So What's New?

So What’s New?


We begin 2010 with a national debt of over twelve trillion dollars and rising. That’s roughly 40 thousand dollars per taxpayer. Should we continue paying for the phony war on terror which started in Afghanistan, moved to Iraq, returned to Afghanistan, is spreading to Pakistan and has lasted longer than World War Two? Or should we put an end to the terror war on tax payers in the USA? Guess which costs us more : our military budget to murder thousands of innocent people and maintain puppet regimes in foreign countries, or our national budget to help citizens find jobs, housing, health care and education? Political lies and moronic bigotry can make it seem that immigrants, the poor and hypochondriacs are sinking us into deeper debt, but morons can also show that the moon is made of green cheese, flying saucers regularly visit earth and the Democratic and Republican parties truly represent the interests of all americans. Yeah, right.

It’s time we face the reality of a crumbling empire that still seems to provide freedom and opportunity, but only for a shrinking minority. And the burden of supporting that minority falls on a majority which picks up the deadly tab in a world growing more politically treacherous, economically desperate and ecologically dangerous. Each day we expect change to result from rhetorical reform offered by the ruling minority’s hired help makes it more difficult to create the radical transformation we must bring about to help save our nation and our world .

Anyone who still thinks the new model hybrid presidential brand represents a difference in anything more than style suffers from wishful thinking disorder. Some are finally shaking the cobwebs out of their heads and organizing to force him to do what they voted for, rather than expect him to voluntarily disobey his financial and political owners. He did not miraculously come to us from the heavens but was selected, shaped and packaged to be sold as an all new product at a time when the system could no longer continue under the old brand name. But his job description is the same as the previous national CEO : represent corporate capital, Wall street and Israel first, and the rest of us, if at all, second .

Those still in denial need to face the global death, destruction and debt that have not only continued but are getting worse under this new regime. What our consciousness controllers tell us are great speeches are merely rhetorical stunts to dull our senses to the substantial continuity with the last regime’s most murderous policies. Denial is difficult to shake given our near total control by corporate media in its job as stenographer for power and mass sleeping pill for its subjects . But there are more alternative outlets for news , analysis and political organizing than ever before that need to be used and strengthened and they are not only on the internet.

Countless small struggling print journals - like The Coastal Post and The Independent Monitor - need the support of citizens interested in change for the better in the lives of previously silenced and manipulated minorities. But whatever the ethnic, religious or other special identity observed, we need to ultimately become the great majority who face lethal problems that need common solutions. The increased warfare in the middle east, rhetorical and military hostilities in latin america and general disrespect by the developed world leaders for the rest of humanity are a call for supporters of real peace and social justice to confront the root causes of war and ecological destruction before it is too late.

Long before he took office this president made it clear that he would protect corporate capital’s global domination and maintain its major branch office in Israel. His induced perception as unique - being only half white instead of all white - played a major role in making him seem truly different. But people with sincere hopes and ideals have had them crushed so often in the past that this latest farce will hopefully be the last lesson needed. No matter what rhetorical pomp and political circumstance are offered , no matter what ethnicity, race , sex or sexuality is claimed by the candidate, financial backing and ownership are far more important. The party of individual wealth , corporate capital and Israel remains in charge, with only minor cosmetic and stylistic adjustments that make no difference at all to foreigners being threatened, embargoed or invaded, or americans left homeless, jobless , uneducated, in debt and denied health care .

Anti-social techniques of mind management remain persuasive among a public trained to worship individual responsibility and show near contempt for governmental action in the name of all the people. This will continue as long as we accept our dysfunctional union as something called a democracy and ourselves as subdivisions of humanity . Global society’s class divisions become obvious when we see which countries invade and which are invaded. And where the consumption frenzy leads directly to the increased debt of the middle class and further suffering of the poor. But whether they are colonized natives, oppressed peasants or exploited workers, the previously submissive are demanding change in their status by organizing as one people with common interests.

When lacking clean water, sickened by chemical foods and polluted air or suffering drought, warfare or hurricanes , it is humanity which is in torment, not simply nationalities. 2010 will hopefully bring us closer to acting as a people with common racial origins , universal bonds and a desperate need to create social solutions to problems that will get worse the longer we allow them to be trivialized as combat between mythological good and evil, simple individual concerns or special identity group dilemmas. All of us or none of us? Indeed. Happy New Year? Make it so.

Copyright (c) 2009 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.

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frank scott
email: frankscott@comcast.net

News from " The Garlic"

President Announces Invasion After Peace Speech

After giving one of his weekly stirring speeches on peace which bring tears to the eyes of admirers, detractors and those suffering Mental Antagonism Disorder(MAD) the president called for a massive military attack on the third world nation Oblivia.

“The Oblivians who are rising up to demand that the west repay them for past plundering of their people and other resources fail to understand the nature of Western domination. We are higher orders of humans, regardless of race, creed or mental status, while they represent a deadly threat to the well being of all Americans whose pets desperately need the animal foods our nation relies on and which come from the remains of Oblivia’s livestock and children. Especially during this cherished holiday season, we must do the smart thing and kill for peace.”

Many of the assembled press joined in tearful appreciation of the president’s rhetorical ability to cloud minds and morals with his soaring rhetoric. Spin doctors, political analysts, congress and day care workers united in support for this smart new war to save humanity from a stupid old culture.

Oblivians Delighted At Invasion By Multicultural Forces

The newly invaded people of Oblivia have expressed grateful satisfaction at being devastated by an attacking army of diverse persons. “My home was bombed by afro-asian-american bisexual jews and my daughter was raped by a latino-arab-american lesbian” said a smiling, if distraught, native of the third world nation which provides dog and cat food to the developed world. “Of course I am sad to lose my home and my family, but at least I can grieve knowing that they were murdered by a truly integrated, socially diverse force of invaders and killers. In a strange and confusing way, I am almost happy that I have suffered for the good of affirmative action in the developed world. Thank you so much for the drug injection you gave me before conducting this interview. Why is my skin making faces at me?”


Tiger Woods named Stud of the Millennium

After the entire female population of Concord, New Hampshire revealed that they had slept with Tiger Woods, raising the alleged total of woman he has had to upwards of fifty seven thousand, PlayWithYourSelf magazine nominated him for Stud Of the Millennium, with aging publisher Hugh Betcha offering Woods accommodation at the world famous PlayWithYourSelf mansion, constructed in the shape of male genitalia.

Woods would not answer calls from the press but his publicist said that while he appreciates all the tasteful attention given his alleged sexual escapades in a nation which sees 100 people killed on its highways every day , he would soon leave organized major sports and enter miniature golf competition out of respect for all the envious white men , angry black women and other unfortunate citizens living lives of such incredible emptiness that only sordid gossip about celebrities could hold their attention.

Attack on Department of Clichés Headquarters

A bloody attack on Cliché Central was claimed by the Clarity in Speech Liberation Front. Three media workers were shot dead while saying that a decade long study had proved that the envelope was being pushed towards transparency by sources which could not be revealed at the present time. A message released to major media and minor online gossip sites said:

“We will not tolerate any further evasions of language, distortions of speech or refusals to call a spade a spade for political reason. Death to the speakers of obfuscatory cliché ridden, uh, inarticulate empty repetitious talk that goes on and on, with interruptions of inarticulateness that, um, like, you know, mess up our minds and like, make it very difficult to , um, get a point across, which has been a problem for the one one hundredth of a decade during which this comment has been in the process of, um, getting across or trying to, like, make clear.”

The group was thought to be affiliated with the international terrorist communist islamic rosicrucian illuminati front and, um, was seen as the biggest threat to peace since the attacks of, uh, 911.

Obamanation Called Abomination by U.N. General Assembly

After the United Nations In-Security Council supported a U.S. - Israel resolution censuring Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and the Little sisters of the Poor as supporters of International terrorism, child molesting and puppy dog and kitty cat beating, the General Assembly voted unanimously to move U.N. headquarters far from the abomination of the Obamanation. The new headquarters will be in a place more representative of the hopes and sentiments of the global majority: a cave on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Leading Banks To Pay TARP With CARP Funds

Major financial institutions which borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars of public money from the TARP fund (troubled asset relief program) have promised to pay their debts early, using money from the CARP fund ( criminal asset relief program). The president, congress and federal reserve thanked them for their early payment and agreed to loan them several trillion more dollars if CARP isn't enough to assure them another record profit making year.

Speaking for the average American taxpayers, former homeowners and unemployed workers, a minority of congress renounced their citizenship and escaped to the West Bank and Gaza, where they hoped to find higher morality if not peace or justice.


Hate Crimes Definition Expanded:
Six billion more Covered

Under pressure from groups which felt they were left out, hate crimes will be considered in cases of discrimination judged to be based on taunting or harassing because of height, weight, region of birth, membership in Crips, Bloods, Elks or Masons, style of dress, being clean shaved or bearded , being overweight, underweight, weightless, unstylish and unfashionable in attire or treated as stupid by people who think they are smart.

Liberal groups threatened to sue conservatives for Hate Crimes under the new definition because conservatives call them wimpy but Conservatives had already filed suit because liberals call them rednecks. That case may reach the Supreme Court after it is featured on the Daily Show, The Onion and the new online sensation from Legalienate, The Garlic. All these groups have been accused of hate crimes in the past or will be in the future, along with countless millions of individuals who will finally have the opportunity to get even with society for making them, uh, members of, uh, groups which are really, like, hated.

Stay Tuned

Morales Accuses The U.S. of Terrorism - Rejects Hillary Clinton's Warnings

December 12, 2009

La Paz

Bolivian President Evo Morales rejected Saturday the declarations of U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who said that relations between Bolivia and Iran "weren't a good idea" and could have consequences.

