Ass in Charge — ‘take out the rubbish’
Filed Under Crime, Madness, Media | Leave a Comment
Down through history, dictators and other such types have always launched slaughter sprees when needed to maintain hold on power, no big deal — in Syria nowadays, however, the horror virally gobsmacks the face of the world.
And it’s bad.
This morning, two journalists — one French, the other an American working for the UK’s Sunday Times — were killed along with two dozen Syrians in the continuous onslaught on the city of Homs.
Near the border with Turkey, reportedly young men were captured, then executed: “Military forces chased civilians in these villages, arrested them and killed them without hesitation. They concentrated on male youths and whoever did not manage to escape was to be killed…Responsibility for this massacre lies with the general commander of the military and armed forces, Bashar al-Assad.”
(Illustration found here).
Although the US official stance has been one of caution, yesterday the Obama administration hinted that supplying arms to the Syrian opposition could be on the table — a “political solution” is the ultimate route, officials said, but White House spokes-guy Jay Carney opened the door a little bit, saying “we don’t rule out additional measures,” which could mean weapons to the ordinary folk now being gunned down.
One of the young Syrians who’d been posting video online on the violence was killed yesterday.
From the New York Times and Rami al-Sayed’s last posted message:
Baba Amr is being exterminated.
Do not tell me our hearts are with you because I know that.
We need campaigns everywhere across the world and inside the country.
People should protest in front of embassies and everywhere. Because in hours, there will be no more Baba Amr.
And I expect this message to be my last.
A horror apparently without an end.
And this via War in Context on the minute-to-minute nightmare:
The corpse, already waxy, wrapped in its shroud, a crown of plastic flowers around its head, lies in a corner of the mosque.
Kneeling next to the coffin, a boy in tears, his brother, strokes his face with infinite tenderness.
The dead boy was 13.
The night before, around 11 o’clock, he was breaking wood in front of his doorstep.
His father, eyes swollen, but upright and dignified among his friends and relatives, tells me what happened:
“He probably shone his mobile phone to see what he was doing.
And the sniper killed him.”
It was neither an accident nor chance.
Their street is constantly under fire from this sniper, who, based in the neighbourhood school, practises on cats when he has no other targets.
“We don’t even dare take out the rubbish any more,” a neighbour adds.
Another man shows me, on his mobile phone, the corpse of his brother, killed while he was protecting his 11-year-old son, before explaining to me that he had to break down the walls between his house and his neighbours’ to get out without exposing himself to gunfire.
One wonders about the mental shape of Assad — but he does, of course, carry those necessary genes for butchery.
What does he expect now?
Even if he kills every opposition voice, what then?
Next year, can he and his lovely wife visit the US, go to Disneyland?
Even in a modern, high-tech world, pure slaughter is still…
False on the Face
Filed Under Bullshit, Lying | Leave a Comment
Political lying as an art form:
Take last Thursday’s Republican debate in South Carolina.
Hundreds of G.O.P. voters applauded as Newt Gingrich blasted CNN’s John King for raising an accusation about marriage and sex in presidential politics.
These same voters, I have no doubt, would have cheered Gingrich for doing just that in 1998 when he led the charge to impeach President Clinton for his dalliance with a younger woman who worked in his office — or technically, for lying about it, but you see the point.
When Clinton did it, Republican voters called for his impeachment; when Gingrich does it and defends himself, they cheer for him.
A lie is the truth until its not.
And tonight, President Obama will go on TV with his third state of the union message, reportedly carrying a theme of a “a fair shake for all,” but in the actual state of the country, the shaking is from the bottom up.
Supposedly, all kinds of diverse shit will be included in the message, especially any and all important points to consider in his re-election bid — Obama’s scheduled for a three-state campaign trip starting Wednesday.
Here we go…
Accordingly, the prez should do some bullshitting himself — via The Daily Beast:
Obama should—without mentioning them by name—take a couple of whacks at Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.
This is a time, with Romney on the ropes and the leading GOP candidate (Gingrich) “enjoying” a roughly -35 point approval-to-disapproval rating, to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.
Play some head games.
Have some fun.
Do—if I may—some dozens.
Not “your mama is so fat” dozens, obviously.
But talk some smack.
Drop in one or two that the Republicans will attack as undignified to the occasion.
Put them on the defensive, make them sound whiny.
Trust me, David Plouffe: independents will like it.
They sure didn’t like what you wanted to do last summer (capitulate).
…
If those things aren’t happening, the speech was a political failure.
And the Brits say no laughing.
From the Telegraph:
But any attempt at levity might come off badly.
There’s a reason why over 600,000 people participated in the South Carolina primary: the state’s unemployment rate is 9.9 percent and folks are angry.
Many are suffering in a recession that has run so long it must now be called Obama’s.
Gallup gives him a job approval rating of 44 percent but CBS reports that only 29 percent of the country thinks America is headed in the right direction.
As cold winds blow over the Northeast and hurricanes hit the South, attitudes are likely to harden.
I’ve been travelling across America for nearly a decade and I’ve never known such pessimism.
Gas price increases are making it harder to numb the pain with consumer spending.
