Las Primarias....

"The Primaries" by Francisco Goya y Lucientes

War Mongering On Easter

Except for the Progressive magazine, the USUK press has downplayed Cheney’s war mongering foray in the Holy Land. Instead the headlines announce “Cheney says Independent Palestinian State Overdue.” Yawn.....

What is really going on is that Israel is pressuring a known war hawk to lean on Bush to go to war against Iran.

As reported by the International Herald Tribune: "Welcoming Cheney on Saturday night, Prime Minister Olmert pointedly placed Iran ahead of the peace process as one of "the many items on the common agenda" to be discussed. ' We are both very concerned about Iran; we are anxious to carry on the peace negotiations with the Palestinians.' "

Of course, “We are anxious for peace talks with the Palestinians” is the single most outstanding bull moo of the last 50 years. It is what Israel says every time it takes some action to torpedo whatever umphteenth Peace Plan is on the table. The refrain is intoned so regularly it would not be in the least surprising to learn that it had been incorporated into morning prayers at the Wailing Wall. It is meaningless. It is taken at face value only by morons, and the US mudia.

What Olmert really said was “We are both very concerned about Iran. 00 000 0000000 00 00000 00 000 00000 000000000000 0000 000 000000000000.”

In case one isn't quick enough to understand the meaning of zero, an Israeli official added that Cheney was seen by Jerusalem as "a significant player" who could influence "serious issues that cannot wait." (IHT 03/23/08)

What “serious issues” can’t wait? Certainly not the Peace with Palestine in Our Time issue. While that might be a serious issue, it has been waiting for 60 years. Surely it can wait another nine months until Cheney leaves office.

Well.... what other “serious issues” can’t wait? Peace in Iraq? We all know that Israel has nothing to do with our incursion into Iraq. Global Warming? As if Olmert were pressing Cheney to do something about the Arctic polar bear?

In case anyone still hasn’t figured it out, maybe Cheney’s reply will help. “America's commitment to Israel's security is enduring and unshakable, as is our commitment to Israel's right to defend itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other threats from forces dedicated to Israel's destruction,"

Once again, we get fillers packed with zeros. No one denies anyone the right to “defend against” terrorism, whatever that is. The right of self-defense is the bedrock of international relations. Cheney might just as well said he was committed to everyman's right to piss. The question is: against whose wall? Well... for one, against the rocket attacks or more accurately the jumbo firecrackers Hamas is lobbing at Sderot which has forced Israel into aerial bombing of Gaza. That hardly needed clarification. So, discounting the sum of zeros, we are lef with “other threats” allegedly “dedicated to Israel’s destruction.”

I will spare the slow reader any further agony. The issue that “can’t wait” is Iran. What the Israeli official was saying was that Israel regarded Cheney as a key player who could influence President Who himself on an issue that Israel says can’t wait.

The International Herald Tribune, which reported on the Unknown Issue, went on to fill up column inches with the usual blather about Abbas, Hamas, rockets, and the usual nonsense that masquerades as news. But supposing the Times, the Post and the Tribune really can't fathom what is going on, even a moron understands that the vice president doesn’t need to go to Israel to “revitalize” the peace process two weeks after the president himself went to Israel and actually did (or so were told) revitalize it.

In the absence of serious reporting from the Times, the Post, and other outlets of the US mudia, it was left to Mathew Rothschild in the Progressive to note that the sudden departure of Admiral Fallon the other week signaled, if not an imminent attack on Iran, the removal of the safety-lock against doing so.

The missle hatches are open. And on this Sunday, when Christians celebrate the the Suffering and Resurrection of the Prince of Peace, the prince of darkness (while he may attend spurious services in some bunkered conventicle of the US Embassy) is in the Holy Land tete a teting with Israel who wants him to lean on Caesar to attack Iran.

God help us.

© Barfo, 2008

Palm Sunday Pay Day

A friend of mine who is an avowed atheist and thinks religion is a crock of shit has been complaining about Pay Day lenders for a little over a year now. For the silk stocking readership of this blog that might not know what my friend is talking about, a Pay Day lender is a loan shark who specializes in short term, usually two week loans, to tie you over until next pay day. It’s a po’ folk thing.

Suppose a someone makes $100.00 every two weeks. Coming up short at the end of the first week he needs $50.00 to tie him over until next pay day. The smiling Pay Day lender lends him $50.00 for which he will charge him $25.00 in fees and interest. Pay day rolls around and our debtor with a new $100.00 bill in hand goes off to pay his loan ($50.00 + $25.00) and returns home with $25.00 which has to last two weeks. He might as well have gotten hooked on heroin.

