphrasing.

Got news for the cretins in Connecticut: if you’re busting 2,000 kids and nearly all of them are nonwhite, you had better look in the mirror until you notice what the problem is.

Maybe six-year-olds are just trying to act their age. Maybe they’re not quite ready to don the official uniform of the American fool and waste their lives working for corporations. Run for it, kids.

James Earl Ray didn’t shoot Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., yet he pled guilty. Most people don’t know it. Most people also have not had a direct experience with the criminal justice system in the United States.

An innocent person pleading guilty, how can that be?

Happens all the time. It’s also happened many times in a variety of ‘show trials,’ the sort of public spectacle that a government or political system feels called upon to produce for the masses, a trial which ‘explains’ things which would otherwise get pretty messy for those in power. It’s not some recent American invention but has been engaged in by all sorts of regimes for thousands of years. When I was a kid, I’d read about Stalin’s ‘show trials’ and wonder, how in the world did they get people to do that? In Russia, they’d execute these people, yet they still confessed.

It’s actually quite simple. Once the state gets hold of someone, let’s call him a patsy, which it wishes to fry for a particular crime, a variety of methods may be used to create no alternative to a guilty plea. In Ray’s case, it was explained to him that his claim of innocence would not go over well; the state had the rifle, which he had purchased, and a bundle of items he had supposedly dumped on the sidewalk in plain view. His innocence was beside the point. People wanted retribution. King was dead. If he appeared to be trying to weasel out of it, they’d execute him.

I don’t mean to get into that case here. That’s not what this column is about. No. It’s about how public perception can be created and reinforced concerning a major crime in which the accused may be entirely innocent yet appears obviously guilty. It’s been done before. It may be happening again in Boston.

The latest media story, released on CBS by former state FBI director John Miller, and based on unnamed sources, is that fugitive Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, bleeding from multiple wounds, hiding in total darkness beneath a tarp which covered a boat in someone’s back yard, and without a weapon to defend himself, managed to locate a Sharpie, or some other special pen which would work, and wrote a somewhat lengthy and ideologically-based confession on fiberglass.

Since the public disclosure of this belated discovery occurred a month after the fact, it does raise some interesting questions. For one thing, the ‘confession,’ as Miller describes it, perfectly mimics the ‘confession’ Tsarnaev is said to have made –– unable to speak due to bullet wounds in the throat, and without counsel –– to special interrogators flown to Boston from Guantanamo by the Obama government.

The boat ‘confession’ is a real break for the government, since the identical ‘confession’ the suspect is said to have made in the hospital would certainly be inadmissible at trial since he had not been advised of his right to remain silent.

I guess that since the younger brother had not been conveniently killed off like his older sibling, and Jack Ruby isn’t available anymore, it must’ve dawned on the authorities that this one might have to be put on trial.

What if he said he and his brother had been working for the government, told to go to the Boston Marathon, maybe even told to wear clothing which in photographs is eerily similar to that worn by a dozen ‘security’ personnel? What if they didn’t realize until later, when their photos were being thrown around on the web, when the cops told the American people to forget about all the other ‘suspects’ in the pictures –– including several carrying the same back packs –– and concentrate only on helping the police capture the brothers? This scenario is quite plausible given what we actually know, not what we’ve been told. What then?

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is 19 years old, shot multiple times and held in a hospital room with armed guards. For several days, he is allowed to see no one except the ‘special interrogation team’ from Guantanamo, which then produced, anonymously and by proxy, his supposed ‘confession.’ Because he’d been denied Miranda rights, on orders from Barack Obama and on a legal pretext so ludicrous that it alone raises substantial questions, this ‘confession’ could not be used in court. But it could be used to poison the public mind, which was perhaps its purpose..

One of the problems that crop up in the investigation of major crimes is that cops and other officials on the prosecution end of things often believe that the facts alone will not do the trick and that they have to dream up some fakery to strengthen the case. When that becomes obvious, as it sometimes does, anyone actually trying to figure out what happened now must sift out the lies and see what’s left. In this case, there are already so many lies that sorting through them has become a major impediment, at least for me. I’m not ready to write my ‘Boston’ column, but I’ll get to it.

In the meantime, the vast majority of Americans accept as given that this guy and his dead brother did the crime, not because there is any known, significant evidence, but because the government has cooked up a public relations story and gotten the mass media to swallow it.

You know the difference between the U.S. and New Zealand? Both countries have about three times as many sheep as people, only in the U.S. we let most of them vote.

Chiquita Brands International is well known for its bananas and its friendly, lilting television ads. Safe to say that not too many people know anything about it. The Cincinnati corporation has been growing bananas in Colombia since 1899, which is before even I was born.

But Chiquita is not as benevolent as its cheerful, dancing banana image would wish you to believe. It has over the years acted as an arms conduit to Colombian death squads funded by drug traffickers and farmers organized as the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). Court documents in a lawsuit against the company, brought under the Alien Torts Claim Act, show that a shipment of 3,000 AK-47 assault rifles and five million rounds of ammunition were routed to the death squads through Chiquita warehouses, then trucked to AUC by Chiquita vehicles.

Chiquita also demonstrated its loyalty to the AUC, which has been the sponsor of thousands of murders and numerous tortures of villagers, by giving it cash, more than a hundred payments over a course of seven years, totaling $1.7 million dollars. All of this occurred while AUC was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. There is also considerable documentary evidence which shows that Chiquita was funding the death squads in part to rid themselves of troublesome indigenous organizers who were trying to attain better working conditions for pickers in the Uraba region.

The corporation got caught, as sometimes happens. But through negotiations with the government, it had to pay only $25 million in fines. Nobody went to prison. The major crimes got buried and the corporation was able to plead to lesser offenses. That’s some pretty fancy footwork by the corporation’s counsel, considering the numerous criminal acts committed, not to mention the tortures and deaths abetted, and he ought to get some credit for it. His name: Eric Holder.

Both the Justice Department and Eric Holder knew at the time, according to documents pried loose two years ago by the National Security Archive at George Washington University under the Freedom of Information Act (which the Obama administration is trying to ‘amend,’ which is to say weaken), that Chiquita’s cooperation with AUC led to 4,000 deaths and gave the death squads a ‘foothold throughout Colombia,’ according to the country’s Attorney General; Mario Iguaran. Didn’t stop Holder. What’s a few thousand deaths compared to corporate profits? Besides, while the U.S. was labeling AUC a ‘terrorist’ organization, it was simultaneously sending it millions in aid.

That’s right, the same man who has authored memos justifying Obama’s death lists had already proven his reliability in working for Chiquita.

This is the man who is telling the mass media, in the current dustup over getting caught stealing phone records from journalists at the Associated Press, that we ought to trust him. Incursions into freedom of speech and freedom of the press, not to mention the entire Fourth Amendment, should not trouble us unduly because he and the President would only do it when national security required it and, besides, the President knew nothing about it.

Well, that’s a relief. We can all go back to sleep now.

The ‘trust us’ theme is an alarming one, used to great effect so far in Obama’s murder of people on his death list, which he calls a ‘disposition matrix.’ First of all, anyone who uses doubletalk like ‘disposition matrix’ to describe a death list is obviously dangerous and untrustworthy. Second, when Holder was finally forced to offer a justification for what is manifestly a police state horror, he listed three elements: the target was someone who was connected to a terrorist organization or “allied” organization and the ‘threat’ was ‘imminent;’ the target could not be easily apprehended; and the President would only do this with respect for the rule of law and American legal tradition. In other words, trust us. He did not bother to answer questions about the purposeful killing of a 16-year-old American citizen, the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, who could not conceivably have represented an ‘imminent’ threat, even though Obama had ordered his father killed weeks earlier.

The Attorney General, in fact, does not work for the American people any more than the President does. Holder’s past work in helping a major corporation escape liability for aiding and abetting mass murder proved he could be counted on to do what his bosses wanted. That, far more than legal skill or hard work, is the primarily qualification for high government office, certainly under Obama but also under many other Presidents in the past.

In a January letter to Holder signed by Senators Charles Grassley and Sherrod Brown, he was asked to clarify the government’s policy with respect to prosecutions of financial institutions. Unsatisfied with Holder’s answer, which the Senators termed, “aggressively evasive,” they summoned him to testify before a Senate committee. “We want to know how and why the Justice Department has determined that certain financial institutions are ‘too big to jail’ and that prosecuting those institutions would damage the financial system."

On March 6, Holder testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the size of financial institutions has made it too difficult to prosecute suspected crimes because such charges could threaten the existence of the bank and therefore damage the national or global economy. I guess he would know, having been counsel for one of the biggest crooks on the planet, the Swiss bank, UBS AG.

This is perhaps the single most bizarre –– and alarming –– statement ever made by the highest law enforcement officer in America. Consider: what sort of criminal acts would necessarily be involved in order to trigger prosecution and damages substantial enough to “threaten the existence of the bank and ... damage the national or global economy”? The kind that could get executives sent to prison for thirty years, that’s what kind. The kind that could result in penalties so severe that the very existence of the bank would be threatened, that’s what kind.

Which means that in Obama’s America, if you commit enormous crimes, you’re covered because you’re too important to the economy to risk prosecuting. If you sell some pot or stick up a gas station you are headed for prison.

Even more telling, Holder and Obama have gone after whistle blowers to the extent that this administration has prosecuted more than all previous Presidents combined. Consider that. They are willing to cripple journalism and free speech, but they will protect beyond any criminality the right of a corporation to steal the life savings of millions.

