BartBlog

Back in the day, I was always trying to fly off to report on international combat hot-spots like Iraq and Afghanistan — always hoping that if the American people back home read my horror-stories of war, they too would somehow become war-resisters and that my stories of brutal, grim and unjustified death in far-away places might even help escalate a strong anti-war movement here at home, one that would finally stop the heartless killing of women and children by American tanks, rockets and drones. But now? Now I’m thinking that I should be doing something even more important than traveling to combat zones far away — that I, like some modern-day Jonah, should actually be going down into the belly of the American beast itself instead.

Plus it’s always cheaper to go to North Carolina or Washington DC or St Louis than to fly off to Syria, Gaza, Haiti or Ukraine.

The main question that I would be asking in these particular American war zones, however, would be, “What makes America tick?”

What has made us become the most dreaded and hated country in the world — a country that has more weapons and more money to spend on weapons than any other country anywhere, ever? What gives us the right to call ourselves “patriotic” and “brave” and “democratic” when, in reality, it is America that has killed, maimed, tortured and mutilated millions of people all over the world — and trampled any survivors’ chances and their children’s chances of ever ever having a decent life again.

Why do Americans support dictators in Ukraine, Palestine, Honduras, Congo, etc. with such enthusiastic glee? And also why do Americans applaud so loudly when elections here at home are stolen and our infrastructure and school systems die and “Christianity” becomes just another excuse to kill, rape, torture and maim God’s children both at home and abroad? http://www.globalresearch.ca/iraqi-army-downs-two-british-planes-carrying-weapons-for-isil-terrorists/5433089

And what makes Americans bitch and complain so much about what ISIS is doing in Iraq and Syria — when what Americans have done there in the past and are doing there right now is so much much much worse? ISIS fanatics behead hundreds of people. American troops level whole cities and leave them contaminated with radioactive detritus that will kill children and other living things there for the next 500 years.

Why do Americans fight so hard against trying to end climate change? Why are Americans so set against preventing nuclear holocausts both at home and abroad? Why do Americans cheer and get all teary-eyed and proud when our cops turn into robo-cops and spray peaceful protesters with tear gas? And then actually buy tickets to go see women tortured? http://womensenews.org/story/media-stories/150219/fifty-shades-grey-eroticizes-torture

“What makes Americans tick?” I need to know what is going on right here in America before I can possibly understand what the freak is going on in all those American-financed war zones throughout the rest of the world.

So here’s my plan. I’m going to go out and see America first. Ukraine and Gaza and Baghdad will just have to wait — while I, like Jonah, go deep into the belly of the American beast instead.

Despite all the nightmares I have seen in the last decades, I continue to be an idealist and to dream of a better world, a world that Buddha, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad would be proud of. Most Americans, however, apparently dream of cruelty, torture, injustice and ruling the world vicariously.

We are the protagonists of our own dreams.

Americans (and all other human beings too for that matter) need to finally learn that it is far better to die with love in our hearts than to live with hatred in our eyes, fear in our guts and evil in our souls.

PS: A Manhattan jury just awarded a $218.5 million verdict against the Palestinian Authority for damages done to Israelis with American citizenship by Palestinian suicide bombers. Do you know what this means? A new precedence has just been set. A new Pandora’s box has just been opened.

From now on, relatives of Americans killed in any foreign country, not just Israel, can also use American courts to get recompense for damages done by acts of “terrorism” on American citizens abroad! http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/nyregion/damages-awarded-in-terror-case-against-palestinian-groups.html?_r=0

For instance, if any Chilean-Americans were killed in the CIA coup against Allende in Chile, their relatives can now sue Henry Kissinger in American courts — but of course they will have to stand in line behind the relatives of any Cambodian-Americans killed by him.

And what about the bunches and groups of Palestinian-Americans, Yemeni-Americans, Iraqi-Americans, Syrian-Americans, Ukrainian-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans, Somali-Americans, Haitian-Americans, etc. who have been killed by American tanks, rockets and drones?

America? You can no longer pretend to not know what you are doing. See ya in court!

PPS: On March 11, 2015, I’ll be going off to Portland, Oregon, to attend a convention — and can start my exploration of American war (and peace) zones there. http://www.leftcoastcrime.org/2015/

What would happen if we Americans suddenly decided to withdraw all of our troops currently scattered all over the world and to actually bring them back to within our own US borders where they belong? What would happen if we actually closed down all of America’s extensive and pricy (over one thousand and counting) military bases and black-site operations all around the globe? We may never know. “Why?” you might ask. Because it is never gonna happen, that’s why.

Despite all of the incredibly huge amounts of money, energy, pain and grief that all these bases and black-site operations are costing us American taxpayers daily right now, the subject of closing even a few of these bases and black-site operations (or at least to stop opening up new ones!) isn’t even up for debate.

There are so many other topics that we are happily debating in America right now — but not this one.

Americans are currently debating such crap topics as how best to save rich people from having to pay taxes; whether cops should be allowed to kill minority and/or poor people at will; why torture is a good thing; how we can most easily give large corporations our life savings and pensions; whether or not our kids should get measles vaccines; and exactly how soon “we” can bomb the crap out of Russia. But one of the most important subjects for debate in America today is not even on the menu right now. http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17416/wall_street_to_workers_give_us_your_retirement_savings_and_stop_asking_ques

A raging debate on how to return America to its grand old isolationist tradition should be the major topic in every newspaper headline and TV news show in America right now. But, sadly, it is not.

And there are many other life-threatening topics for debate here in America that we should be discussing too (but are not) such as, “Is it really in our best interest to support chaos in the Middle East or be Israeli neo-colonialists’ catspaws?” Or whether corporations really are people, or “Why is election-malfeasance in America is still running amuck?” Or if we really want to be committing climate-change suicide? Or why America now has the same distribution of wealth between the upper classes and the rest of us that it had back in 1910 and that the difference in income between America’s top 1% and the rest of us is further apart now than any other time in history including the Roman Empire, Charles Dickens’ London and Marie Antoinette’s France.

According to economist Thomas Piketty, “Income inequality has exploded in the United States.” http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117429/capital-twenty-first-century-thomas-piketty-reviewed

And why the freak is America a member of NATO, the most war-mongering organization in the entire world outside of the US Department of “Defense”? http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015/02/15/More-than-4000-troops-will-be-deployed-to-Kuwait-possibly-to-fight-Islamic-State/2061424019948/#ixzz3Rpuk2BKH

And — really? Here’s a headline that will warm all those Scrooge-like corporate hearts: “Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown” Social science is being militarized to develop ‘operational tools’ to target peaceful activists and non-violent protest movements. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jun/12/pentagon-mass-civil-breakdown Should we not be discussing that too?

And then there’s that good old “New World Order” thingie popping up again, and it no longer even includes America on the list of those giving the New Orders — because the global overlord dudes who are currently drawing up the list to re-order our world seem to have us Americans in mind only to play the minor roles of vassals and serfs.

But none of these other topics are up for debate in America either. http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/warren-display-backbone-threatens-career-democrat

According to journalist Juan Cole, the top five favorite planks for the Republican party platform in 2016 are gonna be torture, war-mongering, bank corruption, tax evasion for the uber-rich and how best to steal elections. http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/27479-top-5-planks-of-gop-2016-platform-torture-war-bank-corruption-paid-for-elections Why aren’t we discussing that either?

Frankly, there seems to be no debate in America today on almost any topic that should be of primary concern to We the People who are paying for all this crap. But I digress. Let’s get back on topic, the topic of closing over a thousand US military bases and black-site operations all across the globe. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/sudans-president-claims-cia-and-mossad-stand-behind-isis-and-boko-haram-10051024.html

Of course I myself am obviously an advocate for closing all U.S. bases and black-site operations on foreign soil and bringing all of our troops home where they belong. So. Let’s debate.

Debaters in favor of keeping America’s foreign empire strong and all these bases and black-site operations open might come up with a list of arguments such as:

1. “They” will come here and terrorize us if we let down our guard.

2. We will then have little or no access to raw materials and natural resources. Our economy will shrink.

3. We need the war industry because it produces jobs.

4. We must bring freedom and democracy to the world and stop tyrannies.

These four points are all laughably easy to refute — except for perhaps point number three. Here are my counter-arguments:

1. In the many decades since the end of WW II, America has systematically created more enemies than one can shake a stick at due to its brutal policy of foreign military interference abroad. People all over the world used to love America. But this is no longer true. Obviously. These foreign bases and black-site operations are not keeping America safe. Just look at 9/11. Just look at the Great Recession of 2008. I rest my case. http://friendsofsyria.co/2014/12/18/fox-news-cia-created-al-qaeda-and-taliban/

2. Hey, we can always get access to foreign natural resources by actually paying for them. Now there’s a unique idea. It’s called Capitalism!