While these figures are merely illustrative, a person on minimum wage working 160 hours a grosses $880.00 a month; so the illustration is not that far from reality. Interests and fees charged by Pay Lenders go as high as 800%. [sic].

Is this legal, you might wonder? You bet! A free market is a free market. Reagan taught us all about the evils of Gov’mint meddling and onerous bureaucratic paperwork stifling the “entrepreneurial initiative.”

Well... wait a minute. Wasn’t usury illegal? Wasn’t there a legal cap of 7% interest on loans? Doesn’t the Bible say something about that?

Yes it does. The Old Testament prohibits interest and mandates the forgiveness of debt. Today, Palm Sunday, Jesus rode triumphantly into Jerusalem on an ass, drove the money changers from the outer temple and freed the sacrificial doves from their cages.

But in god-fearing, ever self-righteous, ever self-adulating United States we don’t really give a crap about that, do we? In fact, how many Palm Sunday sermons actually mention Jesus’s act of Compassionate Vandalism?

In State legislatures and in the back-hallways around Congress there are murmurs to the effect that pay day lending is “hurting the economy”. Various compassionate politicians are talking about putting a 36% cap on pay lending. Can’t get more progressive than that, now can you?

Thirty six percent!!! Sho’ is a lot less than 800%. How much is 36% of $50.00 anyways? Answer $18.00. Huh? You mean the outrageous example we started off with was just about the “cure” being proposed by our humanitarians in the Congress?

Go out, wave your psalms, sing your hosannahs, and crucify the widow and the poor man on a cross of interest.

© Barfo, 2008

In Torture We Trust

The Thing’s veto of legislation that would have outlawed CIA waterboarding is the shriek from Hell that reflects what this diseased regime has always been about : the poisoining and consumption of everything healthy and decent in the United States.

Howling over the radio waves, Thing salivated that “the fact that we have not been attacked over the past six and a half years is not a matter of chance. ... were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland. ... this is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe.”

The Thing never actually asserted that a specific attack had been deterred through the use of torture. Hell’s minion said only that something called our intelligence community “believed” that this “program” had prevented another attack. Once again, injecting poison into the body politic, The Thing sought to induce people into thinking that torture had made us safe. This is a lie.

The truth is that torture does not produce reliable information. The truth is that this diseased regime has been unable to point -- in private or in public -- to a single instance where torture has protected the United States from a specific attack.

So why does Hell’s Bowel Movement insist that torture will make us safe? Does it really believe that? No. It did so because in the festering intestines that are its soul, it knows that the minute the American People buy that lie, they will have been tricked into damning themselves forever. The body politic will have lost all immunity against being consumed entirely.

The instant torture is accepted as capable of protecting us from bad things, it itself becomes a good thing. It will become an accepted routine for bringing about the greater good and we will turn away, dulled and accepting, from the screams and pleadings of the tortured. We will have inverted good and evil. We will have accepted sin.

The moment torture is accepted as protecting us from our “enemies” it becomes acceptable to be used against us, ourselves, in order to ferret out the enemies in our midsts. And not just the known enemies, because the avowed purpose of torture is not to prove what is known but to find out what is unknown. And if not just against known enemies among us, then against any of us to find out who of us is the enemy.

In this way, our acceptance of sin will consume us and the Thing from hell will have triumphed.

Anyone who may have perchanced into this blog, may have wondered why Barfo uses such foul language describing the slime and putrefaction that inhabit our public places. He does so, because this regime and everyone associated with it and everyone who collaborates with it is truly foul and disgusting in every possible way. Foul language is the only way to speak the truth.

©Barfo, 2008

Psychosis, Policy and Purim

The image of Israel is that of a big body-built bouncer holding a five year old by the scruff of its neck, smashing its teeth out, bloodying its nose, and kneeing it in the stomach as “deterrence” for being kicked in the shin.

In researching the previous post on Israel's threatened holocaust, I logged onto Ha’artez in order to find the exact quote from an israeli source. After doing so, I perused the discussion blog, which -- no surprise at this point -- was nothing more that a long roll of murderous, hate-filled self pity.

“ The trouble with Israel is that they keep pussy-footing around and bombing empty buildings. For every rocket attack on Israel their should be a 2-3 day rocket barrage in return, right over the Gazan`s heads.”

