Mainstream Media Inadvertently Admits We're a Dictatorship

Newspaper Report Reveals How Secret Police, Military Rule the Nation

(Though the delay was unavoidable, again my apology for the tardy publication of this post.)

Thursday’s edition of The New York Times carries an extraordinary, 4,000-word report on the role of the FBI in the 2016 US presidential election. Whatever the intentions of those who produced, edited and approved this lengthy account, it gives a glimpse of an American political system in which the security services, and particularly the FBI and CIA, play a critical and even decisive role...(in tyrannizing) a deeply class-divided society, in which two political parties of the financial aristocracy do the bidding of a state apparatus of coercion and violence of almost unimaginable dimensions. 

    

Six Dems Show Party's True Colors, Give Torture-Queen Haspel Command of CIA
"'This was never just about Gina Haspel. This is about a nation that claims constantly to be exceptional and morally superior showing the world in clear terms that it supports torture and will never hold its own accountable.'"
See earlier story for more damning details: "In her testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 9, Haspel insisted that the CIA's interrogation program during the Bush administration was legal. Haspel, a 33-year CIA veteran, argued that it could not be determined whether torture was effective to gain intelligence. She refused to state categorically that torture is immoral. And she never condemned the torture program in which she participated."
Plus this: "...the Senate Intelligence Committee has restricted (other senators') access to a classified memo that Democratic staff put together, detailing Haspel's role in advocating for torture and later destroying related evidence."
And this: "Senate confirmation of veteran Central Intelligence Agency operative Gina Haspel to head Washington’s main spy agency is a new milestone in the collapse of American democracy."
Comment: combined with the Trump/Pence Regime's outspoken support for police who murder or torture U.S. citizens, this newest outrage means there's no significant difference between the United States and Pinochet's Chile or, for that matter, Hitler's Third Reich. The Eighth Amendment's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment" is obviously dead forever -- "forever" because,  thanks to The New York Times (for which see above),  it is again confirmed our alleged "democracy" is indeed nothing more than a scam, the biggest of Big Lies, with our real overlords -- Torture-Queen Haspel amongst them -- rendered forever untouchable by insurmountable barriers of wealth and bureaucracy.  As to Haspel herself, waterboarding obviously gets her wet, and not just from the obscene splatter of the slowly drowning victim's struggles. 

         

The Mass Murder Essential to Capitalism Forces Us into Criminal Compliance

"The cost to human lives in our current cycle of U.S.-initiated 'perpetual wars' throughout the Middle East and Africa is unthinkably high. It runs well into millions of deaths if one counts – as do the Nuremberg principles of international law – victims of spinoff fighting and sectarian violence that erupt after we destroy governance structures. Also to be counted are other forms of human loss, suffering, illness and early mortality that result from national sanctions, destruction of physical, social and medical infrastructure, loss of homeland, refugee flight, ethnic cleansing, and their psychological after-effects. One has to witness these to grasp their extent in trauma, and they all arise from the Nuremberg-defined “supreme crime” of initiating...aggressive war."
Comment: in other words, we have been living in the de facto Fourth Reich long before the Trump/Pence Regime made it undeniably obvious. And in contemplating our futures we would therefore do very well to reflect on how the civilized world avenged the Third Reich's still-inadequately counted millions of victims.  (The preceding link is to 4.33 minutes of historical film, documentary footage bolstered by intensely accurate dramatizations. All-documentary films on the taking of Berlin are here and here; the RT footage was complied in 2010, hence the outdated crawl.)  

Regime to Imprison Immigrant Children in Concentration Camps on Military Bases 

U.S. authorities are surveying American military bases for sites for concentration camps to house thousands of children that the government intends to seize from their parents at the US border under a draconian new policy announced by the Trump administration.
See also: "The Trump administration has zealously altered the US immigration system...

(To read the rest, go here.)

