#1 state sponsor of terror goes for the gold

Here's the story of how some self-described "civil rights organization" in Israel is combating civil rights -- particularly free speech -- in the guise of fighting the "terrorists."

The Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center has petitioned Twitter to remove an account belonging to Hezbollah's media channel, al-Manar, arguing that the US has declared Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Here's CNN's characterization:

Twitter lawsuit threatened over alleged Hezbollah aid - CNN.com: "The Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center describes itself as a civil rights organization dedicated to "combating the terrorist organizations and the regimes that support them through lawsuits litigated in courtrooms around the world." It supported a similar campaign earlier this year directed at social media giant Facebook.
Among other things, the center succeeded in getting Facebook to pull down a page created by Palestinian activists calling for a "Third Intifada" against Israel."

They say the winner writes the history books, and in the current era the owners write the mainstream narrative that ceaselessly broadcast on TV, the internet and the press. Currently, Israeli and US policy is hopelessly entangled, so that one's interest is made to be indistinguishable from the other's. Of course, no one else's opinion is given any credence whatsoever.

One could argue that this is simply propaganda on the part of the government and it's corporate paymasters. And that would be more or less correct -- there isn't much subtlety about it. So long as Israel and the US say Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, instead of the legitimate representative of the aspirations of a majority of the people of Lebanon, it will be considered a terrorist organization and no dissent will be permitted.

What's so bad is that these social media sites like Twitter and Facebook get a lot of credit for being instrumental in movements to bring about political change in some countries in the Mideast and north Africa. While there may be some validity to that in as far as it goes, when it comes to the US and its satellites in the banker oligarchy orbit, such possibilities are proactively forbidden.

We will have dictated by the powers that be powerful disincentives for any dissent or discussion about the political orthodoxies that so pollute the discourse in much of the enlightened western world. It's almost as though the Enlightenment has been rescinded by decree.

In its place, we are allotted our daily dosage of mindless diversion, and the endless repetition of the one true narrative about how the world works.

There will be no talking during the feature presentation.

Ron Paul is not what he seems

Like most other conscious and engaged US persons, we have been victims of politicians two-timing us between the campaign and when they assume office. Barack Obama is a prime example of a changeling, one who sold his supporters a bill of goods, while delivering for the fat cats who ponied up moneys for his campaign. It seems to be in the genetic makeup of all politicians in the US, and Ron Paul -- in spite of his supporters' ardor -- is but another shyster. Watch how his campaign deals with protesters from the Occupy movement:

5 Occupy protesters arrested at Paul's Iowa HQ – USATODAY.com: "DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Five Occupy protesters were arrested Thursday outside the Iowa campaign headquarters of presidential contender Ron Paul as the group continued its protest against Republican candidates and President Obama." The action came a day after seven protesters were arrested outside Republican Mitt Romney's Des Moines headquarters, and Occupy spokeswoman Danielle Ryun said more protests, and probably arrests, will come."They're all going to get equal play on this," Ryun said. "We are very disillusioned with every candidate."

Granted, it's a bit severe to lump Paul in with Obama. After all, who else could be so craven and cynical? But the guy saw his opportunity and went for it, playing on the hopes and dreams of the many to advance his own personal fortunes, while serving the plutocrats on Wall Street who bankrolled his marketing campaign.

So how does it figure that Paul is similarly afflicted? Just watch him. It has nothing to do with what he says, and everything to do with how he handles himself when not talking about his preferred issues.

Ending the wars is great, and something that up til now has been forbidden in the political discourse. Ditto for the PATRIOT act and other eviscerations of the bill of rights as promoted by politicians of both major parties. Finally, he's against the Federal Reserve Bank, and the bailouts of bankers generally. These are all issue of critical importance at a time when the country is sliding to fascism and neo-feudalism.

It's just that Paul has no power to end the abuses and reverse the disintegration of the republic at the hands of the oligarchy. This isn't -- at least it isn't yet -- a dictatorship where a single person rules by decree. There's a vast machinery that's been erected by the powers that be to insulate and protect the levers of institutional power from interlopers intent on rolling back their hard-fought gains in terms of wealth and control.

Paul is a Trojan horse, just like Obama, who promises the things his followers wish to hear, in order to seduce and neuter their imagined political effectiveness.

There is no one principled or genuine in US public life. One becomes a member of the governing class by playing a role, and folksy, avuncular Ron Paul is no different. He'll go only so far, and no farther, and leave his starry eyed followers slack jawed and stupified.

If there's any part of his program that Ron Paul is serious about, it's about ending government regulation, and cutting taxes for the wealthy even more savagely than the GOP has managed to do thus far. There's the key to his support from the investor class, that has always tolerated the pandering to the religious right if it meant they paid less tax. If you get right down to it, this has been the sole objective to all GOP supporters who aren't so-called social conservatives.

In any case, it has been ordained that Ron Paul will not win the nomination to run against Barack Obama. At this point, Mitt Romney is the person to beat for that privilege, while the Ron Paul supporters will either pick up their marbles and go home, or get on board to defeat Obama, which is the only thing that motivates and sustains the GOP during these, the latter days, of the US decline into a genuine third-world banana republic.

The problem with Ron Paul

As the all-important Iowa caucuses approach, the race to the finish line grows more heated by the minute, with each of the GOP hopefuls jockeying for position.

The preceding statement was a bit sarcastic, actually. Iowa is a backwards, unrepresentative state that tends to elevate the compulsive liars who push cynical, patronizing nonsense at the yahoo nation in the hopes of getting the fundamentalist, right-wing voters to give them the nod. It is almost too painful to bear.

What is interesting this year is Ron Paul. Paul, in spite of being out of step with the inside-the-beltway consensus on global empire and the rule of the corporate oligarchy, shows genuine potential to come out on top of the heap -- a development that's causing extreme discomfort amongst the spear carriers of the status quo. Observe the characterization of Rep. Paul from the Asphyxiated Press:

The Associated Press: Romney, Perry slap at Paul on Iran: "A conservative, Paul commands strong allegiance from his supporters but appears to have little potential to expand his appeal and emerge as a serious challenger for the nomination. Yet he could complicate other candidates' pathway to the nomination."

It seems simply unfathomable to those whose careers have been laid at the service of the corporate state and the grand poobahs of finance that someone so far out of the mainstream can actually be communicating a simple idea to the masses: that the US is on a catastrophic and unsustainable course that will certainly end in the complete disintegration of this society and our way of life.