“ Ring Gaza with artillery and bombard from a stand-off distance as a direct answer to rockets. Time this for maximum embarrassment of Condi"

“ The past two years have been devoted to this still born process, called the peace process. ... . We were told that we had to be patient, that Sderot had to be valiant, and her children had to suffer in silence ... People have the impudence to tell Israelis that they have to suffer in silence because otherwise the Palestinians will stop cooperating in this non-existent peace process. The world always liked its Jews quiet and pliant. The world, the "civilized" one, would like nothing better than to see the end to this troublesome country of the Jews. They just dare not say it in public. That would be bad form."

There was a smaller percentage of posts that decried the “holocaust” remarks as a tactical public relations error. I counted only one or two Jewish/Israeli comments that pointed out the moral contradiction and hypocrisy of Israeli policy.

These few examples are illustrative of the mass psychosis that has taken hold of Israel. This is a phenomenon that has been noted and decried by high-ranking Israelis themselves. As far back as 2001, Ami Alayon, the head of the Israeli secret service (Shin Bet) until 2000, told Le Monde that “In Israel, nobody is dealing with reality anymore.” He debunked the self-deluding propaganda that Arafat had maliciously turned down a magnanimous offer. “This is ridiculous”. (Le Monde 12/22/01) At the other end of the political spectrum Uri Avneri, Class of ‘48 and leftist journalist, has repeatedly decried Israel’s “self-brainwashing, paranoia and suspicion. In between, there are anonymous people like “Esther” who lamented on the discussion board that Ha’aretz had deleted her posts mentioning the three Hamas truce offers that the Israeli government rejected before launching its mini (not so bad) holocaust.

The manner of speaking that has been emitting from Israel and zionist quarters around the world has been cribbed from the book of ThugSpeak -- a language of cultivated hardness and brutality. Victor Kemperer, a German Jewish professor who survived Nazi genocide wrote a book about how deeds conform to the mental attitudes carved out by habits of speech Anyone who has truly informed himself about the nazi period can only be shocked by the kind of language coming from jewish lips.

But the truly troubling psychosis is revealed in the comment that the whole rest of the civilized world “would like nothing better than to see the end to this troublesome country of the Jews.” They all hate us!!! Therefore we have to destroy the Palestinians.

This is simply insane; it bears no relation to objective reality. Israel has the United States, the world’s strongest military, firmly in its corner. Pro-Israeli Jews work at the highest levels in all branches of the U.S. government. Laws in France and Germany make it a criminal offence to denigrate or even to question the jewish version of “The Holocaust”. Most western powers have embargoed Iran demanding that it give up nuclear power, while Israel is allowed to maintain a nuclear arsenal. What kind of derangement translates this into “people have the impudence to tell Israelis that they have to suffer in silence” ?

The Israeli author and musician Gilad Atzmon, answered it this way:

“ I tend to believe that the recorded sudden change in the Israeli collective mental mood is nothing but the outcome of the Israeli natural tendency to resolve the schizophrenic mode inherently entangled within Zionism. It is the outcome of the outburst of the conflict between the tribal and the universal that matures into a state of a colossal and complete phobia. The more Israelis want to secure themselves by clinging to isolation, the more death they happen to spread around themselves” [link]

Zionism certainly, but perhaps more. One of the commentators on the Ha’aretz blog wrote:

“ Our Purim Lesson is that Israel needs to do to Hamas what Hamas has promised to do to Israel. Haman hung on the gallows he had built for Mordechai.”

Well, what did Haman do? Haman faithfully carried out the orders of his king Ahasuerus, who ruled, it is said, from Ethiopia to India. On instructions from Mordechai, the Jewish inhabitants refused to bow to the king or to obey his laws . Haman asked the king what he should and the king gave him power to prosecute the offenders.

On orders from Mordechai, Esther concealed her jewishness, worked her way into the king’s affection and by the usual arts turned the king against his own loyal servant. Mordechai moved into the drivers seat had Haman and his sons hanged and then went about merrily slaughtering 75,000 of the kings own non-Jewish subjects..

"Thus the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and slaughter, and destruction, and did what they would unto those that hated them.” (Esther 9:5 )

Perhaps it could be said that Haman got it in the neck during a palace coup. But what of these 75,000? Nothing in the story gives grounds for believing that they were other than just non-Jewish subjects obeying their king’s laws. The account provides no explanation or evidence that these slaughtered innocents “hated” anyone, at least no more than the assertion that “the whole civilized world” just hates us because we are Jews.