The last time an American President went after business executives on criminal charges was in the early ‘sixties, when Bob Kennedy’s Justice Department indicted executives from General Electric and Westinghouse for price fixing. These days, with General Electric paying zero taxes on profits in the billions, sheltering its cash in offshore accounts, its CEO has dinner at the White House and plays golf with Obama.

So when we hear and read statements from Eric Holder, it’s a good idea to remember what kind of man he really is, a fixer for criminals. And it’s growing apparent that that was the main thing which attracted Obama to him.

[Buy my book already, okay? http://www.amazon.com/News-From-A-Parallel-World/dp/1478194448/

On the Alternet site, where I accessed a piece entitled ‘Talking Points Memo: Government Secretly Obtained Wide AP Phone Records IN Probe,’ a scandalous exposé of the Obama gang’s further dismissal of the Fourth Amendment, there suddenly appeared a pop-up invitation from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, inviting me to sign up to show my support for President Obama’s Agenda! The exclamation point is theirs. ‘Democrats need your support to help pass President Obama’s second term agenda,’ the ad says, exhorting me to ‘Show him you have his back!’

Since you are a culturally-aware person, you are now familiar to the point of projectile vomiting with the expression “have his back.” In the case of Obama, I would like to make it clear to the Democratic Party, its Senatorial Campaign Committee, and every bloody Democratic candidate and office holder with his or her hand out that I’ve got your backs to the degree you don’t stab me in mine.

Which means I ain’t helping you until Hell freezes over, pigs fly, and every member of the Federal Reserve is in prison for life.

The amazing thing is that this kind of appeal is still working. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have the balls to try it. It’s the political equivalent of a rapist asking his victim for spare change to call a getaway taxicab.

Yesterday’s disclosure courtesy of the Associated Press, which discovered that Eric Holder’s Justice Department had secretly obtained its phone records and decided not to bother mentioning it to the AP. The government claims it was legal for the usual reasons. According to Barack Obama, he needs the authority to lock up people without trial or an attorney, or even charges against them, in order to keep us safe. This insane rationale was ratified by 93 members of the Senate, including virtually all of the Democrats.

That reminds me, I ought to write a check to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to prove that I’ve got their back.

The President is implementing one of the worst budgetary operations in American history, which is saying something. I refer to the ‘sequestering’ of funds normally allocated for a range of governmental functions. The reason this is taking place is that Obama is a coward and a witling who ‘solved’ the budget crisis (sic) by joining with Republicans to appoint a committee to come up with a proposal. Remember? The committee’s proposal was that if the Congress didn’t fix the problem (sic) by a certain date, there would be automatic cuts made almost across the board.

To no one’s surprise, Congress didn’t do shit. The cuts were delivered. And guess what? When you cut five percent from multi-billion-dollar fat cats, they hardly notice; when you cut it from social services upon which the very poor and needy depend, you kill some of them.

The government immediately leapt into action to fix the problem: it restored funds for air traffic controllers because frequent fliers got inconvenienced by delays. Can’t have that. But the poor, well, tough luck. Some of you suckers probably voted for Obama so it’s practically your own fault.

While Obama entertains a large party of bankers at the White House, poor people are now in worse trouble thanks to his leadership. All across the nation, desperately important programs have been hit.

Meals on Wheels, a literal lifeline for the poorest among us, has been cut. So has Head Start, rent subsidies and vouchers, day care for farm workers, family services. A majority of members of Congress, both parties, are millionaires. Most of them don’t care if you die.

Think I’m exaggerating? Take the case of Sfia Smith. As a rare Chronicle story by Joe Garofoli detailed, Smith has had her senior housing costs rise by $50.00 each month. Unlike the assholes who didn’t do their jobs on Capitol Hill, not to mention that phony in the White House, Smith and others like her need that money to survive.

Smith lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Maybe she should abandon her home and friends for a cheaper locale, say Bangladesh. She receives less than $1,000.00 each month in Social Security –– you know, that “entitlement” Obama wants to cut to prove he can ‘cooperate’ with Republicans –– and a loss of fifty dollars is serious. In Garofoli’s words:

“After a lifetime of working a series of low-paying jobs –– maid, cannery worker, assembly line employee –– Smith doesn’t have a pension. Her daughter brings her lentils and fish most nights for dinner. She rarely goes out because she can barely spare money to see a movie.

“Smith’s housing options are limited in one of the nation;s hottest housing markets. She lives a few miles from where the San Francisco 49ers are building a $1.2 billion stadium and top Silicon Valley tech firms are rolling in money.

“Her daughter, Karima Holdman, is an unemployed former janitor and assembly line worker. Holdman’s long-time partner, Louie Campos, is a grocery checker, and they have little room to spare in their condo.

“’This puts me in a bad position,’ Smith said of the cuts. ‘I don’t understand why they have to do this to poor people.’”

Well, Sfia, let me explain it. See, the bankers stole lots of money, billions and billions. They needed that money so they could pay themselves billions of dollars in what they call ‘bonuses.’ It seems that these days in America, executives, top educators, sports stars, and media personalities all deserve very large ‘bonuses’ for doing pretty much nothing at all. Someone has to pay for that.

Likewise, every drone which fires a Hellfire missile into someone’s home in Yemen or Pakistan costs many millions of dollars. That money doesn’t grow on trees, so it has to come from somewhere. Certainly, you don’t expect executives or politicians to pay for that. The Kardashians aren’t going to pay for it. Tiger Woods can’t afford to pay for it. So, naturally, it’s got to be you.

Then, there’s the cost of the wars in general. These are expensive. You can’t destroy other countries and kill hundreds of thousands of people on the cheap. Then there’s the cost of rebuilding what we blow up. Someone has to pay for Halliburton’s and Bechtel’s profits.

And there are so many other important things which cost money. When Obama invited all of those CEOs and bankers to a feed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, you know they didn’t have to buy their own dinners. You, Sfia Smith, your fifty dollars was needed for the dessert. I’m sure you can be very proud of that.

Yeah, President Obama, I’ve got your back all right. If it were up to me, you’d be out of office faster than you can tell another cracking good joke about drones or draw up today’s death list for your SEAL heroes.

By the way, dear reader, you do know, don’t you, that the entire ‘budget crisis’ is a fraud, right? Where does the national debt come from? It comes from borrowing. Who does the government borrow from? Why, the banks, of course! And the banks charge interest, well, why not? And so the taxpayers must pay more and more taxes to ‘service’ the debt. And of course the debt keeps growing, unless, as periodically happens, the government decides to cut your services, ignore a collapsing infrastructure, and stop spending money on trifles such as food stamps or medicine for the poor.

But none of that is necessary. In fact, there is no actual reason why the government could not itself issue money, whatever it needs to issue, to pay for whatever it wishes to spend money on. There would be no interest. In fact, the money spent, if it was not all pissed away on drunken Congressmen, would wind up working its way through the economy. But that’s another story for another time.

I am furious, as I often am. What kind of country allows this to happen, a bunch of politicians dreaming up a way to evade responsibility, institute ‘automatic’ cuts ‘across the board’ so that, as Obama likes to put it, we all share the pain? The rich are not suffering; they are not meant to suffer. Only the poor, those without jobs, those trying to scrape by, those deciding whether to spend their few dollars on medicine or food this week. Those are the ones who suffer.

Sfia said, “I don’t understand why they have to do this to poor people.”

Because the people who run this country are nasty, soulless bastards, that’s why. I am ashamed to be an American right now.

Buy my novel. It'll make you feel lots better than the daily news. http://www.amazon.com/News-From-A-Parallel-World/dp/1478194448/

Warning: I’m a little pissed-off tonight and this column uses extreme language. If that is likely to offend you, I’m sorry. Sometimes ordinary, diplomatic, polite language is not nearly enough, and this is one of those times. In my opinion, there are no words bad enough to tell this story, but I’m going to try.

There was a time when local ‘law enforcement’ officers who murdered unarmed citizens had reason to worry because there might be people coming after them. This was especially prevalent when white cops were shooting black men to death in the South in this land of the free and there were real lawyers in the Justice Department under Bob Kennedy or Nicholas Katzenbach.

But armed thugs with badges no longer have anything to fear in America. They can do anything. Eric Holder is too busy going after pot growers to worry about Gestapo activities and the criminal activities of ‘law enforcement.’

Early Thursday morning, a gang of armed killers wearing the uniforms of the California Highway Patrol and Kern County Sheriff’s Department beat a man to death with their night sticks, then confiscated the phone/cameras of witnesses, claiming they needed the video for an ‘investigation’ which might take years to complete.

Witnesses say that the victim, a 33-year-old father of four named David Silva, “begged for his life” as they beat him to death. One witness said that the was actually awakened from sleep by the sounds of the batons striking Silva’s head.

The murder took place on a street corner in Bakersfield. Two cops approached Silva to ask whether he was the person neighbors had complained about being intoxicated. They quickly decided that he was not being cooperative and began striking him in the head and upper body. As he fell to the ground, they called for backup, and several other cars arrived on the scene. What followed was an orgy of violence as as many as nine cops beat Silva to death.

Seven of the killers were Kern County Sheriff’s deputies; they have apparently been named. The CHP, meanwhile, refuses to disclose who participated in the murder wearing their badges, claiming that an ‘investigation’ was underway.