Right now, our military mainly serves the purpose of acting as thugs and extortionists for corporations, allowing corporations to go into foreign countries at will and steal their natural resources. Our nation’s finest young men and women are being forced to serve as mega-corporations’ personal security forces and Mafia crews. Hell, let these corporations pay for their own damn security thugs. Why should we taxpayers do the job? We are never the ones who make money off of this deal. Au contraire. We get to pay through the nose for it.

Why should we American taxpayers keep paying out trillions of dollars so that the best and brightest of our young generation can die violent and lonely deaths and leave widows and orphans behind them — in order to “Keep Corporations Strong”? It’s like Vietnam all over again.

3. Yes, the war industry does produce jobs. But working for the Yankee Dollar is a high-risk employment, is morally repugnant and the benefits are few. How about, instead, that we hire all those soldiers to work in the solar industry or to repair our shabby infrastructure? Or train them to become doctors or teachers. Just think of the money we’d save!

4. America doesn’t bring democracy to the world. “We” mostly bring dictators and ruffians and torturers and election fraud. And “we” are currently supporting monsters like ISIS and those neo-Nazis in Ukraine. It’s all about the money. The American dream has become a nightmare if you live overseas (and will probably become more of a nightmare here too if we continue to keep the same vampires and doofuses in charge). http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/27529-focus-us-tv-provides-ample-platform-for-american-torturers-but-none-to-their-victims

That’s my argument and I’m sticking with it.

Hey, I may be wrong here about proposing that we immediately bring all of “our” weapons and troops home. Or I may be right. Who knows. But shouldn’t we at least be having this debate? http://www.gp.org/about-the-green-party

I really hate to mention ISIS in the same breath with my beloved San Francisco Giants, but I will anyway — if for no other reason than to point out the mind-boggling contrast between these two organizations.

In preparation for this year’s FanFest at AT&T Park, I was lucky enough to meet a few members of the Giants’ ball team last week, including Xavier Lopez, Sergio Romo, two Brandons (Crawford and Belt) and Hunter Pence! And got to high-five them all too! I will never wash my right hand again! Plus I actually got a chance to chat with Hunter Pence. “If you show me your palm, I can predict if you will win the next World Series,” I told him.

“No, I’d rather not know for sure,” replied Pence. “That would take all the fun out of it.” And when I promised to use all my influence to get my pregnant daughter to name her new baby “Hunter” instead of Sofia, he gave me a big smile. He was so nice!

But when I also told him that my daughter would probably just stick with the name ‘Sofia,’ he looked so sweetly disappointed that I think I’d better talk to Ashley again.

So what’s my point here? My point is that these amazing young Giants were good-hearted and friendly and open and sweet — fame had not spoiled them. They are the best athletes that America can produce — and yet are still as sweet and innocent as the boy next door.

Not so with ISIS — even though, in all-too-many cases, ISIS members really are (or used to be) the innocent boys next door (if you live in London or Berlin or Paris that is).

And in many respects, ISIS has also become like a new European Children’s Crusade — only instead of some greedy pope in the Middle Ages luring French, German and British kids to their deaths by filling their heads with promises and lies, ISIS’ social media is the one now luring modern European kids to their deaths by filling their heads with promises and lies. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/world/middleeast/isis-displaying-a-deft-command-of-varied-media.html?_r=0

“Come to the Middle East and fight for your religion and ideals,” touts ISIS’s various thinly-disguised FaceBook pages. “Be a hero of your time!” And so off these poor gullible kids go, lured by their pied piper on Twitter, to also meet their deaths in the graveyard of the Middle East, fighting ghoulish battles for their handlers, NATO, Turkey, the US, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel — whose leaders are neo-colonialists who don’t give a flying damn if these kids survive or not. All these War Street touts really want is to conquer the Middle East on the backs of these gullible youths’ bodies and blood. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/16/1330029/-Saudis-Lobbied-John-McCain-Lindsey-Graham-to-sell-War

When the Muslim youth of Europe, who are children of Middle Eastern refugees themselves, see horror movies like “Shujayea: Massacre at Dawn” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTr_Un4a_zA, and they know that US, NATO and Israeli neo-colonials are behind all this merciless slaughter, they just want to do something — anything — to protest. And so they are vulnerable to joining ISIS. But ISIS is not now and has never been a Muslim organization. That would be like calling Hitler a good Christian because his swastika is in the form of a cross.

What to do? Let’s cut off the snake at its head and stop helping ISIS to recruit gullible youth through social media. But how can we do that? Cutting down on ISIS’s growing social media presence would be a hecka lot easier if the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel simply stopped buying up ISIS’s oil and thus flooding ISIS with millions of dollars to buy fabulous and alluring FaceBook graphics. http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/syrian-army-regains-ground-rebels-south

According to journalist Mohammad Kesserwani, “ISIS took hold of more than 11 oil fields in Syria and Iraq. The group actually has ventured into extracting oil and transferring it by trucks to the black markets in Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq,…relying on reports unveiled by US media means quoting the administration in Washington as saying that ISIS was now making more than USD 3 million per day which makes the group the wealthiest terrorist organization in history.” http://www.ilfarosulmondo.it/how-is-isil-financed/

All this slick and mendacious ISIS social media propaganda also reminds me of those dire hoodlums in Pinocchio who lured young boys to Pleasure Island so that they could turn them into donkeys. And now the ISIS boys (and girls) also helplessly bleat, “Mommy! I want my mommy!” Too late.

We Americans (and Europeans) now have a choice. We can spend our trillions on war and dismemberment and turning our children into monsters and/or corpses — or we can spend it on creating upstanding youth who have integrity and openness and good hearts (and hopefully high batting averages too). http://smpalestine.com/2015/02/08/israels-historical-fear-of-the-palestinian-mind-witnessed-in-gaza-today/

I’m still haunted by this video, “Paradise Stolen”: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40867.htm

At this very moment, there might be (a lot more) Giants out there among our children even as we speak — or else there might be (a lot more) gullible kids with no other prospects of education or jobs or tolerance or justice being offered to them than the bogus chance to go off on a Children’s Crusade in the Middle East and become the helpless pawns of bad men.

PS: Instead of Americans fighting tooth and nail to prevent themselves from being grimly swallowed alive by War Street and its buddies on Wall Street and K Street, Americans these days are instead battling fiercely and with all of their might to…wait for it…protect (or not protect) our country from measles! What? Measles is the greatest danger to America today? I think not.

PPS: Such hypocrisy. The American press attacks Brian Williams for a small lie. Yet everything our mainstream media told us about Iraq, Libya, Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, etc. have been big lies. So how come they don’t suspend Bush, Cheney, Obama and Rumsfeld for six months too — preferably in Guantanamo? And doesn’t that also sorta make you wonder what Brian Williams did to piss War Street off so much right now? It never seemed to get angry at him when he told the right kind of lies.
http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/us-has-become-a-nation-where-tv-news-celebrities-are-more-important-than-the-news

And then the American press also (rightly) crucifies ISIS for burning just one man alive — yet War Street has been burning hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people alive since way back in the days of Dresden, Hiroshima, Pyongyang and Vietnam. Then there’s the more recent fire-bombing of Kosovo, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iraq… The napalming of Gaza? Women and children there incinerated alive from the air? War street has clearly stooped to the same level as ISIS — only on a mass scale.

Author’s note: “War Street” is the simplified name that I’ve given to the war-mongers, weapons manufacturers and military-industrial complex members who pretty much own America right now — along with their buddies on Wall Street and K Street of course.

This is my own personal list. Feel free to jump right in with a list of your own.

1. That the Civil War was fought to free the slaves. Nah, that was solely an afterthought. The real reason for the Civil War was the lust for $$$$ and power. Like war always is for.

2. That holding the Union together back in 1860 was a good thing. A good thing for who? Dontcha sometimes just wish that The South had been allowed to go on its own merry way back then — so that we now don’t have to waste billions of Yankee dollars on Red State racists, corrupt senators, war-mongers and welfare queens? Boy, I could surely live without Mitch McConnell. He’s our ultimate grand prize for The North having won the 1860 Civil War? Really?

3. “Remember the Maine!” Yeah right. Apparently the sinking of the Maine was a false-flag operation to force Americans into a brutal war with Spain. http://zinnedproject.org/about/a-peoples-history-a-peoples-pedagogy/

4. The 1908 invasion of the Philippines — wherein approximately one-sixth of its population was massacred by the US Army in the name of bringing “Democracy” to Filipinos. They could have lived without that one — literally.

5. World War I? Really? Do you even have to ask why this war was based on lies — such as that the Huns were out to murder our babies? Or that the Lusitania was torpedoed by the evil Kaiser when actually it was illegally carrying six million pounds of explosives on board a munitions transport ship disguised at a cruise liner before it blew up. Or how about the famous “Zimmerman Telegram” lie?

6. Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt knew. Of course he did. And Senator Prescott Bush invested in Nazi Germany bigtime. And after WW II was over, our very own CIA brought 1,000 Nazi officers over here to help J. Edgar Hoover, Allen Dulles and Joe McCarthy organize their new Cold War storm-troopers. And today “Corporatism,” as Mussolini called it, is now king in the USA — and all over the rest of world too. Unbelievable. Was there any reason at all why we fought World War II? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-agencies-used-1000-nazis.html?_r=1

7. The invasion of Korea. Again, that phony “Democracy” thing came into play — as it has again and again and again as Wall Street and War Street set up dictator after dictator across the globe and then whitewashed these brutal bad guys to the gullible American public back home:

7.a Chaing Kai-shek, “Our democratic ally in Asia”

7.b The Shah of Iran, “Our democratic ally in the Middle East.”

7.c Fulgencio Batista, “Our democratic ally in Cuba.”

7.d Apartheid South Africa, “Our democratic ally in Africa.”

7.d Francisco Franco, “Our democratic ally in Spain.”

7.e Syngman Rhee, “Our democratic ally in South Korea.”

7.f. Papa Doc Duvalier, “Our democratic ally in Haiti.”

7.g Augusto Pinochet, “Our democratic ally in Chile.”

7.h Manuel Noriega, “Our democratic ally in Panama.”

7.i Mubarak and Sisi, “Our democratic allies in Egypt.” http://www.amec.org.za/articles-presentations/135-egypt/484-sisi-s-unenviable-dilemma-the-illusion-of-stability-and-the-perpetuation-of-unrest

7.j King Salman al Saud, “Our democratic ally in Saudi Arabia.” http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/01/23/Canada-Saudi-Arabia-Weapons-Deal/

Although I must admit that the new Saudi king now appears to be actually lightening up and coming to his senses a bit — not an easy task for someone who allegedly has Alzheimers http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-hearst/a-saudi-palace-coup_b_6531246.html

However, Saudi Arabia still has a “Democratic” track record that would impress even Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan. In Saudi Arabia today, for example, the government holds a public beheading on the average of once every four days. No wonder that their ISIS protegees are handy with swords. But don’t even get me started on the Saudis! http://www.iacenter.org/nafricamideast/oil012915/

There are approximately 50 other “Democratic ally” dictators that I could list here too but am running out of space. I don’t wanna be doing this forever you know.

8. The Kennedy assassination. Do you really believe that one lone gunman could have gotten through all that security without any help, or could have made that incredible kill shot with a BB gun from behind Kennedy and very far away — and yet still manage to hit the front of Kennedy’s head? Then I have a bridge to sell you. Lee Harvey Oswald was definitely not Chris Kyle. He was a patsy.

9. Vietnam! The Gulf of Tonkin incident was made-up baloney.

10. Remember all those lies we were told by that “low-life scum” Henry Kissinger during his vicious secret bombings of Cambodian rice paddies in 1969, wherein approximately 600,000 poor Cambodian farmers were massacred from the skies? “Never happened,” said Henry. Plausible deniability is all that matters to him. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40867.htm

11. The Iran-Contra scandal. The death squads in Central America. And all that BS about “Americans do not torture” — even as War Street was running the School of the Americas right under our noses.

12. What came next? Oh yeah. That Milosevic nightmare. Milosevic was America’s go-to guy — until he wasn’t. Didn’t you ever wonder why no one did anything to stop him until after socialist Yugoslavia was just a hot mess?

13. Saudi Arabia. Again. They told us that the Saudis were the good guys, but actually Saudi Arabia is where most of the 9-11 hijackers came from. http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/twenty-eight-pages

14. Israel, said to be “Our democratic ally in the Middle East.” But if Israel is a democracy, I’ll eat my hat. Just ask the Moroccan-Israeli Jews living there. http://vimeo.com/60814711 Or the Ethiopian-Israeli Jews.

Violent and shifty Israeli neo-colonialists have also committed despicable crime after despicable crime against humanity in the most undemocratic fashion, including their brutal, traitorous, dastardly and deliberate attempt to sink the USS Liberty, a false-flag operation approved and facilitated by War Street itself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRZSzdQuOqM, the horrors of the genocidal bombing of Gaza and Israeli neo-colonials’ covert support of ISIS — all in order to steal territory and oil in the Middle East.

Just watch this horrifying film of Israeli neo-colonials’ cowardly destruction of a whole city in Gaza, using US weapons and $$$$: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ41ko3L5Xc And if you still have the stomach, watch this too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTr_Un4a_zA

15. Saddam Husein, who we were told was Ronald Reagan’s hot new Middle East boy wonder — until he wasn’t. See #12.

16. And then there was that first Gulf war, totally based on a lie. The Kuwaitis were slant-drilling into Iraqi oil reserves, a big no-no, and so Pappy Bush told Saddam, “Sure, they deserve it, go ahead and invade…” And remember all those incubator babies too? Lies upon lies.

17. September 11, 2001. Bush knew. And let it happen. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/01/30/police-state-upon-us-paul-craig-roberts/

18. As a result of that infamous “Second Pearl Harbor” on Bush’s watch, we were once again lied to and told that we needed to invade Afghanistan instead of Saudi Arabia. And that we needed to invade Iraq.

18.a. John McCain himself lied right to my face in Baghdad back in 2007 — but I still can’t decide if it was a lie of commission or omission. At a press conference in the Green Zone, McCain told us that it was perfectly safe for him to walk around a marketplace in Baghdad — but neglected to tell us that he was also protected by body armor, humvees and helicopters, and also put a battalion of grunts in harm’s way while he did it. http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2007/04/letters-from-iraq-me-light-brigade-john.html

Just that same morning, I had been told by Major Hernandez of CPIC that if I wanted to go outside of the Green Zone without a major armored escort, I would be dead within five minutes after crossing the 14th of July Bridge. Luckily I believed Major Hernandez and not John McCain.

18.b. That, after 9-11, we also needed to invade Libya, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, I forget where all else, if we were ever to be safe. And that we needed to invade oodles of other countries all over the world in order to “Keep America Safe”. That was the biggest lie so far. Are we safe yet?

19. That Muammar Gaddafi in Libya was standing in the way of “Democracy”. Well, he sure isn’t standing in the way any more! Turns out he was standing in the way of anarchy. But you get what you pay for.

20. That Bashar Assad in Syria is in cahoots with ISIS. Yeah right. NATO, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Pentagon are in cahoots with ISIS. Assad is only the victim here, the one who is getting his country torn apart. Why would he want to support the brigands who are robbing his home? http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/30/syria-yes-we-are-responsible/

21. “I am Charlie.” No, you aren’t. “I am the CIA”. Watching that film of the killers getting into their getaway car was just a big joke. They took their time. They even put their AK-47 on the roof of the car while they fiddled with their backpacks and chatted about the weather, obviously knowing that they were protected. But then they weren’t. See # 12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZyHQljawdE&x-yt-ts=1421914688&x-yt-cl=84503534&bpctr=1422157632

22. The debacle in Ukraine. “We’re not involved,” the Pentagon tells me. Then how come when Flight MH17 was tragically shot down by the Ukies, War Street went to such lengths to blame the event on Russia and not on the neo-Nazi stooges they had set up in Kiev? https://consortiumnews.com/2015/01/06/nyt-still-pretends-no-coup-in-ukraine/

23. That the torture and mass murders at Auschwitz and the “preemptive war” on and occupation of Holland, France, Greece, Norway, Denmark and Poland by Hitler’s minions were obviously war crimes — but the torture and mass murders at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Gaza, and “preemptive war” on and occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine by Bush and Obama’s minions aren’t. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N294FMDok98&app=desktop

That Nuremberg standards apply to war crimes committed 70 years ago but no longer apply to war crimes committed today.

24. That we are always being told the truth by the New York Times and Fox News. Yeah right. Despite the fact that War Street just loves the “Newspaper of record” to pieces, the Times needs to wash its mouth out with soap. And Politifact just announced that 60% of everything Fox News tells us is lies. 60%? Yikes! http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/article/2014/jul/01/introducing-scorecards-tv-networks/?fb_action_ids=10204846428834242&fb_action_types=og.shares

25. That War is better than Peace.
http://www.crescent-online.net/2015/02/distorting-the-story-of-syrias-heritage-destruction-eva-bartlett-4815-articles.html

Sorry, that’s all of the War Street lies I can think of right now. But I’m sure there are many more out there, many many more lies that I’ve missed. Transparency is clearly and obviously not an American value — and democracy doesn’t seem to be one either.

But I will tell you one thing that I know for sure: I won’t ever be fooled again. And the rest of America needs to avoid being suckered down the garden path to War Street as well.

This has been a busy month for me, including helping my daughter prepare for the birth of my next granddaughter, getting a bunch of surgical procedures out of the way so I can be bionic by the time I become our new arrival’s caregiver after her new mum goes back to work, worrying about the role of the CIA in creating radical “Islam,” and still struggling through Thomas Piketty’s 600-page book on modern economics. http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/is-barack-obama-actually-trying-to-help-isis-take-over-syria And the more that I read in “Capital for the 21st Century,” the angrier I get.