And what can be bought is made by child labour in China – a country that now owns roughly $1.16 trillion of America’s spiralling debt.
The big thing, though, Mr. President, is try and not to bullshit with bullshit.
State of Dysfunction
Filed Under Bullshit, Politics | Leave a Comment
Subject to be most discussed this morning here in northern California — the 49ers loss yesterday to the New York Giants.
Personally, I don’t give a fat-rat’s-ass, but this from fumble-bum Kyle Williams typified a lot of shit: “Everyone in here told me to keep my head up and it’s not on me,” said Williams, whose fumbles led to New York’s final 10 points. “We’ll move forward.”
Don’t blame me — let’s just move on.
(Illustration found here).
And on Tuesday night, President Obama makes his annual state-of-the-union speech, his third, with the same feel as fumbler Williams — mistakes have been made, but don’t blame me and let’s just move forward.
According to Bloomberg, Obama’s big punch will be against the current Congress (a group considered the worse in US history):
“The speech will merge what he wants to say in the campaign with what he wants to do.
He’s going to be, as Truman did, attacking Congress as the ‘do nothing Congress,’ and certainly it’s total dysfunctional,” said James Thurber, presidential historian at American University in Washington.
House Speaker John Boehner signaled Sunday that he’s ready for the fight.
“If that’s what the president is going to talk about Tuesday night, I think it’s pathetic,” the Ohio Republican said yesterday on Fox News Sunday.
The Boner should be afraid of anything pathetic.
In polling last month, this particular Congress is disliked by an average of about 85 percent of US peoples — there is most-likely not another group of people as useless as this particular group of shitheads.
And it could get worse.
The US state of the union in 2012 ain’t pretty.
Fog of Truth — ‘Bugsplat’
Filed Under Bullshit, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
As the new year grinds on, politics has taken the edge off the nearly unnoticed pullout of US troops from Iraq, ending a segment in one of the most-horrible of episodes.
And the most lied about military adventure in US history.
“In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.
As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”
– US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, June 5, 2008
Despite the obvious, none of George Jr.’s entourage has ever even been threatened with criminal prosecution.
(Illustration found here).
In a new view of the Iraqi horror is the word, “bugsplat:” One definition is a software for scanning your computer for registry errors; another is the lack of humanity in warfare.
The US military’s invasion was a nasty example of the latter.
In fact, ‘Bugsplat‘ was the name of a computer program in 2003 used to determine collateral damage inflicted by American bombs.
HaHaHaHa — bugsplat, anyone/anything squashed on the US windshield.
Robert Koehler took a look at this line of bullshit yesterday morning at the Baltimore Sun:
“But even when they’re not targeting civilians, which is probably most of the time, they end up killing massive numbers of civilians,” journalist Allan Nairn told Amy Goodman in a “Democracy Now!” interview last year.
“The Pentagon has a word for that, too,” he went on.
“They call it ‘bugsplat.’
In the opening days of the invasion of Iraq, they ran computer programs, and they called the program the Bugsplat program, estimating how many civilians they would kill with a given bombing raid.
On the opening day, the printouts presented to General Tommy Franks indicated that 22 of the projected bombing attacks on Iraq would produce what they defined as heavy bugsplat — that is, more than 30 civilian deaths per raid.
Franks said, ‘Go ahead. We’re doing all 22.’”
And this is the foundation of our national security.
Koehler concludes:
Project Bugsplat is the name of every war, at least from the planners’ point of view.
A winnable war is waged from above, invisibly, with godlike impunity.
Such wars, especially in today’s political order, cannot be effectively opposed with acts of equally brutal counterforce; they can only be prolonged.
“Bugsplat” is a term of ultimate disrespect and indifference, and it begins with a state of mind.
The global Occupy movement, with its humane and nonviolent core certainty, is tipping the balance. Finally it comes down to this: Occupy consciousness.
Without such, death comes by indifference.
This indifference can be applied to the US MSM — news organizations who have turned its eyes and ears away from exposing a rot now fully grown within the American soul.
Watch and listen here to the late Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter’s emotional outrage at the Iraqi war — he expresses horror at his own country (the UK) for being involved with such a crime.
And despite the US supposedly being gone, the blood still flows – from Bloomberg on a new report from London-based Iraq Body Count:
“The rate of Iraqi civilian deaths caused by U.S.-led coalition forces has declined steadily from 2009, while the rate caused by Iraqi state forces has increased,” the group said in an e-mailed news release.
Recent trends point to a “persistent low-level conflict in Iraq that will continue to kill civilians at a similar rate for years to come,” Iraq Body Count said.
“Time will tell whether the withdrawal of U.S. forces will have an effect on casualty levels,” the group said.
The US media, however, has been most quiet about any bad vibes coming off a war that tore apart the world’s thin fabric and left a country in a position beyond misery – a verbal snapshot of one Iraqi woman seems to sum it up: “Today is better than tomorrow.”
And tomorrow is the Iowa caucuses where the war party starts its machine rolling — horror of ugly horrors, though Newt Gingrich whined and took a bugsplat: “No, I feel ‘Romney-boated.”
