Better than Nixon saying (as Vice President) "you won't have Dick Nixon around anymore" Of course he lied. Later he said "I am not a crook!" Again, he perjured. Trump was very succinct. To the point. "I'm fucked" ... actually, he's sodomized with a shovel, sideways so it would hurt more.
Tag: Henry Kissinger
De mortuis nil nisi bonum is well and good but upholds the victor’s narrative
It's probably older than Latin. "De mortuis nil nisi bonum" is a propriety imposed at death, as if to offer the deceased a false comfort that, however fraudulent the pretense of their reputation in life, they can take it with them. Well, most commonly, "Don't speak ill of the dead" is a reminder not to rehash petty grievances in the face of another's mortality, death being after all mankind's mutual adversary. It's a pact I suppose that's meant to benefit everyone equally. But the tradition does sort of cement history as written by the victor, where revisionists dare not speak truth to power while that authority is alive. I saw the adage used in a disturbingly upbeat eulogy for Margaret Thatcher in this week's New Yorker. Disturbing because it was fair handed enough, but mired like New York City, insulated by the growing wealth and cultural disparity, in the Western master narrative. I find that not speaking ill of the dead is completely irresponsible with historic figures like Margaret Thatcher and Henry Kissinger. If we are prevented from hanging them to hasten their death, we must at the minimum garrotte their memory before it's set in stone. To beat a dead horse.
Barack Obama Nobel Prizefighter
At what line in the sand will we be able to say for certain that President Obama's hope bubble is a bust? Half of you are laughing at my naivety, the others are hushing me with your fingers crossed. Will it take a nuclear attack on Iran? More bailout? Less health? For example, when will we know whether Obama will be more a Kissinger Peace Laureate than a Mandela? A decision on Afghanistan? We have it already. The BBC is reporting that as the US thanked Britain for recommitting forces to NATO in Afghanistan, it assured its British allies that Obama would soon be substantially increasing our own military forces. The announcement is to be made next week, the surge, 45,000 more soldiers. The White House emphatically denies this story, stating that President Obama "had not yet made a decision on troop numbers" and "would make up his mind in the coming weeks." And there's your answer. And we've had it for awhile. I'll bet as a supporter of Barack Obama, you had made up your mind on Iraq and Afghanistan before you elected the hope candidate. You probably based your support for Senator Obama on the intuition that a young man smart as that had already made up his mind too, certainly on the moral issues. What does it mean now, that Obama might be still thinking on it? If Obama had made up his mind, or has, he's struggling now to make up his mind about how to tell you. Withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan is not ethically complicated. Financially it's a tough move because you've got all those war contractor profiteers who've got to be weened cautiously. But there is no intermediary way. So long as the US retains authority, it's an occupation. So long as one US company is collecting reconstruction funds, the US is serving its own interests. Rationalizations to remain as peacekeepers are just excuses to keep our hand in the till. There is no peacekeeping role for the US. We must get out, and proffer gobs of restitution. You know who should get the Nobel Peace Prize? The Nobel committee. For their valiant hopeful effort, at the risk of looking foolish. They merit at least a nomination for Time Magazine Persons Of The Year.
Greg Mortenson US occupation pitchman
Greg Mortenson, stealth poster boy for the GWOT Pax Americana, nominated for the same Nobel suggested for Henry Kissinger, will be in Denver this Sunday at Red Rocks, to emcee JOURNEY OF HOPE, to collect "Pennies For Peace" to build Western Education settlements to justify more US military advance camps, and to lead a "Prayer For Peace." Wanna bet it's not an Islamic prayer?
Ward Churchill: Some People Push Back
Here is Ward Churchill's notorious 9/11 "Little Eichmanns" essay, published online September 12, 2001, presented here for archival purposes lest critics think they can silence one of our nation's strongest dissenting voices. Churchill later expanded this piece into a book entitled On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: reflections on the consequences of U.S. imperial arrogance and criminality published by AK Press in 2003. Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens by Ward Churchill When queried by reporters concerning his views on the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Malcolm X famously – and quite charitably, all things considered – replied that it was merely a case of "chickens coming home to roost." On the morning of September 11, 2001, a few more chickens – along with some half-million dead Iraqi children – came home to roost in a very big way at the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. Well, actually, a few of them seem to have nestled in at the Pentagon as well. The Iraqi youngsters, all of them under 12, died as a predictable – in fact, widely predicted – result of the 1991 US "surgical" bombing of their country's water purification and sewage facilities, as well as other "infrastructural" targets upon which Iraq's civilian population depends for its very survival. If the nature of the bombing were not already bad enough – and it should be noted that this sort of "aerial warfare" constitutes a Class I Crime Against humanity, entailing myriad gross violations of international law, as well as every conceivable standard of "civilized" behavior – the death toll has been steadily ratcheted up by US-imposed sanctions for a full decade now. Enforced all the while by a massive military presence and periodic bombing raids, the embargo has greatly impaired the victims' ability to import the nutrients, medicines and other materials necessary to saving the lives of even their toddlers. All told, Iraq has a population of about 18 million. The 500,000 kids lost to date thus represent something on the order of 25 percent of their age group. Indisputably, the rest have suffered – are still suffering – a combination of physical debilitation and psychological trauma severe enough to prevent their ever fully recovering. In effect, an entire generation has been obliterated. The reason for this holocaust was/is rather simple, and stated quite straightforwardly by President George Bush, the 41st "freedom-loving" father of the freedom-lover currently filling the Oval Office, George the 43rd: "The world must learn that what we say, goes," intoned George the Elder to the enthusiastic applause of freedom-loving Americans everywhere. How Old George conveyed his message was certainly no mystery to the US public. One need only recall the 24-hour-per-day dissemination of bombardment videos on every available TV channel, and the exceedingly high ratings of these telecasts, to gain a sense of how much they knew. In trying to affix a meaning to such things, we would do well to remember the wave of elation that swept America at
Norman Finkelstein dissects the current Israeli military disinformation dope
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS" is a quasi US government operation that promotes political disinformation around the globe. Norman Finkelstein has brilliantly dissected their most recent campaign of disinformation on behalf of the Israeli Military terrorist machine that the Pentagon uses so often in its own brand of State Terrorism. Remember Henry Kissinger's terrorism against Cambodia? I do. Israel's latest rampage through Gaza was small beans in comparison. Kissinger was the architect of a true genocide of horrible dimensions in SE Asia, and he did it on behalf of Uncle Sam. CSIS shows their true colors in honoring Kissinger with a special department all his own. Are they Holocaust deniers? I definitely think so.