According to Piketty, Europe and America have traditionally been divided into two basic classes for a long long long time: The “haves” and the “have-nots”. Traditionally, the “haves” have owned the capital (most of it inherited) and the “have-nots” have provided the labor. For many past centuries, it had been pretty much upstairs and downstairs in Western economies, just like on TV. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/23/1359684/-Billionaire-At-Davos-Lectures-Americans-On-Their-Lifestyle-Expectations?detail=email

But then two world wars came along and totally shook up these two formerly set-in-stone class lines, creating a unique glitch in time wherein a new large middle class was suddenly born — in both Europe and America.

According to Piketty, this was an almost-unique experience in Western economic history — where the wealthy were taken down a notch and the poor were elevated up. However, this “accidental equality” was too good to be true for long, and the wealthy classes fought back and the dream died — and so here we are, back again, deja vu, once more playing at “Upstairs Downstairs” like our ancestors have all done since even before the fall of Rome. Sigh.

Dontcha just wish that Piketty is wrong about the recent disappearance of the new middle class? But unfortunately he’s not.

And here in America, those of us who grew up being middle-class and who liked being relatively free of money worries are now suddenly appalled at this sudden change in our status from “Almost Upstairs” to “Definitely “Downstairs” because, silly us, we hadn’t realized that our relative economic freedom was only just a temporary economic glitch.

I myself can remember when I used to only have to work weekends and summers in the post office in order to make enough money to put myself through graduate school at Cal — and with no student loans. And before that, back in the early 1960s, I lived in New York City for two whole years with only an occasional part-time job for income. Those days are totally long gone!

But, even more important, what is the average American today doing in response to this tragic new economic turn of events as he or she watches his or her financial status erode from home ownership to unemployment or worse? Do we protest? Demand justice? Seek redress? Try to end corporate corruption? React logically to this dreadful new “Upstairs Downstairs” situation?

Hell no.

Most Americans today do the unthinkable instead. He or she sides with the wealthy, sides with the bankers, sides with the weapons manufacturers, sides with Wall Street and War Street and sides with the top 1%. http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/land/army/2015/01/21/ukraine-us-army-russia/22119315/

Almost no one in America today (except for me of course) has started pointing his or her finger at the wealthy who have just stolen all of our stuff. No, he or she is too busy pointing his or her finger at his or her neighbors instead — or at those poor unfortunate souls who are lower down on the economic and social totem pole than him (or her). It’s like the butler getting yelled at by his greedy-bastard master and then the butler taking it out on the scullery maid and kicking her backside good — instead to telling the greedy-bastard master where to shove it instead.

Excuse me for having to state the obvious here, but it is the backsides of the inappropriately wealthy that we all should be kicking right now; the insanely wealthy billionaires who are stealing our jobs — and our souls.

So what can we do about it now, in order to get back to the economic Eden that was just stolen from us by a handful of greedy rich dudes? This is what all patriotic Americans should be asking ourselves right now. First, we could raise tax rates on the wealthy to match ours — so that they can give at least a little back to the country that has given them so much in the first place. That would be a good start.

Then we could refuse to vote for anyone who represents banksters, weapons manufacturers, feudal-lord wannabees, billionaires or jerks. We could actually do that. All it would involve would be doing a little research on electoral candidates’ funding and priorities, plus using a little anger finally being directed appropriately. And making sure that every American votes. How hard could that be?

PS: And speaking of childbirth, according to Women’s Weekly E-News, “The United States ranks 60th in the world when it comes to maternal mortality, according to a 2014 report by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, below almost every other developed nation. And the U.S. infant mortality rate is higher than most other developed nations, according to the CDC.” http://womensenews.org/story/momagenda/150122/i-liked-my-epidural-i-read-report

This means that being preggers here in America is much more risky than in sixty other developed countries. In America today, it really sucks eggs to be a woman of childbearing age. How “Upstairs Downstairs” is that! So if you want to become pregnant (or not become preggers at all for that matter), it would be best to move to Iceland or Singapore or Estonia immediately.

PPS: Europe is also having an “Upstairs Downstairs” moment right now for a different reason; because unemployed refugees from the Middle East are swarming into the EU by the millions and lowering wage prices there a lot — as a clear result of having allowed the US, the UN, the UK and NATO (an alphabet soup that always spells trouble wherever it is served) to kick that particular Middle Eastern hornets’ nest again and again and again.

And now, Europe, you need to get ready for a whole new swarm of unemployed “Downstairs” immigrants about to descend on you from Ukraine too, because the US, UN, UK and NATO alphabet soup has also been kicking the hell out of Kiev and Donbass this whole past year as well — and Ukraine’s borders are a hecka lot closer to Europe than Iraq’s. Don’t say you haven’t been warned. http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/23/genocides-not-wars/

In terms of nurturing and protecting the nascent middle classes that Piketty described, the US, UN, UK and NATO have clearly screwed up.

To quote Syrian president Bashar Assad on the subject, “[America,] you are the greatest power in the world now; you have too many things to disseminate around the world: knowledge, innovation, IT, with its positive repercussions. How can you be the best in these fields yet the worst in the political field? This is a contradiction. That is what I think the American people should analyze and question. Why do you fail in every war? You can create war, you can create problems, but you cannot solve any problem. Twenty years of the peace process in Palestine and Israel, and you cannot do anything with this, in spite of the fact that you are a great country.” http://www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/interviews/syrias-president-speaks

Our “alphabet soup” has clearly screwed up. http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/01/panic-in-kiev.html

With yet another World War II commemorative anniversary fast approaching, let us once again reflect on the extreme horrors of that particular war — and how it ravished Europe and left that entire continent literally screaming in pain. Whole cities in flames, corpses of dead babies lying in the streets, grim torture chambers, starving orphans, concentration camps — the entire nightmare of every war that has ever gone before it and then some.

And yet it appears that almost no one in Europe these days can even remember those horrifying times that are just mere decades past — what it was like to see your child tortured, your family being dragged off in box cars or your sister begging Yankee soldiers for candy bars or offering her body to strangers so as not to starve before nightfall. Almost no one in Europe seems to have any compassion at all any more for what it was like to suffer the indescribable horrors of war. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-1961-massacre-of-algerians-in-paris-when-the-media-failed-the-test/5425604?print=1

Is there anyone at all in France today who can even remember the Vichy traitors, the brave underground Resistance or fascists goose-stepping down the Champs-Elyse? Or even remember reading about it in textbooks at school?

Does no one in Britain even remember the Blitz of London or the heroic rescue of British soldiers stranded at Dunkirk? Or hearing stories about it from their grandparents or watching reenactments of it on the BBC?

Does no one in Germany even remember the all-pervasive media propaganda, torchlight Nuremberg parades, “Heil Hitler,” gas chambers that Good Germans knew nothing about, the extreme hatred of non-Aryans, the cruel cartoonish stereotyping of people based solely on their religion — or what it was like to be living in Dresden at the time of the Slaughterhouse Five?

Apparently not.

Because if they did, they would never have recreated Dresden in Baghdad, Auschwitz in Gaza or the Slaughterhouse Five in Aleppo and Homs. There never would have been all those vicious attacks on Iraq or the clandestine sponsoring of ISIS in Syria or the brutal neo-Nazi takeover of the government of Ukraine or the arming of mujahedin war lords in Afghanistan or the nightmare of the “no-fly zone” in Libya. http://www.siliconafrica.com/france-colonial-tax/

Europeans, of all people, should have known better than to muck about with the fates of “war”. Europeans should have known better than to bomb women and children in the Middle East and support Vichy-like dictators in Israel and Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
https://www.transcend.org/tms/2015/01/the-unmourned-another-mass-killing-by-the-peace-prize-prez/

Europeans should have done everything that they humanly could to follow the teachings of Jesus, Hillel and Muhammad (PBUH) — to “Do unto others….”

How did Europeans forget so quickly? How could they possibly have forgotten the deep and bloody lessons of World War II so very soon?

And as for the Untied States, apparently Americans never learned compassion from all those Civil War reenactments and Ken Burns PBS specials either. 22,730 killed or wounded at Antietam alone. 51,112 casualties at Gettysburg. 620,000 soldiers dead, 50,000 civilians dead, 1,030,000 casualties. And all we have to show for all this slaughter is the compassion of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Pappy Bush’s infamous Highway of Death.

Wounded Knee, the Trail of Tears, Shiloh, Chancellorsville, Bull Run, Dallas and 9-11 have apparently only taught us Americans the kind of compassion we showed unto others at Hiroshima, Manzanar, Pyongyang, Chile, Cambodia, Gaza and “Je Suis CIA”. http://www.globalresearch.ca/je-suis-cia/5425118

Clearly this subject has already been covered in the media news cycle ad nauseam but I still can’t stop thinking about the “I am Charlie” concept. Was the idea behind all those people who held up “I am Charlie” posters supposed to be about protecting free speech? Really? Then why isn’t everyone carrying “I am Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden” posters too? http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2015/01/blog-post.html Or demanding that the police stop arresting guys who falsely yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater or deliberately start barroom brawls?