There are several such ‘investigations’ underway, including one by the Kern County Sheriff, a hack named Donny Youngblood, who asked for “patience” while he tried to figure out how to get rid of the evidence and whitewash the whole thing.

Kern County deputies immediately went after witnesses who had filmed the murder, confiscating cell phones and threatening people.

One, Sulina Quair, telephoned 911 as the attack proceeded. In a stunning audio made available to television station 23ABC, Quair pleaded with the dispatcher:

"There's a man laying on the floor and your police officers beat the shit out of him and killed him. I have it all on video camera. I am sitting here on the corner of Flower and Palm right now and you have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight Sheriffs. The guy was laying on the floor and eight Sheriff's ran up and started beating him up with sticks.  The man is dead laying right here, right now."

http://www.turnto23.com/news/local-news/911-call-deputies-allegedly-beat-killed-david-silva

Evidently, what troubled the Sheriff’s Department was not the murder but the existence of a videotape which showed it.

In her 911 call, Quair warned that she would “send it to the news. These cops have no reason to do this to this man.” The dispatcher asked for her phone number “so the watch commander could call me,” but instead two deputies went after her, confiscating her camera when she demanded that they produce a warrant.

Quair had been on the scene because she and her family had been visiting relatives in the Kern Medical Center, across the way. Her sister Melissa Quair’s boyfriend, also present, got the murder on his own camera. In that video, Melissa later recounted, it is very clear that the deputies were beating Silva. At one point, she said, they hogtied him and lifted him and twice dropped him onto the street.

Melissa Quair and her boyfriend picked up some food at a nearby Taco Bell and were home eating it around 3:00 a.m. when two detectives arrived and demanded their phones. They entered her house without permission, she said, then kept them captive. Her boyfriend was prevented from leaving for work until he surrendered his phone.

Sulina Quair told the press that the deputies promised to return her phone to her right away, but Sheriff Youngblood now says that because it was seized under a warrant it cannot be given back without a court order.

Melissa Quair and her boyfriend can’t get their phones back, either. Neither can Sulina and Melissa’s mother, Maria Melendez, who also filmed the murder. When Maria went to visit Melissa later that morning, she was nabbed by the same two detectives and told she had to turn over her phone. These were seized by Youngblood’s goons without warrants, but he’s not releasing them, either.

“They lied to us,” Melissa said. “They said they would personally deliver the phones back to us the next day, but when we called they said they were keeping them until the investigation is over.”

Another witness, without a camera, described the scene she witnessed this way:

“When I got outside I saw two officers beating a man with batons, and they were hitting his head so every time they would swing, I could hear the blows to his head. His body was just lying on the street and before the ambulance arrived one of the officers performed CPR on him and another used a flashlight on his eyes but I’m sure he was already dead.”

The cops are not talking, saying there’s an ongoing investigation, presumably a cover-up, and they won’t let anybody see the cell phone videos taken by witnesses. Eventually, the cops promise, the public will get access to the films. I guess they’re bringing in experts to either manipulate the images or accidentally destroy them.

The dead man’s brother, Christopher, told reporters, “My brother spent the last eight minutes of his life pleading, begging for his life.”

David Silva was a human being. He had four children. In one photo accompanying a news story, he is shown with his three daughters, Makayla, 10, Katelyn, 4, and Chelsey, 8. He had a right to live. Nothing he did or is said to have done could justify what these criminals with badges did to him. We have a responsibility here. Cops are paid with public funds. They are supposed to serve us, not murder us. If we allow this to happen, we will deserve the police state horrors our negligence invites.

Having the Sheriff of Kern County ‘investigate’ his own men is a travesty.

Two of the killers wore the uniform of the Highway Patrol. That makes this a state crime. I want the Attorney General of California, Kamala Harris, to launch a criminal investigation and I want these mother fuckers in prison for life, all of them.

A man is beaten to death by people employed by the state. In a democracy, they are arrested and charged, and put on trial. If the evidence shows what witnesses say it does, they are sent to prison. In a police state, the ‘authorities’ ‘investigate’ the ‘incident’ until people forget about it, lose the ‘evidence,’ and maybe, if the heat makes them uncomfortable, a couple of the worst offenders get fined or put on paid leave. Which do you think is going to happen here?

Nothing’s going to return David Silva to his children, but maybe there are things we can still do to return this country to its people.

Yesterday, Sulina Quair said that Silva’s screams are still haunting her. She was an estimated twenty feet from the deputies as they beat the man to death.

“I’ve been crying a lot and his voice just plays over and over in my head. I sit there and I can still hear him choking in his own blood, trying to gasp for air.”

The story has everything which appeals to Americans: drama, heroism, race, sexual perversion, psychopathology, money and commercial appeal.

Charles Ramsey is the hero, a man who has thusfar refused a reward for rescuing three women held captive by an evil fucker and his two brothers.

According to early press accounts, the kidnapper blames the victims, teenagers at the time of their abductions, for getting into his car in the first place. If that’s the precursor for an insanity plea, it’s a lulu.

As for Ramsey, he’s in a bind. Every time he tries to do the right thing he’s besieged with offers from people well-meaning or predatory. Already, McDonald’s corporation, hoping to suck up some reflected glory, is preparing to make him an offer of some kind. If I were Ramsey, I’d move and leave no forwarding address; it’s only going to get worse.

The women, Amanda Berry, Michele Knight, and Gina DeJesus, were rescued on May 6th when Ramsey heard Berry’s cry for help and kicked in a door, freeing her and her daughter. “There’re two more upstairs,” she told Ramsey. “Call 911.” Each captive had been kidnapped many years before by one of the brothers.

The 911 operator didn’t believe him. Ramsey said, “I’ve got Amanda Berry. The dispatcher told me ‘quite playing on the line, you ain’t got her.’ I said, send the police, you moron.”

When the cops came they found the other two women upstairs.

Ramsey, who lived next door, told interviewers he was amazed that the women were held in that house. “You got to have some big testicles to pull this off, bro, ‘cause I been here a year, we see this guy every day, we barbecue with the dude, we eatin’ ribs, listenin’ to salsa music... he just goes in the yard, plays with the dogs, tinkers with his cars and motorcycle... “

Ramsey himself inadvertently triggered the attention from McDonald’s. It seems Monday was his day off and he’d gone to the fast food emporium for a Big Mac and God knows what else and was home enjoying the repast when Berry’s screams got his attention. He ran next door still carrying the burger, a fact which was relayed to millions by way of videos all over the web. The corporation, naturally, hopped on board.

So far, Ramsey has waved off attempts to reward him. “I already have a job,” he said. “Give the reward money to them (the abductees).” This statement loosed the hounds of hell. One very large strain of opinion, evident by the thousands now on message boards and facebook, is that God will reward him for his selfless act. The other, a bit muted for obvious reasons, suggests that anyone who turns down reward money is a chump, or perhaps fishing for something better.

The rescuer does not see himself as a hero and appears embarrassed by such terms. “People saying I’m a hero, let me tell you something, I’m an American, I’m just like you, I work for a living...”

There are racial comments, many of them well-meaning. Ramsey is black, the kidnapped women white. One writer offered, “There Are Still Alot Of Decent BLACK Men Around. We Need More Ppl Like Him!!” This, of course, surprised me; I’d thought all the Decent BLACK Men had moved to Europe.

Others demanded to know what his race had to do with anything and said that Jesus would have approved. There is considerable talk of Jesus in these comments, a rash of them, actually, and talk of blessings and heaven and plenty of Amens. Maybe there’s a group of people sitting there, diligently composing these notes. Otherwise, where they come from is a mystery.

One writer demanded, “How do you know he is a Christian?” But this question was rolled under the wheels of the Good Lord’s express.

Ramsey himself is not oblivious to the race aspect of the whole thing., advising one flustered white newsman, “I knew somethin’ was wrong when a little pretty white girl run into a black man’s arms... somethin’ is wrong... dead giveaway, dead giveaway... either she’s homeless or she got robbed, that’s the only reason she run to a black man...”

These are strange times. I get the distinct feeling that for many people the Ramsey rescue is exactly the theater they’ve been waiting for. After all, nothing in politics is bringing us any joy, and there are crazy people running around with munitions, either self-directed or on a government leash. We could use a hero and Charles Ramsey may have to serve, like it or not.

It’s one of those numbers you can’t believe when you first hear it. Did someone add a zero?

Twenty-six thousand. Incidents of rape and other sexual predations reported by women in the U.S. military, 2012, attacks on them by men in the U.S. military. 26,000. This is the number of assaults according to a research team which counted and credited what they were told, not the official number. The official number is lower. I don’t suppose I have to explain why that is.

The military brass are now on the hot seat before a Senate committee where female members are a little outraged not just by the numbers but by the official response they’re getting, a bunch of male generals with fruit salad on their chests patronizing the Senators, which is a bad idea.

The Secretary of the Army gave the predictable nod toward the gravity of the whole situation and then lectured the Senators about how women don’t report rape because, you know, they don’t want their families or boy friends to find out.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York was not amused, being a woman and not so easily tricked by brass hats as some of her male colleagues. Also not laughing, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri. Elect a bunch of women to the Senate and there are going to be these problems.

Gillibrand wanted to know why rape charges shouldn’t be handled by civilian juries, a suggestion which no doubt sent chills down the Secretary’s back. She was taken by testimony from numerous women who explained how complaints of sexual abuse were not only ignored by the chain of command but usually resulted in the victims being ostracized or even punished. Perpetrators were routinely promoted.

