Unspinning Official Stories 2013

What you're not told in today's Hugo Chavez story

   9 January 2013: The wire story I'm reading in a local paper today because I refuse to pay $1.50 for the LA Times (a new 50% increase it's not worth) reveals that "Venezuelan lawmakers voted Tuesday to postpone the inauguration of ailing President Hugo Chavez for his new term..." (Chavez is recovering from a cancer operation in a Cuban hospital) ...but then goes on to tell you TWICE that his opposition "condemned the delay as illegal...and a violation of the (Venezuelan) Constitution."
   BUT IT DOESN'T TELL YOU that there is NO codified Venezuelan law or constitutional provision supporting the opposition's claims (a fact fully covered in non-US-embedded publications such as Venezuelanalysis) and that, indeed, the National Assembly declared its decision yesterday to be "in accordance with Article 231 of the Constitution of the Republic," and also in consideration of Chavez' "universal right as a human being to take the time needed for his full recovery, in accordance with the Medical Ethics Code" and also in consideration of the will of the electorate "which, in accordance with Article 5 of the Constitution, holds predominance over any other formality."
   The biased US media don't tell you that because either they haven't done THEIR research (which you can do for yourselves through connections supplied on this site or that you find for yourself) or they don't want to spoil your carefully cultivated and much practiced attitude of indignation (on cue) toward an officially demonized foreign leader.
   But there's some much more important stuff they're not telling you and which they NEVER tell you, related to the second absurd lie (that nothing is happening in Latin America, a cover-up by absurd ommission) i.e. #2 in my list of official lies so absurd that you couldn't possibly believe them if you didn't want to. This cunningly (or stupidly) untold story is also expanded in scattered posts in this column over the last four years.
   They obviously either don't want you to know or don't know themselves (a possibility that ought to be unlikely but may not be) that this story rates a lot more space and more intelligent and prominent treatment than they're giving it, because Hugo Chavez is the de facto leader of a contemporary multi-country movement away from Latin America's very substandard, US dictated past toward a better socialist future for hundreds of millions of people, which makes his health critically important news.
   If you happen to go (as I suggest because it's handily linked on my front page) from here to Granma, Cuba's main newspaper, where you can easily read (in English) the actual declaration of the Venezuelan National Assembly, you should also read (in English) the response of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa (another important leader in the new Latin American socialist revolution) to rumors of a possible CIA plot to kill him. If you know Spanish, you could also look that up in an Ecuadorian newspaper. Correa officially welcomes assurances by the US Embassy in Quito that the US would "never get involved" in such a plot, but reminds the public of what YOU ought to know but might not, that such things have happened in Latin America and that agencies like the CIA "have their own agenda, of which the US President isn’t even aware." He's not raving, he's talking about real history seldom included in the comic-book version you're used to being fed.

-Glen Roberts

Hugo Chavez death rumors raise important issues

   18 June 2013: The embedded media story of North Korea's surprise offer to give up its nuclear arms IS NOT TRUE, which is not surprising. What is surprising is that, buried wa-a-ay down in yesterday's NY Times' same ol' same ol' propaganda piece posing as news, you can actually read what North Korea really said. And never mind how corny their wording may be. Just pay attention to their point.

    “Whether anyone accepts our proud status as a nuclear power, we will hold fast to it until the denuclearization of the entire Korean Peninsula is realized and the nuclear threat from the outside is completely terminated,” the North Korean spokesman said.
    Washington, however, has demanded that before direct talks, North Korea must first take concrete steps to show its sincerity in giving up its nuclear weapons.
    On Sunday, the North said the United States should stop raising “preconditions” for dialogue if it is serious about easing tensions and “safeguarding the peace and security of the region, including the mainland United States.”

    What this clearly means (your local Times clone refuses to clarify) is that North Korea has requested a meeting with the US - NOT to give up but to propose exactly what I proposed to Barack Obama on March 31st, i.e. a sensible normalization of relations, including the withdrawal of US forces and nuclear weapons from the region - and for Washington to quit asininely insisting on surrender BEFORE negotiations.
-Glen Roberts  

McCarthyism returns to America

   10 July 2013: "President Barack Obama has ordered federal employees to report suspicious actions of their colleagues..." as part of the "Insider Threat Program," it says in today's paper. JH(F)C! Has the HUAC returned as the ITP? And are there democratic congressmen hypocritical enough to play the roles of Nixon and McCarthy this time around? Maybe Diane Feinstein, for one?
    Close your doors and windows Americans, and stay off your phones and your computers. You're all being watched! By each other! And, HEY, all you never-say-die Obama supporters: will YOU play this clearly democratic game? On Facebook maybe?