Currently, the likes of Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich are exercised at Paul's refusal to condemn the Iranians for their nuclear research and development program -- assuring their audience among the consensus elites that the mullahs are single-mindedly pursuing a weapon which they will promptly fire at Israel. No one but a damned fool -- or a Bilderberg liar -- would assert such a thing, given the Israeli nuclear arsenal numbering in the hundreds of weapons. Still, though, they persist in being purveyors of utter manufactured reality in the service of perpetual war in the service of filling the yawning coffers of the resource barons.

We can listen to Gingrich, Romney, Perry and company boogey until we puke, as they spin a narrative about a world that only exists in the whorish, paid-for media in the US, or we can tune these tedious bastards out once and for all, and turn our back on their blandishments. They promise only more of the same, more war, more impoverishment of the working people of this country, as the oligarchs build a new world order that reduces all working people to peons and wage slaves, while they rake away the profits that should accrue to those whose labor makes the wealth of nations.

Let's cut these clowns off once and for all, including the present occupant of the White House -- the supreme fraudster himself. It's long past time for people to ignore the bastards, and go a different way. We have the power in 2012 to start shaking things up. Let's take it!

Occupy activists to tarnish the false shine on shitty politics

Of all the words squandered in the press over the Iowa caucuses, some of the most cynical, corrupt and self-serving come from the political establishment that constantly manipulates the political discourse in the US. When Occupy activists plan to come to the state and protest its first-in-the-nation caucuses for the GOP presidential nomination, there's the usual bellyaching about disruptive and irresponsible hippies polluting the pristine American electoral process:

Occupy activists descend on Iowa for ‘anti-caucus’ to target Republican candidates before vote - The Washington Post: "Hundreds of Occupy activists from at least 10 states were expected to participate in a “People’s Caucus” near the Capitol to plot activities between now and the Jan. 3 caucuses. The activists are promising to interrupt candidates at events and camp out at their Iowa campaign offices. They say they want to change the political dialogue, but critics fear their tactics could tarnish Iowa’s reputation for civil political discourse ahead of the contest. Activists say mass arrests are possible."

The Washington Post, the hometown paper of this establishment monopoly that weighs so heavily on the national conversation, is only too willing to oblige the hucksters and con-men who descend on the backwaters of this big, dumb polity, in order to bamboozle and play the rubes for suckers, according to their focus-grouped, Koch-brothers-backed ideology industrial complex script. This is how wholesale politics works in the US, where the media onslaught plays the yo-yo constituency like livestock at the county fair, rolling out the racism, resentments and pork-barrel promises in order to pander to the worst instincts of our woefully unprepared voters.

Enter the Occupy movement. They may lack a clear agenda but their challenge to the entire stage-managed spectacle is way overdue. Just as the national media is making a full-court press to marginalize and downplay the strength of Ron Paul, they're doing double duty to discredit and malign the protesters using the predictable slurs -- that the comity and civility of the process will be breached if interlopers descend on scene and question the unassailable verities of the GOP establishment -- conservatism with an ugly face and an even worse disposition.

The Occupy movement also has to fend off charges of being partial to Obama and the democrats -- who aren't running caucuses or primaries, since Obama is unopposed in his party. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, since these people in Occupy are probably the suckers who fell hook, line and sinker for the fraud in the White House in 2008, and are not in the mood for smooth-talking hucksters to sell 'em a line again in 2012.

It's not that Obama and his clique are immune to criticism, just that they aren't in the fray -- yet. Give it time. The whole rotten two-party sham of a system is about to get a long-overdue wake-up call next year. There's going to be hell to pay for the continuing decline in the standard of living in the US, and playing footsie with statistics is not going to help covering up the vicious cycle of rich feasting on the misery of working class people.

Time's here for the suckers to come to their senses -- if only because they've been knocked over the head with brickbats. The old sham and scam is already played out.

Poor USA, betrayed by a bad boy...

The government finally paraded Bradley Manning, suspected of being the source of the Wikileaks publication of thousands of documents that were embarrassing to our sleazy and conniving politicians. After holding Manning in conditions that barely qualify as humane -- and that's for animals at the pound -- he was finally paraded in public for the first time since his arrest last year. The media circus presented the hearing thusly:

Hearing concludes for suspected WikiLeaks leaker Manning | Reuters: "(Reuters) - The Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking classified files to the WikiLeaks website gave U.S. enemies "unfettered access" to government secrets, a military prosecutor said on Thursday, but a defense lawyer said the soldier had done no harm.

The comments came as lawyers for the two sides made their closing arguments at a hearing to determine whether Army Private First Class Bradley Manning, 24, should be court-martialed on charges including aiding the enemy and wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet."

What seems most disturbing about this entire charade upon justice is the minuscule harm done to US national security by the release of these purportedly secret files, none of which carried a secret or top secret classification. In a regime such as the current US government, where secrecy is a rampaging malignancy eating its way ravenously through the body politic, the game of classification has run amok, and Manning's alleged crime is nothing but a secrecy-obsessed cabal's attempt to squelch any violation of its mania against accountability.

What chit-chat goes on between busybody diplomats who are abusing their status to manipulate and undermine other sovereign governments is not really a matter of national security, but more mundanely an exercise of ass-covering and plausible deniability. The cynical machinations being carried out by the minions of the US government, on behalf of its corporate masters, should really be more exposed, rather than less, but the persecution of Bradley Manning shows the state's determination to silence its critics and squelch any dissent that comes by way of dirty secrets being aired in public.

Does anyone who's familiar with the now-frequent news stories of how easily Chinese government-backed hackers can gain access the US corporate and military secrets -- to say nothing of the ability of "friends" like Israel -- think that this diplomatic yammering is really unknown to the various governments of the planet with competent intelligence services? The Russians and Chinese are fully aware of what the US government is doing in its many spheres of influence -- to put it benignly.

The real obsession of the government is not to keep this out of the hands of other governments, but to keep their dirty laundry out of the press, where it can be used to call for a halt to the excesses of nascent totalitarianism in all the formerly "democratic" governments in the US orbit. Keeping a restive population diverted from the real objectives and agendas of the ruling oligarchy is the primary role of silencing the whistle blower -- something that is being carried out with ever-increasing ardor by the Obama administration, in its role as guardian of the status quo against the agitation of the 99 percenters.