Exporting terrorism

In a press conference in the central region of Cochabamba Morales referred to Clinton's declarations on Friday about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's November visit to Bolivia and Venezuela. "If people want to flirt with Iran, they should look at what consequences there could be for them. And we hope that they will think twice about it," warned the Secretary of State.

"They say that Iran exports terrorism. Do you know who really exports terrorism? It's those people who send troops from their countries to other countries, those who install military bases in other countries. They are the ones who plan and carry out terrorism. It's the government of the United States that plans and carries out terrorism," declared Morales.

"In solidarity Cuba sends 'troops' abroad, they're doctors who save lives. Do you suppose the (U.S.) soldiers are going to save lives? The armed soldiers are going to take lives, like in Afghanistan, like in Iraq, like with the U.S. military bases in South America," explained Morales upon rejecting "emphatically those words coming from the United States."

Bolivia is better off

He added that Bolivia is a "proud and sovereign" country that "doesn't accept warnings or threats, they are pointless and we categorically reject them because the United States has no moral standing, since they are the ones who export terrorism."

The indigenous leader likewise maintained that "without imperialism and without capitalism Bolivia is better off," and that since in his country economic sovereignty is respected, things have improved.

Vice-Chancellor Hugo Fernandez rejected Friday what he characterized as interference on the part of the United States, and said that in the negotiations to improve relations between Bolivia and that country they are working "precisely on the point of non-interference in internal matters, that has to remain very clear."

In 2008, Morales expelled the U.S. Ambassador Phillip Goldberg for suspicion of conspiring with the opposition, and later suspended operations of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, which he accused of espionage, and at the beginning of 2009 he ordered the expulsion of another diplomat.

Tense relations

In response, Washington also ordered the expulsion of the Bolivian ambassador.

However, both countries are seeking to normalize their relations and the Bolivian Chancellor David Choquehuanca announced the arrival of a Mission from Washington for a third round of negotiations, without specifying the date of the meeting.

Bolivia and Iran established diplomatic relations at the end of 2007, but they still haven't exchanged ambassadors, among other reasons because the Senate, dominated by the opposition, didn't ratify the agreements between the two countries.

Source: "Evo acusó a EU de terrorismo," Univision en línea, 12 de diciembre de 2009

Nobel, No Brains, Obama's Surrealist "Peace" Speech

"Never underestimate the Scandinavian sense of humor."

------------Gore Vidal

Now Barack Obama has added his name to the list of previous American Nobel peace prize winners: Henry Kissinger, the Butcher of Indochina whose bombing campaigns killed hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions; Woodrow Wilson, the Apostle of Self-Determination who invaded Panama, Haiti, Mexico (twice), the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Nicaragua, the USSR (twice), and restored segregation to Washington D.C.; Teddy Roosevelt, who exulted in the slaughter of war and saw the elimination of indigenous peoples as the righteous fulfillment of “Manifest Destiny”; President McKinley’s War Secretary Elihu Root, who directed the U.S. slaughter in the Philippines starting in 1898, dismissing Filipino independence hero Emilio Aguinaldo as a “Chinese half-breed” and Filipinos in general as "children" who were “but little advanced from pure savagery"; and Dr. King, who surely must have wondered what he had ever done to deserve such degrading company.

More suitable for a Ripley's believe it or not collection than a peace address, Obama's acceptance speech is the familiar attempt to construct a self-serving mythology that deflects all blame from the U.S. onto its official enemies. For example:

"America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace: a Marshall Plan and a United Nations, mechanisms to govern the waging of war, treaties to protect human rights, prevent genocide, restrict the most dangerous weapons."

As noted before on this blog, Washington unveiled the Marshall Plan to avert economic, social and political chaos, prevent the collapse of U.S. exports, achieve "multilateralism," and dissipate the growing strength of indigenous communist parties (i.e., not Moscow-directed) in post-war Europe. In the absence of massive U.S. aid, American strategic planners feared, war-ravaged Europe might forsake capitalism for experiments with socialist enterprise and government controls, which could have jeopardized "free enterprise" even in the United States. There was major elite concern over the "dollar gap," which prevented Europe from being a market for U.S. manufactured goods, threatening to produce a glut of unbought merchandise that could plunge the U.S. economy into economic chaos. Europe was thus subordinated to a considerable degree to the designs of U.S. corporations, with a corresponding narrowing of the European political spectrum. A prime element of the plan called for the exclusion of "Communists" from power, a broadly defined Satan class that included major elements of the wartime anti-fascist resistance and trade union movements. Secretary of State George Marshall, after whom the Marshall Plan is named, made it clear that U.S. aid was contingent on not voting what Washington considered political undesirables into power.

The United Nations began by discarding the guarantees of the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms. It accepted coolie labor and cheap raw materials as the basis of the world economy. It redefined colonies as "dependent territories" and placed them under Great Power trusteeship until they demonstrated they were sufficiently deferential. It denied representation to blacks, Puerto Ricans, Hawaiians, Guamanians, and Alaskans. India's delegation was completely British. The USSR flatly refused to participate in the "parliament of democracy" sham.

Attending the opening session as a spokesman for the N.A.A.C.P., W. E. B. DuBois protested the continued abuse of 750 million oppressed people around the world, complaining that there was no provision “even to consider the aggression of a nation against its own colonial peoples,” which meant that in the U.N.'s ostensible planetary democracy “at least one-fourth of the inhabitants of the world have no part in it, no democratic rights.”

Meanwhile, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov declared it essential that “dependent countries are enabled as soon as possible to take the path of national independence,” and Washington announced it would neither propose nor support a declaration of universal human rights. When Latin American delegations resisted the continuation of Great Power rule, a U.S. delegate urged Nelson Rockefeller, Assistant Secretary of State For Latin American Affairs, to give them a spanking: “Your goddamn peanut nations aren’t voting right. Go line them up.”

Three years later (1948), Washington opposed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights' call for economic security to be a basic entitlement, dismissing the proposal as socialist heresy. Any notion of a right to subsistence was anathema to the U.S. State Department, which successfully lobbied to have economic, social, and cultural rights split off from civil and political rights, thus creating a divided U.N. covenant. Believing that a right to eat was an intolerable limitation on "free enterprise," Washington never ratified the Covenant calling for guaranteed economic security, and relegated it to inferior status ever after.

On the U.S. commitment to preventing genocide, Washington has never owned up to its genocidal or quasi-genocidal treatment of indigenous peoples, let alone atoned for it. There is a U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington dedicated to Jewish suffering in WWII, but not one commemorating the wiping out of indigenous nations here in the U.S.

In 1998, Amnesty International offered this rather unflattering portrait of the U.S.'s record vis-a-vis preventing genocide:

"The first U.N. Human Rights treaty ratified by the U.S.A. was the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It ratified the Convention in 1988, 40 years after signing it and after 97 other states had already ratified it. The U.S.A. took 28 years to ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, after 133 other states had already ratified it. At least 71 other states ratified the Convention against Torture before the U.S.A. It was only in 1992, after 109 other states, that the U.S.A. ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 26 years after its adoption by the UN General Assembly. The ICCPR is one of two principal treaties protecting human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The other - the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights - has still not been ratified by the U.S.A."

On war and weapons, Washington is far and away the world leader in producing armaments and war, is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons, and refuses to renounce a first-strike nuclear policy. It maintains thousands of U.S. military bases around the world while allowing no country to have a base in U.S. territory. Its Latin American officers graduating from Fort Benning Georgia have tortured and murdered all over Latin America for decades.

"Only a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting. It was this insight that drove drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after the Second World War . . . a just peace includes not only civil and political rights - it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want."

But the United States opposed (and still opposes) the likely large world majority favoring economic security as a human right!

Furthermore, economic security and economic opportunity are not the same thing. No one works harder than workers eager to prevent their families from starving. If there were economic security this kind of desperate earnestness would disappear, and with it a good deal of productivity and profit. On the other hand, for the owners of the system, the security of being "too big to fail" encourages the runaway speculation that has crashed the system into disaster on a regular basis. The only way to prevent the kind of economic pain the world is currently experiencing (for the umpteenth time) is to place worker security and well-being above the profit motive. But that means an entirely different kind of economy and a fight to the finish with the private owners of the present economy. It is difficult to believe Obama is calling for that.

Freedom from want? Obama has gone along with shoveling trillions of dollars of public money to the swindlers who almost destroyed the world economy, and may yet do so. He has done little or nothing for the millions who have lost homes, jobs, pension funds, and hope for the future. Having run up an astronomical budget deficit to provide "economic security" for those designated "too big to fail," he now speaks of cutting the deficit rather than directing government spending to meeting the needs of Wall Street's long-suffering victims. He cannot have it both ways. Either there is economic opportunity for all, which means that corporations, no matter how large, must be allowed to fail just like smaller businesses when their performance merits that, or there is economic security for all, which means government spending must be directed toward meeting the needs of the American people, not subsidizing Wall Street firms, which are not supposed to need such help in a "free enterprise" economy where all are said to rise or fall in accordance with their merits.

"For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism - it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."

Evil exists in "the world," but not in U.S. leaders and institutions. How can that be? It is self-serving to assume, as Obama does, that the U.S. is free of evil, while its official enemies are defined by it. Nowhere does he concede that "rogue states" have legitimate grievances that must be addressed, or that the U.S.A is guilty of evil acts that must be atoned for. Only others are wicked; the U.S. makes mistakes, but is incapable of evil. This is an attitude more characteristic of a juvenile delinquent than a great diplomat.

The false dichotomy of pacifism vs. force is equally self-serving. The alternative Obama overlooks - real diplomacy, real problem-solving, an end to demonization in favor of cooperative engagement around issues that threaten human extinction - is ruled out in advance.