Trump/Pence War on Black Dissidents Claims First Victim

NORMALLY I ORDER the linked reports in Dispatches in accordance with news values that were mine as a daily newspaper news editor or telegraph editor. This is to say international news generally outranks all but the most significant local news, and crisis, scandal or disaster outranks everything else unless it is a positive story about some development (such as an increase in the minimum wage) that benefits us all. But those criteria vanish down the proverbial toilet in the face of the following story, which, though it is about the victimization of one man, nevertheless exemplifies the stark, Gestapo-type  terror with which the JesuNazi Trump/Pence Regime threatens us all. Indeed it is a wake-up call of the most alarming sort -- precisely why I have chosen it to lead this edition of "Weekend Update": 
       

Rakem Balogun, who lost his home and more while incarcerated, is believed to be the first person targeted and prosecuted under a secretive US surveillance effort to track so-called 'black identity extremists.' In a leaked August 2017 report from the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit, officials claimed that there had been a 'resurgence in ideologically motivated, violent criminal activity' stemming from African Americans’ 'perceptions of police brutality.'"

Comment: obviously Mr. Balogun is but the first victim in the JesuNazi regime's Gestapo-inspired terrorizing of dissenters, in which context we dast not forget the words of Martin Niemöller, "first they came for the socialists..."  
  

Fight to Save Net Neutrality Requires Only One More Affirmative Vote    
"Democrats on Wednesday officially filed a petition to force a vote in the Senate to save net neutrality. With a single Republican supporting the effort, only one vote is needed to advance a resolution that may one day soon reinstate the net neutrality rules overturned by the FCC last year."  Please use this story's clickable form to contact your senators.

  

Democratic (sic) Party's Closet Fascists Urge CIA Torture Queen's Approval
"Sen. Joe Donnelly on Saturday became the second Democrat to announce he will cast his vote in favor of CIA director nominee Gina Haspel -- boosting her prospects...

(To read the rest, go here.)

War Clouds Darken: Who Will the USian Empire Attack Next?

While the mass media focuses on the latest daily scandals emanating from the White House, a leader of the secular left in Iran says President Trump is stepping up plans for an attack on that country which could trigger a devastating regional war with horrific implications for world peace...The Tudeh Party leader warned that the Trump administration poses a graver threat to peace than any prior U.S. administration..."
See also: "The war on Iran, in other words, has begun. It has been brewing for some time."
And this: "In the immediate wake of U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement that America is withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, Israel reportedly carried out airstrikes in Syria and began mobilizing its defense forces over what it claimed were 'abnormal movements of Iranian forces.'”
Plus this: "...there are striking and instructive parallels between imperialist diplomacy in the 1930s and today. In the run-up to World War II, all sorts of diplomatic agreements were signed, only to be shredded soon after, with the Nazi regime leading the wolf pack.
As well as this: "President Trump floated the idea that former Secretary of State John Kerry could face criminal charges for lobbying to salvage the Iranian nuclear deal." 
Also this: "a new CNN poll (showed) support for the (Iran nuclear) agreement (was) continuing to rise, with an all-time high 63 percent of Americans saying Trump should uphold the accord.
Comment: the poll results are irrelevant to the One Percent and its Ruling Class vassalage and thus would be ignored even if support for the Iran accord were 100 percent. But when O when will we finally awaken to the fact our alleged "democracy" is but a Big Lie?

  

Empire Ignores World War II History -- Especially the Battle of Sevastopol
"Western leaders and Ukraine’s current pro-Western government...entertained ideas of a NATO base in Sevastopol, right on the border with Russia, offering NATO ships almost unlimited control over the region and also an opportunity to neutralize the Russian Black Sea Fleet...a similar dream once held by Nazi Germany."
See also: "The US Navy announced on Friday that it is relaunching its Second Fleet..."