Bradley Manning, whether responsible for the leaks or not, must be made an example for anyone contemplating an answer to the pangs of conscience, who dares blow the state's cover on its many crimes and transgressions against people and common decency. To the US government, Manning and Assange are the greatest threats to national security, as the state attempts to close the barn doors of secrecy before the sheep escape...

Editorializing in the lead paragraph

ABC news' national editors would like to get on to the staff of the editorial department, so they've started to jazz up their leads with loaded language with misleading implications, just to help the government-approved storyline along:

Manning Hearing Bogs Down Over Dispute - ABC News: "Pfc. Bradley Manning, the young soldier accused of aiding the enemy by slipping a trove of national security secrets to WikiLeaks, sat quietly at the opening session of his pretrial hearing Friday as government and defense lawyers tangled over whether the presiding officer could be impartial."

What trove of national security secrets would those happen to be? What appeared in Wikileaks was just a bunch of diplomatic chit-chat -- embarrassing perhaps, but hardly rising to the level of national security secrets.

That is all just a quibble, of course. President O'Bambi has already declared Bradley Manning guilty -- and he, on his word alone, is able to declare someone a terrorist, have them held incommunicado and without charge, or even summarily executed. The very definition of "tyrant," in fact.

The charges and trial of Bradley Manning, under military "justice", is yet another mockery of the constitution and the rule of law. Thanks to ABC News, we can see how efficiently the government's agenda is carried out by its minions.

A "formal" end to our informal war

File this under the category of "what do you expect them to say?". After nearly a decade of struggle both to sell the war to a skeptical public and then to conclude hostilities "with honor," the politicians have finally hit a brick wall in the pursuit of the Iraq conflict, and now the US is "withdrawing" its military with customary expressions of self-approval:

"REPORTING FROM BAGHDAD --  The U.S. military mission in Iraq formally ended Thursday in a small ceremony at Baghdad airport as the last U.S. troops prepared to leave the country after nearly nine years of war, billions of dollars spent and nearly 4,500 lives lost.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and other top civilian and military officials flew in to Baghdad to mark the formal end of the U.S. military effort, one of most divisive wars in American history.

Instead of addressing the deep questions about the war, Panetta paid tribute to U.S. troops, arguing that the combat losses and the enormous expenditure of resources since 2003 had not been wasted.

What began as a con job ends as swindles and dirty dealing always does -- with carefully scripted, delusional expressions of vindication, both over means and ends.

That this war was never declared by congress is never mentioned. An "authorization to use military force" to remove Saddam's supposed weapons of mass destruction was merely a ruse to get the US into the war. The additional lack of UN sanction, carefully neglected in the communal accolades, ensures that history will regard the enterprise as an unlawful war of aggression, and a crime against humanity and against the peace.

The authors of this atrocity well deserve the fate of Hitler and his henchmen, but will escape being called to account for their crimes in an international order that is based on lies and hypocrisy. It's more the pity, we're so used to it by now as to make little in the way of protest.

The protesters, how gathered in such great numbers in the run-up to war, have long ago disbursed, never to again bother to try to make the will of the people a part of the dialog in our supposedly democratic republic.

This was the war that began with "shock and awe," and ended with barely a whimper, and a tired and bored public long ago dismissed the gore and destruction from its consciousness in favor of xmas banalities and other doobious amusements.

Rampaging Dick is afraid of Iran

Mr. Drizzle Dick himself, the eminent fraud and purveyor of false incitements to war, now concedes that he's having a small bout of paranoia over Iran's "nukes".

Cheney: Obama has not acted to stop Iran nukes - CBS News: "(CBS News) NEW YORK - Former Vice President Dick Cheney said today he feared Iran was expanding its influence in the Persian Gulf region at the same time that the United States is withdrawing forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and said he has not seen the Obama administration do anything to stop Tehran from building a nuclear weapon.
He also expressed concern that negotiations to retain some U.S. troops in Iraq as security for Americans working there were abandoned."

Somebody ought to tell the tiresome old son of a bitch that there's only one problem with his problem: the Iranians don't have any nukes. They may have the nookie, but they haven't got the nookies... For that, we'd suggest that Uncle Dick check with his soul mate Benyamin Netanyahu, every warmonger's best friend.

Obama may be stupid, but he's not dumb. He knows that Uncle Dick and his crew walked the US into a ultimately self-defeating fight in Iraq, where we're now heading out with our heads held high -- just to be sure we don't bump our heads on the way out... The Iranians came out stronger when Dick and the gang disposed of their #1 mortal enemy, Saddam. Now the Saudis are in a tizzy over the rest of the Shiite Muslims, who happen to exist in great numbers in their oil heartlands -- and that threatens their autocratic monarchy.

Obama has to deal with a very bad hand, just as he has on a variety of subjects, including the economic collapse. Wherever there's the stench of failure and disintegration, you won't find Dick Cheney far from the wreckage.

Now drumming for new war in places like Syria and Iran, Dick has nothing to lose but his sponsors in the corporate oligarchy still have an opportunity for additional rapine and plunder -- both at home and abroad.

So the sound you hear is the pounding of Iranian infrastructure by the US and Israel, as they gear up for a war they so assiduously courted, but won't be able to control once it starts. Let this terminally disgusting old turd have his say.

There'll come a day when even the mention of his name will provoke anything from mild illness to a heart attack in the general population.

Attractive nuisance, 2011

It is the most gaudy, spectacular tribute to the consumer religion holiday frenzy -- the Lightmare on Suburban Streets, popularized on the tacky xmas tour circuit:

Read into it what you will, it draws a mad crowd. Carloads of gawkers, foot-trolling, slack-jawed pre-adolescents and goofy teen-aged date-bait honeys in tow by their over-sexed boyfriends.

The best of the season, and the loss of our collective minds is the reason!

Evergreen Cemetery, revisited

Hey boys and girls, there's been a lot of work done at Evergreen Cemetery lately, especially in the main part where Maggie Walker and her kin are buried. The workers bit themselves off a huge chunk of work this time, and they ripped back the undergrowth right down to the naked earth.

For the most part, it was an admirable job. In only a few places did over-zealousness with task at hand show up in the guise of hacked tombstones, but considering the work is all gratis by volunteers and civic-minded companies, have at it!

