freedom's just another word for arrest, beating, and incarceration

almost popped up a bit 'bout the latest police state cloverfield clamp down in Bahrain.  thought better o' that; looks like seriously awful shit.  check fdog.

no one's here for that. malformed rantin' 'bout stupid shit.  yeppurrs.

so, we gots us some good stupid shit in the arrest and slappin' around of us army vet and retired cia intel-an, Ray McGovern, whom we all know and love, and who has been a constant barb to the administration since twee ought ought en three (continuity!), which is precisely why we know and love him.

so ol' lovable ray went to a hillary speech in which she inveighed against governments arresting peaceful protesters.  can you imagine there are places like that?  horrible, surely. according to hil, they are nasty places and desperately in need of reform, if not outright invasion and occupation.  and then, right in the middle of her up at the lectern, lecternin' away, a peaceful protester, ol' sweet ol' cia grandad ray, was attacked, arrested, beaten, and hauled off to jail.  right in front of her, and right in the sweet ol', good ol' eweessuveh.  and she never stopped yakkin' 'bout freedom.  didn't even blink.

juxtapose doesn't get better than that.

now, ray's a congenial guy, if a little frantic about what he knows, and is watching happen in front him.  he is frantic because the things he knows as a cia analyst and what he sees happening in america are converging rapidly. he's been making as big a stink as he can, been arrested a few times. guess this is just the latest, though perhaps most poetically ironic, as freedom sets the stage in all it's blazin' stalinesque glory. natch.

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her speech at George Washington University yesterday condemning governments that arrest protestors and do not allow free expression, 71-year-old Ray McGovern was grabbed from the audience in plain view of her by police and an unidentified official in plain clothes, brutalized and left bleeding in jail. She never paused speaking. When Secretary Clinton began her speech, Mr. McGovern remained standing silently in the audience and turned his back. Mr. McGovern, a veteran Army officer who also worked as a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years, was wearing a Veterans for Peace t-shirt.

Blind-sided by security officers who pounced upon him, Mr. McGovern remarked, as he was hauled out the door, "So this is America?" Mr. McGovern is covered with bruises, lacerations and contusions inflicted in the assault.

free expression! so says the tuna queen.  'cept for you, you cantankerous old coot!  and anyone else who mocks me! it's like fukkin wonderland there. ray later said that he used to do that all the time in front of rumsfeld, never once was bothered.  democrats. spiteful little dinks when they want to be, and hilariously* hypocritical.

fortunately for ray, he's a little too well known to be turfed into gitmo.  well. at least for now.

*hops on*

whew.  quite the stink up  'bout that aaron barr dipshit.  and the chamber and the bank that hired him and claim not to know it. (hey dipshit! we've read the emails.) the beauty of outsourcing blowback all over BofA and the chamber of horrors. yeah, yeah, the corps hired some guns, big news.  the fun comes in the drill down into the ravaging of the barr. sublime and vulgar, just like we like it.

so ol' abarr decides he's going to render unto the law anonymous and other wikileaks supporters, who invariably turn out also to be opponents of the us chamber of horrors.  at the chamber's mighty request.  checkin' into peoples kids, targeting unrelated persons, generalized creepy shit smear diggin'.

New emails reveal that the private spy company investigated the families and children of the Chamber’s political opponents. The apparent spearhead of this project was Aaron Barr, an executive at HB Gary. Barr circulated numerous emails and documents detailing information about political opponents’ children, spouses, and personal lives. One of the targets was Mike Gehrke, a former staffer with Change to Win. Among the information circulated about Gehrke was the specific “Jewish church” he attended and a link to pictures of his wife and two children

ol' abarr also figured he was gonna take down anonymous with his online kungfu chops, and then "sell" the info to the fbi. bragged about it in ft.   abarr works for a "security" company that does big biz wit' d' gubmint.  apparently, such people esteem themselves far too greatly.

aaron barr's twitter page since, well, you can see the date.

no click

gotta skim at some dipshit headline while grazin' the meme, which is pretty freakin' pathetic these days. (what's top of the heap at this world shaking moment? justice thomas doesn't participate in oral argument. i know.  huge.)  anyway, this sad thing reads, "How to Think About the Tea Party."

presumably meant only for those blighted souls already condemned to thinking about the tea party.

the urgency and the ecstasy

Thetans! I'm telling ya, Thetans!!!!!

that's pretty much what i see in this joker*.   crazed scientology book salesmen**.  door to door.  he comes looking like that, screeching at you in your doorway.  go read! do the research!  don't believe meee!!!

so, we don't. for the most part. 'cept for an addled few.  million.