Hitler's armies might never have done any damage if not for the huge surge in U.S. investment in Germany that occurred between 1929 and 1940 - the years the Nazis rose to awesome power. It seems likely that a non-violent movement of U.S. investors might very well have insured that Hitler never achieved the heights of power that allowed him to do so much damage. In short, "stopping" Hitler by force is far less impressive when seen from the perspective of having helped him for a decade prior to the U.S. entering the European war. Furthermore, the U.S. put fascists back in power repeatedly in the wake of its victories in WWII, so the presumed U.S. commitment to "stopping" fascism is dubious at best.

Ditto for getting Al Qaeda to "lay down its arms" - or shall we say box cutters. Here Obama seems to forget that Al Qaeda is "armed" primarily by a desire for revenge against U.S. crimes in the Muslim world, especially Palestine. Osama bin Laden, or whoever speaks using that name, has made it very clear that what the U.S. has primarily to do in order to achieve peace with "Al Qaeda" is end its support for a Jewish apartheid state on Palestinian land. Israel is far and away the leading grievance in the Arab world and it is understandable why it would be. But Obama doesn't get it, cannot get it. He's committed to Jewish supremacy, not peace.

Yes, force is sometimes necessary. Force was necessary to expel the U.S. from Nicaragua in the 1930s, from Cuba in the 1950s, from Vietnam in the 1970s, and from Lebanon in the 1980s. But Obama is oblivious to the need for force to be applied against the United States. He can only think of the United States as a victim of unjust force, never the perpetrator. His ideological blindness is total on this score.

"The world rallied around America after the 9/11 attacks, and continues to support our efforts in Afghanistan, because of the horror of those senseless attacks and the recognized principle of self-defense."

The great majority of the world in fact did not support the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan in 2001, with international public opinion strongly favoring diplomatic and judicial measures over military action. An international Gallup poll in late September 2001 asked, "Once the identity of the terrorists is known, should the American government launch a military attack on the country or countries where the terrorists are based or should the American government seek to extradite the terrorists to stand trial?" Among Europeans support for the application of U.S. force ranged from 8% in Greece to 29% in France. In Latin America, support went from 2% in Mexico to 11% in Colombia and Venezuela. Panama was an exception, with public support for the military option favored by 16%. Even in Israel, a majority opposed responding with force. Meanwhile, Taliban overtures to extradite Bin Laden were rejected by Washington, which also refused to provide evidence for its accusations.

If the world didn't support the U.S. attack at the beginning, what are the chances that it supports it eight years later?

Interview with Gullible Skeptic Editor Michael Schlermer - “Official Holocaust history is objective, scientific, and infallible.”

Legalienate: What is a skeptic?

Schlermer: A skeptic is a person who looks for the logic, reason, and evidence for a claim.

Legalienate: This makes you, in general, quite distrustful of conspiracy theories, no?

Schlermer: Absolutely. The more elaborate a conspiracy theory is, and the more people that would need to be involved, the less likely it is true.

Legalienate: So how do you respond to the claim of A. S. Marques posted on your website, to wit: “So how about the great ‘Holocaust’ conspiracy? . . . You know, the vast German plan to secretly exterminate an entire race in the hope future historians would be at a loss to determine what had happened to it, allegedly resulting in 6 million murdered Jews, with no procedural plan, no written orders at any level, no assigned method of mass murder or bureaucratic control, leaving it to the imagination of a whole bunch of telepathic improvisers who came up with mass execution by such methods as steam, electrocution, non-toxic Diesel exhaust and Zyklon B pesticide. And, of course, not leaving the slightest vestige of such a carnage accessible to forensic examination in any of its precisely located alleged sites.”

Schlermer: I’m a believer.

Legalienate: Really? So much for skepticism, right? Well, let’s take this one step at a time. Just how do we know that homicidal gas chambers existed in WWII?

Schlermer: From the death camp remains for one thing.

Legalienate: You mean things like a small unsealed room with an unlocked door that opens outwards and has a window in it and is called a “gas chamber” by those with a huge vested interest in demonizing everything German?

Schlermer: Well, not only that. We also have eyewitness testimony that swears people were gassed in such places. This corroborates the physical evidence.

Legalienate: I see.

Schlermer: We also have tons of documents from the Nazi archives.

Legalienate: But none of them mention homicidal gas chambers.

Schlermer: They do indirectly. Experts have determined that when the Nazis spoke of eliminating the Jewish problem they actually meant physical extermination in gas chambers. I’m talking about very rational, scientific researchers who wear white coats.

Legalienate: Impressive. Is there any other evidence?

Schlermer: Yes. There are speeches by Hitler and other Nazi officials venting their hatred for Jews and their desire to rid Germany of their presence.

Legalienate: Do they mention homicidal gas chambers?

Schlermer: No. But we have photographs, too.

Legalienate: Of mass gassing chambers?

Schlermer: No. Distant shots of the outside of buildings said to contain mass gassing chambers.

Legalienate: What about the eyewitness testimony?

Schlermer: Very credible.

Legalienate: Like claims that 800 people were packed into a space the size of a file cabinet?

Schlermer: Every bit of evidence doesn’t have to be right for the general conclusion to be sound.

Legalienate: Like 42,000 gassings a day at a single camp?

Schlermer: Ballpark figures aren’t necessarily dishonest . . . .

Legalienate: Like the floor of the mass gassing chambers opening up and depositing the corpses in a “subterranean chamber” that is nowhere to be found in the concentration camp where this event allegedly happened?

Schlermer: Look, anecdotal samples can’t disprove a general proposition . . .

Legalienate: So could you give us the systematic evidence for mass gassing chambers?

Schlermer: With pleasure. Hitler hated Jews and gave anti-Semitic speeches. Nazi documents allude to permanently solving the Jewish “problem” in Europe. There are Zyklon B pesticide traces in former German concentration camps. Eyewitnesses swear mass gassings occurred in these camps. There are also photographs of burning bodies from the camps. And we have architectural blueprints for cremation ovens, as well as gas chambers, which Holocaust deniers say are merely fumigation chambers. There are photographs of the outside of buildings in former concentration camps showing prisoners lined up as though waiting to be gassed. All this evidence converges on the conclusion that the gas chambers existed and were used for mass murder.

Legalienate: Converges?

Schlermer: It all points to the conclusion that they must have existed.

Legalienate: Must have existed? I thought we were proving what did exist.

Schlermer: We are. The evidence says they must have existed, therefore they did.

Legalienate: Is that really the same thing?

Schlermer: Yes.

Legalienate: I see. A customer on Amazon who reviewed your book “Denying History,” says this: “I learned this concept (convergence) under a different name in religion class. It was called ‘leap of faith.’”

Schlermer: But the Holocaust is science. Official Holocaust history is objective, scientific, and infallible.

Legalienate: I see. Isn't it interesting that whenever someone wants to use false or unrelated evidence to support a favored conclusion he talks about how it “converges” on that conclusion? Theology professor David Ray Griffin used that method to “prove” that the twin towers in New York were brought down by pre-planted exposives.

Schlermer: That’s not really fair . . . I oppose Griffin . . .

Legalienate: But not his method. Now how do the existence of cremation ovens carry implications of murder? Aren't dead bodies cremated in every country?

Schlermer: Of course.

Legalienate: So can I ask why cremation ovens are always mentioned in the same breath as gas chambers, as though cremating corpses were the same as murdering people?

Schlermer: You certainly may.

Legalienate: That’s all you have to say?

Schlermer: Yes.

Legalienate: You accept that Zyklon B gas was used to fumigate the camps?

Schlermer: Yes.

Legalienate: So there were fumigation chambers and mass gassing chambers?

Schlermer: Yes.

Legalienate: How come there are no physical remains of the enormous gas chambers that supposedly executed 2000 Jews at a time?

Schlermer: The Nazis destroyed them.

Legalienate: Why were no photographs of the homicidal gas chambers taken by Nazi guards? After all, there are many photographs of American lynch mobs proudly smiling after their grisly deeds were done, why no celebratory Nazi pictures of the gas chambers?

Schlermer: Because the Nazis wanted to keep the final solution secret.

Legalienate: So how come there are roughly a million survivors churning out endless Holocaust testimonials? If they were really determined to maintain secrecy, shouldn’t the Nazis have shot them all, so they couldn’t tell their story to the world?

Schlermer: No conspiracy is perfect . . .

Legalienate: I should say not . . . . Now on the objectivity issue, isn’t it self-serving of you to claim that your side in the debate is the product of scientific historiography, while that of your opponents is the fruit of prejudice?

Schlermer: No. Deniers only seek to confirm their biases. They doggedly look for evidence to substantiate their preconceived views. The mark of intellectual honesty is the willingness to subject one’s favored hypothesis to vigorous attack.

Legalienate: So why won’t Holocaust true-believers debate their opponents?

Schlermer: They don’t want to legitimize them.

Legalienate: But if their opponents’ arguments are hopelessly flawed, wouldn’t demonstrating this in front of a mass audience lead to their delegitimization?

Schlermer: One would hope so. But people tend to believe a lot of weird things, no matter how much they are reasoned with.

Legalienate: Indeed. . . . Like Jewish bodies were converted to soap by the Nazis?

Schlermer: Yes, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the story is wrong.

Legalienate: And Jewish skulls were converted to shrunken heads?

Schlermer: Some of the particulars may be wrong, but . . .

Legalienate: And Jewish skin was made into lampshades?

Schlermer: Look, I’ve already pointed out that a general proposition can’t be invalidated by anecdotal evidence.

Legalienate: What’s the general proposition here, that Holocaust historians are brain-damaged?

Schlermer: Not exactly, but . . . .

Legalienate: Now, as for dealing with Deniers, you say that censorship is no way to handle them.