(scroll way down)

Seattle's War on Homeless Culminates in Bitter Tax Fight   
"In (retaliatory) response to Seattle’s proposed head tax, Amazon is pausing construction of a new tower and may sublease to tenants a new skyscraper in downtown Seattle."
See the tax proposal's details here: "...the city expects only three percent of Seattle’s businesses to be subject to the tax. Amazon, of course, is the big one..."
Plus this: "One day after an open letter from more than 100 Seattle area business leaders to the Seattle City Council in opposition...a group of several local unions has sent a letter in support..." 
And this: "Looking just at the percent of (homeless) people...King County ranked 5th while east coast cities like ...D.C., Boston and New York disappear from the top 10 entirely...all places with some form of a legal right to shelter. Seattle, like most West Coast cities, doesn’t guarantee access to shelter.
Also this: "At the town hall, neighborhood residents sneered at him, telling O’Brien to invite the homelessness into his house."
Comment: because I had the misfortune of being stuck in Seattle for four miserable years -- it was unquestionably the most venomously unfriendly place I have ever lived --  I recognize the malice expressed by the Ballard residents as an unusually public expression of the same reflexively fascist hatred of Blacks and impoverished people in general that has long obstructed mass transit development throughout the state. Indeed, despite the state's documented secularism, it exemplifies the white-supremacist malevolence that brought us the Trump/Pence Regime and its ever-accelerating thrust toward zero-tolerance JesuNazi theocracy.  

(To read the rest, go here.) 

 

"Headaches, Confusion, and an Inability to Think Straight"

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Reaches All-Time Human-Era High

"Carbon dioxide measurements at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii averaged 410.31 parts per million (ppm) in April. That bests last May’s record of 409.65 ppm, is well above the pre-industrial value of 280 ppm, and means the atmosphere of April 2018 was unparalleled in human history. Its reign will be short-lived, as May will almost surely set another record."

See Also: "At it's most tame state, hypercapnia will cause headaches, confusion, and an inability to think straight." 

Comment: could it be the carbon dioxide poisoning that's turning so many of our alleged leaders into apocalypse-courting economic cannibals? (See diagnostic data above, indicative stories below.)

Iowa Governor Gleefully Inks Law to Forever End All U.S. Abortion Rights

“Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) signed the country’s most restrictive abortion bill into law Friday, outlawing the procedure once a 'heartbeat' is detected, which is usually at about six weeks — a time when many people do not yet know they are pregnant...Reynolds, who has in the past referred to abortion as 'murder,' echoed that sentiment in a statement Friday. 'I understand and anticipate that this will likely be challenged in court, and that courts may even put a hold on the law until it reaches the Supreme Court,' (she said). This is bigger than just a law. This is about life.'”

Comment: we all know the intent of the Trump/Pence Regime is to pack the Supreme Court with misogynistic, homophobic, racist JesuNazis; we likewise know that only a deity-class miracle will prevent judicial aging from giving Trump at least one more vacancy to full -- all he needs to turn the court into precisely the rubber-stamp for theocracy he and his collaborators intend it to be. But maybe after the Trumped Court upholds this murderously misogynistic law,  as we know with near 100-percent-certainity it will do,  the nation's women finally will throw away their pussy hats -- which sugar-coat dead serious issues with pink polyester silliness (and in tactical truth  do nothing more than give the cops and secret police aiming points for their cameras and guns) -- and at long last recognize the only way to defeat the JesuNazis is to get Petrograd-serious about the hard and deadly dangerous work of revolution. The only question -- should that blessed event obtain -- is whether we men of the USian Empire will have the brass balls demonstrated by the men of the Putilov Machine Works and, just as they did when they joined the women of the Lesnoy Textile Works on International Women's Day of 1917, follow our breathtakingly courageous sisters into battle.