Cabinet candidate Bill Richardson was clean enough to run for president?
Doesn't it strike you as a bit odd, that Arizona governor Bill Richardson withdraws his name from consideration for the Secretary of Commerce because of some unseemly quid pro quo scheme, yet it hadn't stopped him from running for president? Where was the press to dig up the story when Richardson was still a potential Democratic presidential nominee? It's not as if the subject of corruption hadn't come up. Greg Palast had exposed the governor in Armed Madhouse. I like Palast's extrapolation on Richardson's ethnic heritage. To summarize, Richardson came by his Hispanic hyphen through his mom's side. His dad was a Citibank executive, which qualifies Richardson to be a Citibank-American. As a partner in Henry Kissinger's lobbying firm, Palast also terms him a Kissinger-American. But what most interested Palast was the corrupt election of 2004, and how George Bush stole Arizona, under the nose of a supposedly Democratic governor. With Richardson momentarily in the spotlight, here's an excerpt which Palast is circulating: Bill Richardson - Kissinger-American by Greg Palast, excerpted from Armed Madhouse Henry Kissinger and Bill Richardson January 5, 2009 Bill Richardson is out: Caught with his hand, if not exactly in the cookie jar, at least you could say his sticky finger were near it. I'm not surprised. For years I've been investigating the second-most corrupt state in the USA (after Alaska). I like to check in on the enchanted state with my bud Santiago Juárez. I knew it was not a polite question, but it was really bugging me, so I asked him, “Exactly how does a Mexican get the name William Richardson?” Governor Richardson’s dad, Santiago explained, was a Citibank executive assigned to Mexico City. There he met Governor Bill’s mom, and-milagro!-a Mexican-American was born. Richardson gets big mileage out of his mother’s heritage, and that makes him, legitimately, a Mexican-American, a politically useful designation. But it’s just as legitimate to say that Richardson is a Citibank-American. But Governor Richardson is more than that. Between leaving Bill Clinton’s cabinet where he was Secretary of Energy and grabbing a Hispanic-district seat in Congress, Richardson became a partner in (Henry) Kissinger and Associates. That would make Richardson a Kissinger-American as well. In 2004, John Kerry won New Mexico-if you counted the votes. But they didn't - and George Bush won the state and the presidency by just 5,000 ballots. Everyone was talking about the theft of Ohio by Republicans, but few noted that New Mexico was stolen as well. But one fact drove me straight nuts: In the end, this state and its damaged elections were in the hands of Richardson, A Democrat and a Mexican-American one at that. In New Mexico the issue of uncounted votes is more than skin deep. Lots of Mexican-American votes don’t tally, but Citibank-American votes never get lost. Kissinger American votes always count. The story of America’s failed elections is not about undervotes. It’s about underclass. Disenfranchisement is class warfare by other means. It just happens that in New Mexico, the colors of the underclass are, for
The encirclement of US rivals is apace
"Washington policy now encompasses a series of 'democratic' or soft coup projects which would strategically cut China off from access to the vital oil and gas reserves of the Caspian including Kazakhstan. The earlier Asian Great Silk Road trade routes went through Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Almaty in Kazakhstan for geographically obvious reasons, in a region surrounded by major mountain ranges. Geopolitical control of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan would enable control of any potential pipeline routes between China and Central Asia just as the encirclement of Russia controls pipeline and other ties between it and western Europe, China, India and the Mideast." -William Engdahl In this light does it become more clear why American intelligence interests support FREE TIBET efforts, and Greg Mortenson's Central Asian Institute "western education" encirclement of China's southern border! Bruce Gagnon of Organizing Notes has assembled some notes on the growing conflict in South Ossetia, Georgia, and the implications it poses for a broader military engagement. I'll reprint Bruce's article here: WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT GEORGIA-RUSSIA CONFLICT? I must admit that I am not an expert on the Georgia-Russia conflict that is now underway. But I have been following issues there for some time and have learned to see some linkages between what is going on in places like Poland, Czech Republic, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, China, and the Georgia-Russia conflict. So here are some random, and not so random, observations and quotes that I think might give us all something to ponder. * It's all about oil and natural gas. Russia has the world's largest supply of natural gas and Iran has the world's second largest supply. There is much oil and natural gas up in the Caspian Sea region. Which ever country controls this part of the world will have a jump start in controlling the keys to the world's economic engine for