_______________________
* can't quite figure beck as full bore dipshit, or just showman.
** in conjunction with Goldline.  Gold, for the coming doom (pending investigation).

soothing global caliphate

some dipshits were on a teevee clip the other day, naturally denigrating the uprising in Egypt.  hooligans and scabrous Islamic riffraff who want to start the caliphate, and that this, this Tunsia-Egypt uprising is just part of "the coming insurrection."  i for one certainly hope ol' beckers is right.  i'd love to be around to see that.

trouble is, that ain't what's happening.  and beck is a dipshit, if not an outright dangerous maniac. adams apple ann was on the dipshit tube, screeching like she does, doorknob movin' around in her neck, that the crowd in Tahrir were "all men!" this was, apparently, proof of the sinister global islamic plot.  other dipshits all looked at one picture.  men.  everywhere.  the prognosis for western civilization was grim indeed, without a steadfast resort to war.

Now, we know these people don't get out much. and when they do, they're well cocooned in a comforting, gauzy prophylactic space, one both opaque to the real environment and reflective of their own pampered, perverted weltanshauung.  which means that adams apple ann probably doesn't look at pictures in the ny times much.

dipshits. it's just the cold war for them, all over again.  they're excited about it really.  you can tell.  they've been pining for an Evil Empire for awhile now.  gotta sink into anything while they can.

the conservative dipshits on teevee seem to live for, and hence seek out conspiracies against and enemies of america.  imagine them everywhere.  this is why hitler pops up so often for them.  they want a hitler.  need a hitler.  it's like they are all on a leo strauss iv drip, constantly craving the heathen Other.  the bigger, the better.  wasn't bill clinton hitler to them, at one point?*


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*yep.  Arizona Congressman John Shadegg, who compared Clinton to Hitler "for proclaiming the Ironwood Forest Northwest of Tucson as a national monument." i'm sure there are more examples.  in fact, from the same cited paper,

"The only other president that was close to the number of hits received by Bush was Clinton-Hitler analogy, being with about 100,000 fewer hits than Bush-Hitler, ...",

which would put it at about 281,000 times that Clinton was compared to Hitler.

bang bang, dead bang bang data

As passed by the Congress:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

As ratified by the States:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

As would be passed and ratified by the National Rifle Association:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear ever more lethal, sexy ceramic, plastic, light fantastic, advertised by hollywood arms shall not be infringed.

chewin' some juicy stew burbling around the murderous band of shysters comprising the tendered ranks of the NRA.  fuck, what a scam those bastards got goin' on; rigging up their lavish lifestyles by corn-holing americans with lethal weapons on the back of the second amendment.  that's a conservative dipshit twofer: profit and patriotism.  what could be better than that?  it seems almost certain that god had something to fucking do with it.  million plus per annum.

isn't it great that clever guys like nra honchos get rich by such measures in america, the get rich quick off death scheme?  it sure is.  that's what makes america great.  americans will defend their lethal right to TEK9 slaughter each other -- yowl to rafters about it -- while cheerily, happily and most patriotically swish their money off to further enrich the lavish lifestyles of NRA execs, who are nothing more than arms industry agents bent on selling ever more guns 'n ammo.  it's like cars for them.  gotta keep pumpin' out the new models, and more of 'em.  more killing capacity! faster cycle time! huge magazine! mow down crowds with ease!

seems the ol' nra lads have done a damn fine job, though. can't begrudge 'em that.  yanks got the 2nd amendment shanked into their lip like hooked salmon, convinced that the gubmint will pound down their door an' haul 'em away the moment the glock goes.  confuckkinvinced.  don't seem to have much notion that that is more or less happening now -- has been for awhile -- on a ginned up racist drug war and spooked up security state, guns or no. guess they haven't noticed.  sure do get itchy about the guns, though.   nuttin' bad about 'em.  just rotten people.  who manage to get guns.  easily.  in america.  for the nra, though, well, you simply cannot make it easy enough to get guns.  or patriotic enough to want and own them.  it's an endless, thankless job.  they are patriots, after all.

all of which means you cannot have data about gun deaths in america.

stumbled over this rather amazing segment of the interview with Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center.

Diaz:The industry has been instrumental in suppressing data on gun violence. Think about it: If you run a tire company that is making defective tires, and the tires cause cars to flip over, there are tracking systems that will alert people if there is a problem. There is data on the safety of every product except guns. That data is suppressed. But if we had it, we could end the debate on guns and crime because we would know the facts.

So if the information is being suppressed, who is gathering the data on gun violence?