Here are some photos from Saturday, Nov. 27. It's not readily apparent, but the cemetery's grounds begin almost from the entrance gate on Evergreen Rd., and extend past the Walker family site to where the road loops around again. It's a huge grounds, and most of it lies in a formidable tangle of weeds that is as-yet unraveled.

The entrance to The Four Cemeteries at Evergreen

Newspaper publisher John Mitchell, Jr. statue in tribute to his mother, Rebecca Mitchell

Mostly included for the view of the surrounding grounds it gives...

I was really taken by the carving on this piece...

It's an incredible change from just a couple of months ago....

Still waiting for the cleanup to extend to the Thompson plot...

Under decades of being concealed by the undergrowth, some of this fine work can again be seen...

Sadly, a lot of the ironwork is ruined; it's commendable that some remains...

Again, it looks great!

Here's the Walker family site, with Maggie Walker's grave at left...

I have no idea what kind of defoliant is used, but it does the job -- even on that awful ivy!

The Mitchell statue again, with a bit of artificial light thrown up for effect...

These photos begin the series of shots taken further up the road from Evergreen's gated entrance...

Where there is no surviving family to maintain the grave sites, they become overgrown quickly.

At their worst, they become completely consumed...

This is part of a cluster of graves that's unkempt, and nearly impossible to reach behind fallen trees...

It's a shame that people such as this, so appreciated for their life's work, have be lost to time...

This site was a particular surprise. Fortunately, someone has watched over it...

I tore away the ivy to expose this stone, which lay concealed under a lump of green.

C'mon, people. Can't we do better than this? It's not a fucking dump!

The pepper-spraying Grinch at Wal-Mart

Isn't it funny how the popular press takes a story like the one about the Wal-Mart shopper who grew indignant while waiting in line, and blasted her fellow shoppers with pepper spray, and slowly morphs it into something altogether different?

Woman pepper-sprayed adults, kids at Wal-Mart sale, police say - latimes.com: "Authorities are searching for a woman accused of pepper-spraying other shoppers Thursday night at the Wal-Mart in Porter Ranch so that she could grab more discounted merchandise.

Twenty customers, including children, were hurt in the 10:10 p.m. incident, officials said. Shoppers complained of minor skin and eye irritation and sore throats.

"This was customer-versus-customer 'shopping rage,'" said Los Angeles Police Lt. Abel Parga."

Early reports put the number of victims at closer to a half-dozen, and had the woman reacting to others who were jumping the line while she waited patiently.

Nowhere in the original telling of the story did the woman lash out aggressively against other shoppers, but after several hours of re-telling, the tale has progressed into a Hollywood-style motif of 'shopping rage' at the mall.

America is intoxicated with its own mythos of social disintegration in conflict with its wholesome pursuit of holiday beneficence and generosity. Society unravels at ever-quickening speed, while mobs of shoppers grope the products they desire in a frenzy of patriotic consumerism.

Just look at all the myopic zombies our family and neighbors have become during the happiest time of the year, because it's a long, long way back from consumer hell to the reality of life lived on the precipice of debt peonage.

Drama over "super committee" is a cruel joke

That the political process is paralyzed by partisanship, brought on by the corruption of the political process by money, is a well-established fact. Now that the chickens have come home to roost, we're being treated to this kind of palaver that chalks it up to congressional gridlock, when in fact the system is completely corrupted:

New drama over U.S. taxes and spending looms | Reuters: "WASHINGTON, Nov 20 (Reuters) - The "super committee" may be effectively dead but brinkmanship in Congress over taxes and spending will only escalate as the impending expiration of several provisions threatens to undermine the U.S. economy.

If Congress does not extend them by the end of the year, workers will see less money in their paychecks, nearly 2 million jobless people will lose the benefits that help them make ends meet, and Medicare patients may have a harder time getting in to see the doctor. Countless businesses will see their tax bills rise.

Analysts have warned that this effective tax increase, which would kick in on Jan. 1, could push the economy back into recession even as it struggles to recover from the last one."

Anyone who claims the economy is an any way, shape or form in recovery mode is either an abject liar or so self-deluded as to be psychotic. The economy has been sinking for the working person for a generation, at least, and the decline has accelerated in the past few years -- as the elites and their scams have finally tanked the very system they built.

There will be no recovery, and there is no fix, with the current cast of characters in their accustomed places. There's no way we can put our fiscal house in order while the inmates are still running the asylum, as they are now.

Take the lie about the payroll tax, and how ending the "holiday" on withholding will appear like a "tax increase" -- this is nothing but a carefully crafted strategy to bankrupt the social security trust fund, in order to end the program and turn the money over to the dogs from hell on Wall Street. It has nothing to do with reviving the economy, and everything to do with gutting the moribund social safety net as it currently still exists.

If this is the only hope we have in the face of financial Armageddon, then face it, we're already fuckin' toast.

The stupid committee was always about causing a fiscal trainwreck that would lead to the type of austerity favored by the IMF and the voracious, heartless bastards that run the banks. They claim that this system is nothing but a giveaway for lazy people who don't want to contribute, when it's people who've worked all their lives and are being cut off at the knees who're getting the ax, while the elites don't feel any obligation to the lower classes -- none whatsoever.

As long as you have a system that generates obscene amounts of wealth, but only distributes them to the top of the pyramid, you have the ingredients for a wholesale social revolution. That is the the real train wreck that this society has to contend with, and hiding out in one's gated community will provide little if any refuge when blood runs in the streets.

Still, the oligarchy seems to be willing to risk it.

Israel: time running out to shut up

Patience is running short in the war-mongering campaign by Israel to spark up a war between the US and Iran, so they're cranking up the volume and revving up the horseshit:

Israel: time running out to stop a nuclear Iran | Reuters: "(Reuters) - Iran is less than a year away from being unstoppable in its goal of producing a nuclear weapon, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in an interview with CNN released on Saturday.

In an advance transcript of an interview to air on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" program on Sunday, Barak said Israel was focused on the prospect of a nuclear Iran and what "should and could be done about it on time.""

It's isn't time that's running out, but our patience with Israel in its constant beating of the war drums against potential rivals -- read, any country in the region that won't permit the Israelis to roll 'em at will.

We've seen the same nonsense too many times, and if anyone needed a more convincing example that Iraq of how these false allegations can be ginned up into a shootin' war, then they ain't paying attention.

The Israelis are liars and blusterers. They want to eliminate their adversaries, and they've bought the US congress through AIPAC in order to get the job done. It doesn't matter how preposterous and ill-advised the case for war is, they have the votes to pass any legislation they want, no questions asked (except, how soon? or how much?).