In one notable instance, a military trial by jury, in which a defendant air ace was found guilty, was overturned by the officer who had herself appointed the jury panel. To this, the brass hats had no answer.

They also don’t seem capable of answering the overall question, which is this: what is going on in the United States military where there are more than seventy sexual assaults every single day? That’s a lot of rape any way you look at it.

Not being in the Senate and therefore not worried about re-election or getting any wealthy corporate sponsors pissed off at me, I wonder about the selectivity of Senators Gillibrand and McCaskill when it comes to affixing blame for criminality on the chain of command. See, the Senate has known for quite a few years now that the U.S. military has committed widespread torture as a matter of policy, kidnapping people and sending them via “black” flights to torture chambers all over the globe.

As a matter of fact, one day after the Boston Marathon bombings, as the country was transfixed by the drama of nine thousand heavily-armed troops occupying Boston in pursuit of a single, unarmed nineteen-year-old suspect, a 600-page report was issued by a nonpartisan commission on torture, American style.

The Constitution Project’s Report on the findings of the Task Force on Detainee Treatment was released at the Press Club in Washington, D.C., on April 16th. The product of two years of intense study and research, the bipartisan group, whose members included prominent Democratic and Republican members of past and current administrations, found that the United States has been guilty of conduct in violation of numerous international laws. In short, the Task Force found Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama guilty of war crimes.

Bet you didn’t see that on CNN.

Lest you suspect that the Task Force was comprised of some ideological misfits, let me disabuse you of that notion. Its co-chairs were Asa Hutchinson, former undersecretary, Department of Homeland Security and a Republican congressman, and James R. Jones, former ambassador to Mexico and a Democratic congressman.

Other members include Richard A. Epstein, a professor of law at NYU and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; Brigadier General David Irvine, USA (Ret.), former strategic intelligence officer who taught military law for 18 years at the Sixth Army Intelligence School; Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, former undersecretary of state for political affairs and former ambassador to the United Nations; Gerald E. Thomson, M.D., professor of medicine, emeritus, Columbia University and former president, American College of Physicians; and Judge William R. Sessions, former director of the FBI.

Get the picture?

The Constitution Project report found widespread use of hypothermia, water boarding, stress positions, abdominal beatings, genital torture, and other physical and psychological harm inflicted on prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, at Guantånamo, and at “black sites” around the world. They also found that these practices, which the Obama regime pretends to have ended, are continuing at ‘friendly’ sites in other countries which promise not to use torture, a fiction everyone knows to be false.

The practice of ‘extraordinary rendition,’ which allows people to be kidnapped and flown to these ‘black sites’ began before 9-11, during the Clinton administration, and continues to this day under Obama.

The findings of this Task Force are thus extraordinarily shocking and important. The specific torture practices used and endorsed by the Bush administration and to some unspecified degree continued under Obama, are clearly in violation of international treaties and international laws. They are war crimes.

Several of the practices enumerated in the 600-page report were in fact used by the Nazis in World War II, called “Versharfte Vernehmung,”and SS officers who so engaged in them were summarily executed by Norwegians who captured them in 1948.

One Japanese General who water boarded captured American pilots during WWII was also executed.

The question is, of course, whether the United States is a democracy, governed by rule of law. If that is so, members of three administrations should be arrested and charged with capital offenses under international law which we, as Americans, have always claimed fealty to. We have always claimed adherence to the principles established at Nuremberg when they applied to others. Do they not apply to us?

Articles concerning the Constitution Project’s stunning report have appeared now in several newspapers, including the New York Times, L.A. Times, and Washington Post. They have also been noted by the American Bar Association Journal and by conservative publications.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/04/16/world/16torture-report.html?_r=0

http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/04/constitution-project-report-on-enhanced-interrogation-concludes-u-s-engaged-in-torture/

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/us_tortured_after_9_11_says_independent_constitution_project_panel_report/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-necessary-reckoning-with-torture/

For those among my readers who suspect my political views to be to the left edge, or maybe over the edge, of the spectrum, let me cite at length the commentary from the The American Conservative:

“A new report by the Washington D.C.-based Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment appeared last week, and it should once and for all end the largely partisan debate about whether the United States engaged in torture as part of its counter terrorism effort. A rehashing of the pros and cons regarding the handling of terrorists might well have been considered old news but for the Task Force’s well documented unanimous judgment that in the aftermath of 9/11 the U.S. government had indeed carried out acts that were indisputably torture. A second finding maintains that the top officials in Bush administration bear full responsibility for enabling the practice, having entered into detailed discussions before committing what amount to war crimes.

“The report also notes how the corruption resulting from the White House decision to permit torture was so pervasive that CIA medical doctors routinely monitored the physical abuse that detainees endured and even made suggestions to “improve” the results.

“The report describes in detail how some prisoners were tortured to death or died under mysterious circumstances. Others were chained to walls or hung from ceilings. Some were restrained and placed in unchanged diapers for days at a time, forcing the prisoner to soil himself repeatedly for the duration of his interrogation. Placing suspects in stress positions for hours or days, the use of guard dogs to terrify, enforced nakedness, exposure to cold and heat, and sleep deprivation were routine.

“Of particular interest to those who believe that the CIA has been guilty of some dissimulation regarding the torture that it carried out—since it conveniently destroyed many of the records—the Constitution Project confirms that one or more Libyans were subjected to water boarding, a challenge to the Agency’s contention that the procedure was only used on three al-Qaeda detainees. And another interesting sidebar is the account of how the International Red Cross learned about the systematic torture at Guantanamo shortly after it began but decided it would be better and “more politically acceptable” not to go public and expose the abuses being authorized by the White House.

“Rendition of prisoners began under Bill Clinton and sometimes had nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. Several dissident Libyans were turned over to strongman Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi as a favor. The Obama administration made clear that it had stopped all “enhanced interrogation” when it took office, but it continued to render suspects to friendly governments for questioning. The governments involved pledged not to use torture on the suspects, but an assurance of that nature is little more than a polite diplomatic fiction well understood by both Washington and the nation receiving the prisoners.

“Obama also failed to bring transparency and closure to the illegal activity by refusing in 2009 to go after those who ordered and carried out the torture, in spite of the fact that Washington is a signatory to the International Convention Against Torture, which requires prompt investigation of all such allegations. Obama claimed that he wanted to look forward rather than back and, to be sure, he would have faced intense Republican resistance if he had proceeded, but he has since stonewalled on any accountability by repeatedly citing the state secrets privilege to halt legal proceedings or attempts by victims of the torture to obtain redress. The White House also has reneged on pre-election pledges to close Guantanamo prison, where suspects continue to be held indefinitely and illegally without any charges and a large scale hunger strike currently underway is being dealt with through forced feeding, which the Task Force considers to be a form of torture. The report concludes that Obama’s refusal to address the treatment of detainees generally “cannot continue to be justified on the basis of national security.”

In his failure to pursue the documented crimes against humanity engaged in by his predecessor, President Obama is complicit in them. In continuing many of the barbaric practices himself, he bears similar legal blame. The author of the piece, Philip Giraldi, a former CIA case officer, concludes this way:

“Given the actual record on torture and renditions, trusting the government to do what is right is no longer an option, particularly when the White House can and will claim that its actions are based on national-security imperatives that cannot be revealed.”

When and if Congress gets around to facing its moral, legal, and ethical responsibilities for this grave and brutal history, it will need a truly independent special prosecutor and a courageous, patriotic grand jury to do what’s right.

When I was a kid, the New York Times represented the pinnacle of daily journalism. The best reporters, the most enlightened editorial perspective, the most trustworthy documentation. If the Times printed it, you could trust it.

Those days are gone. Now, the Times represents corrupted journalism. Now, when you see something in the Times it’s wise to discount it unless you find substantive support for it from more reliable sources, such as the Guardian UK, Truthdig, Firedoglake, Nation of Change, RT News, Al Jazeera, Greg Palast, American LiveWire, Rolling Stone, Common Dreams, or a random taxi driver in New York City.

The use of newspapers and other media to promote government or private agendas is well-established. Famously, William Randolph Hearst got his war against Spain by either setting up or capitalizing on the sinking of the Maine. The Times, although it abandoned Lyndon Johnson over Viet Nam, has rallied the citizenry for every international criminal enterprise since then, often fudging ‘facts’ to make the case. It has done this as a “liberal” publication, as a publication which endorses Democrats, including Obama. It, along with many other media temples, self-identifies as “liberal.” Not surprisingly, this reactionary “liberal” viewpoint is seized by crazies on the right who accuse the media in general of being “liberal.”

Liberal, though, has essentially disappeared in America. “Liberals” have become reactionary, pro-war, pro-austerity, pro-surveillance. “Liberals” write Op Ed pieces in rags like the Times arguing for reactionary positions on issues of war while couching them in terms of infinite reasonableness.

That is what is going on now, with the increasing noise about Syria and Iran. There is no decent reason for the United States to kill more people in order to save them, as it has done in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Mali, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere. But lack of a good reason has never stopped us before.

Anyway, reasons don’t have to be real. They don’t even have to be sane. For many years now, the U.S. has been bombing the hell out of innocent people for humanitarian reasons. We’re itching to do it again in Syria. In fact, in the wake of last week’s air strikes against Syria by Israel, domestic U.S. support for American ‘intervention’ has escalated, according to New York Times columnist and former executive editor Bill Keller, who writes that Barack Obama should ”get over” any hesitation to do so.

