TIME FOR ANOTHER WAR, FOLKS? YOU BETCHA!!!

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE!!!

THE NEXT TIME YOU, DEAR READER, CONSIDER THE HONESTY OF THE PRESS WITHOUT EVEN TOUCHING THE ZIONIST CONTROLLED MEDIA, HERE IT IS FROM ONE WHO KNOWS:

"If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of journalists is to destroy the truth; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell this country and this race for their daily bread. We are the tools and vessels for rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

~ John Swinton, Chief of Staff of the New York Times and the "Dean of his Profession", in a toast before the New York Press Club, 1953

Libby Liberal
April 5, 2010

I am slapping this down really fast cuz I am really, really, really angry. I will write a fuller blog later I am sure on the Iran and US situation, but I couldn't let this moment pass. Please indulge me.

I caught part of a podcast of Meet the Press. A part where David Gregory sets up Senator Joe Lieberman to "war monger" once again for war with Iran. That part begins at 30:25 if you access the podcast link for Meet the Press before next Sunday 4/11/10.

David Gregory disingenuously asks Senator Lieberman if Lieberman is AFRAID that the US and the West, in general, are DRIFTING to a war with Iran. Drifting to war with Iran? We all know damn well Lieberman is paddling away like crazy to get us there!

This fool is not afraid. His children won't see combat if there is any. He is too blind to understand the effects of nuclear war. Not when it involves Israel and its blind ambitions and greed.

Joe and Avi, two fine men who just love everyone!

He is also cousin to the horrific Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Avignor Lieberman, fanatic Zionist who has often said that the Palestinian problem would disappear if Israel just nuked them off the planet. The number of lies this man has barefacedly told the world are just too brazen for belief especially concerning the Mossad/Dubai assassination. A complete rogue and cousin to dear Joe.

Of course Lieberman has already earlier in the show reminded all of us we were attacked on 9/11 and we are at WAR WAR WAR ... but that is when he was talking about ... what was it.... not throwing out the law in dealing with enemy combatants.. but the question was more aptly WHICH LAW should be used with them.

That is the question, he said. You mean the real law, Joe, or the jingoistic faux-law that Bush imposed and Obama is following up on? But that is for another blog ... grrrrrr. Anyway, .... back to Iran ....

Lieberman leaps in to say that we are not acting quickly enough, David, as if Gregory does not know damn well how Lieberman views this issue. Inflammatory war-mongering language, sorry I did not transcribe it but it is there, yadda ... yadda ... yadda ... including how it is the LAST CHANCE we are giving Iran and ourselves.

LAST CHANCE????

Drum roll .... (Why do I have the image of a mushroom cloud in my mind?)

More yadda yadda yadda .. but we can count on Congress to get serious .... as Jane Harmon nods vigorously and there is Michael Chertoff. Michael Chertoff? What is he doing there? Didn’t he leave his post?

But then Gregory often likes to ask Greenspan and old timers who f*cked things up to give their expert opinions on what should be done. (I keep thinking I must have an old TV when I see Meet the Press and all these guys back. Did Gregory not get the latest memo with the personnel changes of the Obama administration? I mean, I know some of them are depressing, too, but Gregory likes to recycle the old toxic status quo neocon guard.)

ANYWAY ...

Iraq memories anyone?

I find myself rushing to read Glenn Greenwald as an antidote for all this. Greenwald who reliably, but is one of the very few who does, calls out the war-mongering for what it is.

Whether Fox News or the New York Times, etc. After Iraq and Afghanistan, maybe generalized jingoism is not the way to go senators, Congresspeople, disingenuous soft-ball lobbing media anchors, et al. YA THINK????

Mr. Greenwald:

Fox News currently has an article at the top of its website that is headlined: "CIA: Iran Moving Closer to Nuclear Weapon." The report, by DOD and State Department correspondent Justin Fishel, begins with this alarming claim:

A recently published report by the Central Intelligence Agency says Iran is still working on building a nuclear weapon despite some technical setbacks and international resistance ~ and the Pentagon say it's still concerned about Iran's ambitions.

But, as blogger George Maschke notes, that statement is categorically false. The actual report, to which the Fox article links and which the DNI was required by Congress to submit, says no such thing. Rather, this is its core finding:

The report says the opposite of Fox's statement that "Iran is still working on building a nuclear weapon." And, of course, the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate which concluded that Iran ceased development of its weapons program has never been rescinded, and even the most hawkish anonymous leaks from inside the intelligence community, when bashing the 2007 NIE, merely claim that analysts "now believe that Iran may well have resumed 'research' on nuclear weapons ~ theoretical work on how to design and construct a bomb ~ but that Tehran is not engaged in 'development' ~ actually trying to build a weapon."