-Glen Roberts

Raul Castro a model president compared to Obama

   13 July 2013: Raul Castro deserves a lot of credit for transforming the role of a Cuban president from that of heroic comandante to that of a relatively low profile working coordinator of the island's comprehensive management team. I'm presenting this as news to westerners to whom, thanks to most of their disgustingly embedded news sources, it IS news.
    I first, only coincidentally, reported it from Cuba in January of 2007, 6 1/2 years ago, when I didn't know yet that it was news, either. That is, nobody knew yet that Fidel, whom Raul, as first vice-president, was temporarily replacing, would not return to office, or that the Council of State would appoint Raul to go on replacing him, and I didn't know that what I was seeing would become an important mode.
    But it did, and today, while Barack Obama continues chasing photo ops and embarrassing himself urging the world to go to war in Syria with him and to help him persecute a hacker who has revealed some of his uglier secrets, Raul Castro is quietly behaving himself very much as I've stipulated a national manager should in my definitions of a civilized civil state and of routine communism.
    That is, while Obama goes on destructively fiddling while the eco-world we live in (besides burning) goes on collapsing and pervasive poverty goes on spreading, Cuba, which is not attacking or robbing or ecologically fucking up any other country and has no international enemies (except, by its own will, Obama's State Department) continues, through the cooperative efforts of its various cabinet ministers, coordinated by its quietly working president, moving toward its own very civilized goal of making life good for all Cubans, while helping other countries do the same, not through NGO's (like those in the US who, though they usually fail, try to do the distracted US government's job for it), but through state sponsored volunteers rendering humanitarian aid everywhere, while the Cuban state goes on domestically providing a model for other countries that want to become equally as civilized as Cuba.
    For example, (1) Cuban medical teams were first on the scene after Haiti's disastrous hurricane, as they are for disasters everywhere, and they're still there; (2) when I was in Venezuela exploring barrios everyone told me were too dangerous to enter, I found clinics in those barrios run by Cubans; (3) in the last several years, Cuba has led an international project based on methods developed in Cuba to teach all poor Latin Americans to read and write; and (4) Cuba just last month graduated 4,843 medical students from 70 other countries who will return to their own countries as new doctors. Those are just a few examples.
    But the main super-important example, though it's NEVER reported in embedded western media who have had to nearly erase a quarter of the globe from reported existence in order to avoid the story, Cuba IS the model for a quiet (not violent) Latin American revolution involving MOST of South America and parts of the Caribbean and Central America away from the US business oriented model of government toward a civilized future when poverty will hopefully be erased by a quarter-globe revolutionary priority shift toward socially oriented government.. And, of course, Raul Castro is deeply involved. He's qualified, by the way, by half a century of management experience in Cuba and because, having been just as involved as his brother in the overthrow of Batista and the founding of modern Cuba, he shares his brother's understanding of the goals of a benign socialist state.
    Don't imagine, by the way, that I'm knocking Fidel's long term of heroship. As is clarified in my definitions of a civil state and communism just in case you didn't click those links), to START moving an inert capitalist-dominated population toward civilization and then keep moving them until they reach a state of civilized stability usually DOES require a heroic leader as exactly as possible like Fidel. But once a civilized state is securely established, the need for heroes is replaced by a need for mild-mannered managers like Raul focusing on the people's all-important day-to-day needs, rather than the kind of typically chesty flag waving US president (like Barack Obama) who goes on forever obscenely trying to conquer and exploit the world.
-Glen Roberts

LA Times admits population growth error
but claims it's even better for business

   19 July 2013: "This just in: Humanity is growing faster than we (sick) thought." That's a quote from the LA Times last week. I don't know if the word we is a royal we, a co-optive-of-lumpen-readers'-brains we, or just ordinary careless language abuse. It doesn't mean me. I've always known that their figures were conveniently stupid, and they still are.
    Actually, the cat just jumped out of the bag when the findings of a team of British (not American) scientists were broadcast worldwide that population is growing much faster than previously thought (still by someone besides me), So now, the Times editors are trying to co-opt the discovery of their own ignorance and put even that discovery into their own warped terms.
    They quickly assure themselves (and you if you're a willing part of their idea of we) that the numbers are only "startling" but not "alarming," and then go on to give "revised" predictions not much different than they usually give, including the mathematically impossible claim that world population is "on track to reach 9.6 billion by midcentury and nearly ll billion by 2100," predictions they giddily welcome as entrepreneurial opportunities.
    You can use your own pocket calculator on this morning's "track" rate (see top of front page) of over 200 more humans per minute, well over 290,000 per day (both those numbers growing a bit every day) to see easily that, while ANNUALLY plopping down on the Earth's tired surface the equivalent of another 365 cities as big and ugly as Stockton, "we" will reach 8 billion BEFORE 2020 and 11 or maybe 12 billion BEFORE 2050, IF, between now and then and then again, the ecosystem itself doesn't decide without LA Times advance editorial notice to suddenly up and totally, finally finish collapsing all at once.
    And, in fact, the British scientists, after first offering the predictions the Times quoted, went on to almost timidly admit that, "if the CURRENT (my caps) growth rates continue," guess what - the projections will have to be revised to match the ones I gave you two paragraphs back. Besides crunching numbers, maybe those Brits are reading my site.
    What's important is that the Times is admitting that it, no THEY, were wrong about something. About what? Well, of course about their assumption BEFORE last week that the US Census Bureau's flaky world population clock and the embedded scientists who contribute to it were reliable. About what else they won't tell you. But I will. They were wrong in 1990 or 91 in their gullible acceptance of a claim by some embedded mathematician maybe named Zeno that, because the percentage growth rate of population was dropping, the population explosion had ended*; and in their assumption on January 1st of 2000 that the explosive 4 1/2 billion growth of human population in 100 years wasn't important enough to include among the big stories of the 20th century (compared to blockbusters like the death of Mother Teresa); and in their failure to assume anything at all in January of 2010 about the addition of nearly ANOTHER billion people in only the first 10 years of the new century; and in their assumption in January of 2011 that the world was facing a "critical population deficit." In other words, they were wrong over and over again, while I (for over 60 years) and Paul Ehrlich (for over 50 years that I know of) have been constantly right. So to whom should you now pay more attention?