Let your elected representatives know that you're against funding Israel's wars against its neighbors. Either they fight 'em with their own troops -- and their own money -- or they find a way to come to terms with their neighbors. No more of this, my way or the highway style of negotiations.

Of course, this is a joke. We know how this is going to turn out, Obama or Rick Perry or Mitt Romney -- they've all talked themselves into a box on this one.

Hope you guys like the idea of $10-a-gallon gasoline, because that's what the war on Iran promises to bring your dumb asses. So pay attention!

Are you sick of your life?

Just in case you're terminally bored and there's no hope of any relief, you can tune in to a 30-year-old, played-out story of no intrigue involving a beautiful movie star:

Yacht captain blames Robert Wagner for Natalie Wood's death [Updated] - latimes.com: "A yacht captain claimed Friday that he lied to investigators about Natalie Wood's mysterious death 30 years ago and that he blames the actress' husband at the time, Robert Wagner, for her drowning in the ocean off Southern California.

The former captain of the boat alleged on the "Today" show Friday that Wood's husband, actor Robert Wagner, was responsible for her death.

Dennis Davern said he is now urging homicide investigators to look into Wood's death."

The billionaire media hucksters like Murdoch and Zuckerman, and the others in the CIA's pocket who don't have the same name recognition, feast on this dreary type of fascination with long-dead celebrities. It's the perfect antidote to the real, perplexing issues that bedevil society, and would have led to blood in the streets unless the tensions were skillfully defused by propaganda and mindless distractions.

The Natalie Wood story was big in the supermarket tabloids, as she and her husband were up there with Liz and Dick in the Inquirer and other similar topical venues of sleaze and cornpone schlock.

So it's hardly surprising, really, to see the fascination with these people take another run around the course -- just for old times sake. Even the LAPD is playing along, since it's a good break from the OWS police brutality story.

Never have so many been so deluded by such meaningless drivel.

Climate change deniers in the crosshairs

If FOX news could get away with it, they'd be suggesting that the OWS people are somehow carrying out a vendetta against climate-change deniers by unleashing these extreme weather events on the good people of the US southland:

The Associated Press: 6 dead as storms, possible tornadoes hit Southeast: "ROCK HILL, S.C. (AP) — At least six people have been killed and dozens more injured as a storm system that spawned several possible tornadoes moved across the Southeast.
Suspected tornadoes were reported Wednesday in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina. Dozens of homes and buildings were damaged and thousands of people were without power as trees and power lines were downed.
In South Carolina, three people were killed and five injured when a likely tornado swept through a rural community near Rock Hill, about 20 miles south of Charlotte, N.C. In north Georgia, a man was killed when a tree fell on his sport utility vehicle. Authorities also said an adult and child were killed in central North Carolina."

No matter how bad it gets, the profit-seeking exploiters of nature will never be tagged with responsibility for the damage their predatory kind of capitalism creates. Instead, it'll be imputed to greedy scientists in search of federal grant money -- never mind that guys like the Koch brothers spend billions of dollars funding a propaganda machine to create that and other convenient fictions to misdirect attention from their activities.

Here in the southland, you have a lot of bible-thumping, rock-ribbed Republicans who are reliable voters for the emissaries of their own destruction. They're so gullible that the guys who savage the environment get a pass, and instead it's "god" who wills these terrible events in some inscrutable way.

That's how someone like Rick Perry can be taken seriously when he announces that he'll pray for the divine to intervene and grant his supplicants mercy. And exactly like the clown who said the rapture was imminent, and when proven wrong simply said he'd gotten the date wrong, the true believers think that it doesn't matter what happens here on earth, since they'll all be in heaven when things get really bad anyway.

Obama in full bluster mode on China

Barfy Obambi went to Australia with a few thousand troops and announced that the US is relevant in the Asia-Pacific region.

Countering China, Obama Asserts U.S. a Pacific Power - TIME: "(CANBERRA, Australia) — Signaling a determination to counter a rising China, President Barack Obama vowed Thursday to expand U.S. influence in the Asia-Pacific region and "project power and deter threats to peace" in that part of the world even as he reduces defense spending and winds down two wars.
"The United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay," he declared in a speech to the Australian Parliament, sending an unmistakable message to Beijing."

You might almost be convinced that this is serious, except for the fact that the US is a used-up, limp dishrag of an imperial power.

Sure, it's muscle-bound and stubborn as a jackass, but that hardly is sufficient in a world of vigorous and energetic rising states on the other side of the globe, a group of upcoming world powers that will soon show up the US as the sclerotic and empty shell it truly is.

US presidents and their minions like to travel around and claim the moral high ground, as if the US is a beacon of freedom and human rights. When it comes down to it, however, the empty ritual of going into the voting booth every couple of years to select on of two corporate-vetted clowns that further the prerogatives of the oligarchic-corporate state hardly qualifies as meaningful citizen involvement in the direction of the country.

The US is simply posturing on the world stage, and so far nations like China are tolerating this erratic and juvenile behavior as though it's the antics of an eccentric and irrational elderly relative at Thanksgiving. They countenance it with a knowing wink it its peers in the banquet of geopolitical relations.

They -- and we all, if we're honest -- know that the game can't go on much longer. No one wants to say it out loud, but everyone knows that such displays a empty bravado mask the exhausted and ineffectual nature of the beast.

If only thinking might make it so, but it can't. Obama's protestations notwithstanding.

Too late: the USA is already a corporate prison

The major corporations that sell the crap that oozes out of our TVs, radios and mp3 players have the country by the balls, pulling the strings of their congressional marionettes in pursuit of draconian new laws designed to eviscerate the world wide web and turn it into a corporate cesspool.

Backers defend controversial online copyright bill - CBS News: "(CNET) The first House of Representatives hearing devoted to a controversial online copyright bill began in an unusual way: with politicians defending themselves from charges that the proposal goes too far.
It's "beyond troubling to hear hyperbolic charges that this bill will open the floodgates to government censorship," Rep. Mel Watt, a North Carolina Democrat, said during a House Judiciary committee hearing this morning.

Claiming that the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, will transform the United States into "a repressive regime belittles the circumstances under which true victims of tyrannical governments actually live," said Watt, a SOPA sponsor."