Schlermer: Right. I’m a firm believer in free speech.

Legalienate: How do you react to the beatings, torchings, bombings, book shreddings, heresy trials, blasphemy laws, and jailings inflicted on Holocaust deniers?

Schlermer: They’ve invited this, so there’s really nothing to be done.

Legalienate: In other words, “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to your death your right to be given summary justice by a howling mob.”

Schlermer: Well put.

Legalienate: Thank you. You say Holocaust Deniers are “ideological.”

Schlermer: Yes.

Legalienate: Their fondness for fascism leads them to minimize or deny crimes of the Nazi state?

Schlermer: Exactly.

Legalienate: And how about the other side? Doesn’t the Holocaust Industry’s incestuous relationship with the state of Israel predispose it to distortions and fabrications that favor the interests of that state?

Schlermer: Not that I’ve noticed.

Legalienate: I see. Why are political affiliations relevant to the Holocaust debate in the first place? You go to considerable lengths to point out the “right wing” associations of Holocaust Deniers.

Schlermer: Because they establish that Deniers have an ideological axe to grind, which interferes with their ability to objectively assess history.

Legalienate: I see. And the political affiliations of the Holocaust Industry don’t have a prejudicial effect?

Schlermer: Not all historians who accept the Holocaust are part of the “Holocaust Industry.”

Legalienate: They are if they intend to continue publishing.

Schlermer: In truth, there is no “Holocaust industry,” just honest researchers seeking truth against a rising tide of obtuse Deniers motivated by racism.

Legalienate: I see. Your co-author Alex Grobman is a founding editor-in-chief of the Simon Wiesenthal Annual. That doesn’t interfere with his objectivity?

Schlermer: Not in the least.

Legalienate: O.K. let’s continue. You say that the moral superiority of the Allies in WWII is demonstrated by the fact that the killing stopped the moment the Allies won.

Schlermer: Yes.

Legalienate: But the U.S. firebombed Tokyo and nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki while the Japanese were trying to surrender. The Purple code had been broken and Washington knew they were petitioning the Soviets for surrender. After the war, the U.S. War Department announced that there was no military necessity to the atomic bombings.

Schlermer: But all that occurred on the road to victory . . .

Legalienate: So a lost war is the only crime . . . .

Schlermer: No. The Axis powers would have gone on killing had they won.

Legalienate: How do you know that?

Schlermer: It was part of their ideology. Aryan supremacy. They were committed to killing off their racial inferiors.

Legalienate: Like Teddy Roosevelt and Manifest Destiny?

Schlermer: Look. I’m talking about the racism in WWII.

Legalienate: Right. So let me read you a quote about how bad it got: “We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying in a hole with the dead, and . . . boiled the flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter openers.”

Schlermer: That’s exactly the ideology of hatred I’m talking about. It needed to be defeated militarily.

Legalienate: But it wasn’t. That’s a quote from war correspondent Edgar L. Jones, describing the U.S. war in the Pacific.

Schlermer: Well, in that case it was an unfortunate excess caused by the stress of battle.

Legalienate: You say that the Axis “killed for geography, for political control, for economic power, for racial purification, and for pleasure.”

Schlermer: Yes.

Legalienate: The United States doesn’t do such things.

Schlermer: Of course not.

Legalienate: Did the indigenous nations of North America voluntarily disband to make way for the United States?

Schlermer: No, but . . .

Legalienate: Weren’t they physically eliminated through genocide, or something very much like it?

Schlermer: Maybe, but there was no poison gas involved . . .

Legalienate: Didn’t the United States launch war with Mexico in 1846 in order to take California?

Schlermer: Possibly, but . . .

Legalienate: Isn‘t that killing “for geography?”

Schlermer: Perhaps, but . . .

Legalienate: When Thomas Jefferson shared his aspirations for founding a country “without blot or mixture” and urged that the Indians be "exterminated" or driven “with the beasts of the forest into the Stony mountains,” was he not endorsing killing for racial purification?

Schlermer: Look, we were talking about Europe . . .

Legalienate: When U.S. troops exulted in their “turkey shoot” in the Gulf War in 1991, were they not “killing for pleasure?”

Schlermer: We are not Nazis!

Legalienate: In 1898, when the U.S. began slaughtering a couple of hundred thousand Filipinos to gain a “gateway to the Orient,” were they not killing “for economic power?”

Schlermer: I really don’t know . . . .

Legalienate: By establishing slavery did the U.S. not kill “for political control” of people they reduced to chattel? And who is in political control in the dozens of countries where Washington maintains military bases to this day? Aren’t the deaths of dissidents that occur in those countries in large part Washington’s responsibility? Isn’t that, too, “killing for political control?” How many of those countries are permitted to have military bases inside the United States?

Schlermer: We are a democracy, we stand for human rights . . . .

Legalienate: Thank you for your time.

Chavez and Ahmadinejad Seal Cooperation With Anti-Washington Accords and Speeches

Caracas November 25

The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, consolidated today in Caracas a relationship that the host leader characterized as "exemplary," with new accords and speeches in defense of their cooperation and against the United States.

In a signing ceremony on cooperation projects in Miraflores Palace, both heads of state agreed that "accusations of violence" against them are a "joke," before stating that their collaboration is for the purpose of "building life," and denouncing Washington's responsibility for conflicts and crisis situations in the world.

"In truth it seems a joke that they accuse us of violence," declared Chavez, echoing words pronounced shortly before by his Iranian colleague.

Both responded to the State Department spokesperson, Ian Kelly, who said that he hoped that Caracas would emphasize to Ahmadinejad "the concerns that the international community have about his nuclear program, his alleged support for terrorism, and the status of Iranian human rights."

The Iranian president said that the real worries are about "nuclear and chemical arsenals" and repeated "threats of military invasion," in reference to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Chavez, for his part, emphasized that if Washington wants to be consistent it should extradite the "father of terrorists of this continent," Luis Posada Carriles.

"We remind the Nobel peace prize winner (Barack Obama) that he has there (in the U.S.) the terrorist that ordered the bomb that killed 73 passengers be placed aboard the Cuban airliner, a man that also tortured and killed when he was in Venezuela," said Chavez with respect to Carriles.

During the more than three hours that the ceremony lasted both presidents repeatedly denounced those who "attack" them, in clear allusion to the United States, which they referred to as the "yankee empire," and they stated that the collaboration of their countries is in "service to the people."

The "arrogant ones" initiated "their propaganda against Venezuela and Iran, but the whole world is seeing that the objective (of the cooperation) is the welfare of the peoples," declared Ahmadinejad, who cited (as evidence) construction projects for houses, refineries, and hospitals, as well as research studies.

In the ceremony at Miraflores, which concluded at around 10:00 p.m. local time, both leaders presided over the signing of twelve agreements in the areas of energy, transportation, and housing, among others, after holding a meeting behind closed doors for more than three hours.

Chavez indicated that 129 agreements of bilateral cooperation already exist and that another 68 have been considered in recent weeks.

The Venezuelan president stated that the inspection of those agreements has been very satisfactory and that those programs aimed at "consolidating" the "political, cultural, scientific, and economic independence" of the two countries are "showing results."

During the ceremony, the presidents followed live broadcasts in order to witness the handing over of homes constructed with Iranian cooperation, and the inauguration of the headquarters of a bilateral fund in Caracas aimed at financing the joint projects.

It is anticipated that the fund will have a billion dollars in capital before the end of 2010, supported in equal parts by both countries.

Ahmadinejad, who arrived Tuesday night to Venezuela, showed up for his appointment with Chavez in the presidential palace at around 3:15 p.m. local time, on this his fourth visit to Caracas since he came to power in 2005.

The Venezuelan leader gave him a warm welcome, calling him not only "brother," but also "gladiator of anti-imperialist struggles," in the reception ceremony on the steps of the presidential palace.

"The homeland of (Simon) Bolivar welcomes you and your wife," declared Chavez, who expressed his satisfaction with the present South American tour of the Iranian leader, which has taken him to Brazil and Bolivia as well.

The Venezuelan leader, whose country has not maintained relations with Israel since this past January, denounced that country as the "assassination arm of the empire" upon referring to it.

Chavez reiterated his criticisms of his Israeli counterpart, Shimon Peres, for having stated that he and Ahmadinejad "will soon disappear," saying he took it as a "threat" and would act "accordingly."

The visit of the Iranian president, who is expected to leave Caracas this evening, has provoked various protest actions in Venezuela, where groups of students and political opponents have expressed their rejection of the presence of the Iranian leader, whom they accuse of being a "dictator" and of discriminating against women.

Source: "Chavez y Ahmadinejad sellan cooperación con acuerdos y discursos contra EEUU" Univision en línea, 25 de noviembre de 2009 (Translation by Michael K. Smith)

Interview with Deborah Lipstatic - "Holocaust Denial is Pervasive, Growing, and Doomed"

November 22, 2009

by Michael K. Smith

New York City -- Speaking from the Bellevue psychiatric ward where she is undergoing evaluation for advanced schizophrenia, Holocaust Confirmer Deborah Lipstatic today declared, "The situation is critical and victory is at hand" in the war on Holocaust heresy.

Lipstatic, Professor of Victimology at Coca Cola University in Atlanta, insisted that Holocaust denial is not a legitimate field of study and entirely worthless intellectually, which, she said, explains why she devotes herself night and day to refuting its claims.

This year marks nine years since historian David Irving lost his libel suit against Lipstatic, who chronicled her battle against him in her book, “Money Can't Buy Love But It Can Buy The Courts - How I Single-Handedly Defeated David Irving With Swarms of Lawyers and Researchers and an Avalanche of Holocaust Industry Cash" (Orthodox Books, 2000).