-Glen Roberts

*The percentage growth rate of world population has ALWAYS dropped, ever since the birth of Adam and Eve's TWO sons (in let's say two years) registered as a 100% growth rate, proving that a small number can be a big percentage of a small number, while a bigger number (say over 200 million in the last two years), can be a smaller percentage (only a bit over 3% in fact) of a big number like 7 billion. Check that with your own pocket calculator and think about it really hard, and, if you were one of the smart alecs who kept telling me in the 90's that everyone knew the population explosion had stopped, please blush.

NATO's Middle Eastern blunders and ugly intentions
obscured by blather about chemical weapons

   27 July 2013: With all their other Middle Eastern foreign policy chickens disgracefully crash landing into their roosts, the big-three NATO hawks (aided by some Turkey squawking from the side), continue pushing the UN to ple-e-e-ase find some evidence of chemical weapons use by Bashar Assad to allow them to vaguely justify another stupid mistake of the same kind in Syria.
    So, an umpteenth investigation begun today will again lead to the same old conclusion: that the fanatical CIA-backed Syrian rebels might (proudly) use chemical weapons whenever they can, but the government probably doesn't. This will not be clarified to American news consumers who remain blissfully unaware that in every dispute so far over Syria, Russia, which consistently backs Assad against the religious-nut rebels, always turns out to be right.
    It's not just a guess; it's apparent that, if (or maybe I should say when) the rogue acronym NATO finally bulls its way into Syria and lynches another president, they'll be handing another country to the Muslim Brotherhood.
    It's also apparent, that, in any case, the blissfully twittering American so-called left will not protest.
-Glen Roberts

Obama accuses Russia of reviving cold war
while he sets records starting new hot wars

Media report Syrian chemical war crime
before they know it's not a rebel hoax

   22 Aug 2013: Exactly as if they shared their rich owners' lust for war, almost ALL major media JUMPED today to pass on what literally stinks of a Syrian rebel hoax- a huge spread of unconvincing pix and propaganda - FROM THE REBELS - that MAY or may not have appeared (as some sources say) BEFORE the rebels claim the government hit a Damascus suburb yesterday with chemicals but was certainly too thick a sheaf to have appeared so quickly.
    In fact, it IS certainly stupid to believe any version of this story without indisputable substantiation, i.e. that the the government, at a time when they're mopping up the rebellion, attacked civilians with chemicals 2 days after the UN team investigating rumors of chemical arms use arrived. But the same media have been passing on unbelievable rebel propaganda from the beginning of the Syrian conflict, ALWAYS as if THEY believe it and want YOU to believe it, too.
    Reviewing all the supposedly disturbing pics I could find, I found them disturbingly familiar, by the way, and certainly not convincing.
    Nevertheless, BBC and Al Jazeera seemed almost to be calling for war, making the biggest part of the story the declaration by the French government that the "red line" had been crossed; and the NY Times unequivocally declared what they could not know - that "scores""WERE killed," mid "telltale signs of chemical weapons," before, midway through their second graph, lapsing (very briefly) into atypical objectivity, they admitted:
    "...The rebels blamed the government, the government denied involvement, and Russia accused the rebels of staging the attack to implicate President Bashar assad's government..."
    But that's not completely objective, either, considering that, at the time the big media went to press today, there was NO objective certainty that ANYTHING had happened.
    Don't be surprised if this supposed blockbuster story disappears tomorrow. While they've got it in front of your face, the media have used it to remind you of the "red line" Obama drew and to pass on implications that he's failed to follow up with an attack, and to reinforce the official fantasy that it's England and France and Turkey and all right-minded folks who want to attack Syria, while Obama, though properly horrified by Assad, is, like John Wayne, reluctant to draw his six-shooter too quickly.
    Remember! I'm not reporting on Syria. I'm reporting on the reporting of the embedded media, the unreliable propaganda junta you are expected to and maybe do believe every day.

-Glen Roberts

US, UK and French war-mongers
put last things (war) first and first things (proof) last

   24 Aug 2013: Now that we know chemical weapons used in a rebel-occupied Damascus suburb killed a lot of people, the first thing is to prove who did it, but NATO blusterers are putting first things last and ATTACK PLANS first. In fact, since before they knew ANYTHING had happened, Barack Obama and his French and British counterparts were already DESCRIBING their attack on Bashar Assad upcoming as soon as they can prop up an excuse.
    But come on! I'm acknowledging the chemical attack that I called a probable rebel hoax on Thursday because a reliable witness, Doctors Without Borders, has credibly verified it. The claim by bloodthirsty embedded media that unnamed "analysts" doubt the rebels could have done it are bullshit.
    All the Middle Eastern governments and all their religious opponents appear capable of brutality, and that the Syrian rebels are both technically and psychologically capable of faking a government chemical attack to provoke a NATO invasion is still far more certain than that Assad's military would welcome the arrival of a UN chemical war investigation team in Damascus with such an attack just a short drive from their hotel.
    The NY Times habitually reports things they can't possibly know as facts. I don't. I don't know what's happening in Syria. I DO KNOW, and I'm reporting it, that embedded western media want NATO to invade Syria and Barack Obama wants war after war and has wanted war ever since he took office. I know his official motives won't bear examination. And I know war is profitable mainly for corporations based in the US. I've had a lot of on-site experience in Latin America when the CIA and the US State Department were insidiously engaged there (or rather MORE insidiously engaged there than they obviously still are now). I see symptoms of the same kind of crap in the Middle East, and that's what I report.
    Barack Obama always does his reluctant cowboy hero act before he pulls the trigger, but his rhetoric of the last few days has been blatant. He wants to invade Syria and he's probably going to do it, and THEN, just as in the case of Bush and Iraq and ALSO Obama himself and Libya, the failure to prove a provocation will get lost in the megorama of war news.