Diaz:The gun lobby-by that I mean the NRA and the manufacturers-have deliberately shut down the sources of information. There is very little data collected by the federal government. Some data have been patched together from various sources, and much of the research is privately funded. From my point of view, that's insane. And think about it: If the gun manufacturers were so confident about the utilitarian nature of their product, then they wouldn't worry about the data collected on how they're used. The ATF [The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] used to release their list of the top guns used in crimes each year. But legislation was passed and now the ATF can't release this data. We want that changed-we want full data and an open discussion. Even law enforcement has trouble getting this information. And there is no data on the guns being trafficked to Mexico. The ATF information is ridiculous. The Mexican government gave them the information, but the ATF won't break it out according to the types of guns being trafficked.

when you're in the bang bang industry, the only good data, are dead data.

our man in al-Qāhira

that long sought bush-fantastic freemanmoxy is finally spreadin' its glorious wings across the arab Muslim world. or, at least, trying to unfurl them.

'magine that. just like ol' george said. gotta give it to him. bush finally got his dream. regimes trembling, droppin'  like flies, or to their knees, hoping a "reshuffling" will save their pampered asses. fun to watch, in the big way. and those ballsy protesters in the 'nisia and Ägypten have been amazing! guys all lined up, takin' that water canon head on. watching american media dipshits focus and fret about "what this means for Israel" has been a funhouse ride in itself.  'stache bolton naturally sees that a democracy in Egypt means ... the "timetable" for the inevitable attack on iran has been sped up.  but, but, the freedom agenda was supposed to bring peace.  more confusion.  in readin' summa his shit, ol' fisk seems apoplectic with glee, spittin' nails at the cops. fuck, he's over there climbin' on the tanks, ferfucksakes. yeehaa! ol' pissed off fisky.  the revolt you've been waiting for.

so, the yanks got their democracy push, though perhaps not quite the vector they had imagined in those glory and yonder years of spreadin' their happy horseshit.  hey, wait a stinkin' minute! freedom and democracy are not supposed to be taking out our guys, whom we will refuse to acknowledge are bad and decidedly undemocratic.  freedom and democracy are supposed to be taking out bad guys we say are bad guys.

this is the trouble with people.  entirely unpredictable.  one just never knows how long one can run rough shod over people and ostentatiously use the nation as a personal cash drawer, before who knows what will set them off?  so hard to know.  ol' georgie figured that invading iraq would set those mighty wings a flappin', go east, democracy.  go east.  not south or west.  our guys thata way.  didn't happen like that though.  but it did happen.  happening right freaking now.  but from and toward entirely the wrong direction.

natch, the usual dipshits are movin' fore, cryin' for that homely staaabiliteee.  suddenly, dipshits who "want democracy" really actually do not fucking want democracy.  at all.  not fer them damn muslims, anyway.  forget that freedom and democracy thing now.  now that the realization has set in that democracy in the "arab world" pretty much means Muslims will rule, well ... yee fuckin yikes!  who the fuck thought that one up?  or didn't "think" that one up at all?  oh.  right.  not sayin' bush here. that democracy excuse came shootin' straight outta the pieholes of Scaife welfare queens at aei or pnac -- those assholes.  can't fault 'em, though.  sounds great when you're selling a war.  don't think of it as war.  think of it as a deep cleanse, followed by dollop of freedom to fill in unsightly pores of wounding oppression. like that.

anyway, all of this is a bit confusing.  bushie said democracy would be good for the arab world.  who doesn't remember that?  and since the "arab world" is chockablock full of muslims, seems the bush dream pretty much meant muslims should have democracy. and that it would be good for them, and good the for world.  'member all that happy horse shit?

and the happy horse shit is exposed once again, as american official response twirls around, searching for the appropriate, rms narrative that appears to lend credence to a belief that the united states government does indeed support democratic reform, while at the same time, does not offend their man in Cairo with calls for ouster, and downplaying american made weapons used against protesters in Egypt. whew. that is one tight rope.  the fall was inevitable.

'course, bush never gave a rat's ass about freedom spreading, or anything else so far as can be discerned*  

and obama?  well, he was supposed to be the change, right?  but, he already showed his stripes with the honduras posture, and honduras was small beans. after honduras, the obama change sham was fully exposed on the fp front.  you just knew he couldn't come out and call for freedom and democracy anywhere authoritarian allies found themselves under popular, democratic assault.   oh no.  no, no.  Obama wears a fine rhetorical sheen, but is nothing but an establishment agent.  hedge 'n haw, like always.  gawd, who isn't tired of watching presidential hedging and  hawing?  tiring and tedious.  is that what "no drama`' means?  hedge and haw?

so, there appears to be no firm us response or position on the situation in cairo.  except the perspicacious omission of calling for mubarak to step down.  Actually, the lack of apparent firm official response more than adequately demonstrates a firm official response -- in favour of Hosni Mubarak.



* -- 'cept brush. bush does have a thing for brush, and the clearing thereof. not sure what that is all about, but he shoulda stayed with that.