Legalienate's editors were generously granted a lengthy interview with her on the recently proclaimed Holocaust Obsession Day, which lasts for 24 weeks instead of what Lipstatic called the "stingy" 24 hours of the standard day. Speaking from the isolated back ward where she currently resides, she explained how to make failure look like victory, why freedom requires adherence to a single view, and how Holocaust denial plays a crucial role in forging Jewish identity, especially among Gentiles.

LEGALIENATE: Nine years later, how would you characterize the Irving trial?

LIPSTATIC: It was a resounding victory for the world inside my head. I went head-to-head with the world's leading Holocaust denier and I single-handedly won a judgment stating that historical facts are not to be determined by the courts.

LEGALIENATE: But wasn't that obvious from the beginning?

LIPSTATIC: Not to me it wasn't.

LEGALIENATE: Have you solved the problem of Holocaust denial?

LIPSTATIC: Of course not. But we did provide precise explanations proving that what Deniers say are complete deviations from what we say. We didn't prove what happened, and nobody else better either, but we proved that what they say happened could not possibly have happened if what we say happened, happened. And to quote George Bush the Elder, "what we say, goes."

LEGALIENATE: I see. How do you advise people to deal with Holocaust deniers?

LIPSTATIC: The first way is to see if the facts prove the case: If they say “At this meeting Hitler said X, Y and Z," you can go and check if they changed the date. If they say Hitler said X, Y and Z on a Wednesday, but it was actually a Tuesday, you can be sure you are dealing with lying scum and dismiss their argument.

The second way is deductive reasoning or logic. Deniers will say that the very fact that there are so many survivors proves that the Holocaust couldn't have been as ruthlessly efficient as we say it was, because if the Germans were all-powerful and utterly determined to kill every last Jew, how did more than a million Jews survive?" You counter that by saying that there were a lot of miraculous escapes, because the Jews were plucky and determined and learned to jump off the transport trucks just in the nick of time.

LEGALIENATE: Why weren't they gunned down?

LIPSTATIC: They ran between the bullets.

LEGALIENATE: Oh.

LIPSTATIC: The third way of refuting Deniers is by citing the facts: If they say, “How do we know there were gas chambers?” you can say, “Let me show you the German plans for gas chambers.” But if they say, "Where is the forensic proof of the gas chambers themselves?" you can reply, "Let me show you Israel's plans to have people like you extradited and put on trial for Holocaust denial." That clinches the argument.

LEGALIENATE: Why don't you debate deniers?

LIPSTATIC: It's like trying to convince a member of the flat earth society that the earth is round. There's no point.

LEGALIENATE: But you can show a flat earther a picture of the round earth. Do you have a picture of a mass gassing chamber?

LIPSTATIC: No, but it wouldn't matter if we did. Deniers are irrational. They think absence of evidence is evidence of absence of evidence. They're completely irrational.

LEGALIENATE: How are they successful then?

LIPSTATIC: The usual way. They confuse people with convoluted explanations that lead nowhere. Remember, Holocaust denial is anti-Semitism, and anti-Semitism is hatred of Israel, and hatred of Israel is anti-Jewish prejudice, and anti-Jewish prejudice is congenital in Gentiles, so it's impossible to eliminate, but we must try to do the impossible because it's ennobling and we owe it to the victims of the Holocaust.

LEGALIENATE: I see. You're sure there's no point in debating your opponents?

LIPSTATIC: If you try to argue with a person who is committed to a completely illogical premise, then you're lost to begin with -- you're already sucked into their world of fantasy.

LEGALIENATE: So, it's like imaginary numbers in mathematics. They don't really exist, can't exist. After all, what's the square root of a negative number?

LIPSTATIC: Exactly.

LEGALIENATE: So math teachers who force kids to study that stuff are nutcases who can't face reality. The kids have ample reason to turn them in.

LIPSTATIC: Right. They're defaming the rational numbers. Have them call the Simon Wiesenthal Center. They have a program to extradite them to Israel to stand trial for numerical anti-Semitism.

LEGALIENATE: How has Holocaust denial changed since your trial and book?

LIPSTATIC: Well, recently we've seen the emergence of both "hard core" and “soft-core” denial. Hard-core denial is saying, "I need forensic evidence of mass gassing chambers before I can believe in them." That's hard core because once you get on the slippery slope of requiring material evidence for your beliefs it becomes addictive and you stop believing just for belief's sake, or because there are Holocaust specials pouring out of the TV twenty-four hours a day, and you start thinking, "Why should I believe in something that no one can show me the material basis of?" The next thing you know you don't believe in UFOs or penis-enlargement, and the entire basis of civilized order collapses.

LEGALIENATE: I'm convinced. And soft-core denial?

LIPSTATIC: Soft-core is more subtle. It's “Why do we have to hear so much about the Holocaust?” Or "Haven't the Jews done anything other than be exterminated in Nazi gas chambers?" The person who makes this kind of remark is gullible, not hateful, so they're worth talking to. Just tell them, "You have to hear constantly about the Holocaust because it's the only historical event that ever had any real importance." But if they don't buy that, brand them an anti-Semite and hound them mercilessly. It's for their own good.

LEGALIENATE: How do you respond to those who compare Nazi treatment of the Jews to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians?

LIPSTATIC: You have to zero in on what genocide is -- you can say, "A genocide is something done to the Jews, never by them, or a lesser genocide done to lesser people, but which is endorsed by Jewish groups to help take heat off of Israel. Like Darfur." The point is that only Jewish suffering counts. Gentiles are thick, so you can't make this point too often.

LEGALIENATE: Is Holocaust denial on the rise?

LIPSTATIC: Definitely. Holocaust denial is pervasive, growing, and doomed. It is incredibly serious that it is taking over, but at the same time utterly trivial and quite meaningless. We must ignore it and crush it - right away.

-----Michael K. Smith is the author of "Portraits of Empire" and "The Madness of King George" (illustrations by Matt Wuerker), both from Common Courage Press. He can be reached at proheresy@yahoo.com

More Bulletins from Konsciousness Kontrol

Green Peace Has Corporate Rival

Green Pus, a new advocacy group formed by international capital, lauds garbage and waste as profit makers that can be recycled into more garbage and waste which will create jobs to produce, distribute, sell and then collect, recycle and reproduce more garbage and waste.

A spokesman for the group said “ Garbage and waste are the backbone of our economy . Foolish “green peacers” try to protect the earth not realizing it is the exploitation and destruction of earth that brings great prosperity to humanity.”

Green Pus has adopted as its logo a photo of third world children picking through enormous piles of foul rubbish seeking food, clothing and shelter for their families, with the caption:

Without garbage these poor children would never survive!

Environmental Movement Takes Strong Antiwar Stand

A new coalition urges ecological sensibility in all future wars. It will not support any military actions unless they are performed against bio-invadable nations.

“We must only attack bio-invadable countries in future or the environmental damage done by wars will endanger all of us, even those far away from the actual killing and maiming. And our attacking forces must be diverse and multi-lingual, in keeping with a changing environmental movement that is diverse and multi lingual”

Bio-invadable nations are those far enough away that the attacking nations don’t have to worry about the pollution, toxic chemicals, maimed victims and other ecological dangers of wars affecting them.

The group was immediately nominated for a Nobel Peace prize.

Pubic - Not Public! - Option

America’s new Private Health Insurers Assurance of Control program will cover the cost of pre-surgical shaving of tax paying citizens’ genital areas with a special subsidy collected from illegal immigrants. A spokesperson for the Speaker of the House said “congress and the president regret the mistaken notion of a public option, unthinkable in our free market economy in which there is no such thing as a free lunch, a free health exam, or for that matter, when you come to think of it, an actual free market.”


Israel Justifies Killing Children In Gaza

Jewish state claims they would likely have become terrorists when they grew up and the IDF was thus protecting the nation from a future holocaust.

“These kids were certain to grow up wanting to murder innocent Jews, since they were Palestinians and we know how horribly they have treated the Jewish people, worse even than the nazis who only tried to exterminate Jews but never threatened them with mass drowning by driving them into the sea.”

The Democratic Congress and President Obama supported Israel’s action as understandable and necessary defense and the president said “I stand with Israel 100%, always have and always will, even if they might have to kill my daughters if they find out my daughters might someday become terrorists who might develop nuclear weapons and might use them to kill innocent Israeli children and might create a second holocaust.”

Congress passed a supporting resolution calling for aborting all Palestinian babies as potential future terrorists. The vote was unanimous. “We stand with Israel 100%, always have and always will “ said a spokesperson for the republican minority.

Citizen Activist Group Charged With Hate Crimes

By accusing politicians of performing as "lap dogs for corporate wealth" and calling them "sexual perverts for snuggling at the crotch of capital "and "foot fetishists for licking the boots of power", the citizen action group SCORN has been accused of hate crimes by congress, the president, major media, and organized religion.

A spokesperson for the established values coalition said “Our great nation was not built on straight talk, honesty, or calling a spade a spade. In fact, cancel that last metaphor or I could face trial, too. This kind of hate language could lead to acts of terrorism, critical thinking and other horrors too evil to even mention. They must be tried in a court of constitutional law that forbids such genocidal language. Such perversion of free speech must be dealt with by rational and serious people.”


Unlimited Violence Games Deemed Suitable For TV

The television success of kick, punch and spit-on boxing has led to the creation of even more vicious sports and the FCC has decided that the new Unlimited Violence games will be allowed on pay television. These games will introduce American audiences to live, competitive throat slashing, eye gouging and disemboweling of opponents, but also terror bombing of their families and ethnic cleansing of their neighborhoods.