Or if those “I am Charlie” posters are in protest of armed thugs in Paris gunning down civilians in cold blood, then why isn’t everyone in Paris also carrying posters proclaiming “I am Iraq” or “I am Syria” or “I am Palestine” or “I am Ukraine” or Libya or Mali or…. You get the picture. http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/2015/1/11/je-suis-gaza

All those people holding up signs protesting the slaughter on Rue Nicolas-Appert might actually think that they too are “Charlie” — and that’s fine. Terrible things happened to the employees of Charlie Hebdo. No one should ever have to suffer the fate of being shot down in cold blood, and thus the victims deserve to be mourned. However I myself chose NOT to be Charlie Hebdo, a vicious slimy obscene rag clearly designed to stir up religious tensions in France. http://www.workers.org/articles/2015/01/13/charlie-hebdo-free-press-racism/

And I also choose not to be any other bigots or terrorist troublemakers who clearly delight in trying to stir up religious tensions in France, crassly using others’ religious differences to pave their own way to riches and power — and yet who have the ultimate and offensive hypocrisy and nerve to show up for the French “I am Charlie” marches with innocent smiles on their faces. “Who us?” they innocently proclaim — after doing everything they possibly can to stir up bigotry against Muslims. http://www.jpost.com/International/European-leaders-to-attend-Paris-anti-terror-march-Sunday-387290

I am NOT Avigdor Liberman

I am NOT Naftali Bennet

And I am definitely NOT Bibi Netanyahu.

These three guys and their cohorts seem to be always at the center of any religious tension or terrorist attack almost anywhere in the world — starting in 1948 when the Stern Gang blew up the King David Hotel and Moshe Dayan’s “army” slaughtered Christian and Muslim Palestinians left and right in order to steal their land. “Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East,” a Jesuit priest stated back then. And that’s still true today.

Israel’s sleazy military-industrial complex then went on to be an uber-cheerleader for America when our own sleazy military-industrial complex bombed Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yugoslavia, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia and I forget what all else. And Israeli neo-cons themselves have bombed Palestine, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and I forget what all else too — not to mention their documented ongoing support for ISIS and Al Qaeda. http://www.globalresearch.ca/israeli-military-supports-al-qaeda-tel-avivs-dirty-role-playing-in-the-syrian-crisis/5371624

If bombs, missiles, white phosphorus, tanks, false-flag operations, F-16s, tear gas or even bottle-rockets are involved, Bibi and these guys are so there!

Millions dead in the Middle East? I call that terrorism. And yet Bibi and his minions actually had the chutzpah to march in Paris “against terrorism,” according to Paris Match. Yeah, right.

Yet who benefited from the Charlie Hebdo incident? Let’s see. According to Paul Craig Roberts, it’s the American military-industrial complex that benefited. “Not France, not Muslims, but US world hegemony. US hegemony over the world is what the CIA supports. US world hegemony is the neoconservative-imposed foreign policy of the US.” http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/01/08/charlie-hebdo-tsarnaevs-trial-qui-bono/

But as they say in poker, “I’ll see Roberts and raise him.” Netanyahu benefited. Apparently, right before the Charlie Dodo incident was staged, France had just announced that it might be backing off supporting sanctions on Russia. What? No immediate prospect of World War III? No big Israeli weapons sales? Bibi must have been tres disappointed!

France had also just announced that it was gonna recognize the Palestinian state. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/world/europe/france-vote-recognize-palestine.html?_r=0 OMG! That must have totally pissed Netanyahu off.

Also, our Bibi is having trouble finding settlers to occupy his many illegal condos in Palestine’s West Bank. But he just loves French Jews — and hopes to scare them enough to force them to flee to Israel and live rent-free on Palestinian land. Heck, I like Israel well enough. Wouldn’t mind living there myself. It’s a nice place. Heck, even the Palestinians used to like living there too. But it’s the Israeli neo-cons’ blood-thirsty hypocritical scheming military-industrial-complex-flaunting neo-con national-socialist leaders that I do not respect or cannot like.

And I’m not being anti-Semitic here. Let’s leave all that religious bigotry to Charlie Hebdo. I am only being a student of American-Israeli neo-con “Realpolitik” (Rāˈälpōliˌtēk/: A system of politics or principles based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations). And Realpolitik has nothing to do with religion.

Good grief, I’m so glad that I’m NOT Netanyahu.

And I also feel nothing but compassion for all the billions of Muslims, Christians and Jews who are being subjected to his vile manipulations. I also feel nothing but compassion for the hostages in the kosher supermarket who were also victims of Bibi’s lust for money and power and to create chaos throughout the world — even if it means putting the all world’s Jews in danger again.

PS: What is going to happen next in France? Or in Israel and the United States too, for that matter. As my friend R.J. suggests, let’s follow Norway’s heroic example after the dreadful 2011 massacre there and stop spending our patrimony on guns, bombs, war and alienation and start spending that money on integrating our nations’ diversity into our national bank of excellent human resources instead. http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/charlie-hebdo-and-the-hypocrisy-of-pencils/

We’ve already wasted a hundred trillion dollars on “war”so far, only to discover again and again that violence doesn’t ever work. Not in the Middle East, not in Ukraine, not in Paris, not at the World Trade Center and not in Ferguson either. Just imagine if we had spent all that money on education, jobs, and integrating our society into a smooth-running democratic machine instead.

To paraphrase Thomas Piketty, “You can’t have a political democracy unless you have an economic democracy too.” And “war” has ruined — absolutely ruined — the economic democracy of both Israel and the USA. And probably France too.

Author’s note: This is a satire. Sort of.

Don’t you just hate it when people get killed? Murdered? Decapitated? Have their bodies blown up? Why would anybody in their right mind even consider killing another fellow human being? Have you yourself killed anybody lately? Not me. I’ve never killed nothing. Cockroaches, maybe — back when I was living rough on the Lower East Side in 1965. But cockroaches don’t count. Or do they? Can you get PTSD from killing bugs? Probably not.

Yet last week 12 people were shot dead in the streets of Paris by unknown gunmen dressed in black and carrying AK-47s — and apparently even a rocket launcher. And yet nobody twigged to these odd Halloween costumes before it was too late? http://www.conspiracyclub.co/2015/01/07/paris-fake-terrorism/ How did this happen? Apparently a deal had been struck.

Over the past decade or so, the American military-industrial complex in all its glory has moved into the Middle East and killed a million or so people. And it has handled, trained and armed Al Qaeda and ISIS, a pretty much documented fact. However. What goes on in the Middle East stays in the Middle East, right? Theoretically, yes.

But Pappy Bush said, “Let’s go invade Kuwait and kill us some Iraqis.” So he did. And then Baby Bush said, “I can do you one even better than that!” And he killed even more Iraqis — and, being in a generous mood, threw in some dead Afghans, Palestinians and Persians as well. http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2007/05/gwbs-new-iraq-strategy-keep-jane.html

Then Obama came along and started bragging, “I went to Harvard. I can top that!” And by God he did. Libya, Syria, Palestine (again) and Ukraine (technically not the Middle East but it did include slaughtering a whole bunch of people — so that should count for something, right?) http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/23136

And then apparently some Al Qaeda wannabes sent word to their handlers or whatever at the CIA, saying, “We’ve been your grunts since forever and, don’t get us wrong, we really do appreciate all the training and weapons you’ve given us and the chance to behead women and children left and right. Don’t get us wrong, Consigliere. We are not ungrateful. But could you kinda maybe send a bit of a tidbit or bone or reward our way too? We too want more of the action. War in the Middle East just isn’t enough. We’re bored of shelling Mosul and Damascus. Can we PLEEZE go shoot up Paris as well? Just a little bit? Please?”

Well, the CIA understood. Who can even think of resisting an all-expense-paid trip to Paris? Certainly not our homeys in ISIS. Paris being the City of Light and all that. “Sure, go on ahead with your bad selves,” the ISIS handlers replied. And a deal was struck.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/09/je-suis-ahmed-merabet/

“What do you got in mind?” asked the handlers. “A little R&R on the Champs-Élysées?”