-Glen Roberts

NATO big shots massacre language and logic
to excuse their lust for war with Syria

   29 Aug 2013: By now, all the B-level US, UK and French high school kids must be aware of and embarrassed by their presidents' and prime ministers' massacre of language and logic to excuse their lust for war with Syria.
    Even John Kerry can't be stupid enough (can he?) not to know he"s standing logic on its head and undeniably lying by pretending it's "undeniable" that Syria's government (not the US sponsored rebels) gassed civilians last week in Damascus and that the country with the biggest WMD arsenal of them all (including far more chemical weapons remaining than Syria was or is ever likely to have *), i.e. the US, with its standing claim that it has the right to use them in "retaliation," plus its very long rap sheet for bombing bystanders, has the moral authority to punish anyone.
    Of course, Kerry's actual stupidity is not as important as his determination to stick to his talking points regardless of their stupidity. The embedded media (which share Kerry's level of intelligence and insider complicity) are still pretending Colin Powell's argument for invading Iraq was only discredited LATER. So, remembering those asses' daily lie that Powell's views of the roofs of buildings and his claims about what was under them were "compelling," experience suggests we'll be treated to the same distortion of the value of the US argument to the UN Security Council this time AND the lie again that a (trumped up) "coalition of willing allies" will justify mass murder by NATO again.
    What should happen is that millions of people should appear in the streets in front of the homes of the big-3 NATO assholes carrying barn-door size signs hugely red-lettered "NO!" And Russia should abandon diplomacy and confront the US with a plain-words declaration that: "the world will NOT put up with another Iraq or Libya from you. The world demands that you creeps SHUT UP AND BACK OFF!" And then the rest of the Security Council and The world should stand up and cheer.
    Now I'm dreaming. Russian and Chinese leaders are looking good these days only in comparison to the top three NATO klunks. Meanwhile, news management has become a mega-effective (though mega-clumsy) pseudo-art, and "the" people have been trained to swallow a mega-mix of grammatical blunders and logical fallacies as pseudo-news without losing track of the sports scores and the movies, and I haven't got the weight to knock a dent in that program.
    But, also, slightly contradicting that point, the stupidity of the official story in the Syrian case has become so unprecedentedly obvious that (even if they're not enough to turn the flow of general b.s. around) enough others (besides me), including even some otherwise ordinarily stupid heads of state, are blasting the stupid story, so that I can afford to get bored with it and turn my attention to some less exposed official lies - which I promise I'll do in my next post.
    You might think I owe the US people a credit for their alleged 60 percent opposition to Barack Obama's latest war plans, but I know that over half of that bloc is just generically tired of war, and I have no hope that the picket signs in the picture of the White House demonstrators will change any time soon from "What Change?" to something more to the point, like "WE said NO, stupid!" and "WE are the U.S. and YOU are not US anymore!" and "Neither is NATO!"
    Meanwhile, while reality is not following my sensible script, check out my explanation of how and why democracy doesn't work - that is, while you're watching it not work.

-Glen Roberts

* Embedded search engines will dodge all your efforts to research this point, always forcing you back to the politically correct official story of US/Syria conflict today, but patience will eventually prove NO certainty but the probability that the US, a reluctant signatory to the chemical weapons ban, still has thousands of tons of the stuff (WHICH it still claims the right to use), while Syria, only known to be producing chemical weapons since 2012, is probably producing "hundreds" of tons a year.

Obama is clearly NOT a reluctant warrior
and his reasons for war are no damned good!

   7 Sep 2013: It's past time for embedded media to retract or at least stop telling TW0 big lies they've kept telling us over and over recently: (1) that Barack Obama is a reluctant warrior being pressured into action (HE CERTAINLY IS NOT); and (2) THAT the US, UK, and French (NATO) misleaders have publicly well known reasons to attack Syria (THEY HAVE NO REASON RESPECTABLE ENOUGH TO BEAR THE LIGHT OF AN EXPLANATION - AND THEY'VE NEVER GIVEN ONE).
    With ALL the currently known pressure from the world, the regressive G-20, the UN, what respectable analysts exist, and even from THE people of the three countries these assholes supposedly represent being pressure NOT to attack Syria, the fog is clearing (at least for those who can read) and revealing Obama, his administrative UK and French counterparts, Turkey and the most cynically regressive Arabs, NOT reluctant warriors but as the ONLY ones who wants to attack. Obviously, Obama was never a reluctant cowboy. He's been a warmonger since he took office in January 2009.
    With multiple opportunities to present their evidence against Syria, the case they and the media (clearly the loudest participants in the coalition of the willing) keep calling "certain," "undeniable," "forceful," etc. is not just similar to the flaky case made for the unprovoked attacks on Iraq and Libya, it's exactly the same kind of argument - a metaphysical argument at best - not including a single certain, undeniable, forceful fact - made up only of passionate but empty rhetoric.
    The best clumsy shot in the dark they have is their assertion (just a naked assertion) that, "since" the Syrian government has "custody" of chemical weapons in Syria, only the Syrian government could have launched the chemical attack that killed about 355 people in a Damascus suburb according to Doctors Without Borders. But that's NOT CERTAIN; more credible sources than the CIA DO DENY IT; reports from unembedded and therefore unsung media easily found on the net, which may not be totally reliable but which are CERTAINLY, UNDENIABLY more reliable than US State Department spooks, cite evidence that the opposition has "custody" of its own chemical weapons stockpile (from Turkey probably) and has in fact used chemical weapons.
    It's past time for the mainstream media to retract their big lies and it's past time for them to publish the truth. The world is being misled by big shots with SOME motive for wanting to go to war with Syria. The wish has been apparent and even often stated since way before the unprovoked attack on Libya. The motive can be guessed but needs to be investigated and set forth in headlines as big as the lying headlines we've been suffering for a long time now. And it's time to end the myth of Obama and strip him naked as the would-be emperor of the world he yearns to be.
    I am not piling on, by the way. I've been uncovering Obama since right before he initially took office - not in chorus with the Republicans or the pseudo progressives, but as a truly progressive revolutionary for honest, coherent analysis of reality in perfect English and for effective social, economic, political, philosophical, ecological movement toward world-wide civilization someday.

