Astigmatism in High Places

Justice Ruth Bader Ginzburg gave an interview the other day in which she lamented the goings on in Ferguson, Missouri.  She attributed the violence to social inequity and to ongoing electoral discrimination against Blacks which, she said, the Court’s recent decisions terminating Federal oversight of state voting procedures had only made worse.

For what it is worth, the Chipster Editorial Board, generally agrees with Justice Ginzburg’s stance on legal issues before the Court.  But does she truly  believe that the violence in Ferguson has anything to do with discrimination at the ballot box?

The riots in Ferguson are attributable to one thing and one thing only:  the militarization of the police that have become a lawless army of thugs who beat up and shoot down people at will and with impunity.

They do so as a result of Government policies which are have turned the country into a militarily occupied police state and to decisions of the High Court which have removed all constitutional restraints on the police.  It has nothing to do  with not being able to vote for the town mayor.

It is surprising that Justice Ginzburg can’t see the elephant standing before her.

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Let the Punishment Fit the Suspicion.

The New York Daily News reported that

 Israel blows up homes of 2 men suspected of kidnapping, killing 3 Jewish teens

"In a stunning display of payback, Israeli forces blew up the homes of two Palestinians suspected in the kidnap-killings of three Jewish teens —   The shocking crime set off the monthlong war that has left 1,976 Palestinians, mostly civilians in Gaza,....."

The article quoted an Army spokesman as saying that “The demolition of the terrorists’ homes conveys a clear message to terrorists and their accomplices that there is a personal price to pay when engaging in terror and carrying out attacks against Israelis.” 

A clearer message could not be sent that Israelis are barbarians and that the Daily News is constitutionally  tone deaf.

We have reached the point at which no one raises an eyebrow when punishment is inflicted without trial or proof and on a mere suspicion.   What next?  Execution on suspicion?

This is what happens when you "wage war"  in civil society.   No one questions killing someone on the field of battle "on suspicion" that he is the enemy come to kill you.  But civil society is not a field of battle and when it is, it ceases to be civil and descends into barbarism.

A clearer message could also not be sent about how prostrate, craven and brainwashed the U.S. media is by the zionist lobby.

Our One American Family

Once again, Obama proves from his own mouth what a dipshit he is.  Speaking about the confrontations in Ferguson, Missouri, following another cop execution of another black man, Obama intoned,

"I know emotions are raw right now in Ferguson and there are certainly passionate differences about what has happened," Obama said in his first in-person remarks about the tense standoff in the Missouri suburb on Thursday. "But let's remember that we're all part of one American family, we are united in common values and that includes the belief in equality under the law, respect for public order and the right to peaceful public protests."

Imagine if Obama had said such a thing after the Birmingham riots of 1963.

Now, we have never considered Obama to be black except for some possible tonal influences on his skin.  Nor do we expect him to be “culturally black” especially when such a term, for all intents and purposes, equates with a culture of poverty.  But, acknowledging this country’s racial categories, it is not too much to expect from him a little more overt empathy for those on whose side of the divide he is, whether he likes it or not. 

More fundamentally, one might expect a more forceful endorsement of general civil rights from the nation’s chief executive officer and head of state.

The president of a federal republic ought not to weigh in on every state issue or local fracas.  Although presidents of all stripes have rushed in to pronounce on purely local issues — such as the kidnapping of a little girl or the death of a sports or movie star — they have done so out of craven political motives.  It is simply not the president’s job to make every cause his own.

But a crisis of national scope and significance does require presidential involvement.  This much has been recognized, at least, since 1933.  

What occurred in Ferguson Missouri was not the odd incident but another instance of what has become a national pandemic of  cop executions.  When cops saunter and swag through the streets off-ing people at will, civil society ceases to exist; and the maintenance of civil society ought to be of concern to the president.... at least to one who wishes to be more than Chief Thug of the Nation.

And thuggery is what it is about.

A Republic of Dimwits has finally blinked up to the reality of a militarized police force, a problem which Woodchips alerted to back in 2006.  But to speak of “militarization” is to focus on hardware.  The nastier problem is the culture and spirit of thuggery that goes along with the hardware. 

American cops are brutal, murderous, unaccountable thugs.  The exception is the one good apple in the otherwise stinking rotten barrel.

There is no moral equivalence here between the values of “law n’ order” and “the right to peaceful protest.”  Obambi typically contextualizes that matter in that fashion so that he can sit astride the fence.  When State Thugs go about murdering people at will we are no longer a constitutional civil society, but a police state as much as those of the fascists juntas we have installed around the world.

There are those who might protest against our use of the word “murder.”  The police, they will say, are entitled to take reasonable measures against potential risks in stressful emergency situations where their lives are at stake and they may make regrettable mistakes in judgement from time to time. 

The refrain is so tediously familiar one might as well give it an acronym like permaprises for short.

But it is murder, and the investigation which inevitably follows and duly exculpates the thugs in the regrettable and unfortunate “incident” is a sham and cover up for murder as we have recently shown in Pollos Armados.