Greenwald has this to say about the war mongering of the New York Times:

Meanwhile, The New York Times' David Sanger ~ who is the Judy Miller of Iran when it comes to hyping the "threat" based overwhelmingly, often exclusively, on anonymous sources ~ continues his drum beat this week.

In an article co-written with William Broad, Sanger warns ~ "based on interviews with officials of several governments and international agencies" ("all" of whom "insisted on anonymity") ~ that "international inspectors and Western intelligence agencies say they suspect that Tehran is preparing to build more sites in defiance of United Nations demands."

But rather than the secret, nefarious scheme which the NYT depicts this as being, these plans for additional sites were publicly announced ~ by the Iranian government itself ~ many weeks ago.

Greenwald is not refuting that Iran may want to arm itself with a nuclear weapon. It is not IRRATIONAL given US militarism in that part of the world and the desire of having a nuclear weapon to ward off US pre-emptive defensive (oxymoronic) attacks. And I am skating over the concerns of Israel and that dimension, I know, no small issue, but saved for a later blog. Again, I am not leaping in to defend Iran. I am leaping in to say

WAF-Minute!!! Okay, America????

Greenwald:

As I've noted before, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Iran wanted a nuclear weapons capability. If anything, it would be irrational for them not to want one. What else would a rational Iranian leader conclude as they look at the U.S. military's having destructively invaded and continuing to occupy two of its neighboring, non-nuclear countries (i.e., being surrounded by an invading American army on both its Eastern and Western borders)?

Add to that the fact that barely a day goes by without Western media outlets and various Western elites threatening them with a bombing attack by the U.S. or the Israel (which itself has a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons and categorically refuses any inspections or other monitoring).

If our goal were to create a world where Iran was incentivized to obtain nuclear weapons, we couldn't do a better job than we're doing now.

Finally, Greenwald stresses how important ACCURATE reporting is on this subject.

A CNN poll from February found that 59% of Americans favor military action against Iran if negotiations over their nuclear program fail (see questions 31-32) ~ and that's without the White House even advocating such a step.

As the invasion of Iraq demonstrated, the kind of fear-mongering, reckless, and outright false "reporting" we're seeing already ~ and have been seeing for awhile ~ over Iran's nuclear program poses a far greater danger to the U.S. than anything Iran could do.

So, thanks to Gregory and Lieberman and so many in the war mongering press and Congress, 59% of the population favor military action over Iran if negotiations fail without it being even a very bright twinkle yet in Barack Obama's eye. Great.

Does the American public really know what the negotiations are truly about?

What the history is?

Why the rush to judgment?

Why all this trust?

Why not some critical thinking?

I know the media is seductive.

But come on!!!!

This is war we are talking about!!!!

Nuclear at that!

There is 59% of America. 59 f*cking percent!!!!!

Ready to trust this government that has looted their tax dollars.

Killed off their sons and daughters in combat for years and years and literally millions of innocent civilians in other countries for questionable (a kind word), mega-corporate friendly agendas.

Ready for war with another Mideast country?

Really?

Down the garden path to another hell ... another quicksand ... mass deaths that all these deciders will be safely away from in their comfortable and important high rise conference rooms, congress chambers, or in front of the cameras on Meet the Press, Fox News, Charlie Rose, et al., playing their egotistical war games as innocent civilians in Iran this time, civilians btw whom they recently professed to admire and care about, die from or be devastated by (not to mention exponentially increasing global anti-Americanism and revenge terrorism) and again, these heartless power wielders risking the young soldier sons and daughters of this country, who will possibly be killed from such war or risk severe physical injury or at the very least psychological scarring for the rest of their lives if they make it through all those deployments now SOP.

WOW a run on sentence like the above, so full of power and passion just CANNOT be touched. Read it and absorb. Every syllable.The writer barely warms up when one considers the ramifications of it all. And she barely mentions the effects on the rest of the planet. And she forgets that all of these reporters are mouthpieces for companies that MAKE war.

As Iraq soldiers are launching their FOURTH deployments!!!! Let's play Russian roulette over and over and over with the same chamber with the same people, America.

But hey, we are the United States of Amnesia as Gore Vidal once quipped.