“American viewers have grown tired of simply watching one man beat another senseless and they need to see actual murders and if possible, group annihilations. This is far more realistic and entertaining than kick, punch and spit on boxing and sponsors are lining up to buy time on these telecasts which will surely attract new millions to pay tv, especially if their credit cards haven't yet been canceled. “

Future plans are to include a division for battling women which would include competition involving homicidal makeup smearing, violent bitching about stupid men and tearing off wigs without without first removing hair clips. There had been a suggestion about dog and cat fighting, but producers thought viewers would find such cruelty to animals completely unacceptable.

Don’t Ask : Just Kill ?

As the economic assault on middle class America continues one government institution profits from this condition. Our division into identity groups has long been supported by corporate capital to strengthen the myths of equality and meritocracy, and to keep us competitively consuming without questioning the system of consumptive competition. But one public entity has been the greatest beneficiary of affirmative action programs .

Working class minorities and women have found the U.S. armed forces the most accessible entry point in attaining jobs and an education . The present situation and the all volunteer armed forces has meant a recruiting bonanza as people with other economic doors slammed in their faces gravitate to the military. Unfortunately this puts them on the front lines of supposed defense of a nation which has not been threatened by outside force for nearly two hundred years, since the War of 1812.

We presently spend more than 600 billion dollars a year on the military, conduct offensive wars in two nations and maintain more than 700 bases in foreign countries. Our military is a global police force for an empire which costs us trillions of dollars , thousands of lives and creates more enemies for America. Defense?

This is just one major contradiction in policies that ostensibly benefit groups suffering as outsiders by making some of their members alleged insiders. But their minority success is purchased by a majority which is failing. While some women and minorities rise in status, unemployment and debt are sinking much larger groups of citizens, obviously including minorities and women. No matter how we are ethnically , racially or sexually categorized, most of us are of an economic class kept divided by designations which become almost religious in that faithful beliefs in our differences have almost as much to do with them as material evidence for their existence.

We certainly have a murderous history of racist oppression of Africans in the worst possible attack on human rights, then continued with a warped institutional base which reduced others to sub-citizen status. But while many of us still suffer severe disadvantage , rewarding only some , and then in a contradictory fashion, is hardly the way to bring the whole society into a balance of equality and justice. As long as our economics totally negate any possibility of real equality but only a facade perpetuated by the minority of wealth with the most power, we cannot achieve a just society but one with justice for some only at the expense of everyone else .

Science clearly finds that we are one race with geographic differences in how we look but none in how we are biologically composed. Cultural differences are learned behaviors that have absolutely nothing to do with skin tone, sex, religious or ideological belief. We need a serious discussion of this to identify the enormous problems we face as a class in this political economy. Unfortunately, ruling divisions that treat us as individuals except when confined to subjugated identity groups, but collectively regard us as a massive consumer mob have so far prevented that discussion.

Among those reduced to being social outcasts, homosexuals have fought to be openly and honestly themselves and not live in shadows. Forcing people to lie about who they are is anti-human and the move towards openness is a positive step for all society. But finding this freedom in the military is a perverse blessing. That a community based on what was once called “the love that dare not speak its name” would derive liberation from being allowed to openly perform as warriors is a social pathology. Whether the president was sincere or not, his plea for equal rights by ending the policy of homosexuals remaining secretive in the service or losing their jobs is twisted political logic . And foolishness about macho warriors is more outdated than bigoted discrimination against gays and lesbians. Any child can sit at a console and push buttons that send weapons to blow up humans thousands of miles away. The Hollywood idea of war is a product of affluent image creators who wouldn't know physical combat from physical labor. But these myths must be confronted and not perpetuated by groups among us led to believe they are somehow liberated by participation in the most wretched and immoral social operation we can imagine.

Gays are not unique in being manipulated into thinking they can achieve equality only by uncritically accepting all established institutions as long as they can participate in them. These are the outcomes of every effort to advance specific groups only by advantaging select members of the group, which in our economy always means at the expense of others. But to consider it progress to be an open, honest participant in the actions of mass murder and cleansed by the diabolically deceitful name of defense is a moral tragedy .

As is too often the case, such alleged equalities are negative rather than affirmative. Being “allowed” to participate in the market place in the same destructive economy previously dominated by others, or to act as grasping, selfish and egocentric as the profiteering minority that still rules the economy, can only be seen as affirmative by a confused population. The majority of us who support continued destruction of the social and natural environment by our forced divisions into competing cross purposes need to learn that we are a common race and class, with common interests in our survival. Those will not be satisfied if we are reduced to acting as singularly identified groups , members of a ruled class endangering our future by not acting together in the present. None of us, gay, straight or neuter, should buy into this military lie, nor the crippled system it supports.



Copyright (c) 2009 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.

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fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be
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frank scott
email: frankscott@comcast.net

Frank Scott writes political commentary which appears in print in the Coastal Post and The Independent Monitor and online at the blogspot: Legalienate

Dogma, Double Standards, and Doubt - The Bradley Smith Heresy and Beyond

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.

-----James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

In his autobiography "Break His Bones" Bradley Smith gives us a lively and infuriating review of the Holocaust dogma that has crippled intellectual freedom in the U.S.. It should be required reading for every course with an Elie Wiesel book on the class reading list. While sympathetic to Jewish suffering, it dispassionately analyzes the fantastical claims made by Holocaust eyewitnesses, including mass gassing chambers, lampshades made of human skin, soap made from Jewish cadavers, and towering geysers spurting human blood for months on end in the wake of Nazi atrocities in Europe. Maintaining a steady, ironic tone throughout, the author details the intellectual cowardice of college professors, the craven submissiveness of the corporate media, and the fanatical zeal of Holocaustomaniacs.

This remarkable achievement has not come without a price. Holocaust Industry fanatics routinely slander Smith, disrupt his speaking engagements, prevent circulation of his work, keep him on the brink of financial ruin, and threaten to kill him, his wife, and his children. Nevertheless, Smith persists in pointing out the wild implausibilities in the conventional Holocaust narrative, as he has for three decades, and calls for an open debate on the topic on U.S. college campuses. Though no such debate has yet taken place, his tireless efforts to give sanity a chance have left the Holocaust Industry looking increasingly ridiculous.

At the root of this mother-of-all-industries is a Judeo-centric self-obsession that simply will not face reality - or let anyone else do so either. James Baldwin explained the problem well in his famous letter to his nephew on the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Noting that the illusion of black inferiority had long served as the anchor of white identity, Baldwin told his nephew that white people couldn't help but feel alarm in the face of a black freedom movement that attacked their very sense of reality. "Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shining and all the stars aflame," wrote Uncle James. "You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature." And violations of nature cannot be assimilated. "The black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar," he observed, "and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations."

Among Jews, orthodox belief in the Holocaust has functioned as an immovable pillar, so that any skepticism about mass gassing chambers threatens to bring the Temple of Eternal Victimhood crashing down upon their heads. Having long built Jewish identity around a narrative of 2000+ years of unmerited suffering culminating in "extermination" in Nazi gas chambers, organized Jewry cannot easily accept that key aspects of the story may be as much legend as factual description, as much myth as reality. Confronted by Smith's skepticism, they do not debate what they consider to be his intellectual errors, but rather, smear him as Nazi-sympathizing scum.

Though it is often claimed that "tons" of captured German documents prove beyond doubt that the Nazis attempted to exterminate Jews in gas chambers, in fact documents are scarce, and their interpretation is very much disputed. As a result, the Holocaust narrative has become almost solely dependent on the testimony of martyrs. But eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, especially from those who were held in conditions ripe for the flourishing of collective hysteria. "History is filled with stories of masses of people claiming to be eyewitnesses to everything from sexual union with the Devil to abductions by moon men in flying saucers," Smith observes. How "anti-Semitic" of him to notice.

The situation being what it is, Smith gets no support among U.S. college professors, who meekly submit to Holocaust Industry tyranny, even as they piously declare their (imaginary) belief in free speech. While they may be in favor of free speech in the abstract, as soon as they encounter the slightest doubt about homicidal gas chambers they are reduced to Holocaust Industry sound bites that divert attention from the disputed facts to the alleged sinister motives of those who seek to have them investigated.

Like Holocaust Industry lobbyists, the professors insist there can be no "other side" to the gas chamber story, because Holocaust revisionists are hateful people with an "agenda," and so cannot arrive at the truth the way the dispassionate professors allegedly do. This is the educational equivalent of Israel's claim that it can find no partner for peace, only terrorist maniacs intent on continuing Nazism by other means. If Bradley Smith doesn't realize by now that Jewish apartheid is inherently noble because mass gassing chambers are inherently credible - and vice versa - so much the worse for him. Such is the level of intellectual sophistication at U.S. colleges, now charging tens of thousands of dollars a year for the privilege of becoming associated with them.

Given the ban on open Holocaust debate, "Break His Bones" might just as well have been titled, "Free Speech: An Autopsy." "Every institution of higher learning cooperates in the suppression of revisionist scholarship," Smith notes. "No book or periodical distributor will handle revisionist publications" and "no philanthropic organization will contribute funds to revisionist research." For Smith, this is a "spiritual" issue, not a political one, since you either want free speech "for others as well as for yourself or you don't really want it." Minds that have mastered Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche find these words impenetrable.

Here is the dismal sequence of speech suppression at U.S. universities. After Smith places an ad calling for free discussion of the Holocaust, agents of the Holocaust Industry express indignation that heretical ideas are being given a public platform. Devoid of shame, they contact the president of the university in question, "suggesting" that debating a Holocaust revisionist legitimates racism and must not be tolerated. Then they launch vicious attacks on the heretic, claiming he is lying and implying that he is a genocidal murderer at heart. They accuse the editors and advertising departments of the offending paper with having all of the worst qualities of the revisionist himself. Next, they smear all revisionists as peddlers of hatred and denounce as anti-Semitic the campus organizations that extend them invitations. This performance produces the intended effect: cowed professors and administrators maintain a disgraceful silence and campus libraries and bookstores refuse to shelve revisionist works.