the foreseeable future. * The expanding economy of China has tremendous need for energy. China now imports much of its oil via sea (thru the Taiwan Straits) and the U.S. has in recent years doubled its naval presence in this region pursuing the ability to "choke off" China's ability to import oil. China is looking for alternative, land routes, to transmit oil thus pipelines through Central Asia become crucial. U.S. permanent bases in Afghanistan and attempts to put military bases in other Central Asian countries is in large part an attempt to create the ability to control these pipeline routes. F. William Engdahl, author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, maintains that, "Washington is out to deny China east land access to either Russia, the Middle East or to the oil and gas fields of the Caspian Sea." Engdahl goes on to say, "A close look at the map of Eurasia begins to suggest what is so vital for China and therefore for Washington's future domination of Eurasia. The goal is not only strategic encirclement of Russia through a series of NATO bases ranging from Camp Bond Steel in Kosovo to Poland, to Georgia,
Al Gore?
Al Gore? What a joke the Nobel Peace Prize is! Gore is the most laughable winner since all together now, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin got the prize in 1994. I take that back. This is the most laughable recipient since Woodrow Wilson got it in 1919. Who even remembers the majority of winners of this prize? Willie Brandt for example? Or Frank B. Kellogg, who supposedly stopped World War 2 from happening? Now Gore gets to join on board this illustrious list of Peace Prize big winners alongside Henry Kissinger, who won in 1973! How proud he must be... Awarding a peace prize for a man that never spoke out against the atrocities the US committed against Iraq while he was in office as US VP is shameful. Not to mention that he still is no voice of peace against the current Iraq War continued forward by Bush after he left office. For further commentary see A Grand Misjudgment, Gore's Peace Prize at counterpunch.org
Two and a half for Scooter
Poor Scooter, fall guy for Bush and Cheney's record setting criminality. He got a 2 and 1/2 year sentence for something you and I might have gotten life, and yet, he will probably not even have his golf games interrupted. He now faces a likely pardon or time at a country club 'prison'. Such disgrace! The funniest part of the whole thing, is who gave him personal references in front of the judge. They were Paul Wolfowitz, Henry Kissinger, and Donald Rumsfeld! Write your government representatives and ask that his time be spent at Guantanamo instead. They say he looked red eyed and ashen faced when he left the courtroom. Let him look like Padilla when he comes out Guantanamo. That would teach the bum a lesson, would it not?
Numb skulls awarding peace prizes
Two weeks ago I wrote about a CIA funded Otpor spokesperson in town talking to local pacifists of Gandhi and nonviolence and how supposedly that had overthrown Milosevic in Yugoslavia instead of the US and NATO bombs rained down on his country. Then last week I wrote about a NM Department of Tourism run 'peace' festival in Albuquerque funded to the tune of $450,000. Sappy 'peace' rhetoric run by the Chamber of Commerce basically. This week I guess the focus has to be on the Australian 'Sidney Peace Prize'. This one just blows me away, too! The prize was awarded to none other than Hans Blix, which is the most absurd award of a peace prize since Henry Kissinger was given the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1973! We truly live in an Orwellian world these days when initiators of wars are so often given prizes by people spouting pacifist ideology. Hans Blix was the guy who set up all the lies about Saddam Hussein and Iraq having WOMD that Bush and his Democratic and Republican Party enablers used to launch the invasion and occupation of Iraq. No way he deserves a peace prize, and actually he might better be executed as a war criminal instead. Without his personal act as wrench-er up of the propaganda, hysteria, and panic, the world public would never have gone along much as they did with initially supporting the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. This is just one more example of how pacifist beliefs and desires by much of the public can often be distorted into its opposite by simplistic twists of illogic. Then we get numb skulls awarding peace prizes to war criminals like Hans Blix and Henry Kissinger. PS- I am still trying to get over how the local ACLU cut off audience questioning of CS police chief Richard 'Liars' Myers last week. The ACLU organizers required that all questions be vetted and then read by one person alone to the audience. Because of this, the annual meeting of the ACLU turned into a hug and handshake fest with the cops. Shameful. If the city of Colorado Springs had tried to do this sort of stunt at the city council meeting we would all have gotten peeved off. But instead, the audience silently sat by while the police chief fed them a long sermon of crap. And then many of the crowd applauded just that! Sometimes some amongst the 'peace' crowd can make one wanna cry with their innocence and naivete.