Dumbing down and killing off the ability to think rationally has really paid off for those who love war if this is the future we face.

That nice David Gregory. Such a trustworthy face.

And Charlie Rose with his talking heads (that wording needs to be reconfigured, Charlie, but I don't have time or respect to do that) ... inevitable war with Iran.

Good going guys.

We are up to 59% ripening

of the American public

for another war.

What is that definition of insanity again?

How about Zionist shill, Neocon, .....

We're not going to war with Iran.

By basement angel
04/05/2010 ~ 3:22am

We're engaging in bluster to move the negotiations down the path and allow everybody on both sides of the fence the latitude they need to get their work done.

Iran has a huge military. We can't take them on like we did Iraq. Getting involved with Iran would be a monstrously large endeavor and no one is interested in that. Not even Lieberman.

"Someone needs to point out

that elephants produce

infinitely more shit than donkeys." ~ Brad Mays

well, aren't you an anti-war-mongering buzz kill!!!!

By libbyliberal
04/05/2010 ~ 4:04am

Are you applying logic to this situation? Sane thinking?

I think of that movie In the Loop, worth watching. Crony gamesmanship totally bypasses sanity and responsibility.

Well, even if you are right about that, which I hope you are btw, there is 59% of the country, okay with such a decision.

I don't know about you, but I find that rather ALARMING!!!!!!!

GOOD-BYE. THE TRUTH HAS FALLEN AND TAKEN LIBERTY WITH IT

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." ~ George Orwell

March 24, 2010
Information Clearing House

This is a very sad and disheartening sign off by Paul Craig Roberts, one of the great voices of journalism. Under decent and humane circumstances, and admittedly these days are very very distant from those, a man with his accomplishments and credentials would be sought after ~ been a vital contributor to the growth of the world. Instead, Mr. Roberts resigns with a heavy heart, worn out struggling to be heard. against the powers that be.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand.

As media began to clamp down on the information leaked to the public, Mr. Roberts kept on with his work. Eventually, however, one publication after another blacklisted him. So now he tightens the lid on his inkwell, cleans the nib, and puts his pen to rest. A great loss for all of us. I can only hope that, perhaps in the future, Mr. Oliver will be moved to continue in his work. Those of us already involved in the struggle of the pen versus the sword, have lost a guiding light in the pressing darkness of censorship. Mr. Roberts.

There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Today Americans are ruled by propaganda.
Americans have little regard for truth,
little access to it, and
little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”

Lowering the standards of education have gone a long way towards the advancement of propaganda. The people are less able to reason themselves to find it, more easily deceived and gullible to the fantasies they are sold, and worst of all, unable to remember times when things were very different on every level.

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it.

Pure and simple truths are rarely pure and never simple. ~ Oscar Wilde

“Free market economists” are paid to sell off-shoring to the American people.

High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by “the New Economy,” a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore.

All Americans need in order to participate in this “new economy” are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.

Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of “the New Economy.”

Very old cartoon regarding journalists, the truth, and authority.

And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted “studies” that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the “studies.”

The Council of Europe is investigating big pharma’s role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.

The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.

And there is the global warming scandal, in which climate scientists, financed by Wall Street and corporations anxious to get their mitts on “cap and trade” and by a U.N. agency anxious to redistribute income from rich to poor countries, concocted a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.

Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.

Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth,
ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.

I remember when, following CIA director William Colby’s testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders.

In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.

When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a “threat,” he wasn’t impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee.

In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don’t carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.

As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the off-shoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries.

U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO “performance bonuses,” have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe off-shoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.

Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money.

The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these “performance awards” by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about “the Muslim threat,” Wall Street, U.S. corporations and “free market” shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.

Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state. They have bought into the government’s claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect “terrorists,” and not themselves.

Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.

Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.

I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week’s first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American “mainstream media.”

For the last six years I have been banned from the “mainstream media.”

My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the off-shoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched.

No such thing could happen today.

For years I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush’s wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.

The American media does not serve the truth.
It serves the government and the interest groups
that empower the government.

America’s fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory.

The government’s account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media.

It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.

These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington’s deficits and threaten the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that the budget deficits put on the dollar’s value have put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block.

Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called “entitlements” as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll taxes all their working lives.


With over 21 percent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington’s greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the “war on terror,” the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.

The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course.

As the pen is censored
and its might extinguished,
I am signing off.

PAUL CRAIG ROBERT'S work can be found at one of my favourite sites,