Keller argues that just because we didn’t find any of the mythical weapons of mass destruction Bush and his regime (and the Times) said we’d find in Iraq, that shouldn’t stop us from attacking Syria.

“Our reluctance to arm the rebels or defend the civilians being slaughtered in their homes has convinced the Assad regime (and the world) that we are not serious.”

As Keller says, we are already arming the rebels via our proxies, the Saudis, and through Qatar, but our unwillingness to do it directly has caused many of our weapons to fall into the hands of extremists, including people associated with Al Qaida. Plus, we couldn’t make the situation any worse, he says.

Keller, in the fashion of today’s New York Times, is a ‘liberal.’ For real ass-sucking madness, another columnist, Thomas J. Friedman, pretentious asshole of the decade in my estimation, has a more straightforward prescription:

“I believe if you want to end the Syrian civil war and tilt Syria onto a democratic path, you need an international force to occupy the entire country, secure the borders, disarm all the militias and midwife a transition to democracy. It would be staggeringly costly and take a long time, with the outcome still not guaranteed. But without a homegrown Syrian leader who can be a healer, not a divider, for all its communities, my view is that anything short of an external force that rebuilds Syria from the bottom up will fail.”

Look, what is it with Americans that we think the world is our territory and we’ve just loaned it out to the people who live on it? What is it about us that we think we know what’s best for others and that, if necessary, we’ll impose it on them even if we have to kill them in the process?

Friedman wants to “tilt” Syria? Who the fuck gives him the right to do that? He wants to “occupy the entire country”? For what purpose and on whose behalf? He wants to “rebuild Syria from the bottom up”? In order to accomplish what end? The creation of a model state which better conforms to some mythical ideal we’re promoting, all the while our corporations are raping the nation and its people?

Friedman, Keller, and other American “liberals” are also looking to blow up Iran, although that’s not quite how they put it, at least not always. Hillary Clinton once threatened to “obliterate” the country and its people, an unusually candid moment from a classic war hawk who normally tries very hard to disguise her belligerent attitude toward other peoples. Syria, they may think, is a way to bring that about.

It’s been apparent for years now that the true aim of the United States in the Middle East is not peace or stability but a complete takeover of the region. We are an empire, pretending for the domestic audience that we’re for democracy and self-determination while the rest of the world is not fooled for one bloody minute. Any people being hit with American rockets are not under the false impression that we bring peace. Any government, especially those democratically-elected as in many Latin American nations, which sees the CIA and other spy apparatus being slipped into their lands for the purpose of killing or displacing their leaders knows exactly what’s going on, even if the American public is too anaesthetized by television and the government’s circuses to figure it out, or too morally bankrupt to care.

Nobody wants our “help,” because they know what it means.

I’m not sure what crime Assad committed to piss off America, but he clearly did something. We are not sending military equipment and, unofficially, special ops forces to ‘save lives,’ though that is what we say.

America’s record in the saving lives department is not especially good right now. It cost the Iraqis more than a million dead for us to save lives there. In Libya, the carnage was limited to but a few thousand directly, but our paid mercenaries from Qatar have butchered tens of thousands and probably many more than that, in the process of liberating them.

Meanwhile, America is being manipulated by Israel, nothing new, I grant you, but in increasingly alarming ways. The Israel air strikes against Syria last week were carried out ostensibly because Israel thinks that Syria is supplying arms and equipment to Hezbollah in Lebanon and believes it has the right to prevent it. What gives Israel the moral right to do what it’s doing in this and other respects is a mystery to many people, including me, however it clearly has a stranglehold on U.S. policies and U.S. public opinion.

President Obama, on the Israeli strikes:

“Israelis justifiably have to guard against the transfer of advanced weaponry to terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. We coordinate with the Israelis recognizing they are very close to Syria. They are very close to Lebanon. Hezbollah has repeatedly said they would be willing to attack as far as Tel Aviv. So, the Israelis have to be vigilant and concerned.”

Let’s step away from Fantasyland for a moment. Right now, Israel possesses nuclear weapons and the delivery system to hit any country in the Middle East. They developed these weapons after John Kennedy, who had hoped to halt their spread and convince the four countries which at that time had them to disarm, was killed. In size, they are the sixth largest nuclear power.

There are no Middle Eastern countries which pose a threat of any kind to Israel. Rhetoric aside, it would be suicide for anyone to attack Israel. Iran, among other things, has attacked no one for a thousand years, which is one reason for its survival.

Most Middle Eastern countries not named Israel have long been infiltrated by America’s CIA and other special operations forces. All have been threatened and several overthrown. Attempts at democracy unfavorable to America have resulted in assassinations and invasions. Iran itself was a democracy in 1953 but wanted to control its own oil; England and the U.S. destroyed the government and installed the Shah, one of the most brutal despots the world had ever known. Iranians remember this and are not grateful for it.

When Obama proclaims that Israel “justifiably” must “guard against transfer of advanced weaponry to terrorist organizations,” he presumably is suffering from a major cognitive lapse. In fact, most “advanced weaponry” now in the hands of groups America doesn’t like got there after initially being introduced into the world by the United States. Last year, Obama’s State Department bragged that the United States had sold more weapons to other nations in 2011 than at any time in its history. Even now, there is concern that much of the weaponry the CIA has provided to the ‘rebels’ in Syria is being held by people affiliated with Al Qaida.

It’s not hard to see that Obama and Israel are both moving into position for an attack on Iran. Indeed, there were major acts of sabotage connected with defense plants inside Iran within the past few days.

Where all this is leading is anyone’s guess, but an interesting commentary has begun to emerge in the Israeli press. This, by columnist Gideon Levy, in Haaretz:

“Israel is prodding U.S. President Barack Obama, catching him in his use of the words “red line,” challenging and provoking him to reach the real thing: bombing Iran. Israel wants to reveal the president’s nakedness on the Syrian matter in order to present him as naked on the Iranian issue. Perhaps he won’t bomb Syria, as Israel requested; The key thing is that he should bomb Iran. This policy of manipulating the American president, at the expense of Syrians’ blood, perhaps will pan out in the short run. But it will also make Israel even more loathed in Washington…”

It will also make the United States even more loathed throughout the Middle East. “The key thing is that he should bomb Iran.” The pure evil of this is evident to any sensate human being. These are people who live in Iran, ordinary people who have the same right to life as anyone in America, including members of Congress and the President’s own family. What did they do to earn such a despicable wish?

The argument that the United States has a right to attack, bomb, invade, or otherwise cause misery to any country in the world it wishes to destroy or merely push around is a dangerous one, a sick one. That it is promoted by so-called ‘liberals’ and about to be implemented by the government of a ‘Democratic’ President is grotesque.

The facebook item referenced a graduation speech at Ohio State by Barack Obama. In it, he told the graduates to reject dissent. Oh, he didn’t put it exactly in those terms but there is no mistaking the point.

He denounced it as ‘cynicism’ and ‘blaming government,’ meaning him, for “all of our problems.”

In between the introductory rote praise for soldiers, the hired killers who do his dirty work and make the world safe for corporations, and the ritualistic ‘God bless America’ exhortation at the end, Obama urged the next generation of adults to eschew making an issue of anything, to choose instead the “tranquil and steady dedication” over a lifetime. He likes the term ‘tranquil,’ bringing it back for an encore at the end. It’s an odd term, I think. Why would anyone use such a term when talking about the role of a citizen?

He talked about ‘American values’ and called the U.S. "the greatest country in the world,” which is ridiculous but predictable. It’s after all our ‘exceptionalism’ which gives us the royal right to bomb other countries with which we are ostensibly not at war, to kill strangers without any conscience whatsoever, and to loot other lands of their resources because, well, we’re special.

When he began discussing ‘service’ to the nation, he conflated it with the military. Like many shallow, reflexive, dangerous public pronouncements from fools these days, patriotism for Obama is about wearing uniforms and killing strangers on command. He wanted especially to praise the “50 ROTC cadets in your graduating class (who) will become commissioned officers in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines.  130 of your fellow graduates have already served – some in combat, some on multiple deployments.  Of the 98 veterans earning bachelor’s degrees today, 20 are graduating with honors.  And at least one kept serving his fellow veterans when he came home by starting up a campus organization called Vets4Vets.  As your Commander-in-Chief, I could not be prouder of all of you.”

In fact, Obama’s emphasis at Ohio State was on conflict and war. He opened with this description of the times in which these graduates were entering adulthood:

“Class of 2013, your path to this moment has wound you through years of breathtaking change.  You were born as freedom forced its way through a wall in Berlin, and tore down an Iron Curtain across Europe...  And you came of age as terror touched our shores; an historic recession spread across the nation; and a new generation signed up to go to war.”

Without extensive analysis, it should in any case be noted that the Berlin wall did not come down because “freedom” forced it to. “Freedom” had nothing to do with the fall of the Soviet Empire. Greed, corruption, hypocrisy, and militarism killed the U.S.S.R., just as it’s doing to America now.

“...a new generation signed up to go to war.” Again, an odd construction. “...signed up” to go kill and be killed, mostly the former. Terror “touched our shores” and we are therefore going to rain it down on people in Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia and Mali and God Knows where else, and you wonderful new military recruits are going to do the raining.

To be fair, Obama did not limit the range of activities the young might engage in to contribute to a better world. They could join the Peace Corps, he said, or create a “startup” company.

