Hypocrisy As Official Policy

As I round the corner into my fifth year here (Five years? It seems like twenty)one of the things that has really grated my cheese has been hypocrisy. I know that everybody has a bit of it in themselves, it's only human. But when it becomes official policy, that's a different story.
Glenn Greenwald has a piece about how that bastion of all things media, the official paper of record won't use the term torture when describing US 'enhanced interrogation techniques'. However, in an article about Iran's use of torture to extract confessions about those attempting to topple that brutal theocracy under a 'velvet revolution', what term do they use for techniques milder than what we ourselves (well, not really us, just the people who have forgotten who they work for, our government)? Torture! And politicians and publishers wonder why newspaper circulation is dwindling. Maybe it's because the NYT has hypocrisy as an official editorial policy that has caused people to throw their collective hands in the air and say "They expect me to pay for this shit?"
One of the many changes not brought forth by the people who promised you lotta change is the official government policy of hypocrisy. Joe Biden, today on one of them Sunday mornin', nobody watchin' did-he-really-say-that talk shows:

the U.S. "cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do."

What he meant was that although the US can tell Iran to abandon it's nuclear power program, it cannot tell Israel not to attack Iran because of Israel's paranoia about Iran's alleged atomic weapons program. And, I'm fairly sure, that after Israel attacks Iran, the Us will probably tell Russia and China, who trade regularly with Iran, not to retaliate against Iran.

The Campaign Begins Today

...we can ALL learn from our selfless Troops... they're bold, they don't give up....-Sarah Palin (from the SarahPAC website)
This land, blessed with clean air, water, wildlife, minerals, AND oil and gas. It's energy! God gave us energy.
Much speculation has been raised about yesterday's sudden announcement by Sarah Palin that she is stepping down from her job as governor of the State of Alaska with a year and a half yet to go on her term of office. Some say there's a scandal looming, others offer more spurious explanations.
it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: "Sit down and shut up", but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out.
But between the lines of her SarahPAC post, she indicates that, although she is quitting, she is not a quitter.
I'll work for and campaign(emphasis mine) for those PROUD to be American, and those who are INSPIRED by our ideals and won't deride them.
Yes, the Palin campaign for the Republican party's nomination has begun in earnest! No more being stuck way up there in Alaska, far from the national forum on issues and stuff, not having to answer to voters will allow Sarah to be Sarah. And, I know what you're thinking: won't quitting her job when the going gets tough make her look, well, like a quitter? That depends on who she's trying to woo.
The world needs more "Trigs", not fewer.
Yes, she is out to appeal to the retards, the Tea Baggers, and those people who believe that shooting moose and abortionists is not only a God given right, but a patriotic move as well.
I thought about how much fun some governors have as lame ducks... travel around the state, to the Lower 48 (maybe), overseas on international trade... So you see, rather than spend the remainder of her term as governor traveling around and campaigning for the presidency, she's going to quit her post so she can commit to it full time without feeling the guilt of "milking it". And this bold move has been successful so far, like Nirvana, she has succeeded in knocking out Michael Jackson.

Double Standard Time

How long is too long? German doctors today cleared suspected Nazi death camp guard fit to stand trial as an accessory in the murder of 29,000 Jews. John Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker was extradited from his Seven Hills, Ohio home in May of this year to stand trial even though he has bone marrow and kidney diseases.
The great irony here is, if Demjanjuk is guilty of the crimes he is accused of,while he certainly should be punished for them, they happened over sixty years ago. At the same time Obama was sending this 89 year old to trial, he was announcing his intentions not to prosecute anybody for the torture carried out by the Bush/Cheney regime, because, as he said, it was time to move forward.
So we're straight: Demjanjuk, a prison guard who merely followed the policies of the Nazi regime (if, indeed, he is guilty) and did not create the policies, gets prosecuted, even though these events happened in the past?
Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, etc., don't get prosecuted for their crimes, even though they are the ones who created the policy that led to illegal acts being carried out, because, even though they happened within the past eight years, it's time to look forward?
So when it comes to war crimes, it's better to create the policy than to carry them out? Would Obama have given Hitler a pass as well?

News Flash:John Bolton Is A Tool

I don't watch much television news. These days it deems reporting every bit of minutia concerning the death of Michael Jackson more important than a US Congress women taken hostage by a foreign nation.
Newspapers are struggling these days, and why not? They are as about as useful as a Republican politician lecturing to us about morals.How trustworthy can a paper that offers access to Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and even the paper’s own reporters and editors for a token fee of $25,000?
Even worse is when the very same paper publishes an opinion piece by neocon tool John Bolton advocating an Israeli strike against Iran. The reasons are both spurious and complete fabrications, starting with Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program, and continuing on with the disputed election results from last month's elections. Never mind that such an action would be illegal under international law, Bolton (and Israel) have no use for international law, except when it serves their purpose.
As for that whole "democracy" thing, when Hamas won the majority of seats in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council, the US, (as part of the Quartet on the Middle East) voted to cut funding to the PLC. There you go, that's what you fucking get for exercising freedom of choice.
So if the newspapers are struggling, maybe they should focus less on Michael Jackson (that's why we have supermarket tabloids) and focus less on propaganda for that next big war. However, online newspapers do provide good links for bloggers, and I will continue to link to them even if some crazy judge thinks the practice should be banned to save newspapers.