The dogs of war fight amongst themselves — bug splatting everybody.
The ‘midget’s turd’ has left the building
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Musings, Terror | Leave a Comment
One of the more-mysterious assholes on earth is dead — Kim Jong Il, the self-styled “Dear Leader” of North Korea died of a heart attack it was reported last night or early this morning.
The guy reportedly has been dead two days and passed while hard at work: A tearful broadcaster reported that Kim died due to “overwork” after “dedicating his life to the people.” Kim suffered “great mental and physical strain” while on a train during a “field guidance tour,” North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency reported.
Yeah, right.
KCNA eventually noted Kim suffered a heart attack and couldn’t be saved despite the use of “every possible first-aid measure” — a heart way-bloated by too much Hennessy, lobster and women.
(Illustration found here).
Keeping it tight, within hours of the announcement, a South Korean news agency said the north tested an unspecified number of short-range missiles in a kind of wake-up notice that just because Kim is dead, his so-called country is still bat-shit crazy.
Kim Jong Un, one of Kim Il’s sons, is believed to be now in charge, though no one knows for sure, in fact, no one seems to even know the boy’s age, other than he’s in his 20s.
And that is the way-crux of the problem — the darkness of information.
Via the BBC: Val Hamer in South Korea tweets: “I live in South Korea. Military on high alert. Choppers everywhere. Strange tension in the air.#kimjongil #northkorea.”
How this whole scenario plays is fairly crucial due to the horrible fact that North Korea is both unstable, and they possess a shitload of material for nuclear weapons, and as the above rocket-launch announcement dictates, can throw that material around the region.
The US White House played it softly, commenting only that officials are “closely monitoring reports that Kim Jong Il is dead.”
The BBC, though, did report President Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak have spoken by telephone, keeping all eyes on the pathic north.
Although Kim Il was greatly disliked by the rest of the world, he scared people.
A retort from a US version of a political shithead: “I loathe Kim Jong Il,” former President George W. Bush once told journalist Bob Woodward, calling him a “pygmy” and a “spoiled child.”
Some background via the LA Times:
Kim was born Feb. 16, 1941, in the Russian city of Khabarovsk, where his father was stationed with other Korean and Chinese guerrillas being trained by the Soviet army to fight the Japanese.
The North Korean propaganda machine later claimed his birth took place a year later on Mt. Paektu, a sacred peak in Korean folklore, and that it was heralded by a double rainbow.
It was only the first of many outlandish legends in a cult of personality that also credited him with writing dozens of books and operas and making 11 holes-in-one in a single round of golf.
…
He borrowed heavily from Christian imagery (nobody was any the wiser since the Bible was banned in North Korea, along with other religious literature) to create the myth of a holy family destined to rule.
He was credited with designing the little red badge bearing a portrait of his father that North Koreans to this day are required to wear on their lapels.
Kim eventually became director of the party’s bureau of agitation and propaganda.
The position gave him an excuse to get involved with one of his great passions: cinema.
He expanded North Korea’s film studios and wrote a book, or at least had one published under his name.
In that 1973 tome, “On the Art of Cinema,” he espoused the theory that “revolutionary art and literature are extremely effective means for inspiring people to work for the tasks of the revolution.”
In 1978, overcome with a passion for movies, Kim IL ordered the kidnapping of Choi Eun Hee and Shin Sang Ok, a South Korean film couple — she an actress, he a director — to improve the North’s film industry.
The couple were held for eight years before escaping:
The pair had covert tape recordings of their conversations with Kim and later wrote a memoir containing one of the few firsthand accounts of his personality.
They described a man who could be alternately imperious and self-deprecating, once quipping to Choi about his height, “Small as a midget’s turd, aren’t I?”
A funny, strange little man, who was a self-centered asshole:
Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, tales of Kim’s eccentricities spread throughout the world.
Defectors told of wild drinking parties and naked dancers.
Some of the stories were hyped by South Korea’s fiercely anti-communist propaganda machine, but many were corroborated.
Kim imported $650,000 worth of Hennessy’s finest cognac in a single year.
His appetite for women and drink was exceeded by a love for the finest foods.
He hired for his private kitchens a sushi chef from Tokyo and a pizza chef from Italy, both of whom wrote accounts of their experiences.
At the time, North Korea was in the midst of a famine that would eventually kill as many as 2 million people, up to 10 percent of the population, and leave many of them permanently stunted.
Homeless, starving children became a common sight at North Korean train stations.
Kim nonetheless sent couriers on shopping excursions to buy rice cakes in Tokyo, mangoes in Thailand, cheese in France.
And what happens now with the Great Face-Stuffer gone?
The son could keep the hideous shit going like the dad: “The latest move indicates Kim Jong-Un is being put forward formally as a powerful leader like his father,” Sejong Institute analyst Cheong Seong-Chang, a specialist in the succession issue, told the AFP news agency in October. “Jong-Un is known to have the potential to become a strong, ruthless leader,” added Cheong. “He has a take-charge personality.”
Time will tell if he takes charge of some awful shit.