“I suspect that those of you who pursue more education, or climb the corporate ladder, or enter the arts or sciences or journalism, will still choose a cause you care about in your life and fight like heck to make it happen.”

Even as you enter the arts or sciences or climb the corporate ladder, you’ll “choose a cause” and fight like heck to make it happen.

I kept reading the text of this speech and couldn’t shake a disturbing sense of atonality. The lines are just a little off, as though they were written by a fifteen-year-old intern or someone careful not to say anything meaningful.

The terminology itself, “choose a cause,” sounds creepy, as though it’s being said as a pro forma expression. It has the same resonance as someone advising a high school sophomore to “choose a club” to join, something to add to the resumé along with all the other useful adjuncts in “climbing the (corporate) ladder.”

What he was getting around to was what he called “citizenship.” He described it as something which seems to come out in crisis, when people rally around to help those harmed by the explosion of a plant in Texas or a bombing in Boston. Citizenship to Obama is a unifying thing, people forgetting their differences and “joining together” regardless of “petty divisions.”

It is a “united urge to help” which defines “citizenship” for Obama. We are “bound to one another... by a deep devotion to this country we love. That’s what citizenship is.”

No, it isn't. Citizenship is anything but a ‘devotion’ in which we are ‘bound to one another.’ It is a requirement of being informed and taking part, of challenging and standing up, sometimes alone, not as part of a crowd but as one who has taken on the risk of telling the truth. The founders of this country, whose work Obama is fond of homogenizing, risked their lives to stand against the policies of what was then their ‘mother country.’ They were in the minority and they had a decent chance of being hanged for it. They did not chant ‘USA! USA!’ as an exercise in the ‘unity’ of ‘citizenship.’

Maybe it’s the audience and Obama’s presumption that Ohio State students are not terribly intelligent. Maybe he doesn’t think they collectively possess much of a vocabulary. But there’s no question that in some passages he is talking down to them, talking to them as though they are slow-witted middle school students who might have trouble following anything very sophisticated. To wit:

“But if we’re being honest, as you’ve studied and worked and served to become good citizens, the institutions that give structure to our society have, at times, betrayed your trust.
 
“In the run-up to the financial crisis, too many on Wall Street forgot that their obligations don’t end with their shareholders.  In entertainment and in the media, ratings and shock value often trumped news and storytelling.  And in Washington, well, this is a joyous occasion, so let me put this charitably: I think it’s fair to say our democracy isn’t working as well as we know it can.  It could do better.  And those of us fortunate enough to serve in these institutions owe it to you to do better, every single day.
 
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we might keep this idea alive at a national level – not just on Election Day, or in times of tragedy, but on all the days in between.  Of course, I spend most of my time these days in Washington, a place that sorely needs it. 

Isn’t it painful to read this? “If we’re being honest...” and “as you’ve studied and worked and served to become good citizens...” “In the run-up to the financial crisis...”

He’s been “thinking a lot lately about how we might keep this idea alive at a national level –– not just on election day or in times of tragedy but on all the days in between.”

It’s like nails on a chalkboard, isn’t it? Bush spoke to us as though we were gullible. Obama speaks to us as though we’re children, not very bright children.

Missing from his speech was any reflection about how it might be that the bankers who “forgot... their obligations” wound up under him running the Treasury Department, much of the regulatory machinery, his White House staff, and the Department of Commerce, where Penny Pritzker, an old crony who introduced Obama to the golden coffers of Goldman Sachs, just got nominated for the top job, and there was no reference to the concession of Obama’s Attorney General that he wouldn’t prosecute any of these criminals –– maybe the worst felons in America –– because it would disrupt the economy, i.e. upset the bankers, to do so.

A month ago, Obama hosted a couple of dozen of these swine at a fancy dinner. He did not mention that, either.

Similarly, Obama urged the students to “vote, eagerly and often.” This may have been an attempt at humor, or perhaps he thought he was still in Cook County. And if those people you elect don’t do the job, he said, “if they put special interests above your own – you’ve got to let them know that’s not okay.  And if they let you down, there’s a built-in day in November where you can really let them know that’s not okay.”

A built-in day in November!

Omitted from his mention of special interests was his own appointment of a roster of thieves, lobbyists, and whores to run virtually every federal department. Pritzker is only the latest in a long and distinguished line. If Obama, who promised on the campaign trail there would be no lobbyists in his administration, and then appointed more than a hundred of them, realized he was speaking of himself, well, this is a joyous occasion, so let me put this charitably: are you kidding?

But he isn’t kidding. In fact, he spoke of lobbyists as though they were the enemy rather than the talent pool from which he selects everybody in his government:

"As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us.  It’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government." (Ask not what your country can do for you...)
 
"The founders trusted us with this awesome authority.  We should trust ourselves with it, too.  Because when we don’t, when we turn away and get discouraged and abdicate that authority, we grant our silent consent to someone who’ll gladly claim it.  That’s how we end up with lobbyists who set the agenda; policies detached from what middle-class families face every day; the well-connected who publicly demand that Washington stay out of their business – then whisper in its ear for special treatment that you don’t get."

But no, that is not “how we end up with lobbyists who set the agenda.” We end up with lobbyists who set the agenda because they buy the Congress and the President, including you, Barack Obama. While you were running your ‘grassroots’ 2008 race, you called on ordinary people to bankroll it; only later did it turn out that the big money –– more than three times what they gave to McCain –– came from Goldman Sachs and the other Wall Street crooks, and so you gave them the Treasury Department and control over national economic policy.

Of course, waiting until November of 2016 is not doing us much good right now. But we have to be patient. That’s another virtue of citizenship, according to Obama. Pick something, a “cause,” he says, and make it part of your life. While you’re climbing the corporate ladder, be sure to leave time for extra credit.

Meanwhile, don’t listen to those who want to scare you with stories about how dangerous the government is. Hell, the founders , Obama said, “left us the power to adapt to changing times.  They left us the keys to a system of self-government – the tool to do big and important things together that we could not possibly do alone.  To stretch railroads and electricity and a highway system across a sprawling continent.  To commit mass murder of native peoples and herd the survivors into ghettos in which they are now able to run casinos. (Just kidding about the murder part; he skipped that, probably in the interest of saving time). To educate our people with a system of public schools and land grant colleges, including Ohio State.  (Never mind that what was free public education now requires students to indebt themselves so that they are forced into jobs they may hate, or into the military). To care for the sick and the vulnerable, and provide a basic level of protection from falling into abject poverty in the wealthiest nation on Earth.  (Although I’m going to take a piece out of Social Security and force some of our poorest citizens to choose between food and medicine, and our veterans we all pretend to honor have to wait years for help from the VA, and there are homeless veterans sleeping in our streets)....

“Still, you’ll hear voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s the root of all our problems, even as they do their best to gum up the works; or that tyranny always lurks just around the corner.  You should reject these voices.  Because what they suggest is that our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule is just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.”

Well, that’s pretty cute. What I am suggesting is not that our “brave, creative, unique experiment... is a sham” but that it’s been hijacked by self-serving schmucks and by people like you, Mr. President, who have found “creative” ways to undermine the Bill of Rights, spy on every citizen, justify attacking other countries, and draw up death lists, none of which, if you’ll check the records, “the founders” had in mind.

While confining his advice on political participation to voting and to “choos(ing) a cause you care about” and ‘patiently’ pursuing it, Obama carefully excludes the more confrontational political exercises. If we don’t like what our ‘leaders’ are doing, we can always vote them out of office –– and elect a new batch of punks –– at the next ‘built-in day’ in November, 2016.

Friend of mine, on reading some criticism of Obama’s speech, objected that, while he is himself ‘disappointed’ in the President’s work, he thought the speech was okay. Maybe we read into it what we expect to find, he said. And maybe he’s right.

In my case, I’m a lot more than disappointed. Disappointed is what I am in the Giants loss to Philadelphia tonight at the yard. Disappointed is what I was last evening when the pasta I made turned out a lot less tasty than I’d hoped.

What I am about Obama is angry, really, really angry. Spitting angry. Throw-a-shoe-at-him angry. He has not disappointed me, he has betrayed me. He lied. About everything. Torture. War. Guantanamo. Civil liberties. Open government. Wiretapping. NAFTA. GMO labeling. Unions. Social Security. Freedom of speech. The banks. The Bush tax cuts for billionaires.

It is possible to give a speech to college students without treating them as though they were infants. I read the text of the speech and thought of other speeches I’d seen or read about. One speech I recalled clearly, a United States Senator at the Greek Theater at U.C. Berkeley. I was twenty years old, a college junior.

“It is not enough to allow dissent. We must demand it. For there is much to dissent from. We dissent from the fact that millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich. We dissent from the conditions and hatreds which deny a full life to our fellow citizens because of the color of their skin. We dissent from the monstrous absurdity of a world where nations stand poised to destroy one another, and men must kill their fellow men...”

“You are a generation which is coming of age at one of the rarest moments in history - a time when all around us the old order of things is crumbling and a new world is struggling to take shape. If you shrink from this struggle...you will betray the trust which your own position forces upon you... You live in the most privileged nation on earth. You are the most privileged citizens of that privileged nation... By coming to this school you have been lifted onto a tiny, sunlit island while all around you lies an ocean of human misery, injustice, violence, and fear. You can use your enormous privilege and opportunity to seek purely private pleasure and gain, but history will judge you and, as the years pass, you will ultimately judge yourself, on the extent to which you have used your gifts to lighten and enrich the lives of your fellow man...”