Chances Are That If You Are Reading This, You're a Political Extremist Dickweed

Or maybe it's just me. Maybe you're the political extremist, and I'm the digital dickweed.
Whatever we're doing, we're pissing off the corporate media because we lack the legitimacy of capital earned by fellating corporate sponsors and favored political hacks.
Now just to be sure, the CEO of News Corp., the parent company of Fox News, home to the likes of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly, call us political extremists? I guess a political extremist is anyone to the left of Adolph Hitler. But it doesn't end there. No, John Hartigan suggests that bloggers be jailed as they are in oppressive police states like China and Burma. Because freedom of the press should only be available to those whom would use it to try and shape the agenda for an illegal war (while still maintaining that whole "fair and balanced" facade).
Less serious is the charge from CNBC host Dennis Kneale, who responded to bloggers who have called him "unwatchable", among other things, by referring to them as "dickweeds". Hey, I may be a dick weed, but at least I still have my soul.
Which is more than I can say about anybody working for the corporate media.

Mental Fundy Christiansanity-The Missing Link

Many people are jumping ship on the conservative movement within the Republican party, and I can understand why. The mental fundies are making it confusingly difficult to stay on message as they bat at straw men and scapegoat everything that doesn't fit in their strict and narrow nomenclature.
Take our current economic woes. A sane and intelligent person could say they were caused by the loss of our manufacturing base coupled with dubious banking procedures by an unregulated industry. But in the mental fundies eyes, there are three completely different reasons for the current economic crisis: Gays, Porn, and Abortion. Their God is upset with America, you see, and they feel it necessary to pass an "Oklahoma Citizen’s Proclamation for Morality" in order to curry His favor and get America rolling again.
Then there's the other school of non-thought put forth by the owners of the "Creation Museum" which states that all our troubles were caused by a "moral relativism" that came about when America embraced evolution. Never mind that America's greatest period of growth and equitable prosperity came at a time when evolution was taught as scientific fact, and since some Americans rejected that theory, our country has entered a period of decline-these people say it's true because their big book of fairy tales says so, therefore, it must be or their whole lives have been built upon a lie. But why stop there? Why not just say that our country really went down the tubes when we rejected God's mode of transportation, and replaced it with the Horseless Carriage? The only certainty in all this is that our real problems will never go away as long as we have people who elect representatives like this.

Fighting Fire With Fire Means That Everyone Gets Burned:America's Terrorist Tactics Against Iran Exposed

"They hate us because we are free....and they are not"-George W Bush
Leave it to a simpleton to provide a simple answer. The reasons that America is so reviled in the Middle East are myriad, and it all boils down to this-we won't leave their countries the fuck alone! We install puppets on almost a whim, and then, by the same whim, decide to topple them when they show dissatisfaction with being asked to perform like little monkeys time and time again. We put America's corporate interests over the interests of indigenous people, our allies' people, and even our own sainted troops. All must suffer so that rich men may become richer.
And now, we're screwing around in Iran, and have been since the Bush administration. Using proven tactics, we have been working to destabilize the current regime since, probably since 9/11, when Bush identified Iran as part of his "Axis of Evil". And the faithful corporate media has been playing right along.
-The paper of record went on record reporting a misinterpretation as a fact when in truth completely different statement.
-The creation of a martyr conveniently killed on camera by terrorists working with the CIA.
-The arrest of nine Iranian British embassy employees by Iran accused of instigating the unrest following the disputed elections. This is reminiscent of the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis, in which American embassy workers, including at least three CIA operatives, were taken hostage following the US's decision to allow the Shah into the country to seek medical treatment. Ironically, one of the agreements reached during Carter administration negotiations was that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran's internal affairs." I guess that little tidbit escaped the Bush administration, or, more likely, was ignored because it was a pledge made by the highly unpopular Carter administration. The hostage crisis was seen as leading to anti-Iranian feelings in the US that have remained (especially in conservative circles).
-The continued, and quite unproven claim that Iran's nuclear energy program is a front for a nuclear weapons program.
It is highly likely that a lot of the covert activity that we are seeing in Iran was started by the previous administration. However given recent events, it is likely that the Obama administration will do anything to reverse these policies. And it is just as unlikely that we will see any honesty from the corporate media with regards to Iran.