Sunday, March 23, 2008

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

Sunday, March 16, 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

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Pictorial "Balance"


The News: BBC pictures from Gaza show one Israeli woman being led away on a stretcher in bloodless stomach pain agony. (I.e. the theatrics of agony). It also shows one neat and clean rubbelized building with absolutely no photos of maimed children's bodies although it does bother to show one Palestianian funeral where the sand has covered the body so that it looks like a gardening exercise.

The Note: What fucks. This is what passes for "pictorial balance" in the USUK press.

©Barfo, 2008
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Monday, March 10, 2008

Bread Today, Hunger Tomorrow


The News: Explaining why she voted for the communist party in Spain's general election, Gloria Perez chastised president Zapatero for not having done enough "to bring down the price of rents, control mortgage costs, help young people and get us workers better salaries.”

Perez expressed contempt for so-called "tax incentives" and Zapatero's promise of a 400-euro ($620) tax rebate. “That’s bread today, hunger tomorrow. We need reforms that will help us in the long term: better work contracts, better salaries, less inflation.”

The Note: Wouldn't it be nice if workers in the United States had a fraction of Perez's brain power? If they would the "Times" report it?


©Barfo, 2008
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Saturday, March 08, 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

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

U.S. Claims Asserts Rights to Space and Cyberspace


The News: The US has released a report criticising China's military spending, and voicing concern over advances in space and cyberspace. China rejected the Pentagon report as a "serious distortion of facts" that could harm its relations with the US. "We do not pose a threat to any country. The US should drop its Cold War mentality," the foreign ministry said in a statement. In the report, Washington claimed that the real Chinese defence budget for 2007 was at least double the stated amount.

The Note 1: It never ceases to amaze how diligently the press works to cover Uncle Sam's shame. How come BBC fails to note that the U.S. military budget exceeds by several fold the Chinese and Russian military budgets combined ?

The Note 2: "Space and Cyberspace" -- where have we heard that phrase before? Indeed! in Billy Kristol's zio-con Project for a New American Century. The U.S. had to project its power and be prepared for the new battles in "space and cybespace". So what this means is that the U.S. is upset someone else might get a leg up into the U.S. owned ethers.

©Barfo, 2008

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Monday, March 03, 2008

The Next Israel?

The News: Both Ecuador and Venezuela have shut down their embassies in Bogota to protest Colombia’s violations of Ecuador’s territorial sovereignty. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa ordered troops to Colombia’s border. Chavez warned Colombia never to carry out such a raid in Venezuela.

Hugo Chavez: “This could be the start of a war in South America, because, for example, if they ever think of doing something like that in Venezuela, President Uribe, I will send my jet fighters. We are not going to accept that Colombia become the next Israel in our land.”

The Note: Chavez is alluding to Israel "advisors" helping out the Columbian military and Israel citizens illegally selling arms to the Columbian paras

©Barfo, 2008

Zionist Math


The Headline:
Israel: “No Moral Equation” Between Palestinians and Israelis

The News: Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livini called on the international community to support Israel’s actions. Said Livini: “The world should respect any action taken by Israel in order to defend its citizens. I would like to say that I cannot accept condolences saying that there are victims, both sides. Well, yes, there are victims both sides, but there is no moral equation between these terrorists who are looking for civilians to kill and between the Israeli soldiers who are looking for the terrorists.”

The Note: Nor is their any moral equation between a hand held stick of dynamite and a Jumbo Depleted Uranium Block Buster.... now is there? The United State has been totally moronized by AIPAC, but I wonder how long the rest of the world will continue to respect anything Israel does or palavers.


©Barfo, 2008

Cultural Metastasis


The Headline:
Utah Boss Accused of Waterboarding Worker

The News: The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting a supervisor at a motivational coaching business in Utah has been accused of waterboarding an employee in front of his sales team. According to a lawsuit, the supervisor poured water from a gallon jug over the mouth and nostrils of one of his workers. At the conclusion of the waterboarding, the supervisor allegedly told the sales team that he wanted them to work as hard on making sales as their coworker had worked to breathe while he was being waterboarded. David Ellis, the president of the company Prosper, defended his staff. Ellis said, “It was meant to be a team-building exercise. Everybody was . . . involved and enthusiastic.”

The Note: A perfect of example of the the Bush Cancer metastasizes throughout society

©Barfo, 2008

Saturday, March 01, 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?