    

2018 Farm Bill Threatens Genocidal Food Stamp Cuts

"There is a lot at stake in the 2018 Farm Bill negotiations. The largest proposed cuts would be to the SNAP program, formerly known as 'food stamps.' Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, argues that these cuts would 'increase hunger, foster poorer nutrition, and further increase health inequity in our nation,' while Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association, calls them 'deeply concerning because they potentially cut millions of Americans out of these benefits, putting their health in jeopardy. The staff of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, cautions that the bill’s proposed 'sweeping, aggressive new work requirements' for SNAP recipients 'would likely prove unworkable and do substantially more harm than good, fueling increases in hunger and poverty.'"

Comment: this is conflict in which the Democrats lose the 2018 election by revealing their true Neoliberal (aka Republican aka JesuNazi) colors and supporting the Trump/Pence Regime's savagery.

Trump/Pence Regime Continues Iran Warmongering...

(to read the rest, go here.)

Hillary's Gaddafi-Is-Dead Cackle Is Our New National Anthem

But Will Wolf's Fact-Fanged Satire Jump Start Our Redemption? 

UNDER ORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES, I would ignore the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. But the outcry for and against Michelle Wolf's precedent-setting denunciations of the Trump/Pence Regime and its enablers in the Democratic (sic) Party and in the Mainstream Media propaganda machine have catapulted the event into a major news item. 

Why do I see it as such? Because -- those who know me as a perpetual pessimist please accept my apology for this forthcoming spasm of optimism -- I believe Wolf's rightfully venomous characterizations of our JesuNazi overlords and their nauseatingly obsequious enablers could mark the beginning of a genuine transformation in our domestic political discourse. 

The  Mainstream Media will of course continue to serve its One Percent masters by strumpeting  lies and disinformation  on command -- that is, after all,  the sole function of this uniquely USian, privately owned, for-profit version of Josef Goebbels' Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. 

But thanks to Wolf 's epic bravery -- and depending too on the severity of the inevitable retaliation the One Percent and its vassals inflict upon her in the days, weeks and months to come -- we the people may now be notably less reluctant to publicly acknowledge the apocalyptic monster the U.S. has become. Those who have hitherto been silenced by fear may, now encouraged by Wolf's example, begin to speak up for themselves. And the resultant outpouring of pent-up anti-Capitalist rage and anguish could indeed grow into a revolutionary variant of #MeToo -- unless the Ruling Class radically accelerates its plans to effectively shut down social media for any communication more profound than mutual masturbation.  

Meanwhile, just as the Trump-Pence Regime repeatedly reveals, the rulers of today's United States yearn for nothing so much as to become the Führers of a Fourth Reich. They are determined to conquer and subjugate all the peoples of the world and to exterminate any of us who  might dare resist.

Nor should we forget that same malevolent ambition is shared by both the Republican and Democratic (sic) factions of the One Capitalist Party Of Two Names (OCPOTN). 
 
Thus, cloaked by Big Lies and deceptive euphemisms, it predates Trump/Pence by at least six decades.

Indeed this is the most terrible secret Trump has shamelessly revealed to the world -- that Hillary's sadistically triumphant cackle is in fact the Empire's national anthem. And that revelation -- the Trump/Pence normalization of the white-majority JesuNazism the Democrats had hoped to keep hidden at least until Hillary fulfilled her obscene fantasy of conquering Russia -- is no doubt the main reason the Democrats so relentlessly despise Trump himself. 

That said, what follows are my links to reports on Michelle Wolf's performance as I had organized them before I realized their potentially pivotal significance and elevated them to this week's lead story:

(To read the rest, go here.)

Weekend Update 28/4/18: Top Scientist Says We're Doomed

Proposed Korean Peace Treaty Exemplifies Our Remaining Potential 

THE HEADLINES ABOVE and the related text immediately below combine two very different reports as if they were separate aspects of the same story -- which in oft-unacknowledged fact they truly are, intertwined like Yin and Yang. 