Minorities and victims of police brutality know this without have to read the Woodchip Gazette  and, knowing it they despise, the wretched gaggle of hypocritical judges, politicians and golfers among whom Obama is pleased to count himself.   When he speaks of “our American Family” they must surely spit, as do we.  

©WCG 2014

Operation Enduring Fiction

Obama made a fool of himself today, except nobody in Washington noticed.  Speaking from his vacation garden in Martha’s Vineyard, the President said,

Today, Iraq took a promising step forward ...   Last month, the Iraqi people named a new President.  Today, President Masum named a new Prime Minister designate, Dr. Haider al-Abadi.  ...  Earlier today, Vice President Biden and I called Dr. Abadi to congratulate him and to urge him to form a new cabinet as quickly as possible -- one that’s inclusive of all Iraqis, ...

It was just too Late Empire, reflecting the ossification and dementia of those who have been in power for too long and who confuse wish with reality.

What Iraq?  Forget the tired mantra of the umpteenth “new beginning,” the more astonishing lunacy is the belief that there is a there there. 

There isn’t.  Iraq has fallen.  Its massive army, on which the United States spent billions, dissolved on contact with ISIS, as if it were an Alka Seltzer tablet.

 

The country has been cut in two, with the Caliphate controlling the Euphrates, the Tigris (the Mosul Dam) and seven oil fields in the norther region adjacent to the big Kurdish controlled field in Kirkuk. 

ISIS could have had Baghdad for the plucking but it held back, probably in the view that rotten fruit falls soon enough.

What government?  A government is as its writ runs  and the government in Baghdad has no writ.  About the only thing al Abidi can boss around is the Palace Staff and his gardener.

What services does the “government” in Baghdad provide to the people in the once nation-state of Iraq?  Nothing more than the feeble forms of a merely political infrastructure in the capital and more feebly yet in some outlying cities. 

The Kurds which had been granted autonomy have all but declared outright independence.  So debased was the government in Baghdad that it’s “writ” over Kurdistan was reduced to acting as the middle-man for Kurdish oil sales thereby sustaining the fiction that the oil was “from Iraq.”  Now the Kurds have torn up even that paper napkin and have decided to sell their oil directly to international purchasers. 

What is really sweet is that the Caliphate controls the Ceyhaan pipeline through which a heft portion of Kurdish oil flows.  Now that is a “writ”.

In fact, the Caliphate did not even seize Mosul Dam from the fantasy government in Baghdad but from the Kurds. 

All material has a formal manifestation.  But when the core of a tree rots out, leaving only a husk of bark, the tree no longer actually exists.  The same may be said of “Iraq.”

The United States in its infinite imperial wisdom liberated Iraq into oblivion.  And now, the president simply babbles.

Among bubblier babble was the President’s call for the formation of an “all inclusive” government. 

What about ISIS? — Does ISIS not exist to be included?  There are three dominant ethnic groups in the territory known as “Iraq” — Kurds, Sunnis and Shia.  The government in Baghdad has been mostly a Shia affair.  The Kurds may be bought off sufficiently so as to “include” themselves in the Baghdad Follies.  But what of the Sunnis?  How can they be included without including ISIS which is first and foremost a Sunni movement?

What the government in Washington is evidently hoping is that enough “old guard” Sunnis can be persuaded to back away from ISIS and join the inanity in Baghdad that will be fobbed off as a “government.”  Washington is evidently banking on personal greed to entice establishmentarian Sunnis away from ISIS.  Some trappings of a sinecure, a house in a gated enclave, a Beamer and a bodyguard should be enough.  It usually is for these slimy types.  But that will not make the government any more real.  It will remain what it in fact is:  a gaggle of sleazy slime bags.

The irony of ironies is that the “old guard” Sunnis who are needed to maintain the fiction of an all-inclusive government of an equally fictitious Iraq are none other than Saddam Hussein’s old crowd.

So 1.7 trillion dollars later and the liberators of Iraq will be going hat in hand hoping to entice the evicted oppressors of yore to help make Iraq a “viable fiction.”

And what of the eminence noire in the whole affair?  At the moment, Israel is too busy slaughtering Gazans.  Perhaps it is doing so to distract itself from the catastrophe of its policy to “cut down” Iraq.

If Israel wants oil from Iraq, it will now have to negotiate with the Crazy of All Crazies.  More important than oil is water, and ISIS controls both the Tigris and Euphrates basins south of the Turkish border.  Since Turkey cancelled its proposed 20 year water-contract with Israel that leaves Israel looking at a high and dry future.

“Disaster” hardly does the work of the situation.  “Maelstrom” is more suitable which suddenly calls to mind a wood chip from 2003.

ISIS could vanish tomorrow.  Such is often the case with fanatical furies.  Or, it could be bombed into oblivion by a power for whom destruction has become a modus operandi, leaving one to wonder just how much more bombing sand and rubble can take.

Or, lastly, ISIS will restore a repressive, fundamentalist stability to the region and the West and Israel will simply have to swallow hard. 

By then Obama will be off and golfing and no longer providing the rest of us with comedic inanity.