Of course the congress-critters and running at full stride to do their paymasters' bidding. The broadcasters and content-providers are some of the most potent lobbying operations in existence, and when they say jump, their suitors on capital hill are only too willing to get on all fours and bark like dogs if that's what they're told to do.

Democrat or Republican, all are equally culpable. Because of Mickey Mouse, the copyright laws are now so skewed in favor of these mega conglomerates that nothing passes into the public domain in any living person's lifetime. This has turned the entire regime of "intellectual property" into a perpetual giveaway for the rich and powerful. It is totally incompatible with the purpose and intention of the laws to impose the restrictions on fair use that are being purchased wholesale by big business.

This congressional circus of purchased outcomes is just one more chapter in a long, sordid tale of corruption beyond comprehension at the top of the US government. Whatever corporations will, that's what will be done. They own the government, make no mistake about it, and what they seek is what you find when you wake up in the morning.

So get ready to kiss another promising medium goodbye. The 'net is already corrupted almost beyond recognition by hucksters and cheap hustlers, it's nothing but a bloodbath of capitalism and manipulation to keep the public dumb and disconnected from their lives. Why not stuff more garbage down their throats? This only makes it easier for the government and politicians to create secure dominions for raking in the big payoffs that come with power.

Instead of occupy, perhaps a better strategy is to abandon. We're being pushed out of the public sphere at every turn by organized money. The only answer is to withdraw our support of this malignant charade.

Rick Perry speaks to voters who are real stupid

Can anybody believe the lies a politician tells any more? After Barack Obama promised much and delivered only to the guys on Wall Street who bankrolled his campaign, here we have the butt nodule from Texas making a preposterous proposition:

Rick Perry Vows Real Change if Elected - TIME: "(BETTENDORF, Iowa) — Texas Gov. Rick Perry, looking to breathe new life into his bid for the Republican nomination, opened an Iowa campaign swing by warning activists not to settle for a candidate who will just propose incremental change.

"The solution is not to nominate someone who is just going to nibble around the edges," said Perry. "Washington doesn't need a new coat of paint, it needs a complete overhaul.""

Rick Perry sure has the ego for the job. He saw how George W. Bush rode in triumph to DC, and sees in himself a worthy successor. Only he lacks one thing that Dubya: the last name of Bush, and all that implies. This is just another overly ambitious yahoo who thinks that he can ride dumb luck to the leadership of the free world.

Unfortunately, that often is enough in the current configuration of the nation.

The polity is in a mess, and yet we have an electorate that takes self-affirming rhetorical candy corn about the everlasting nature of American goodness and eternal prosperity to heart. While the country is swirling down the toilet of insolvency, defending imperial pretensions more relevant to a previous era, all the candidates for presidency have to offer is preposterous yeowling and chest-thumping bravado from brainless clowns that couldn't think they way out of a wet paper bag.

So blow, Rick, blow. Blow some hot air into your limp campaign for the White House. If they media is taking another look at Newter Gingrich, then certainly once that old crock of shit self destructs, there'll be another opportunity for you to spew glorious corn pone for the lousy voting public in the throes of their discomfort.

Rick will put a new coat of paint, in the shape of a bulls-eye, right on the fat and lazy asses of GOP primary voters who need a good porking to feel they're still conscious.

Out of the abyss, consumers keep spending

You'd never know it from the economic stats that matter -- like wealth distribution and personal income, the job market, etc., but people are pulling dollar bills out of their asses to continue their consumerist binge:

Consumers keep spending, driving gains in retail sales - chicagotribune.com: "Consumers kept hitting the stores in October despite economic headwinds and higher gas prices that took a bite out of their wallets.

The Commerce Department reported that retail sales were up 0.5 percent compared to September. That was a bit better than the 0.4 percent rise economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast.

Part of the additional spending came on autos, as automakers reported a solid gain in sales. Excluding auto sales retail sales shot up 0.6 percet, three times stronger than had been forecast.

The report also showed strength in electronics and building supply retailers."

How this goes on under the circumstance is anyone's guess, although one can easily take a whack at it: credit cards.

If you get a card with a $10,000 limit, and the monthly minimum payment is $70, hell, you can go on spending like there's no tomorrow -- which for you there won't be, saddled with a shitload of debt that keeps your nose to the grindstone long after your shiny gizmos and gadgets have been consigned to the trash heap.

You can't even crawl out from under those debts with bankruptcy like you once could, so creditors will hound you until you're sleeping under a bridge. It's a hell of a way to end one's life, but it can be fun while it lasts...

After all, how do you think people end up living in their cars?

USA! USA!

Corrupt and hypocritical, and proud of it

The Israelis are so concerned about Iran and its nuclear research, because they want to be the only nuclear kid on the block. It's unthinkable to the regime that any other power could arm itself in such a way as to negate the Israeli nuclear blackmail arsenal. And that's what it is: a means to intimidate anyone who dares oppose the Israeli's expansionist agenda.

And so the experts debate what to do about "it".

Analysis: Israelis doubt world will stop Iran's nuclear quest | Reuters: "Giora Eiland, a former Israeli general and national security adviser, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government had "a year, maybe two" to decide, given Iran's nuclear progress.

"And if you don't make a decision, you make a decision" to leave Iran to its course, Eiland said. "Two terrible choices. I believe the international community will fail to reach a solution on the Iranian case, so such a dilemma will be real."

For now, those seeking to hobble, if not halt, Iran may have to make do with covert attacks such as cyberwarfare or sabotage.

"Will these things be accorded new legitimacy in light of the difficulty of nuclear diplomacy through negotiations?" said INSS arms control expert Emily Landau."

While giving the perfunctory nod to negotiation, everyone knows the Israeli preference for settling disagreements through the most violent, extreme methods. This is standard operating procedure for a state that sees itself as a beacon of liberal western values in a sea of backwards, Islamist extremists.

The facts on the ground tell a different story, however. They tell the tale of a powermad, aggressive, expansionist and warlike empire, in a dirty fight with all its neighbors to secure all the best lands and resources. There's nothing good or noble about the Israeli modus operandi, nor its agenda for expansion and domination over the region. Why should anyone defer, much less lend support, to such a corrupt and degenerate state?

US-backed dictator critiques violence against protesters

King Abdullah of Jordan says that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ought to honor the will of his people, as expressed in their protests against the regime, by stepping aside and letting the democratic process proceed:

BBC News - Dozens killed in Syria as Jordan king tells Assad to go: ""I would step down and make sure whoever comes behind me has the ability to change the status quo that we're seeing," King Abdullah stated in an exclusive interview with BBC World News television.