One report -- "a new era of peace has begun" --  applauds the inspiring progress the Koreans are making toward establishing lasting peace on their peninsula. The key to their success seems to be recognition by both Kim Jong-Un and Moon Jae-in of the extent to which the Empire and its plutocratic owners profit by keeping the ancient nation divided. The two Koreas -- culturally one nation --  are thus quietly but fiercely fighting for the independence they need to extricate themselves from the JesuNazi race to apocalypse. Thus too the apparent success-by-negotiation of the two Korean heads of state bids fair to be the most hopeful omen for human survival since the Trump/Pence Regime took office. 

The second text --  "(an) influential social scientist...has declared humanity 'doomed' due to its reliance on the burning of fossil fuels and the Capitalist economic system that ensures that dependence will continue" -- describes our fate if we fail to throw off the shackles that bind us to the Capitalist juggernaut. Ultimately, every one of these shackles are traceable to Abrahamic doctrines, especially the belief Earth is no more than a notably sadistic  trial court to which the sons of god are sent to prove their worthiness for heaven. (The misogynistic wording of the preceding sentence, like the biblical tract to which it links, accurately portrays the zero-tolerance male supremacy at the core of all Abrahamic doctrines.)  That's why the Capitalists -- whom the Christians worship as exemplars of their cruel god -- ignore our pleas to stop their depredations. Why bother to prepare for a nonexistent future? Not only do the Capitalists continue their obscene quest to wring profit from ecocidal ruin; the JesuNazis provide the Earth-is-evil rationale (scroll down to the 10th and 11th grafs) that enables the Capitalists to escalate their war on our Mother Earth.  Both groups -- Capitalist eco-rapists and Christian fanatics -- behave as if she -- not they -- were the sole reason the planet is turning hostile to sentient life.  Obviously they have concluded that as a species our only remaining human hope is to die, pampered to senselessness,  amidst an orgy of greedy acquisition.  

But the dramatic breakthrough Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un have seemingly accomplished on the Korean Peninsula -- a feat that only a few days ago we were being told was impossible but is nevertheless relentlessly demanded not just by Koreans but by all mindful peoples of the world -- gives  us a little taste of what we might do if we truly put our minds and bodies to it. Yes, it's still too soon to jump and cheer, but most inside sources say the positive signs are undeniable. The question of course is whether the Empire -- which depends on its South Korean presence to perpetuate a big chunk of profit for its military-industrial vassals -- will crush detente as it has so many times in the past.

If the majority of us begin doing as the Koreans began doing long before this (now-prophetic) report was published in 2016   -- that is, joining hearts and hands to save our planet from apocalypse whether thermonuclear or environmental --  we might just yet survive. 

Frankly I think what happened at Panmunjom on Friday is the most promising, hope-inspiring omen we've seen here on this tragically afflicted planet since 9/11 gave the Empire its long-sought rationale for flooring the accelerator on its 84-year drive toward global fascism. 

(To read the rest, go here.)

*****

22-26 April 2018: Is Demo Lawsuit Start of Hillary's 3rd Run?

How This Blog Serves the People; How Its Service Defines Its Content

A COUPLE OF READERS have asked me why I didn't link to last Friday's breaking news of the brazenly deceptive lawsuit the Democratic (sic) Party filed in federal court against Hillary Clinton's long list of selected scapegoats -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, WikiLeaks itself, the Russian government and of course the Trump campaign. 

Rather than dodge such questions, I welcome them as potentially corrective feedback; they often tell me what I need to do improve Dispatches' usefulness to readers. In this instance the questions tell me I have not adequately explained Dispatches' form, content and purpose -- an oversight for which I apologize and -- hopefully -- will remedy in the next few paragraphs. 