To this day Purim is a jewish holiday. And the actions in Gaza will provide the Israelis with another occasion for holiday that they can call Purim II.

©Barfo, 2008


Post Script. The Guidelines for the Ha’artez discussion board prohibit

“2. Statements terming Israelis or Palestinians and their leaders Nazis, or accusing them of genocide or ethnic cleansing."

Uh.... that makes it kinda difficult to discuss the topic, doesn't it?

It's not a Holocaust even when We say It is.

It was the shock that reverberated around the world. An Israeli defense minister threatened Gaza with a holocaust.

It defied belief that a people who have expended so much talent and effort in educating the world as to the horrors of genocide should turn around and threaten others with what they themselves suffered.

This wretched denouement will come as no surprise to those who recognize in Zionism the same fatal ethnic idolatry that agitated Nazism. The difference between legitimate ethnic pride and pathological ethnic narcissism is always a question of degree. But when self-worthiness passes into self-worship it inevitably ends up worshiping at the expense of others

The reaction among most Israelis and their supporters around the globe fell into two categories: (1) denial that anything so outrageous had been said and (2) an attempt to shift the blame onto the victims.

The back-pedaling of the first would be comic were it not so hypocritical. It was said that the word “shoah” (or holocaust) didn’t always mean holocaust, but was used colloquially to refer to the mess in the kitchen, messed up accounts, and any kind of routine fiasco. Ergo, the Gazans weren’t really be threatened with anything like genocide. Not to worry.

This hasbara (“forensic defense of Israel”) is just an outright lie. Just last year, AIPAC and Jewish Groups in the United State fought tooth and nail to prevent an official commemoration of the “Armenian Holocaust.” Over and over again Jewish spokesmen declaimed that the word “holocaust” had a specific meaning limited to Jewish suffering and the “extent of the horror” would be cheapened by being applied to any else.... except of course as we now learn, the mess in the kitchen, the fiasco at the picnic and other such disasters which afflict ordinary people in daily life.

Just this January, the Jewish Council of Germany was aghast and offended that some Munich carnival goers had been granted a permit to parade on what the they unilaterally decreed was “Holocaust Day.” In short, the efforts of Jews around the world to turn their experience in the second world war into a sacred and taboo event is obvious to anyone who hasn’t had his head buried in the sand. To come now and claim that “holocaust” really didn’t mean that when it was uttered is just bald faced hypocrisy that counts on the world being stupidly suckered.

As for blame shifting; this has become the Standard Performance of Israeli policy. Thus, after protesting that, “in context,” shoah really only meant a doozy paloozy, Israelis followed up with “and they deserved it anyways”. Inevitably the coda to this refrain was that “Israel” was being terrorized by a “rain” of rockets and had to defend itself against, unprovoked attacks and a looming Holocaust™ at the hands of jew-hating Arabs.

mini-shoah in Gaza

The only way Israel can disequilibriate the sheer disporportionality of its conduct is to shuffle and switch the things compared. “Israel” is not under attack in any real sense. Sderot, a small township, near the Gaza border is being harrased by jumbo firecrackers that in a period of four years have killed two, perhaps now three or four people. By way of a true comparison all of Gaza is under siege and daily attack by the Israeli military and In the same period, hundreds verging on a thousand Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli collateral actions. The false equation foisted is revolting.

When all is said and done, no one “deserves” a “holocaust” -- mini or otherwise. The whole point of international law in this area is to put limits on how wars are fought. Those limits mean that whatever else “the enemy” may deserve it deserves not to have its children blasted to bits or to be starved and diseased into submission.

What Israel is doing in Gaza is evil, and has been condemned by the UN, the Secretary General, the World Court and numerous human rights organizations. For years the Israel government has subjected Gaza (and the West Bank) to restrictions that clearly qualified as “genocide” under the definitions studiously worked out by Rafael Lemkin who coined the word.

During the past year, what the sycophant western press labeled as energy cut offs was in fact a program of starvation, as reported here and elsewhere. Earlier this year (2008), it was reported that as a result of Israeli bombings the sewage mains had broken in Gaza. What this means is that the Gazans are being placed in imminent danger of typhus outbreaks.