That’s what it sounds like, a decent and genuine leader who does not counsel ‘patience’ but rebellion, who urges the young not to wait for the next election but to struggle against the inhumanity which infests our spirit and our politics.

No, Robert F. Kennedy didn’t mention climbing the corporate ladder, as though that were a necessary or admirable enterprise. He did not tiptoe around the misery in his country, mumbling platitudes about the ‘middle class,’ but stated it plainly, the truth, whether we were comfortable with that or not.

Obama barely mentioned the nightmare visited by American weaponry on other areas of the world, referring only to “our” troops, and then only in terms which invited his listeners to accept the inevitability of war. He skipped over every serious issue facing us as a nation, electing to refer to the economy in vague terms, picking up an easy plus with his global warming reference and neglecting to mention that we still refuse to sign on to international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol.

It is insulting to speak to a nation in these terms and worse when the language he uses is simplified as though his audience is not capable to understanding anything more complex than “built-in day.”

He cited a very brief line from John Kennedy, taking it out of context from a speech Kennedy gave on disarmament, a graduation speech fifty years ago this June 10th, at American University, as a matter of fact, though Obama doesn’t say so, perhaps worried that some students might locate it on YouTube and see the difference between a real President and someone who is faking the whole thing.

Kennedy’s June 10, 1963, speech was, in fact, his greatest speech, one which broke dramatically with the military-industrial establishment his predecessor had warned of and which today, in a greatly advanced, cancerous form, owns Obama:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7IBSxVt9pw

Go ahead, watch it. Hell, just catch the first five minutes and then tell me you don’t see the unmistakable chasm, the tragic difference between these two Presidents. You will know why I am more than disappointed, why I feel with all my heart that for today’s President to take a short, unreflective line from the 1963 speech of a real President, distorting its context and ignoring its meaning, is a lie and a blasphemy.

Okay, enough vitriol for one column. If you like the style but want something a lot more fun, check out my novel, eleven five-star reviews, on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/News-From-A-Parallel-World/dp/1478194448/

“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, we’re finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming, four dead in Ohio...”

April 4, 1970. American troops crossed the border from Viet Nam into Cambodia, invading a sovereign nation which had done us no harm. The rationale, expressed by that murderous swine, Richard Nixon and his pal Henry Kissinger, was that North Vietnamese troops and Viet Cong guerrillas were using Cambodia as a sanctuary from which to launch attacks against the puppet regime in the South.

In the United States, college campuses were filled with angry students, demonstrating against America’s policy, seizing campus buildings, holding mass rallies, in some cases burning ROTC buildings to the ground.

At Jackson State in Mississippi, local police shot more than twenty black students who had gathered near a bowling alley to protest against continued segregation. Most of them were shot in the back.

At Kent State in Ohio, National Guard troops called out by Governor James Rhodes opened fire at unarmed, peaceful student demonstrators. Four were killed. More than seventy rounds were fired in just a few seconds of horror.

No one was prosecuted for the murders at Jackson or Kent.

Three decades later, American troops attacked the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, despite more than one million protesters across the world marching in a desperate attempt at pre-empting the wars begun by the Dick Cheney presidency.

Subsequent to these unprovoked mass slaughters, American Hellfire missiles were fired into Pakistan, a sovereign nation which had done us no harm. The rationale, expressed by George Bush, Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, was that al Qaida and Taliban guerrillas were using Pakistan as a sanctuary from which to launch attacks against the puppet regime in Afghanistan.

Under the successor presidency of Barack Obama, these strikes against largely civilian populations in Pakistan have been increased, and we now also routinely attack targets in Yemen, Somalia, and Mali. Mostly, the Obama White House refuses to talk about it, or even acknowledge that it’s going on. Congress does nothing.

In the United States, college campuses are filled with students trying to line up summer jobs, downloading the latest cool apps, and planning trips to the beach.

In the United States, every telephone call you make, every e-mail you send, is captured electronically by the FBI and stored for future use against you. In twelve years, an agency which did not even exist has burgeoned into a massive police state apparatus. Whistle blowers are imprisoned; criminals are considered too powerful to prosecute. These are facts, not guesses.

Neil Young asked it 43 years ago in another context, but it’s more true now than ever. How can you run when you know?

The facebook photo is of a blue-uniformed cop standing proudly before a red sign which reads, ‘PUBLIC NOTICE: Pursuant to F.S. 715.21 John Goodman is a convicted Sexual Predator and lives at this location.’

The caption invites me to ‘LIKE if you LOVE the idea (and share).’ It has 442,079 ‘likes’ and has been ‘shared’ 86,589 times, but it’s only been on the web for a week. Ideas like these take time.

The signs are being posted in Bradford County, Florida. That’s the state where amateur storm troopers physically intervened to prevent ballots from being counted in 2000, thus creating the constitutional crisis in which a corrupt Supreme Court threw out the actual vote and appointed George W. Bush President. It’s also the state where it’s apparently okay to shoot someone to death if he’s black and wearing a hoodie, as Trayvon Martin discovered.

The cop in the picture looks pretty smug, and why shouldn’t he be? The signs are sure to give him more work, since inciting vigilante behavior has always proved profitable to law enforcement and posting such signs outside the residences of sex offenders will certainly give rise to rocks through windows, bullets through walls, and routine assaults by passing do-gooders.

Elsewhere in Florida, another cop has had another bright idea, this one also ratified and funded by the legislature. The Palm Beach County Sheriff has been given a million bucks to implement a neighborhood informer program. That’s right, kids! In Palm Beach County, you, too, can have law enforcement show up armed at the home of anyone you don’t like.

According to Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, the “prevention intervention” units will take phone calls on a 24-hour hotline from citizens informing on their friends and neighbors. “We want people to call us if the guy down the street says he hates the government, hates the mayor and he’s gonna shoot him,” Bradshaw said. “What does it hurt to have somebody knock on a door and ask, ‘Hey, is everything OK?’ ”

Bradshaw hopes this will become a model for the rest of the nation.

The goal, the Sheriff says, is preventing crime. In the case of the various tragedies we’ve witnessed in recent years, from Aurora, Colorado, to Newton, Connecticut, there’s always been someone who had an inkling ahead of time, someone who knew the perps were not quite right.

In Palm Beach County, they aim to ‘intervene’ before anything happens. In the local newspaper, the Palm Beach Post, the writers stress that there’s a debate “about the balance between civil liberties, privacy, and protecting the public.”

I’ve been hearing and reading a lot lately about a “balance” between civil liberties and a “need” to “protect” people. The requirement that we “balance” these things is being taken for granted among lawmakers, in Obama’s comments, at public meetings in places as disparate as Palm Beach and Oakland, California.

What Obama and these other cretins mean by ‘balance’ is that we will have to surrender some of the rights and freedoms guaranteed us by our foundational documents, by the Bill of Rights, in order to gain some additional ‘safety.’ The general public seems to be buying this. The mass media, of course, buys whatever they’re told. America is being militarized in our towns and villages and cities, in our communities and on our streets.

The people in Boston willingly handed over their rights under the Fourth Amendment because they were told that a single, 19-year-old ‘terrorist’ was loose among them. They submitted happily to an occupying army. Such is the life and times of America in the 21st century.

The Palm Beach Post story included this chilling line: “Bradshaw is...planning public service announcements to encourage local citizens to report their neighbors, friends, or family members if they fear they could harm themselves or others.” Sounds like East Germany, circa 1960.

The Sheriff explained that his intervention unit would help prevent violence and, “as a side benefit, law enforcement will have needed information to keep a close eye on things.” Bradshaw conceded that there was a possibility some would abuse the program, but is confident that “We know how to sort through frivolous complaints.” In other words, trust us.

Trust us is the premise, spoken or unspoken, for much of the extension of violent authority claimed by everyone from Barack Obama to the local cops. The President reassures us that although he pushed through a law which allows him to lock up without trial or charges, indefinitely, anyone he wants to, we shouldn’t worry because he would never abuse the power. Then he smiles and talks basketball and shows us his kids again.

Several people commenting on the Palm Beach story noted that in recent years, there has been a marked increase in police shooting to death unarmed people who had attracted calls from worried relatives or neighbors. Reminded me that in my own part of the country, the California coast, there have been such shootings almost weekly. Happen all the time in Vallejo, for example, and in Santa Rosa and other towns, someone phoning the cops because a spouse or son is “acting strange.”

Cops don’t subdue or otherwise disarm people anymore. They shoot them. Subsequent hearings are a farce because nobody is going to hold these wonderful law enforcement people liable for anything. Americans kiss the ass of cops and soldiers, regardless of what they do.

Programs where people are encouraged to inform on others always lead to horrors; they are the common signature of a dictatorship or police state. Nazi Germany made it a patriotic act to inform on one’s parents or children or siblings who, in the words of Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, hated the government.

Informers are also, not coincidentally, at the root of the ongoing shame of Guantanamo Prison. When the United States first invaded Afghanistan, we encouraged the locals to inform on one another; often, bounties were offered. The result was predictable: people informed on their personal enemies, anyone they wanted to get rid of. More than ten years later, after conducting experiments in psychological torture on them, the U.S. is afraid to let them go.

These are the signs of disaster and there are more of them all the time. Apparently, it doesn’t take much to scare Americans into pissing away the most critical rights they have, rights hard-won and hard-preserved over more than two centuries. It’s a line often attributed to Ben Franklin, sounds like something he’d say. Those who would exchange their freedoms for the promise of greater security will end up with neither.