“Nah. We just want to shoot up Charlie Dodo. Those guys said really really obscene things about the Prophet. Not, of course, the same really really obscene things we say about the Prophet — but definitely in the ballpark. http://www.alternet.org/world/jesuischarlie-no-im-really-not-charlie-hebdo-and-heres-why Charlie Dodo has made a mockery of the Prophet. Not as much of a mockery as we have — but a mockery just the same.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/09/nasrallah-cartoons_n_6443530.html

“Done!” cried the handlers — and then the paperwork began. And why not? This could definitely be in War Street’s best interests and get everyone in France hating Muslims (even more than they do already). Just look how well 9-11 turned out for Islamophobics! “Plus it’s always fun to stage a false-flag operation — and you know how we love to kill journalists.” It’s a twofer. This could work! http://news.yahoo.com/brothers-past-draws-scrutiny-french-manhunt-enters-day-073049780.html

So their CIA handlers quickly dug up the requisite fake passports and the requisite phony ID cards to leave miraculously lying around at the scene http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/deceptions/passport.html And they even tried to get their new Qaeda-trash protégé thugs some free passes to Euro-Disney as well, but didn’t quite have the clout to pull that one off. But the stage was set. Journalists and police and French citizens were gonna be slaughtered and the whole world was gonna be shocked and go around saying “I am Charlie”. And it would be “Mission Accomplished” all over again, right? And, even more important, now France also has a carte blanche excuse to bomb Palestine or Russia or Vietnam or Walmart or whatever they please — just like Baby Bush had his excuse to bomb Afghanistan. http://www.activistpost.com/2015/01/france-announced-aircraft-carrier-for.html

But I still really hate it when people get killed.

PS: I wrote this because I’m really and totally dubious about what actually happened at Charlie Hebdo the other day.

I’ve been to Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Africa, Palestine, Dallas, etc. and I’ve seen with my own eyes what is actually going on in these places. But then I go back home to the States and read the MSM newspapers and watch the TV news — and it’s a whole different world they are describing, one filled with fantasies, wistful thinking, propaganda and lies.

I never believe anything I read in the MSM any more. So why should I suddenly start believing what they say about the bad guys who shot up the Charlie Hebdo offices in France?

The deaths of some lab animals in a senior dissertation project, conducted in Scranton Pa. more than fifty years ago, would hardly seem to be a topic relevant to a political punditry column in 2015, but since it provides a marvelous example of how difficult it can be to ascertain exactly what happened we can start with that obscure and innocuous incident and escalate up to more serious and recent events quite rapidly.

Mary Kay H*****’s experiment subjects died under mysterious circumstances. Did her brother or some of his high school classmates substitute beer for water and cause the project to disintegrate before completion? Hearsay, conjecture, and allegations abound but hard evidence has vanished in the mists of history. One (conspiracy?) theory suggests that her father may have deemed it necessary to scuttle the project.

A call to the World’s Laziest Journalist News Organization headquarters from Germany, on Sunday January 4, 2015, didn’t help the investigation because, although we knew all of the personalities involved, we weren’t there and couldn’t add any facts to the inquest, which has been reopened a half century later.

If someone wasn’t there when things happened, how can journalists write knowledgably about things they did not witness? It’s difficult to peace things together from old memories and conjecture. Aye, lad, there’s the rub!

Just minutes after the call from Germany, we walked into the latest political dispute occurring in Berkeley CA. We were told that the Papa John’s franchise on Shattuck Ave. would not sell to homeless customers. Here we go again with hearsay, rumors, allegations and unverifiable “facts”!

At one point Sunday, we thought we saw a Berkeley Police officer give a slice of pizza to a young lady who couldn’t buy it.

On Monday, January 5, 2015, this columnist went to investigate. When we entered the pizza parlor at approximately 1 p.m., we noted that the customer at the counter had long and shaggy hair, was barefooted and had a dog with him. Most food establishment can refuse to deal with barefooted customers and so the fellow was denied service.

Next up, the guy with the street name “Ninja Kitty,” stepped up to the counter and was informed that he couldn’t buy a pizza. Note: We know for sure that if served he could pay because he was carrying a $20 bill. He left. This columnist was next and we ordered a pizza, paid, and waited for it to be served.

We were unable to locate Ninja when we exited the store, so we went to where he and his posse congregate. We learned that Ninja was helping change a tire for a woman parked in front of the pizza parlor. We passed out slices to his buddies and held two for him to consume after doing his good deed. He gave one of those two to the barefooted fellow.

Since folks reading this column on the Internets don’t want a long and involved think piece, it will suffice to say that this seemed to have the potential of becoming a viable news story and so we started picking up various and sundry related bits of information.

Mike Zint, a political activist and writer, informed us that he had learned the business was directed to not provide service to homeless people by the building’s owner (or designated representative).

Is it an example of irony to note that this treatment of homeless is occurring in Berkeley, which has a reputation for being an ultra liberal city and is located in California’s 13^th Congressional District, which is one of the country’s most liberal congressional districts?

We had learned late last year that the Hotel Shattuck building is going through the bureaucratic process necessary for it to be demolished and replaced by an 18 story high rise building.

Could it be, we wondered (speculation alert!), that someone was trying to disperse the groups of homeless people who ask for handouts in the downtown Berkeley business area, before the high-rise opens for business and caters to the swells? Could it be classified as economic cleansing?

As we recall the Santa Monica city attorney forced Domino Pizza to make deliveries to homeless people at a phone booth because it had been depicted in the movie (co-inky-dink alert!) “Ninja Turtles.”

We were told on Elvis’ birthday that the instructions to deny service to the homeless came from the Downtown Business Association. Who, we wondered, is running that particular franchise? We assume that the lawyers for Papa John’s corporation (in Louisville) will know for sure who is running the show and calling the shots for their downtown Berkeley CA franchise.

Over the weekend, we also learned that the Berkeley Public Library main branch has adopted a new hard line way of dealing with the public.

The street person known as “300” was reportedly ejected from the Public Library building last weekend.

Also invited to leave was a local resident (note: that means not homeless). According to hearsay evidence this local political activist was a member of the Maquis. She has some difficulty with the English language and may have had an expired library card. In our book (opinion alert!) the closest any civilian can come to having earned a Congressional Medal of Honor would be to have served in the French underground during the Nazi Occupation of Paris. Shouldn’t Berkeley residents be ashamed of this example of über-rudeness? Hint. Hint. Why isn’t she getting invitations to appear on some late night talk show?

Question: Did the Nazi Occupy Paris movement get criticism or support from the mainstream media? Was there a concerted effort to make the Nazi Occupation of Paris fail? Wasn’t it called “The Maquis”? (The punishment for reading the underground anti-Nazi newspaper, Combat, was death.)

The Nazis also persecuted the gypsies. The first gypsies were thought to have come from Egypt. Gypsy is a contraction formed from the word Egypt.

By midweek, the homeless were mounting an effort to acquire yellow six pointed star patches with the word “Homeless” printed on them.

We would like to write a “Je suis Charlie” column in support of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory was alerted to a video purportedly showing one of the murdered French policemen moving around after supposedly being shot. His face didn’t show in the video and there was no background scenery to establish where the shot was made. Hence a high level of skepticism was used to respond to this bit of evidence for supporting the theory that the terrorists attack didn’t really happen.

We intend on writing next week’s column on the implications of the work slow-down being conducted by the New York City Police Department.

Do the Christian Republicans read the bible? If so, they should know our end of the column quote. In the Bible we find: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Matthew 25:40.

The disk jockey will play: Spring Break’s song “Pizza Riot,” Willie Nelson’s “Band of Brothers,” and (irony alert!) the Warsaw Concerto. We have to see if we can take a member of the French Resistance to dinner. Have a “with two free toppings” type week.

I am so sick and tired of listening to a sleazy ill-mannered collection of white Southerners, Tea Party members and Red-State Republicans constantly making horrible racist slurs. And I am sick of this abomination for two reasons.

First, no real Christian would ever say anything as mean, hurtful and ugly as some of the things that are being said about African-Americans today.

Second, and even more important, is the simple fact that there would be no African-Americans in the United States today to even make racial slurs about — if these same Southern racists’ great-great-grandfathers hadn’t brought hundreds of thousands of slaves over from Africa in the first place. That’s like spilling the milk and then complaining that we are now stuck with spilled milk. Not cool. Not cool at all.

And to add insult to injury, these same bespoke Southern racists also complain about gun violence in the African-American community. That’s hypocritical too. All they have to do is pass some decent gun-control laws and then — poof! — that problem will pretty much disappear.

I swear sometimes I think that Southern racists just like to whine.

“If you can’t be part of the solution, at least stop being part of the problem.” http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/20/1346224/-GOP-Columnist-The-VERY-Bad-News-FOR-THE-GOP-in-the-GOP-s-Midterm-Victory?detail=email

Originally, 450,000 slaves were forcibly kidnapped from Africa and dragged off to colonial and post-colonial America, mainly to the antebellum South, in the most cruel and inhumane ways imaginable. And, as a result, the number of Americans of African descent living in America by 1860 had grown to 3,638,808. So, clearly, if there hadn’t been all that vicious, mean and cruel slavery in the antebellum South, there would definitely be very few African-Americans around for today’s white Southerners to hound, bully, degrade, insult, abuse and kill.