He said: "If Bashar [al-Assad] has the interest of his country [at heart] he would step down, but he would also create an ability to reach out and start a new phase of Syrian political life.

King Abdullah added: "Whenever you exert violence on your own people, it is never going to end well.""

It's always interesting when US clients, who take dirty money in order to thwart the legitimate will of their own people, and serve as compliant torturers for the US regime, speak out in such unequivocal terms about how dictators should relate to their own people. There's not a hint of irony in Abdullah's remarks regarding his own status as a hereditary ruler of a state without legitimate democratic institutions, but like most of the West's stooges in that region, he knows which side his bread is buttered on. When the boss says criticize your neighbor for the exact same defect you yourself suffer, you go on TV and do it.

One finds it hard to reconcile the reaction of the West to Assad with the equally abrupt manner in which the authorities have cracked down on the dissenters at various Occupy sites across the US. Free speech has been under siege in the beacon of democratic values for a number of years, with the events of 9-11 serving as a convenient pretext for categorizing demonstrators as terrorists to be silenced by any means necessary. This has led to travesties such as "free speech zones" during events like presidential inaugurations, to more militaristic responses to G-20 soirees targeted by the anti-globalization movement.

Now, with the Occupy movement having gained a bit of traction, and drawing an increasing diverse cast of characters from across the political landscape, there appears to have been a call from the oligarchy to silence this movement with extreme prejudice. As it is commanded from on high, so it is done on the streets of Americas big cities, as we see the powerful elites start to use all means at their disposal to shut those protests down.

The US is practicing its accustomed double standard here, where the poor, backward countries of the third world are held to a higher standard than the US hold itself. Since the country entered a permanent state of emergency in recent years, everything has been put in place to facilitate the mass roundup and detention of troublemakers, and we'll see that infrastructure increasingly put into use -- to an extent that the leadership in Syria has never even dreamed.

It'll be interesting then to see how well Abdullah's prediction about violence against one's own people turns out.

Israel a world leader in hypocrisy

Why is the world silent when the Israelis carry out acts of war against other nations, while engaging in over-the-top breast-beating over any rival to the Israelis who would erect a defensive capability against the terrorist regime in Tel Aviv?

It's no secret that even without an overt attack against Iran, Israeli and its US puppet have been engaged in a series of assassinations and other assorted provocations against the Iranian regime. While the US proposes bombastic condemnations against Iran in the UN, it is really Washington's ally that deserves the condemnation -- along with the US -- for breaches of international law and crimes against the peace:

Israeli secret service the Mossad linked to Iran military blast | World news | The Guardian: "A series of news reports linking Israel's intelligence agency the Mossad to a blast at a military facility in Iran, in which 17 people were killed and a further 15 wounded, has gained widespread coverage in the Israeli media on Monday.

While Iranian officials insist the explosion at the Bid Ganeh base was accidental, caused by the movement of ammunition, claims from anonymous western and Israeli officials that Saturday's blast was a covert Israeli operation have gained momentum.

Leading Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot picked up a post by US blogger Richard Silverstein claiming the Mossad had teamed up with Iranian militant group Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK) to execute the alleged attack. MEK denies involvement in the attack.

Leftwing broadsheet Ha'aretz also led with reports that a western intelligence source quoted in Time magazine had claimed the Mossad carried out the attack in an attempt to stall Iran's development of a nuclear weapon. The official is said to have warned: "There are more bullets in the magazine.""

This may just be the way it is in international relations, but its sickening to read the papers and see the electronic media peddling this line about how the Iranians -- with their arsenal of exactly zero nuclear weapons -- is such a great threat to Israel, which has one of the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, along with the means to deliver them by air, land and sea.

Who is threatening whom? And why is the US, with its proffered respect for rule of law and human rights, abetting one of the world's preeminent outlaw regimes as it terrorizes its neighbors and hold an entire people in a stateless, lawless limbo in the occupied territories -- all against international law?

It's because the US is Israel's partner in crime, and an enabler of its rampage against other people and nations in the middle east. While there is not God, and no justice in the sense that it's commonly understood, there is a price to be paid for the arrogant and insufferable, and at a time when it's least favorable for these two obnoxious bullies, they'll come to understand how limited their power truly was, and how cruel fate can be when you're on the receiving end of great powers flexing their muscle.

Media stuffing turkey down viewers throats

The results are in, and the media has decided that the race for the GOP nomination to run against President O'bambi next year has boiled down to three pathetic turd-hoppers:

Poll: Cain tops 3-way race with Romney, Gingrich - Political Hotsheet - CBS News: "In the Republican race for the presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich's support continues to slowly grow, and he is now tied with Mitt Romney for second place, while Herman Cain just edges both of them out for the top spot. Both Cain and Romney have lost support since late October."

It's simply miraculous how Puke Gingrich has emerged from the wilderness of being abandoned en mass by his campaign staff earlier this year, and written off as a completely lost cause, and now finds himself among the top three!

But that's nothing compared to Herman "crotch grabber" Cain, a serial pervert who is riding the Koch express to political prominence. It's interesting to note his resume includes a stint as chairman of the Kansas City FED.

Rounding out this tawdry threesome is Mitt Romney, the most accomplished chameleon in politics today. If this is Friday, Mitt has a popular new position on whatever issue is trending at the moment. Unlike Newter, he can become whatever the Tea Party wants him to be.

One wonders where the other hot prospects, so ballyhooed just weeks or months ago, have disappeared to. Bachmann and Perry both lost to the sands of slime, while the only candidate that arouses any actual enthusiasm by actual voters, Ron Paul, has remained totally invisible. No matter how adroitly he handles himself in the debates, his politics are toxic to the mainstream consensus that the corporate media is sworn to uphold and promote.

This isn't an endorsement of Paul, but when any candidate talks about the issues a voter cares about, while the others waste their and the voters' time yammering about distractions and emotionally charged drivel, you must begin to wonder what this exercise called elections and voting are really about. Since we seem to have the decisions made from somewhere on the other side of the screen of the idiot box, with no input from YOU, the viewer, is it any wonder that people are beginning to tune it all out in disgust?

That leaves the idiots who still think any of it matters to choose between these pitiful vacuities, as the state of the nation continues to degenerate into pure, ungovernable chaos.