Nor is this all. Thanks to Hillel rabbis, Smith reports, today's American university students are spied on with a thoroughness that puts U.S. intelligence agencies to shame. "Rabbis who work to destroy those who argue for open debate on the Holocaust stories represent a New Inquisition," and are converting the Holocaust into "a quasi-religious cult, complete with an immense crank literature of infallible texts, crazy miracles, saintly eye-witness tales of miraculous escapes from nazi devils," the entire fantastical tale protected against scrutiny "by taboos and media witch trials." Anyone who doubts receives the prescribed rabbinical punishment - "public disgrace and financial ruin."

Thirty years of such organized hysteria have conditioned Smith to expect anything but a debate on the points of contention that separate revisionists from proponents of the orthodox version of the Holocaust. His opponents never disappoint him. When he asks for substantiation of the mass gassing thesis he is asked, "Why do you defend Nazis? How can you justify Hitler? Why does it matter to you how the Jews were murdered?" When he points out the ludicrous nature of the claims that are taken seriously about homicidal gas chambers, he is told not to focus on them: "It's not the gas chambers that are important. What's important is the fact that the Jews were murdered. There are so many more important issues." When he persists in focusing on facts, he is psychoanalyzed: "What are your motives? Your real motives?" When he stands up for intellectual freedom, it is contemptuously dismissed: "Free speech? Don't try to put us on about free speech. What did the Jews ever do to you?" Discussion, debate, intellectual exchange, all are completely irrelevant: "We don't care about your fantasy about how there are no proofs that the gas chambers existed. We're past that. We know they existed. We want to know why you do it. Why the gas chambers? Why the Holocaust? Why the Jews?"

Charges of anti-Semitism are particularly easy to refute in Smith's case. He concedes that the German National Socialist state singled out Jews for special and cruel treatment, that they were stripped of their rights, forcibly relocated to ghettos, conscripted for labor, dispossessed of their property, and deported from the countries of their birth. He acknowledges that large numbers of them perished in awful conditions presided over by the Nazis. "In short," he says, "Jewish culture in Eastern Europe was destroyed during the Hitlerian regime." Such are the thoughts of what the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith calls one of the most dangerously racist men in America.

One weakness of Smith's work is its "spiritual" orientation and the uncritical anti-Communist bias that accompanies it. Smith judges historical events to be the product of "hate" projected onto human institutions, not to a clash of interests objectively in conflict. "Those who hate or believe they do," he writes, are in a struggle with their inner lives, as we all are. Projecting the struggle out into institutions and political movements is what leads to the violence, not the feelings themselves." This stance encourages Smith to gloss over important distinctions and give too much importance to his personal dislikes, which have no bearing on historical events.

For example, responding to the horrendous 911 attacks on the U.S., Smith issues a blanket condemnation against widely disparate political figures for engaging in "violence":

"With respect to killing the innocent for the acts of those who rule them, the Islamist radicals did nothing unusual. They represent an old established human tradition. They want to right what, from their point of view, are the injustices being carried out against 'their' people. That's what they all say. Hitler said it. Stalin said it. Pol Pot and Idi Amin said it. Even Che Guevarra (sic) and the pipsqueak Fidel Castro said it. They all were willing to intentionally kill the innocent for what they convinced themselves was a 'higher good.' The people who did the World Trade Centers were unique only in that they represented no nation state, but an NGO, a non-governmental organization."

What is interesting about this commentary is that it omits mention of Palestinian violence. Smith cannot be unaware of the long train of kidnappings, shootings, bombings, hijackings, and general war carried out by the PLO and Hamas. But unlike in the case of Marxist inspired movements, he omits mention of it. Why? Because, as Smith repeatedly points out, Israel is to blame for establishing an apartheid state on Palestinian land and brutally expelling as many of the indigenous inhabitants as possible, actions that make such a "terrorist" response, if not inevitable, certainly highly predictable. In other words, he puts the blame where it belongs - on the actions of the oppressor, not on the desperate measures of the oppressed to fight back. This is as it should be, and Smith should do the same vis-a-vis other oppressed groups, whether they be Nicaraguan, Cuban, Chinese, Russian, Korean, or Vietnamese.

After all, none of the figures Smith indicts above would likely accept that their policy was to "intentionally kill the innocent," and therefore it is up to each and every one of us to rationally evaluate what they actually did, rather than dismiss them as heartless mass murderers on ideological grounds. Smith prefers to ignore the distinction between oppressor and oppressed and issue a blanket indictment against both groups for engaging in "violence." But this sheds no light on history, which, after all, is a secular process, nor does it address the issue of what oppressed majorities should do to escape the brutal conditions institutionalized violence imposes on them. For such people, the issue is not hatred, but desperation. Smith nowhere addresses their plight.

For Smith, "the initiation of violence is the overriding issue." The problem with this orientation is that it overlooks the fact that violence is seamlessly integrated into all the dominant institutions of capitalist society, making it quite impossible to determine the "initiation" of violence. Under capitalism it is permissible to exclude millions of people from access to clean water, adequate food, medical care, and other basic necessities, resulting in countless unnecessary deaths. Capitalist propagandists insist this is not violence, but that a social movement dedicated to changing these priorities by displacing capitalist elites by force is violence. This is a starkly ideological definition that Smith does not bother to inspect. In fact, he uncritically supports it.

Furthermore, Smith, like Holocaust revisionists in general, is far too credulous in believing fantastical claims about socialist or Communist atrocities, whether real or imagined. Consider this episode Smith relates from the 1980s: "In Mother Jones there's a photograph of a Nicaraguan girl with the stump of one leg wrapped in bandages. Some progressive-forces group is using the photo as anti-Contra propaganda. The one-legged girl is laughing and the propagandists are asking for money. These are the same folks who did not take photographs of the one-legged girls manufactured by the Sandinistas when the Sandinistas were guerrillas . . . .their own politics are more important to them than the one-legged girls."

Here Smith uncritically equates the Contras and the Sandinistas as "guerrillas" dedicated to "manufacturing" mutilated children in the pursuit of political goals. But is this true? The Contras, composed overwhelmingly of ex-Somoza National Guardsmen famous for torture, rape, and murder, were an imperial mercenary army, never a guerrilla force, and they had no indigenous support inside Nicaragua. Their leaders were wealthy Somocistas who were given $84,000 tax-free every year by Washington to deliberately target civilians for torture and murder. There was no comparable Sandinista loyalty and policy, before or after the revolution. In fact, during the guerrilla phase the Sandinistas won the loyalty of the overwhelming majority of the population by "violent" actions against high value political enemies, not against civilians in general. (After the revolution they abolished the death penalty rather than execute the men who would later form the Contras.) So if the Sandinistas were "manufacturing" one-legged girls, how does one account for their overwhelming popularity at the time among the Nicaraguan people? In fact, Smith's claim is simply untrue.

Smith is similarly dismissive of FMLN "violence" during the war in El Salvador from 1979 to 1994, when a U.S. sponsored death squad government (Salvadorean death squads were created by the C.I.A. during the Kennedy Administration) killed roughly 70,000 people, often after hideous torture, the vast majority of them civilians. Nonetheless, after reading a newspaper article about a priest in El Salvador who had joined the guerrillas, Smith characterized the situation as follows: "So the priest is going to bless the people who are killing the people for the good of the people. The usual." He neglects to point out that the people were the ones who took up arms to protect themselves against death squads created by Smith's government in Washington, and that the priest was therefore blessing these efforts at self-defense, not exercises in wanton killing, as Smith would have us believe.

"I ought never to initiate force against another person to get something I want," writes Smith in his book, "The Man Who Saw His Own Liver." He seems not to realize that this precept has no application in the lives of the hundreds of millions or perhaps billions of people who do not have the luxury of wondering what a "want" is, so preoccupied are they with securing that which they desperately need to keep death at bay for themselves and their children. (Recall that psychologist Abraham Maslow's famous hierarchy of human motivation deals with needs, not wants.) If they pick up a gun to protect themselves against the imperial armies and C.I.A. goon squads sent to repress and kill them, in Smith's eyes they are just as guilty of "violence" as their enemies in Washington. But this is like saying that the surgeon who cuts you open to remove a diseased organ is no better than the gangbanger who knifes you in order to steal your wallet. In fact, given the vastly greater killing carried out by imperial armies as compared to guerrilla forces, it's a lot worse than saying this.

Smith states that "the Holocaust story increasingly reads like the greatest, most successful PR campaign of the 20th century." If this is true, and it is not difficult to credit, then belief in Communism as a satanic and even more murderous force than Nazism has to be a close second. After all, from the moment of its triumph the Bolshevik revolution was hysterically smeared, accused by the capitalist press of engineering deliberate starvation, massacre, sexual communism, and hideous refinement of unspeakable torture. Bolshevik leaders were denounced as assassins and lunatics, human scum, criminals by nature, and beasts. The fledgling Soviet Union was depicted as a land of raving maniacs forcing hapless peasants to fight over carrion with dogs.

Testifying before the Congressional Overman Committee in 1919 U.S. Ambassador to Moscow David Francis claimed the Bolsheviks were killing everyone “who wears a white collar or who is educated and who is not a Bolshevik.” Madame Katherine Breshkovskaya, a famous anti-Bolshevik militant, testified that in one year of Bolshevik rule twice as many Russian men, women, and children had been killed than Russian soldiers were lost at the front during all of World War I. Other witnesses swore the revolutionary army was made up of criminals and Jews transplanted from New York’s Lower East Side. Still others insisted promiscuity was running amok, with women nationalized and roped into "free love" bureaus. The bed-hopping Bolsheviks were also alleged to be roasting their political enemies in furnaces, scalding them with steam, dismembering them on racks and hacking them to pieces with axes. Sound familiar?