So? So what the vast heap of “The Holocaust®” documentaries invariably omit to tell, is that the piles of bodies so horrorificly being bulldozed into mass graves were not “gassed” but were people who had died of typhus. Epidemics of typhus had broken out in most camps. For this reason one of the key elements of the judgement at Nuremberg was that the Nazis had done “little or nothing” to prevent the outbreak of typhus. -- and this calculated “negligence” qualified as an intentional war crime.

And now that the sewage mains have broken in Gaza, what does the Israeli government says? It threatens a “fiasco”.

©Barfo, 2008

Mothers for Perpetual Safety

It did not take long after the latest “senseless high school killing” for the harpies on the False Issue Left to raise their quills and voices to demand more effective gun control. Leading the charge for Perpetual Safety were: John Rosenthal of the Christian Science Monitor (”Had Enough Gun Violence? 20 Feb 2006) and “Packing Heat in the Parks” (New York Times Editorial 20 Feb 2006)

The United States doesn’t need more gun control but less. In case anyone hasn’t figured it out yet, the Second Amendment was designed to insure political empowerment (the one and only true kind). Simply put, it enshrines the right to revolt. This was understood quite clearly at the time. In fact, it almost went without saying.

The Bill of Rights of 1688, had guaranteed the right of all Protestants to “have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.” The right was enumerated in order to guard against catholic subversion which, from the protestant perspective, was a true and real threat.

Before that suffice to say the barons at Runnymede (1215) were sure as hell not leaning on their quills when they forced King John to cease and desist from undermining the independence of the English Church and courts,

Understanding the purposes of the Second Amendment leads to the ineluctable conclusion that rather than limiting the types and circumstances under which arms can be borne, the Amendment needs to be expanded so as to cover as broad a range of armaments as is reasonable for the purpose intended.

The plain fact of the matters is that hunting rifles and .45’s really won’t do much against the array of armaments in possession of the Government. Waco was a demonstration of the kind of armaments which are adequate to intimidate and oppress ordinary citizens. Since then, the Government has elaborated even more sophisticated “crowd control” armaments including: Mass-tasers, Sonic Beams and Slippery Jelly.

The tasers are laser beams that create excruciating “burning sensations” in the “subject” . Like waterboarding which only “simulates” drowning, these beams only “simulate” burning. Only a few old folks who were going to die anyway would croak.

The sonic beams are the auditory equivalent. They fill the air with such stunning hyper sound that you literally cannot think, but simply fall to ground in paralyzed stupefaction.

Lastly, in case you could possibly get up...there is Slippery Jelly which makes it impossible to do so. So... in mind-numbed stupor and excruciating burning agony, you will meekly allow yourself to be cuffed and carted off by some State Thug encased in Kevlar.

Hollywood fantasy? Nope. Your Total Safety Society brought to you by the Mothers of Perpetual Safety -- senawhores, congressoids and their pimps in the press whose vision of US-America is a “secure” camp -- from sea to shining sea.

The Second Amendment at the very least, protects the right of every citizen to possess and bear his own Slippery Jelly dispenser.

There will doubtless be those who will make the usual argumentum ad horibilis. ... trucking out a parade of horribles, all of which, when stripped of code words, boil down to: Eeeek! You mean let the Darkies have MORE weapons?

In fact, your average, road-raging suburban Blimp-in-a-Ram-Charger is probably more of a real and present danger to most people than your ghetto rapping crack dealer, who after all is really just in the “business-decisions” business.

But either way, the other cardinal fact to remember, just in case anyone forgot, is that the Bill of Rights and Our Form of Government presuppose a certain level of social sophistication and circumstance. Madison said as much in Federalist Ten. The bottom line is simple: the Constitution is a magnificent legal edifice but it is not free standing. In the last analysis, law stands or falls depending on the social subsoil. Simply put, the Constitution is meaningless among apes.

The right the bear arms presupposed a certain level of burgertum: a, broadly speaking, literate, more or less “liberally educated”, society of middle class farmers and homeowners and merchants none of whom were too different or distant from one another culturally or economically. You didn’t fear your neighbor owning a weapon because he was not likely to use it against you any more than he would come at you with his scythe, or axe, or any other number of ordinary deadly household utensils in use at the time.

If we trash the Second Amendment because we fear our neighbors and fear our own fellow-citizens having weapons, then we have simply confessed the utter failure of US-American society. And, if US society is dysfunctional, then the Constitution is irrelevant anyways.

©Barfo, 2008