The Bowings of a Sociopath

Triggering a flurry of pro-forma criticism from Western governments, Israel has seized 1000 acres in the West Bank in order to build a settlement in Gush Etzion, between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.  The area is close to where three Jewish teenagers were murdered in June.

Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the right-wing Jewish Home party, said the decision to build in the Etzion bloc was the Zionist answer to Arab terror.  “Hamas murders and we build.”

What kind of logic is that? 

Theft by any other name is just as foul.  Israel is not “building” it is seizing.  What one does with stolen land or property after it has been taken is a distinct issue from the taking of it.

Dishonestly switching terms, Bennett attempts to confuse others into overlooking that Israel has stolen land belonging to others. 

“We continue to build our country as we always have,”  Bennett warbled on.  For over 120 years, since the dawn of Zionism, we have built and the world did not like our building....  Aww such touching pathos.  Jews build while the whole world cavils!

 

This is truly the mental process of a sociopath in whose twisted mind his own misconduct is transformed into earnest good doing. 

But it doesn’t end there.  Bennett’s statement implicitly acknowledge that this do-good, building of a new world was actually punitive pay back for murders attributed to Hamas.

First of all there has never been any proof, not a scintilla, that Hamas was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of the three Jewish teenagers.  Hamas has denied any involvement and, given its usually candid acknowledgement of responsibility for past actions, its denial does not warrant rejection out of hand.  Moreover, Hamas is primarily a presence in Gaza, not in the West Bank where the murders occurred.  Lastly, given that Hamas was preparing for critical Palestinian elections in June, it is hard too fathom — without engaging in double reverse poker gambits — what it stood to gain by carrying out such a crime. 

But even supposing Hamas were responsible, what possible justification is there for punitively stealing land from a third parties (Palestinian farmers) who have certainly never been implicated in the crime?

This is precisely the type of psychotic reasoning which motivated Kristallnacht.   Yes, Kristallnacht.  In 1938 Herschel Feibel Grynszpan, a Polish Jewish refugee shot Ernst vom Rath,  a junior clerk in the German Embassy in Paris.    Grynzspan  committed the murder out of frustration over Germany’s anti-Jewish policies.   In response, the Nazi government unleashed mob action throughout Germany against Jewish establishments and rounded up 30,000 Jews and packed them off to concentration camps.

The reason collective punishment is primitive and barbaric is that it punishes the innocent whose only “connection” to the crime is sharing some irrelevant characteristic with the actual perpetrator - skin color, religious affiliation, ethnicity, or any other arbitrary attribute.

Howsoever the differentiation is drawn what is involved is a mental process that says: all of them  are equally bad,  guilty, worthless and undeserving of any individualized consideration.  They are, in a word, as cockroaches.

This is the mentality that reigns supreme in the councils of Israel’s government.  The seizure of the land is not simply “illegal” it is a nauseating performance of stroking the violin atop a heap of shit.

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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.

The Futility of Typewriters

Last year, in the wake of the the Snowden disclosures, Russia announced that it was reverting to typewriters for its most sensitive communications. "The most primitive method is preferred: a human hand with a pen or a typewriter,” said a spokesman for the Federal Security Service.

Oh, how the world turns. It sounded all rather like Général Joffre ensconcing himself in the Chateau de Chantilly and communicating with his GHC via carrier pigeon, while the Battle of the Marne raged.

But now Germany is following suit. According to Die Welt,

“... people [in government] are trying to stay away from technology whenever they can. Those concerned talk less on the phone, prefer to meet in person. More coffees are being drunk and lunches eaten together. Even the walk in the park is increasingly enjoying a revival"

Walks-in-the-park brought to mind another memory.

I had a professor who had fled the Nazis shortly after they came to power.  Every year, for incoming Sophomores, he held a two or three session class to explain how and why the Nazis had come to power.

The official line at the time — believe it or not — was that a megalomaniac with a clownish mustache had begun ranting and salivating on a podium and a whole nation murderously followed.  Our professor aimed to provide a more adult account.