The following year (1920) Charles Merz and Walter Lippmann published their study of New York Times coverage of the Bolshevik Revolution, characterizing it as “nothing short of a disaster.” Far from basing its views on fact, the Newspaper of Record had shamelessly promoted stories “dominated by the hopes of the men who composed the news organization.” Accordingly, the Bolsheviks schizophrenically appeared in the Times' coverage as both “cadaver and world-wide menace,” depending on the imperialist needs of the moment.

“The news about Russia is a case of seeing not what was, but what men wished to see," observed Merz and Lippmann. “The chief censor and the chief propagandist were hope and fear in the minds of reporters and editors.” Fabrication was routine: The Times cited fictional atrocities, repeatedly claimed the Bolshevik government was at the point of collapse, and spread panic about an imaginary threat of armed revolution inside the United States.

The Times’ newsmen were guilty of a “boundless credulity, an untiring readiness to be gulled, and on many occasions a downright lack of common sense.” Their contributions to public understanding at a time of world crisis have been “about as useful as that of an astrologer or an alchemist.”

“For subjective reasons,” Lippman and Merz went on, the staff “accepted and believed most of what they were told” by the U.S. government and “the agents and adherents of the old regime.” With the U.S.S.R. reduced to starvation and ruin they mocked Soviet leaders’ peace offers as Bolshevik subterfuge designed to “concentrate their energies for a renewed drive toward world-wide revolution,” starting with a “Red invasion of Europe” that somehow never materialized.

At the same time, in the eagerness to equate Marxism with Satanism Communist social gains have been routinely screened out of capitalist news coverage. The dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights that characterized the Stalin period are very rarely mentioned when the USSR is being discussed. It is considered axiomatic that "socialism doesn't work," so the idea that revolutionary communism actually created a better life for for the mass of people (in Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba) than the miserable existence that preceded it under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists, simply cannot be entertained no matter what the facts are.

In China, where the 1949 revolution unified the country and ultimately ended mass starvation, the social gains of the Communist period were quite marked. According to work published by Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen (and his associate Jean Dreze) in 1989, "Chinese efforts have been quite spectacular," but dramatic gains in raising life expectancy and quality of life levels came abruptly to an end in 1979 when market-based reforms were implemented and "the downward trend in mortality [in China was] at least halted, and possibly reversed." The results were "particularly severe" for women and female children. After 1979, there was "a steady decline in the female-male ratio in the population" and a two year decline in female life expectancy, after a period of steady growth in the pro-reform period.

Meanwhile, in neighboring capitalist India, Sen and Dreze reported, Indian death rates were even higher than in China during the famine attending the Great Leap Forward, an event that resulted in somewhere between 16.5 million and 29.5 million people starving to death, the authors conclude. Nevertheless, "as far as morbidity, mortality, and longevity is concerned, China has a decisive lead over India." Between 1949 (the year of the revolution) and 1979 "China . . . achieved a remarkable transition in health and nutrition," while "no comparable transformation has occurred in India." Therefore, as of 1979, "the life of the average Chinese has tended to be much more secure than that of the average Indian." If India had adopted China's social programs, "there would have been about 3.8 million fewer deaths a year around the middle of the 1980s." The authors do not shy away from the obvious conclusion: "That indicates that every eight years or so more people in addition die in India - in comparison with Chinese mortality rates - than the total number that died in the gigantic Chinese famine." In short, India in its experiment with democratic capitalism starting in 1947 caused more deaths than all those attributed to Communist states in the whole world after 1917 - over 100 million by 1949 - and tens of millions more in the last three decades.

How often does this conclusion reach a mass audience in the United States? Has it ever reached Bradley Smith? And where are the New York Times headlines screaming of a capitalist murder machine running amok?

The point is that claims about tens of millions of people being deliberately murdered are very often ideological exercises designed to demonize or otherwise discredit selected enemies of capitalist empire. Therefore, stories of Communist "gulags" and deliberate Marxist mass murder campaigns should be taken with a very large grain of salt. They are all too similar to stories of soap made from Jewish cadavers and lampshades made of human skin.

Sources:

Bradley R. Smith, "Break His Bones - The Private Life of a Holocaust Revisionist," (Bradley R. Smith, 2002)

Bradley R. Smith, "The Man Who Saw His Own Liver," (Nine-Banded Books, 2008)

Michael Parenti, "Blackshirts & Reds - Rational Fascism & The Overthrow of Communism," (City Lights, 1997)

Noam Chomsky, "Rogue States - The Rule of Force in World Affairs," (South End, 2000)

Robert K. Murray, "Red Scare - A Study in National Hysteria, 1917-1920," (University of Minnesota, 1955)

Murray B. Levin, "Political Hysteria in America - The Democratic Capacity For Repression," (Basic Books, 1971)

Robert Justin Goldstein, "Political Repression in Modern America," (Schenkman, 1978)

Peter G. Filene, ed. "American Views of Soviet Russia, 1917-1965," (Dorsey Press, 1968)

Interview with Allan Nairn, "Democracy Now," June 8, 2004

-----Michael K. Smith is the author of "Portraits of Empire" and "The Madness of King George" (illustrations by Matt Wuerker), from Common Courage Press
Posted by Michael Smith at 11:00 PM

Weapons of Mass Distraction: Again!

Seven million jobs vanish from the economy in two years, most never to return without a multi trillion dollar public works program. American leadership stresses market profiteering as a solution to climate change , while more scientists see that as the source of a problem so critical it needs immediate action . The slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan has lasted longer than the 20th century world wars and now spreads to Pakistan , destroying more lives and draining more trillions from a nearly bankrupt USA . Tensions grow among stressed out citizens , including some of what passes for their political leadership . So what should most concern us?

IRAN?


We are continuously warned of the ominous threat represented by this nation said to be secretly preparing to annihilate all life on earth, or at least its most perennially menaced tribe . Ahmadinejad is supposedly out to exterminate Jews with nuclear weapons that do not exist. They certainly exist in Israel but are never mentioned in our “don't ask don’t tell” policy towards the Jewish apartheid state. With 70 million people, Iran spends some $7 billion annually on its military. Israel spends double that amount, with one tenth that population . The United States spends $600 billion , or 85 times more than Iran . Obviously, Israel and the USA are pacifist nations while Iran is a military monster. Also, atheists wrote the bible and pimps believe in free love.

Given the hysterical ravings of corporate puppets posing as our government and then repeated by their media stenographers , we can be forgiven for consuming intellectual garbage and believing it is informational health food.

America’s Israeli lobby has been hysterically demonizing Ahmadinejad and Iran for years now. Most recently , after thousands of AIPAC minions lobbied for it, congress - America’s not Israel’s - approved action authorizing government divestiture from companies invested in Iran’s petroleum and gas sectors. Then the Secretary of State - America’s not Israel’s - argued for a “diplomatic” approach so “we gain credibility and influence ...to make a sanctions regime as tight and crippling as we would want it to be.” Why should we “cripple” Iran, which has done nothing to us while suffering American meddling in its political process for generations? It dates back to the assumption of power by the Islamic revolution which overthrew an American created despot . But it became worse when Ahmadinejad hosted an international conference on the holocaust with some participants who would be imprisoned in their own nations for merely suggesting a critical view of an historic event. Since then the hatred for him, the distortions of his public comments and the charge he was embarked upon the annihilation of the Jewish people has become a dementia with the potential of plunging the entire world into unimaginable horror . This terrible threat needs to be dealt with by rational leadership, if any still exists. There is reason for doubt.

The president who supposedly represents change speaks out of both sides of his mouth, making occasional statements of reason to attempt balance with the usually irrational , but the possibility of lunatic action by other leaders still looms . Most of the world can see through the blatant lies and hysterical suppositions of those who claim imminent extermination if Iran is not destroyed, but it is more difficult to overcome consciousness control exercised here by the lobby and its employees in U.S. government and media. While some confused and disoriented Americans are screaming over alleged socialist policies taking their hard earned money, a minority ruled government is moving toward stealing far more than some angry family's christmas club fund.

As more of our people suffer joblessness, unpayable debt, unaffordable health care and sink into poverty , our heads are filled with gibberish about a threat from nonexistent Iranian weapons . We should remember the charges lodged against Iraq by the same political forces that are trying to get us into another murderous fiasco. They clamor for more blood to avoid what they devoutly believe is an eternal assault on Jews which seems to date back to a time even before there were Jews. Some compare the situation to Viet Nam in that we get more deeply into an un-winnable war, as though its immorality doesn't matter and only victory assumes importance. But even without moral consideration - essential in our immoral system - the wastefully brutal madness of conducting war while our nation suffers crippling social problems shows deteriorating ability of leaders to understand material reality. It calls for a genuine democratic intervention, something that presently seems beyond American capacity .

What is to be done when a war making president receives a peace prize, and this after condemning a report which called Israel's atrocity in Gaza exactly what it was? When media outlets purvey such disinformation that much of the public is reduced to believing socialists rule the USA ? An individual in our condition would be sedated and put in a padded cell but our problem is social. Despite our cultural shaping as isolated individuals, we need to create democratic social action to reverse the process by which we live, but will not be able to survive if it continues .

A spineless president who bends to minority power is a problem but could become a solution if democracy brings real majority control . Obama will follow orders coming from power, which is why he obeys the war making class. If there is to be peace and a better world, real democracy needs a wake up call among the people. An aroused public needs to provide a choice that reflects majority values and interests or minorities will not only continue ruling Obama, but make things much worse than they are now . Is that possible? Don’t ask, just make it impossible.




Copyright (c) 2009 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.

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frank scott
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