Nor deserve them. Looks like we’re in for nasty weather...

The last time I paid cash to a shrink was almost ten years ago. It didn’t take long to realize that she was lots crazier than I was.

I mean no disrespect to the therapists I know, a couple of whom are probably aces when it comes to helping people work through their problems, but I’m done with that stuff for life.

Part of the difficulty with shrinks is, of course, that they get into the field because they’re troubled and desperate to get fixed. That’s not a disqualifier. People get into what they get into for all sorts of weird or sensible reasons. But in my experience most of the shrinks I’ve seen were still working on their own shit, except that they were charging me money to do it.

Naturally, my unwillingness to trust any more credentialed whackos with my mental health has left a vacuum. I knew there was something wrong with me; I just didn’t know what.

Now, thanks to one Alex Seitz-Wald, a writer for Salon.com and occasionally the New York Times, I finally understand my problem.

I suffer from “motivated reasoning.” Unlike most normal people, who have no motives cluttering up their minds, I believe what I believe in order to make sense of my world.

One would never accuse Seitz-Wald of this. He was the writer who actually wrote a pre-election column in the Times proclaiming that Obama was a great President. Given that most ‘liberal’ observers were searching desperately for a rationale for voting again for the President, in some cases settling for the ‘Supreme Court’ argument, the Seitz-Wald approach was certainly novel.

Anyhow, according to Seitz-Wald, he has figured out why some people keep insisting on claiming that some major political events are the result of conspiracies. We are just trying to find a way to feel “in control.”

In support of his theory, Seitz-Wald enlists the help of professor Stephan Lewandowsky, a ‘cognitive scientist’ from the University of Western Australia, who last month published a paper which received “widespread praise for looking at the thinking behind conspiracy theories about science and climate change.”

Of course, you may mistakenly think that not all ‘conspiracy theories’ are the same, but Seitz-Wald and Lewandowky are here to straighten you out. Let’s take a look at the exchange, as published by Salon.com:

First of all, why do people believe conspiracy theories?
It gives people a sense of control. People hate randomness, they dread the sort of random occurrences that can destroy their lives, so as a mechanism against that dread, it turns out that it’s much easier to believe in a conspiracy. Then you have someone to blame, it’s not just randomness.

What are the psychological forces at play in conspiracy thinking?
People have a need or a motivation to believe in this theory, and it’s psychologically different from evidence-based thinking. A conspiracy theory is immune to evidence, and that can pretty well serve as the definition of one. If you reject evidence, or reinterpret the evidence to be confirmation of your theory, or you ignore mountains of evidence to focus on just one thing, you’re probably a conspiracy theorist. We call that a self-sealing nature of reasoning.
Another common trait is the need to constantly expand the conspiracy as new evidence comes to light. And that’s typical — instead of accepting the evidence, you actually turn it around and say that it’s actually evidence to support the conspiracy because it just means it’s even broader than it was originally thought to be.

Everyone is prone to some degree of bias and motivated reasoning — where do you draw the line, if there is one?
The crucial difference between having a preconceived notion — we all do that, of course — and conspiratorial thinking is when you get into that self-sealing reasoning and ignore every piece of evidence that is pointing the other way, when you’re starting to broaden the circle of conspirators, and when your skepticism gets to be nihilistic — when you believe absolutely nothing that the government or the media is saying — that’s when you’ve crossed the line.

I hear a lot of stories from people who email or from friends who have a brother, or cousin, or friend who they say is normal and smart, but then they’re horrified to find conspiratorial stuff on their Facebook page or whatnot. One was even a medical student at a very prestigious school. How do otherwise smart and reasonable people end up believing this stuff?
Well, there is no relationship to intelligence, in my experience. Many of these people are actually quite smart, though not all, so it’s not that. It’s the need to explain and control, as I said, but it can be other things also: A general sense of disgruntlement, feeling excluded from society.

How should we think of conspiracy theorists? They’re often dismissed as fringey nuts, but an awful lot of Americans believe in one conspiracy or another.
First of all, any extraordinary event will be followed by conspiracy theorizing. I can tell you that right now. Whatever happens tomorrow, there will be a conspiracy theory about it. Number two, I think it’s important that we understand that it satisfies a need. It isn’t that these people are necessarily disordered or marginal members of society. After all, not that long ago, half of Republican primary voters thought President Obama was born outside the U.S. So, if half of one segment of a population believes in a conspiracy theory then you can’t talk about marginal elements and you have to accept that it’s a real part of society and serves a need. And I think we have to understand that need and find ways for society to find other ways in which that need can be satisfied.

Whew! Impressive, isn’t it? A professor, too, with such deep analysis. And what a relief.

Here I thought the government had been lying to me about Viet Nam, the Gulf of Tonkin, WMDs in Iraq, al Qaida and its origin, NAFTA, Venezuela, the war on drugs, what the CIA and AID did in Latin America, the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, the murder of John F. Kennedy, and the attack on the World Trade Center. But I guess I “crossed the line,” lapsed into “self-sealing” from a deep need to control my environment.

Lewandowky can’t find a relationship between intelligence and conspiracy theories but I can. Anyone who still thinks President Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald is dumb as a post.

Naturally, one might think that not all ‘conspiracy theories’ are identical. That is, a belief that 9-11 was carried out with at least substantial assistance from forces inside the U.S. government is not the same thing as believing that aliens are trying to scramble your brains using directed beams from atop the Empire State Building. But apparently I’m wrong. In the Seitz-Wald world, it’s all the same.

Seitz-Wald gets lots of mail from people “horrified” to find “conspiratorial” thinking on a friend or relative’s facebook page. These are “smart” people, and some of them seem “normal.” One was even a medical student at a prestigious school!

Look, we have a “need,” a “motive” for believing these things. We ignore evidence because we want to see the world this way. We are “self-sealing,” which sounds kind of strange. I don’t really think I’ve sealed myself, but maybe I just don’t know the whole story.

I’ve got an old friend who recently challenged me to give him “chapter and verse” on the physics of the World Trade Center buildings. He’d been told that the temperature from burning jet fuel, office furniture, and paper, had been sufficient to cause the forty-seven steel posts surrounding the interior to weaken to the point of total collapse. This, of course, is not the case, which explains why tall structures had never before fallen like this.

In fact, the burning jet fuel was almost entirely gone within moments of impact, and the presence of black smoke pouring out of each structure was graphic evidence that the fires were not very hot, not as fires go, and were oxygen-starved. And then there’s the molten metal flowing for more than a month underneath the rubble: how was that possible absent some additional factor?

The best ‘chapter and verse’ I know of is a 90-minute video produced by Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth, one of those vast conspiratorial organizations comprised of more than a thousand “self-sealing” professionals who appear “normal” but are in reality desperately seeking an explanation, however fanciful, for the tragic events of their time. I sent my friend the 58-minute edited version (it’s free, on line, You Tube) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddz2mw2vaEg.

I haven’t heard back. Maybe he’s seen it, maybe not. Up to him. I’m responsible for my own mental processes, not anyone else’s. I do find it peculiar that some otherwise quite bright people continue to buy the bizarre theories of a lot of public tragedies propounded by the U.S. government, especially since we all know by now that, first, the government lies like a rug and, second, these theories are not supported by actual facts.

I can’t claim to be “normal,” and I’m not at a “prestigious medical school,” but my credentials don’t much matter if the facts are on my side. Some people use the term “conspiracy theorist” as a pejorative, meant to isolate and even condemn those who don’t buy the government’s lies about things. Citizens are supposed to be docile consumers of the information given us. Anybody asking questions is just looking for trouble.

In actual fact, a conspiracy is simply, by definition, an agreement among or between two or more people to commit a crime. To be a ‘conspiracy theorist,’ therefore, is hardly crazy. One would have to be barking mad to think such things do not happen, not just to stick up a local convenience store but to topple governments and manipulate policy. After all, there are trillions of dollars at stake.

The video I sent my friend includes a short piece at the end in which several psychologists are interviewed on the reasons some people are afraid to look honestly at evidence of conspiracy. Such people are in denial. The reasons are pretty obvious, but one of them is to remove our guilt. If presidents are killed or buildings brought down by solitary or uncontrollable forces, then it can’t be our fault. We don’t have to do anything about it. We can keep going as we are, sympathetic but ultimately unconcerned. Blame these things on Lee Harvey Oswald or Sirhan Sirhan, or on nineteen guys with box cutters, or maybe just on the random nature of the planet. Our sense of our own world, our own reality, our own truth, can remain the same.

The true ‘self-sealers’ are those who manage to ignore anything dissonant, anything which disturbs the storyline as given to them by their leaders, their father-figures, and broadcast by the corporate media. They are disturbed by inconvenient facts, take refuge in official government reports.

I, on the other hand, am a conspiracy theorist. I didn’t set out to be. I began to learn what was really going on in my world by letting my curiosity lead me to some books and articles forty-five years ago.

I don’t subscribe to every ‘theory’ being floated by people. I would rather think than subscribe. Consequently, I am not quick to believe that every tragedy is the work of a government agency. But I do by now know quite enough to know that my government does indeed commit monstrous acts and its secret police agencies have done murders. That’s not seriously disputable. And therefore, I look.

Unlike self-satisfied fools such as Alex Seitz-Wald, I haven’t handed my critical faculties over to the state. Don’t intend to, either.