I did not overlook the lawsuit story or -- Goddess forbid -- choose to ignore it. The suit itself is merely the newest reiteration of the Democrats' endlessly repeated Big Lie that a criminal conspiracy by Assange, Russian intelligence operatives and Trump/Pence campaign officials  stole the 2016 election from Hillary. The reeking taint of its Big Lie is half the reason Dispatches' "Weekend Update" of 20-21 April did not link to the original stories. The other half of the reason is the extensive, favorable and typically misleading coverage the lawsuit was granted by the Mainstream Media propaganda machine. Why sully Dispatches by linking to the sort of disinformation it seeks to neutralize or transcend?  The story was already widely reported, and at that point in the news cycle I could add nothing to the coverage save perhaps a cynical sneer. 
        
Thus -- as I usually do in such circumstances -- I decided I would await further developments. Decades ago the evolution of broadcast media, and more recently the advent of the Internet and social media, relieved print journalism of the scoop-the-world mandate that had ruled during most of my newspaper, wire service and magazine years.  By necessity, print journalists these days focus far less on the rudiments of what happened -- that's now the job of the broadcasters -- and far more on the intricacies of what it means and what it might portend. It is an approach that in the newsrooms of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was known as a "second-day angle," and it was the reportorial lifeblood of all the better afternoon papers. 

(Note too it is the greed-motivated refusal of the news monopolies to adopt this approach that has put U.S. daily newspapers on the endangered species list. Reliably ferreting  out and communicating second-day angles demands of its writers and editors far more than the sorely limited perspective provided by a journalism degree. It is therefore considerably more expensive to produce than the traditional who-what-when-where-and-why brand of reporting. But why should you buy a paper if it merely rehashes what you already saw on  your TV or cellphone?) 

In any case, I knew someone of far greater professional renown than I would soon analyze the implications of the lawsuit, at the very least recognizing it as an obvious effort to further undermine the First Amendment, or as the World Socialist Web Site has since called it, "a frontal assault on democratic rights." Other analyses were similarly forthright.  See also: "The DNC's suit...poses a grave threat to press freedom." Plus this: "The Democratic Party...is seeking to...cripple journalists’ ability to expose corporate and government wrongdoing."  And don't overlook this: "It’s very a risky move. In civil suits 'discovery' runs in both directions. We’re about to learn a lot more about how the Democratic Party really works behind the scenes."  
 

Meanwhile even the more normally astute analysts somehow missed the suit's most glaring implication -- that Hillary Clinton is planning a third run for the presidency. 

The lawsuit's accusations provide precisely the pseudo-factual foundation Hillary needs to support her false narrative of victimization, That's the only way she can redefine her 2016 loss to the Trump/Pence ticket as anything other than what it was -- a colossal blunder fostered by her own astounding arrogance and proven so by her unprecedentedly large victory in the popular vote. 

If proven, the lawsuit's assertions would substantiate the portrayal of Hillary as a feminist martyr. But even as formal though unproven allegations, they turn the Trump presidency into to her springboard. They enable her to offer herself as the reanimated savior come back to lift the nation out of its Trumpian convulsions of cruelty, conflict, chaos and corruption "without ever" -- this next whispered in an aside to her owners -- "damaging so much as the proverbial strand of hair from any One Percenter's head." 

If Hillary makes it onto the 2020 ballot, the notoriously short-memoried gullibility of the U.S. electorate will interact with widespread post-Trumpian loathing of anything Republican to enable her to at last fulfill her all-consuming ambition to be not only the first female president of the United States and ruler of its global empire, but also the first-ever conqueror of Russia.

How else but with a resurrected Hillary candidacy will the Democratic (sic) Party continue to serve its Capitalist masters? How will it (again) suppress the ever-intensifying grassroots effort to leverage it toward another New Deal? 

And what of the so-called "CIA Democrats"? Are they not the perfect Praetorian Guard for a Hillary presidency?  

Given the givens, what other strategic explanation for the lawsuit actually makes sense? 

 

Which brings me to the purpose -- and therefore the form and content -- of Dispatches from Dystopia. 

As its founder and editor, I do my best to avoid regurgitating the rigorously censored... 

(To read the rest go here.)