-Glen Roberts

Another war to save Obama's face? No way!

   9 Sep 2013: To start another war to save Barack Obama's face is unacceptable! Period! Supposed moral reasons loudly, redundantly, but not at all logically or grammatically advanced by the chief war-mongers backing Obama are unacceptable, too, because those reasons aren't credible. Period! Any other economic reasons never mentioned by a complicit embedded media because they're shameful are unacceptable, too. Period!
    A very few big shots in a very few countries share Obama's risk of losing face. But their dilemma (or the dilemmas of their sponsors who stand to profit from war) is/are of no importance to the rest of the human race. Their faces and profits are a thousand times more expendable than the lives and limbs of bystanders who will be under the bombs. Period! Even if there are a handful of worthy individuals among the Syrian rebels, most of those guys are contemptible, and to start an endless war to give Syria to them is beneath unacceptable. Period!

    The only acceptable option is to force the rebels to enter negotiations (which Assad has already agreed to) that lead to UN supervised elections open to all parties, including the present government, with an understanding that if the government loses, the army will be dismantled and replaced by an army assembled by a coalition of all parties. That makes sense! By contrast, nothing from Obama and his very limited camp makes any sense at all! Period!

    But this does! Rather than let him start another war, Obama should be impeached.

-Glen Roberts

Upstaged Obama/Kerry effort to grab spotlight back
threatens to undermine Russia's good work

   13 Sep 2013: One can only hope that, with his embarrassing effort to shoulder into the Russia/Syria/UN deal, John Kerry hasn't torpedoed it. A couple of days ago (Sep 11), we all believed that Russia had saved the day. Syria was ready to turn custody of all its chemical weapons over to the UN and to cooperate with whatever had to be done to annihilate the entire stockpile. Not easy maybe, but things couldn't have been better in the Middle East.
    But, for no other reason except to save their stupid faces, not only have Barack Obama and Kerry had to make loud speeches implying they were still in charge, Kerry, as part of his pretence that HE has been part of a purely Russian/UN/Syrian deal made at least two days ago while Kerry and Obama were still beating war drums, has now declared Syria OUT of any talks (though all relevant talks have already taken place) and imposed conditions that can't be met, exactly like George Bush in Iraq. He's demanding that Syria turn over all their chemical weapons within a week.
    So, though Vladimir Putin can hopefully cool him, Bashar Assad (who claims, probably correctly, that it was the US sponsored rebels who unleashed the chemical attack on August 21 in order to force Obama/NATO to invade on their behalf), is now retaliating by imposing some actually realistic conditions on the world's ugliest rogue state (I mean fascist America, if you're asleep).
    So now what? Can Russia bully the US idiots into shutting up and backing off? Will Assad refuse to be bullied into kneeling at Washington's feet (which, by the way, IS Obama's and Kerry's main aim right now) and back out of the deal? I (who have no faith in humanity at all) am hoping that the entire world will rise up in some sense and tell the two klunks off emphatically enough to actually stop them. But that's not a prediction.
    Meanwhile,there's something else that has to be done, which Russia can't do, and, though you may think so, the US can't do, either. I'm going to reprint a paragraph from my last post to make this critical point that the embedded media haven't the wit to make:

    Somebody has to persuade the rebels, who are losing their war and can no longer count on NATO to invade and win it for them, to enter negotiations (which Assad has already agreed to) that lead to UN supervised elections open to all parties, including the present government, with an understanding that if the government loses (or wins, which it almost certainly will), the army will be dismantled and replaced by an army assembled by a coalition of all at least politically secular parties.