However, given the basic surley nature of today’s white Southern racists, they would more-than-likely have found some other reason to be bullies and bigots if they didn’t have African-Americans to kick around. “Hey, you! Your eyes aren’t blue enough! Step to the back of the bus!”

“Deflecting the anger…” as Howard Zinn used to call it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rnJEdDNDsI

This week I’m going to have cataract surgery performed on my right eye — and after the surgery is over and the gauze is removed, my ophthalmologist assures me that “You will have 20-20 vision in that eye again.”

Imagine if every human being on this weary planet was also suddenly granted 20-20 vision again too — including a clear and perfect inner vision so that we could always see what our real, long-term, enlightened self-interests actually are.

If everyone in the world was suddenly granted 20-20 moral vision, the first thing we would get rid of would be war. And the internal combustion engine. And tax havens for the uber-rich. And GMO foods and corporatism. And injustice, bigotry and racism of course.

“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” would become the new ultimate 20-20 inner vision for all human beings.

Fat chance of that ever happening.

PS: After just this short length of days into the year 2015, we already have a choice to make for this particular New Year. We can, as Rep. Dennis Kucinich reminds us, do the right thing in 2015 and change the course of our nation’s current downward spiral http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/27860-new-years-resolution-for-america-body-title

Or, as journalist William Blum reminds us, we can continue on the sleazy course that we are now on — and suffer the disastrous results http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/02/a-preview-of-2015/

This choice is ours to make.

PPS: Why do Americans seems so willing to believe even the most ugly KKK-like racial-profiling versions of what happened in Ferguson, Staten Island, Los Angeles, Cleveland, etc? Because they saw some slanted, misguided or even outright untrue version of it on TV, of course.

According to Dutch journalist Raul Ilargi Meijer, “If anything defines 2014 for me, it’s the advent of incessant claims for which no proof – apparently – needs to be provided. Everything related to Ukraine over the past year carries that trait. The year of ‘beautiful blue eyes’, in other words. Never any proof, you just have to believe what your government [and media] says.” http://www.theautomaticearth.com/2014-the-year-propaganda-came-of-age/

For instance, just take a look at that recent “60 Minutes” segment regarding the destruction of the ancient and historic Syrian city of Homs. Bob Simon made it appear as if President Assad himself had destroyed Homs, instead of the real culprits: ISIS and their American, Saudi, Israeli and Turkish handlers, trainers and suppliers. But then, why would Wall Street and War Street ever want us to know that the lethal weapons that ISIS thugs hold in their hands have come from us?

And as for the American media’s reports on racism in the USA? “Doesn’t exist,” cries America’s mainstream news. Good to know. Unless of course you are an African-American who can’t find a job, has kids going to run-down schools and is being shot at in Walmart.

I just finished reading an article by a guy who had accurately predicted the fall of the former USSR two whole years before it actually happened. However, nobody back then even believed him. “The USSR has over-extended itself and is going to collapse!” he kept telling people. But everyone who heard him just laughed. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/zepps_essays/conversations/topics/961

Well. At this point in time, the USA has totally over-extended itself too. Like some addicted shopaholic set loose with questionable plastic at a shopping mall, the USA has over-charged every single one of its credit cards by at least eleven trillion dollars in order to buy its very favorite consumer product — endless war. And, in addition, the USA has also spent another ungodly number of trillions on making its uber-rich 1% even richer, and keeping its corrupt bankers happy as clams. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40560.htm

And so, like the former USSR back in 1991, now the USA also has nowhere to go but down either — due to its total over-extension. And you don’t even have to be a genius to do the math here. Anyone with a calculator app. on their iPhone can figure this one out. A couple hundred trillion $$$$ subtracted from zero equals what? Total collapse. This is pretty much a given at the rate that our “fearless leaders” on Wall Street and War Street are currently spreading their phony credit-card moolah around. http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/26/the-empire-is-crumbling-that-is-why-it-needs-war/

But what I really want to talk about here is what will actually happen to America (and to you and me) when our country suddenly does become referred to as “The Former USA”. To know that, all we have to do is look at a model already set before us — what had happened to the Former USSR after it had over-extended itself.

First, you gotta remember that ten percent of all citizens of the Soviet Union actually DIED after the USSR collapsed. Ten percent! One in ten. The old people went first. And the working poor. And the kids. That would be like having about 30 million Americans dead as a doornail because Wall Street and War Street didn’t behave themselves.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/false-flagging-the-world-towards-war/5421649

Second, a huge number of Soviet public buildings throughout Europe and Asia suddenly became “privatized” and were happily handed over to the lowest bidders — the oligarchs. But then that is happening here in the USA already. Let’s take my own downtown Berkeley post office for instance. It’s being practically given away to oligarchs even as we speak. And American schools, national parks, mineral-rich lands, public buildings and all kinds of other property that used to be held in the common interest is now not being held in the common interest any more. And when the USA becomes “Former,” this process will be speeded up even faster. Say goodbye to Yellowstone, the Statue of Liberty and your local city hall.

Third, after the former Soviet Union fell, people’s teeth began to rot for lack of dental care there. Suddenly there were no affordable doctors and dentists in Russia, a trend that has also gotten a big head-start here in the soon-to-be Former USA already. If you don’t take care of your citizens, this is what you get. Sick people and rotten teeth. http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2009/06/california-famous-for-its-rotting-teeth.html

Fourth? Unemployment in Russia. Of course we already have a head-start on that one as well. But it will be getting worse. Much worse.

Fifth, the USSR’s status as a world super-power suddenly collapsed as its wounded warriors painfully wound their way back home from places like Afghanistan. The same will happen in the former USA too.

Sixth: Before its collapse, the USSR used to be a “communist” state — in the sense that only a few people at the very top made all the decisions. And now, thanks to Citizens United, the USA has already gotten that way too. We are no longer a democracy either. So in that respect too we have already started to become like the Soviets right before their big fall. And it will get even worse here after the fall of the USA as well. Our current “deep state” shadow governments will be coming out of the shadows and cesspools for sure. Can you say “President-for-Life Cheney,” boys and girls?

But actually, back during the 1950s, it was America that had been the true communist state — after WW II had reshuffled the cards, dealt new hands to working folks, given our middle class a leg up and redistributed our wealth more equally by taking it from the uber-rich and giving it to the middle class. But Reagan’s tricky re-stacking of the deck in favor of Wall Street, and Bush’s ace-up-his-sleeve gifts to War Street and sleight-of-hand tax redistribution act of 2003 soon changed all that — and our wealth was then redistributed upwards to the uber-rich once again, ending “communism” in America forever. No, they don’t call it “capitalism” without reason. The uber-rich now own all the “capital”. We don’t.

In order to return to America’s former “communistic” economic glory of the 1950s, three things need to happen. We need to go back to giving America’s middle and working classes their former leg-up tax breaks — instead of only giving a huge tax leg-up to our 1% “Soviet Commissars” only. And we need to stop stacking the deck in favor of Wall Street’s insane profit margins. And we need to shut down War Street completely. Otherwise, after the USA falls too, we also are gonna have oligarchs coming out of our ears — even more than they are now.

Seventh, the USSR ruble collapsed back then — just like the dollar is now collapsing already. It’s gonna be rather tough around here when the US dollar also becomes worth diddly-squat.

Eighth, consider that wise Biblical saying, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”. And then become very afraid. From Hiroshima, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Africa and Latin America to the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, etc., the first thing that the USA and/or its surrogates do when they attack a country is to bomb its civilian population, take out the water supply, power plants and hospitals, and/or install a ruthless dictator. Let us just hope that the former USA will not fall into a position to be vulnerable to retaliation, that our former victims will show mercy and that “Do unto others…” will not apply to us like it did to the USSR.

And, ninth, the huge Soviet Union began to break up into smaller states and groups as it fell. That will definitely happen here too. Can’t exactly say that I will miss any of the Red States when they leave — but they will sorely miss not being part of the new American Blue States, their current life-line to prosperity. I can tell you that right now.

All the signs of the eminent collapse of the USA are already here right now, just like they were for the USSR back before 1991. Go ahead and laugh if you will, but hard times really are coming here too. The Former USA is practically upon us. We have already over-extended ourselves too deeply to rationally expect any other result. Sigh.

Let us just hope that America somehow manages to find another chess master like Putin to lead us After the Fall, and doesn’t get stuck with another drunk like Yeltsin!

Playing mindf**k with the voters rather than trying to solve problems may sound diabolic but the fact that such is the case was highlighted by Berkeley CA merchants this week when store windows began to simultaneously proclaim: “All Lives Matter.” Some people see the problem as a chance to build up a new wedge issue for dividing the Democrats. Cynics proclaim that the Republicans want a race war and that would provide an excuse for establishing marshal law.

Drone strikes produce collateral damage, to be sure, but Americans are comfortable with that fact (well, most) and shrug off any attempts to focus attention on the regrettable civilian casualties. Americans don’t want to think about the question of do those lives matter. Wasn’t the image of just one crying infant in Nan King use to visually establish the barbaric nature of the “enemy” during WWII?