Serves us all right. Only a bunch of drones and dupes would abide this kind of contempt the oligarchs show for the public.

The alarmists are alarmed by IAEA report

Ring the alarm bells, the ding-dongs in the professional alarmist brigade are issuing a 5-alarm alarm about being alarmed:

White House: IAEA report on Iran 'very alarming' - Israel News, Ynetnews: "The White House said on Thursday that this week's International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran's nuclear program was "very alarming" and said it would continue to pressure Tehran to "change its behavior."

"They need to get right with the world and live up to their obligations with regards to their nuclear program. We will continue to pursue that going forward in the wake of this very alarming report," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

The warmongers want war, and the alarmists want people to be alarmed. Together, the work to make the world a more dangerous and unstable place, in which to pursue their agendas.

The Israelis are alarmed because other countries aren't sufficiently alarmed about Iran's alarming nuclear program. The IAEA, under new management, has revealed that Iran is researching nuclear weapons. Not building, but thinking about it.

The US warmongers are gearing up for the war they've been planning for more than a decade. Saddam Hussein was just the warm-up, the appetizer, and now they're ready for the main dish: a knock-down, shock-and-awe fight followed by a nice, neat regime change. This is where the men will be men and the boys will be dead.

The notion that we all ought to be alarmed by one country doing what all its neighbors have already done rings a bit hollow to some of us. If Iran isn't supposed to be thinking about nukes, then perhaps the Israelis and the US government ought to get rid of some of theirs, as a gesture of goodwill.

But what would be alarming about that? Would millions around the world faint in complete surprise at this extremely unlikely turn of events? You betcha!

That's precisely why it won't happen. You need to be alarmed, the be full of fear, for the good of the country, for the good of the economy, and for God. When one talks in absurdities, one can even escalate to the most extreme absurdity imaginable: a world where the US and its handmaidens don't threaten and kill and interfere in others' business.

It's all the same. We have the naked self-interest of powerful countries driving a process to militarily subdue and then exploit their victims economically. This has been and will be the alarming ultimate goal of these corrupt and misguided regimes.

We might as well get used to it. It isn't going to stop.

Crying about soldiers' remains going in the landfill

The US public is treated to an endless litany of heartbreaking disclosures involving practically every item of admiration and affection. Today it reaches to the sacred realm of the remains of dead soldiers, which we learn were disposed of in a most disrespectful and callous manner:

Air Force chief questioned over war dead's remains | Reuters: ""I'm deeply troubled by the reports about what's happened at the mortuary at the Dover Air Force Base. And I'm sure you would agree with me, this is outrageous that remains of our soldiers would be put in a landfill," said Senator Kelly Ayotte.

The Washington Post, which first reported those details, quoted one widow saying she was "appalled and disgusted" to learn what happened to her husband's remains in a letter from the Air Force earlier this year. He died in Iraq in 2006.

"My only peace of mind in losing my husband was that he was taken to Dover and that he was handled with dignity, love, respect and honor," Gari-Lynn Smith told the Post. "That was completely shattered for me when I was told that he was thrown in the trash.""

The tear-jerking mechanism thus received many vigorous exertions as the story of how our military establishment deals with these inconvenient detritus. Since the bulk of the remains had already been delivered to families, the military simply disposed of additional matter located subsequently in the most efficient manner available.

While it is the least the nation can do to treat these remains with respect, is all the hand wringing and complaining really accomplishing anything for these people, who for the most part died in needless and illegal wars having nothing to do with national defense, and everything to do with perpetuating the business of perpetual warfare in which the US now wages on behalf of its corporate masters?

Rather than suffering paroxysms of grief over their mismanaged remnants, shouldn't we save the outrage and demands for a change in procedure to the actual cause of these peoples' deaths, an out-of-control militaristic culture that consumes lives like so much raw material in an infernal killing machine?

The US media-molded culture has elevated the "troops" to a higher level of being than ordinary people, but along with this near-veneration we strip them of their plain humanity. We venerate them in some abstract sense, without reckoning the loss of their lives, or the loss of lives of those they ended abroad, consigning them to the consumerist version of Valhalla that lies beyond the reach of any moral calculus. Their death is an abstraction, just like the nature of their adversaries or the alleged object of the wars themselves.

This is a perversion and a travesty, being perpetuated by a media machine that can examine any irrelevancy or tangential issue in endless detail, while glossing over and completely missing the main point. It's not a few carelessly handled body parts we should be livid about, but the waste of these young lives for such a demented purpose.

Obama’s Influential Mideast Turd Resigns

The number of cynical and Machiavellian foreign service operators on the US state department payroll is about to decrease by one, it was just learned:

Obama’s Influential Mideast Envoy to Resign - NYTimes.com: "WASHINGTON — Dennis B. Ross, a seasoned diplomat who has been one of President Obama’s most influential advisers on Iran, the Middle East peace process and the political upheaval in the Arab world, will leave the White House in December, a senior administration official said on Thursday."

The Ross dude made his announcement "at a lunch with Jewish leaders," the NYT story continues, showing their subject in his most comfortable milieu. Among Jewish leaders, listening to their instructions and giving an affirmative response to any and all requests is the perfect characterization of a US envoy in the Middle East.

The US at one time attempted to present itself as an "honest broker" in the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians, but as the right-wing PR machine grew and perfected its techniques, and the essential lubricant of political influence flowed from the Zionists to US politicians, facades and appearances ceased to be of much concern to the political establishment and its sycophants in the corporate media. It was then that an imposter like Ross could operate at peak efficiency as Obama's butt-boy emissary to Tel Aviv.

No stone has ever been left unturned in the Israeli campaign to remake the region in its image and interests. The plight of Palestinians has grown progressively desperate with Dennis Ross and his cohort putting the entire resources of the US government in the service of Israeli expansionist and colonialist designs.

"What a shame it is to lose one's mind," as GW Bush famously remarked, and he could have been speaking of those who would assert that the US deals evenhandedly with the parties in the Mideast. It is because of guys who are eager to follow the orders of their patrons, however immoral and illegal, that makes the process of oppression and exploitation so effortless and lucrative for corrupt governments in today's world.

So it's not hats off, but we drop our drawers for Dennis Ross, and wish that he kiss our arses with the relish he reserves for the guys who sign his paycheck -- may he find himself buried alive under pallets of benjamins!