-Glen Roberts

While media pretend US idiots are helping,
Russia alone achieves an unusually sane diplomatic triumph

   16 Sep 2013: By playing Edgar Bergen to Obama's and Kerry's Mortimer Snerd and Charlie Mccarthy, Vladimir Putin has managed in the last three days to at least bend US foreign policy into a slightly saner path, so that, while still shunning diplomatic gray for myself, I have to credit him with a masterpiece of diplomatic trickery, which has actually done some good.
    Efforts by embedded media today to somehow fit the alteration of Syrian news reality wrought entirely by Putin into their existing comic-book based official story have reached the level of high comedy.To laugh last and best, though, you have to understand (what they're obscuring) that there's been not one deal (as they pretend): but two deals, the first (the important and done deal) made only between Russia, Syria and the UN (while John Kerry was still loudly declaring war at any second) for the sequestration of Syrian chemical arms under UN jurisdiction until they can be rounded up and destroyed. I'm assuming that Assad was persuaded by Putin that, with Syria separated from its chemical arms, the world would have to suspect the rebels of any subsequent chemical attack.
    The second mock deal, ventriloquized by Russia into John Kerry's mouth, allowed Kerry to blather on to the press as if he were still in charge in exchange for his changing his idiot demand that Syria turn over its chemical weapons in one week or else to a Putin-crafted, Kerry-mimed (for US consumption) "demand" that Syria turn over just an inventory in one week (which they've probably already done), and that all their chemical weapons be destroyed by "2014," a flexible deadline certainly already agreed to.
    Great work Mr. Putin! But the war won't end until the rebels are also effectively bent into line. This is so critical I'm re-quoting myself for the third time:

    To achieve a civilized peace, somebody has to persuade the rebels, who are losing their war and can no longer count on NATO to invade and win it for them, to enter negotiations (which Assad has long ago agreed to) that lead to UN supervised elections open to all parties, including the present government, with an understanding that if the government loses (or wins, which it almost certainly will), the army will be dismantled and replaced by an army assembled by a coalition of all at least politically secular parties.

    But the rebels are not, as US Face Book Obama supporters have convinced themselves, the good guys in Syria. They are Islamic fundamentalists given to fundamentalist unreasonableness. They WANT a NATO invasion. They want Assad lynched BEFORE NATO gives them the country and lets them turn it into a Muslim state. If not a majority, at least a majority of Syrians with anything like 20/20 brain vision apparently believe, according to alternative media on the spot that you can research, too, if you refuse to let Google force your search into the official story trench, that the only way to resolve the current crisis and return to the last previous version of normality, so that reform can begin from there, Assad must be allowed to annihilate the so-called "rebels."
    I'm not advocating that. I'm just reporting reality. And it IS a fact that Barack Obama and NATO, with the constant aid of the embedded media, created the reality I'm reporting.

-Glen Roberts

NATO and crazy Jihadists are now allies

   22 Sep 2013: World War III, pitting Jihadists against everyone else, is now underway, and US, UK, and French chiefs of state are apparently allied with the Jihadists. Their latest treachery to the rest of us is a threat to undermine Russia's brilliantly diplomatic chemical disarmament deal with Bashar Assad and the UN unless Russia joins their screwy war-drumming for an unprovoked invasion of Syria.
    That they have blundered into their pro-Jihad position, thinking they were doing something else, is not to their credit, since the something else, setting aside all their grammatically grotesque rhetorical white-washing, is a secret precisely because they subconsciously know it's just as ugly as Jihad. I'm theorizing about some of the details, but the ugly NATO plan for world conquest, blindly parallel to and (in the Middle East) allied with the Jihadic plan, does exist and is trying to unfold.
    (to be cont'd)
-Glen Roberts

Media continue supporting "Obamacare"
by insidiously calling insurance industry subsidies "health care"

   25 Oct 2013: Reporting on health care in America remains typically evasive today, as embedded media quote only Obama"care" supporters and Republicans on snafus undermining the gre-e-at sign up that should never have taken place.
    While unruly pundits in the media itself, and even coffee and barber shop wizards everywhere are rationally ridiculing the incoherence of the "portal" provided for suckers who in fact DON'T yearn to buy overpriced (at any price) insurance enough to wade through so much shit, the media go on pretending to expect the same klutzes who made the mess to make healing adjustments to the hopelessly normal combined language abuse of salesmen, politicians, and internet nerds that IS the problem.
    And, of course, in the midst of the eternal fog, they stick to their wall-to-wall evasion of ANY mention EVER of the need in America for socialized medicine, though that, too, is becoming a drum-beat topic at least in the blogosphere. An unprecedented (since 1990) awakening of Americans on that score is not news to the news vendors when (to the rich insiders who own them) it's an unwelcome awakening, you see - please, DON'T YOU SEE? - Sadly, thanks to your greater overly-willing exposure to the media I'm talking about than to me, you probably don't.
    It's way past time for the people themselves to get the blame for their own screwing, but it's another newer set of villains, the nerds, who (besides helping the CIA start most of the "Arab Spring" Face-Book religious revivals) have jammed all our computers wall-to-wall with chummy club joining ceremonies in order to do absolutely ANYTHING, the currently most relevant of which is the solid wall of opening-a-chummy-account ceremonies (complete with passwords) confounding the fools who, for some stupid reason want to JOIN the Obama "care" club that's really an insurance company, pharmaceutical company, and corporate medical establishment subsidization plan.
    If I just lost you, you deserve to be lost, but, whether you went to day school or night school, you should be able to figure out that insurance is not health care (insurance DOES NOT = health care). Insurance companies do not perform surgery or bandage cut fingers or even issue aspirin. They are middle men, and you ought to already know that adding a middle man to your health care payment plan will increase (not decrease) the price you pay. Furthermore (and this has become appallingly obvious recently), insurance companies don't at all mind putting good health FOR EVERYONE even further out of reach by paying inflated prices to every insider involved since they're going to recover those losses through inflated premiums, something YOU (the already proven foolish credit card user) can be counted on not to notice, because the premiums come out of one of your pockets, while the medical price increases come invisibly out of another at a different time and (to you, apparently) in a different dimension, and because the pro-business media that you go on and on and on believing stay spectacularly silent on that point.
-Glen Roberts