Speaking of playing mindf**k, some radical elements of the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory have suggested that the hack attack on Sony was just a “false flag” operation designed to build the audience for a mediocre comedy that would sell more admission tickets by being established as a way to make a bold and courageous statement in favor of freedom of speech.

Such a cynical interpretation would assume that revealing the bitchy e-mails was just a bit of psychological collateral damage and was worth the effort needed to make a poor example of cinematic artistry into a modern pop culture phenomenon.

Why, in the era of “Black Lives Matter,” is the mainstream media ignoring the case of the Florida woman who fired a warning shot and now faces twenty years in prison in a state that became famous for promoting the “stand your ground” principle? Do a Google News search for Marissa Alexander.

Why, when Ferguson Marches have become ubiquitous and contentious, do the mainstream media ignore the case of Ezell Ford?

The World’s Laziest Journalist had intended to take a pundit break from early December until late in January of 2015 when we fully expect the Republican Reich to start impeachment proceedings aimed at President Obama.

Suddenly, Berkeley CA became the home of repeated Ferguson Marches and also one of the few areas where the controversial SONY movie, “The Interview,” was being shown so we had to shelve our plans to run some “Best of” columns and churn out some new fresh attempts to observe, analyze, and comment rather than re-run some vintage insights into how after failing to end the Vietnam War as promised, President Nixon got reelected by making “Law and Order” the focus for winning a second term in office. Could “Law and Order” become the theme of the JEB Bush campaign in 2016?

When it came time to rush off on Christmas Day to the Berkeley theater showing “The Interview,” we realized that on the skim and skip battleground called the Internets a prolonged effort to review the new comedy might be a bit of wasted time and effort because readers just want to know if the flick is funny and worth the price of admission. So we could reference its rating on the tomato meter and throw in some premeditated misspellings and not have to bother to actually see the film and ponder its social significance.

Can SONY subsidize an effort to get Dennis Rodman to provide some damage control and defuse the crisis with North Korea? Is it true that Rodman now travels with a passport that provides him with diplomatic immunity status?

As of the morning of Friday, December 26, 2014, the new movie was getting a 48% (of the reviews were good) rating on the Rotten Tomatoes web site.

We have noticed that the evening news shows are focusing on the weather rather than current events in Libya, Egypt, and Syria and so we must include the fact that Christmas Day in the San Francisco Bay Area was just another example of summer in winter California style.

The end of the year season is jam-packed with Top Ten Lists (compiled earlier in the month), Best of radio and TV programs, and innocuous feature stories such as the traditional Australian way to celebrate Christmas; in your bathing suit on one of their world famous beaches such as Bondi or Cottesloe.  {Note from Photo Editor:  The bronze surfer was seen in Fremantle Western Australia, some years ago at Christmas time.]

Isn’t it ironic that a man who got elected by promising to win the Vietnam War and got reelected on the issue of “Law and Order” came very close to being impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors?

Conservative pundits are relentless in asserting that everything wrong in America can be blamed on President Obama. If Obama is impeached early next year and if JEB is elected in 2016, some folks might expect that conservative pundits might have a difficult time explaining any gaffs (such as 9-11?) that occur during the Republican Reich era.

Just as the conservatives had no problem ignoring the reality and consequences of George W. Bush’s invasions and wars in the Middle East, conservatives will do the ostrich defense and will act like the folks who criticized the band’s performance while the Titanic was sinking.

George W. Bush was quoted as saying, on May 14, 2001: “For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three nonfatal shootings.”

Now the disk jockey will play “I shot the Sheriff,” “Frankie and Johnnie,” and Lauren Green’s “Ringo.” We have to go stock up on soda pop before the new Berkeley tax becomes effective. Have a “you get a get out of jail card” type week.

We may be in the Christmas season right now — but what the freak has happened to all our “Tidings of Comfort and Joy”? There only seems to be coals in our stockings these days. And there only seems to be versions of “You’d better watch out” hanging around too.

For instance, right now the American economy seems about to stop jingling its bells, give just one last futile gasp and collapse like Santa Claus falling off a roof. Only the Christmas Miracle of our economy’s former strength keeps it from not crying and pouting under the load of [war] toys and [corporate-lobby] gifts that the top 1% have loaded our sleigh down with in the past several decades.

And not only that but our “Holy Nights” have now become a hecka lot less Holy — ever since we’ve heard the sad tidings of what actually goes on in CIA black sites and torture camps. “Do you hear what I hear?” Victims of torture, screaming through the night. Not exactly joy to the world, if you ask me.

I myself have been in a great deal of pain lately due to an operation on my left arm — and have learned the hard way that pain is definitely not fun. “Do you know what I know?” Just exactly how long would any of us last under the pain of American-made torture when those black sites come to America too? Let’s just hope that we never have to find out.

America, like Nazi Germany, is now a country that embraces torture — no matter what our 9-11 excuses are (I’m sure that Hitler had lots of Reichstag fire excuses too). http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/12/butchers-of-langley/

Regarding America’s foreign policy, “O Holy Night” has now been replaced with “O Holy Crap!”

And in the Middle East, Jesus’ very own “Little Town of Bethlehem” is once again under a Herod-like, child-slaughtering, grim occupation http://rt.com/op-edge/216507-israel-palestinians-gaza-massacre-uninhabitable/ — as Bibi Netanyahu happily sings “Born is the King of Israel” to himself while visions of also being King of Egypt, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq now dance in his head as well, thanks to his generous support from American taxpayers’ money and his own strategic support of ISIS and Sisi (Sisi is ISIS spelled backwards, BTW). http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/12/19/isis-is-sisi-spelled-backwards-egypt-syria/

But what about “Hark the Herald Angel sing”? Can we at least hear some herald angels singing out in Christmas joy these days, please? Nope, not at all. Those particular angels are completely silent this year — on the subject of racism in America. How can they possibly sing about equality and hope — when the average African-American elf makes 15 times less than the average white Santa’s helper here in the USA; almost as unequal as back in the day when African-Americans were bound into slavery like Moses in Egypt or in the antebellum South.

Baby Jesus would have hated slavery — but apparently America’s Red-Nosed States still really like it a lot. http://urbanpolicy.net/justice/

Then there’s always “The [last] Noel the angels did say….” And of course that would be climate change they are singing about. “On a cold winter’s night that was so deep.” Ho Ho Ho.

Not to mention the on-going and escalating threat of Fukushima. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/12/18/national/six-tons-of-tainted-water-leak-at-fukushima-no-1-during-korean-safety-tour/ No one hears anything about that any more — but that doesn’t mean that it still isn’t going on. “Silent Night”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STSmFZeE50E

And of course “Away in a manger, no crib for a bed…” is still very popular these days. 40% of America’s children are being raised in poverty — plus most of their schools are crumbling, their chances for a college education is prancing away from them and their future job market looks as bleak as Tiny Tim’s before Scrooge got set right. “The little Lord Jesus, asleep in the hay.”

And not only that, but the President of the United States himself seems to have got run over by a reindeer as well — or at least he’s been run over by the Republican party. Of course we all know that this has happened — but exactly why did it? “WHY don’t Republicans like Obama?” I keep asking myself. Perhaps Republicans, like grandma, have been drinking too much eggnog? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zmnuNd5rX8

This complete distaste for Obama is a total mystery to me. Just exactly why does Obama have all those Tea Party footprints on his forehead? He has done every single thing that Bush and Cheney did back when they occupied the White House — only, like Ginger Rogers, Obama has practically done it backwards and in high heels!

Torture? Check.

War-mongering? Check.

Supporting corrupt bankers, criminal Wall Street deregulation and the evil Federal Reserve? Check.

Encouraging tax evasion for the wealthy? Check.

Signing unconstitutional executive orders? Check.

Lying to the American public about causes for war? Check.

Standing back while militarized police attack peaceful protesters? Check.

Hell, even Obama’s new Cuba policy and healthcare system benefits large corporations instead of the rest of us. http://www.globalresearch.ca/regime-change-in-cuba/5420956

About the only thing Obama hasn’t done that Bush and Cheney easily got away with is to participate in election malfeasance — that is, that I am aware of. So WHY don’t the Republicans like him? Obama was even educated in an Ivy League college and has big ears and a smirk like George W. Bush! Have the Repubs forgotten their medication? I just don’t understand.

But, in any case, and despite all the disastrous “bah-humbug” that we now receive from our so-called leaders, I would still like to wish a Merry Christmas to all Americans — and a happy birthday to the Prince of Peace as well.

*****************************
Photo is of U. Utah Phillips, the Golden Voice of the Great Southwest, playing Santa Claus at the Freight & Salvage Coffee House back in 1973. Don’t even try to guess who Santa’s helper was! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5YoLjYD8QE