I recall someone asking, what was the worst thing about living under the Nazis.  Our professor thought a moment a replied, 

“Probably the fact that you didn’t know whom you could trust or where you were safe.  People met secretly in cars or on walks in the park where they couldn’t be overhead.  You never said anything important over the phone.”

Joffre’s penchant for secrecy has been ridiculed for the French reverses in the early stages of the Great War.  But if there was a problem it was in the “ensconcing” not in the “pigeon.”  After all, pigeons can be used to spy from the sky as well as to deliver secret messages.

SPY PIGEON

It is obvious that the more complex anything is the more weak points it has.  Less, as they say, is more. 

The converse is also true, as I have fruitless tried to explain to people many times.  The more you securitize something the more you slow it down and ultimately “lock it up.”  And engine that gets locked up, doesn’t work.

However, the real issue doesn’t concern mechanical causes but political ones. Just as the problem with Joffre was his self-imposed isolation, the real problem at hand is the NSA’s self-ordained spying.  Both are responses drawn from the same psychosis.  Finding itself at war, Joffre looked with suspicion on anything outside his secure castle even "friendly wires."   Secured in their exceptionalist isolation, the NSA considers the whole world to be hostile territory.

Over ten years ago, when the descent into darkness began, this blog warned  that the "war on terrorism" meant that

“. . . the Government will have to presume is that everyone is at least a potential terrorist. In the most fundamental sense that is a presumption which is entirely antithetical to the concept of civil friendship, i.e., societas." (Woodchip Gazette, 010915)

The United States Government has become inimical not only to freedom but to civil society itself. It has injected fear and distrust into the body politic like a metastizing cancer or an auto-immune virus.

Resorting to typewriters, solitary walks (under surveillance cameras) and carrier pigeons are futile medicines against a mortal disease.

Researchers have isolated the civil deficiency virus.

Rambo's Global Rampage

Germany has expelled the CIA bureau chief in Berlin after it was revealed that it had “turned” a second German security official into a U.S. spy.

The events in Germany follow upon last week's decision by the United States to punish France’s BNP Paribas with a $9 billion fine  and a one yearn ban on dollar-trades for helping counties like Iran, Sudan, and Cuba process $30 billion in transactions which are illegal under U.S. law. 

As if that were not draconian enough, President Vladimir Putin accused the U.S. of seeking to blackmail France into scrapping a contract to sell Mistral warships to Russia by offering to cut a record  fine against BNP.   Since France did not cancel the sale the fine was imposed.  [1]

French banks are not the only victims of Unilateral States justice. The U.S. is  also fining major European banks in Switzerland,  Germany and the UK for violating U.S. law, as if sovereign nations were mere ordinary schmucks under the U.S. boot.   [ 2 ]

This has led the French government to call for breaking the monopoly the dollar has on international transactions.   Michel Sapin, the French finance minister,  called for a “rebalancing” of the currencies used for global payments, saying the BNP Paribas case should “make us realize the necessity of using a variety of currencies.”  Sapin said,  "We [Europeans] are selling to ourselves in dollars, ... Is that necessary? I don’t think so."  [ 3 ]

It is hardly news that the United States is intoxicated with its own power.  How could it be otherwise since the assertion, a decade ago, of the unilateral right to preemptively attack anyone anywhere?  The almost daily reports of some domestic or international, military or economic excess has become monotonously tiresome.  What is surprising is that it has taken European nations so long to wake up and that they finally do appear to be waking up to the fact that the U.S. is insane.

"Dans un monde où la nouvelle économie américaine s’est construite sur le pillage, par les Etats-Unis, des droits incorporels et des données personnelles en Europe et où l’antienne n’était pas ennemie de pratiques corruptives, les Etats-Unis de la manifest destiny (« destinée manifeste » qui prête une mission civilisatrice à l’Amérique) et du puritanisme (cette version anglo-saxonne du protestantisme revu par les hommes de loi), prodiguent les sanctions aux entreprises européennes d’une façon de plus en plus effrénée."  [4]

Et je m’en fous si vous ne le comprenez pas.

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