Americans avoid reading the Constitution
by letting media tell them what it says

   31 Oct 2013: Whenever another copy of Proposition 8 pops up in another backward state, US media, which have politically correctly (if not in their hearts) stopped frowning at gays but still support primitive American religion as stalwartly as Muslims, make sure the story continues to be thought of as relevant only to the suppression of gay rights, never never never mentioning that Proposition 8, which they stupidly (or maybe as an intentional distraction) keep calling "the gay marriage" act, has always been far more importantly an illegal effort to carve a religious taboo into a supposedly secular Constitution. The people, of course, stay dutifully asleep, and let their defenses against the American Jihadist efforts to turn the U.S. into a religious state slacken and weaken.
    Now, reporting with equal dishonesty about several lawsuits filed by people sick and tired of public meetings beginning with prayers, the media, proving once again to be the de facto agents of creeping religious revival, are saving their readers the trouble of reading the Constitution by quoting only those "experts," lawyers, and even atheists (JHFC!!) who (unexplainably) agree with them that the Constitution only prohibits governments from supporting one particular religion. HEY! THAT'S NOT TRUE!

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment OF RELIGION, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...

    THAT'S the First Amendment on religion. It DOES NOT include the phrase any particular religion, but prohibits government support of religion" - PERIOD! And regardless of possible FUTURE word-twisting by some rogue Supreme Court in this increasingly religious country, NO coalition of illiterate lawmakers, lawyers, judges, social-media smart-Alecs, reporters, editors, or citizen gatherings can just up and suddenly substitute words or phrases they like better just because they want to. America is not the Jerry Springer show - yet. Nerd-driven social media, at least legally, are not YET running America.
    Furthermore, just in case you're confused by all the sometimes smart/sometimes dumb rumbling over the meaning of the Second Amendment, please try to note that, while the Second Amendment IS open to interpretation because it's such a sad example of bad grammar, the First Amendment, whether it's perfectly clear to you or not, has been repeatedly found to be clear, at least about whom it restrains and about the contrasting purposes of the parts before and after the word OR, in courtroom after courtroom, and by the Supreme Court.
    The Supreme Court, in a never overturned 1947 decision, ruled that the First Amendment proscription against Congress also applies to state and local government (a caveat confirmed in the California State Constitution) and that what no government can do is, in law or official procedure or ceremony, SUPPORT religion. As an example, pre-meeting prayers have never been allowed by ANY court. The prohibition against government support of religion was spelled out unambiguously, in 1947, by Justice Hugo Black, who wrote:

    The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, OR prefer one religion to another ... In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "the [First Amendment] clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between church and State' ... that wall to be kept high and impregnable." We (the Supreme Court) could not approve the slightest breach.

The First Amendment
presented by an English prof (me)

    For your benefit, so you don't have to rely on the screwy interpretations of embedded lawyers and grammar challenged politicians, here is exactly what the Constitution says, too clearly to need much interpreting, about any governmental body's right (or rather its lack of any right) to make or support laws related to religion, or (by logical extension AND court precedent) to adopt and carry out official ceremonies implying any official authority, support, or interest, positive or negative, over, of or in religion:
    Congress shall make NO law respecting an establishment of religion, OR prohibiting the free exercise thereof...
    Please note first that, making its point more clearly than does Justice Black"s interpretation, the First Amendment makes NO reference to official support of one particular religion over another but only to official promotion of religion generically.
    Second, check your grammar book on rules of sentence structure and parallel structure (I bet you country bumpkin lawyers, politicians, and reporters never thought of doing that), and then note that the main clause of the First Amendment is Congress shall make no law, which is followed by two parallel phrases modifying the word LAW - i.e. examples of the kinds of laws that can't be made. These examples are easy to spot because, following the word LAW, to grammatically prove they ARE parallel, they are structured in a parallel way, each starting with a gerund (respecting OR prohibiting), to show that, separately but equally, each fits logically into the sentence in the same way, right after the words MAKE NO LAW, and, as is appropriate for two parts of a compound joined by the contrasting conjunction OR, they are about contrasting legal proscriptions against EITHER support that amounts to sponsorship OR non-supportive prohibition.

    READ IT AGAIN: Congress shall make NO law: either (A) respecting an establishment * of religion, OR (B) prohibiting the free exercise thereof...

    And that goes, not double but exactly the same, for all governmental bodies, none of which can legally start their meetings with prayers or flag salutes;**
    ...or (since marriage is a religious not a civil concern), tell any church what kind of couple, trio, quartet, etc. it will or won't marry; though the state may reasonably regulate how a couple, trio, or etc occupying the same domicile (married or otherwise) and sharing income and expenses will be taxed or held individually or jointly liable in any state related matter.
    That last is slightly irrelevant to the rest of this article, but it's fitting to deal with it here. None of this, by the way, is a matter of opinion. I'm reporting objectively and accurately on the First Amendment, which, in accordance with Alice's rule, says what it means and means what it says.
-Glen Roberts

* If you're stumbling over the 3-word construction respecting an establishment, note that, whether it's archaic or the result of camel-building, it IS clumsy, but also note that Hugo Black clearly interpreted it as meaning in any way endorsing and apparently sponsoring, an interpretation followed over and over again by the courts; and that, while the construction can be replaced by any of several better wordings, any of those wordings would amount to the same thing. Also note that, no matter how much back and forth legal blather has been expended on these words, the prohibition against government SPONSORSHIP of prayers has never been left in doubt.
** If my very sensible pairing of "flag salutes" with prayers isn't obviously as sensible to you as it should be, clarify it to yourself by carefully reading the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th paragraphs of my prescriptive definition of a civil state, one of the two most important documents on this site.

-Glen Roberts

Syrian rebels not popular in Syria:
a story I reported long ago

   13 Nov 2013:: Some truth leaked through the official Syria story today when an AP writer called the chance of Syrian peace talks "muddied by the opposition, which has little support inside Syria..." "Which has little support inside Syria?" Wow! Of course, that was in the last paragraph,but it wouldn't have been news to you, if you'd been reading this website all along.
    Meanwhile, another story just barely surfacing in the media, that the Syrian rebels are now decisively losing their war (the only reason some of them are finally willing to negotiate) was first reported here (as a probability not as a fact, but definitely reported) 3 1/2 months ago in June.
    My knowledge of the Middle East is slight compared to my knowledge of Latin America, but I've got 20/20 brain vision and I know who the usual liars are. Never willing to buy anything the CIA, the Regressive Times and the White House try to sell me, when the Syrian "Arab spring" first sprung, I did my research, found out that most Syrians (whatever they thought of Assad) didn't support the rebels; and, continuing to research geography, history, and sites not listed on top by Google, I learned that, as the war progressed, most Syrians wanted mainly to return to the civilized life under an officially secular government that they'd had before the war and, as the war got worse, grew more and more willing to see the rebels wiped out rather than endure any future nightmare the Jihadists were dreaming up for them.
    Hey! You don't have to keep trusting media that you know very well almost always lie to you about US foreign policy. You, too, can do your own research.
-Glen Roberts

Media stance on Middle Eastern brutality is nuanced

   28 Nov 2013: While death by stoning may be a bit much for western media, flogging "adulterers" very possibly to death bothers them less, and arresting adulterers and executing them (say by hanging) isn't disturbing enough to them to mention.
    Every publicly "shocked" western media news story I've read so far on this fine Thanksgiving morning about US-backed, newly democratic Afghanistan's plan (announced 3 days ago and withdrawn only after world-wide blog boards angrily erupted) to re-legalize STONING married adulterers to death (if one of the sinners is married) - I say, EVERY western media story I read DOWN-PLAYED the Islamic democracy's plan to FLOG unmarried adulterers possibly to death (with 100 lashes) and QUOTED NO WESTERNER, politician, philosopher, or whatever, with enough good sense or courage, even in England, France or America, to forthrightly condemn the Islamic custom of executing or even arresting people for "adultery (a word that hasn't even existed in America itself since the 50's)," which in the Middle East may mean holding hands in public. These countries are "our" friends, you politically correctly see, and must be confronted diplomatically.
    Also, EVERY western media story I've read so far carefully attributes past stonings only to the Taliban, and not to Islamic fundamentalists throughout the Middle East. Nor does any reporter or quoted western official do any fretting in public print anyway about the intentions of all of the CIA's, NATO's, and Barack Obama's favorite rebels to restore sharia law, the source of such medieval brutality, wherever the US helps them win a war.
-Glen Roberts

Printing money to order IS easier
than digging up and reburying gold

   7 Dec 2013: Did the WTO just decide to order their collective treasury departments to print another trillion new paper dollars and distribute them - maybe by dropping them out of small planes in selected locales all over the world?
    A quickly passed-over reference to a "deal" that will "add" "$1tn" "to the world economy," on this morning's BBC page, in the London Guardian, and in the Financial Times, certainly implies that, but in the long columns of blather that follow, including a video of an optimistic talking suit, it is never clarified just WHAT the "deal" was. WHAT they did is never explained. All we get is a list of puffed up quotes about supposedly good generalities that will somehow result from some "deal."
    Of course, "they" (not you and me or any so-called country, but the anointed representatives of the insiders in all the WTO's "member states") must do something like what I suggested in the first paragraph above all the time, or the cash to go with the endless expansion of what's called "the" economy wouldn't keep being there. Hey! I'm just reporting exactly all I can figure out.
    I have always maintained that money is a fantasy and that the government of a civilized civil state (if any such thing ever exists beyond the still budding Cuban example) can print all the money they need whenever they need to and assign whatever fixed value to it they want just by fixing all salaries and all prices to match and by just outlawing inflation.
    If the WTO or their ilk elsewhere not only subconsciously agrees with me but regularly does something a lot clumsier than what I just said, that THEY believe in, why are they and the embedded media so coy about it? You know very well that, aside from a few famous bail-outs, you not only didn't know "they" did things that way, you've been led to believe something very different. Of course, the expedient printing and injection of extra money to order does destroy the credibility of capitalism, plays hell with the myth of the gold standard, and pulls the rug out from under all the dizzy pundits who propound a tangled web of vague economic theories on the embedded business pages every day. But, aside from that, why be so self consciously vague?
    Of course, I don't think the insiders, besides flooding us with new money, are going to do anything so sane, simple, and civilized as "fixing all salaries and all prices to match and outlawing inflation." I think they're going to do something capitalism friendly but also typically capitalistically messy, in order to keep things vague and keep "the" people sort of thinking that the fortunes of fortunes are mysteriously determined by the gods through the media of coincidence provoked by "free" enterprise.
-Glen Roberts

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