08.19.16

The Song Remains the Same

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Made in China, The Corporate Bund at 1:14 pm by George Smith

From the Fairness Desk, quoting from the Intercept:

“U.S. corporations have by now stashed over $2.1 trillion in profits overseas (including Apple’s $181 billion), thereby starving the U.S. of revenue we could use to repair our collapsing infrastructure. What they want is for Americans to get so desperate that Congress is willing to deeply slash the corporate tax rate for “repatriated??? money.

“This will deliver a one-time jolt of tax revenue, at the cost of sending the message that everyone who possibly can should use tax avoidance schemes like Apple’s in the future…Hillary Clinton has hinted that she’ll push for exactly this in her first 100 days in office, while Donald Trump has said explicitly that he wants to make it happen. Moreover, in the interview Cook also notes he’s gotten advice on how to handle this issue from both Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Bill Clinton.

“So get ready for a tsunami of fairness, headed your way next year.”

Apple feels the current corporate tax rate to be “unfair.” “It doesn’t go that the more you pay, the more patriotic you are,” said Apple’s Tim Cook to the WaPo (here by way of The Intercept).

08.18.16

America’s Wehrmacht (continuing)

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 2:06 pm by George Smith

America’s Wehrmacht is guilty of war crime in Yemen. There simply is no reason to support, aid and abet Saudi Arabia and Co’s terror-bombing of one of the most desperate and poor places in the world.

From the Guardian today:

The campaign of indiscriminate killing – though let’s call it what it is: a war crime – has now been going on for almost a year and a half. And the United States bears a large part of the responsibility.

This US-backed war is not just a case of the Obama administration sitting idly by while its close ally goes on a destructive spree of historic proportions. The government is actively selling the Saudis billions of dollars of weaponry. They’re re-supplying planes engaged in the bombing runs and providing “intelligence??? for the targets that Saudi Arabia is hitting.

Put simply, the US is quite literally funding a humanitarian catastrophe …


“If you talk to Yemenis, they will tell you that inside Yemen this is not perceived to be a Saudi bombing campaign, this is a US bombing campaign,??? [one Democratic Party politician] continued. “What’s happening is we are helping to radicalize the the Yemeni population against the United States.??? This statement was also backed up by longtime Yemen reporter Iona Craig this week, who emphasized to NPR that Yemenis blame the US for the carnage just as much as the Saudis.

Perhaps one of the reasons America’s Wehrmacht is so hellbent on this is to showcase weaponry.

The Patriot missile battery being one example.

A news story that reads like a press release, from Defense One:

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Saudi Arabia used American-made Patriot missile interceptors to shoot down rockets fired by Houthi rebels from Yemen last week, according to a top U.S. military commander …

“Only last week, the Houthis in Yemen fired missiles into southern Saudi Arabia, which was defended by Saudi Patriot,??? Adm. Cecil Haney, head of U.S. Strategic Command, said at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium, an annual conference attended by thousands of military and industry missile defense experts.

The Space and Missile Defense Symposium, you’ll be interested to know, is being held at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

And that would be “von Braun” as in Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich scientist who developed the vengeance weapon known as the V-2 rocket. (And there he is, long ago, hamming it up with the GIs who captured him at Peenemunde or Ulm or wherever it was. Note cast: There was some pain in his life.)

We snarfed von Braun up on the end of WWII and he later went on to be very big in Huntsville at what was then known as the Redstone Arsenal. The arsenal was transferred to NASA upon its inception and von Braun went on to become of one of the father’s of the Saturn V space rocket.

Here’s another shot. It really shows off his good side.

Because of his role in the development of American rocketry, from intercontinental ballistic missiles to the moonshot, von Braun received a get-out-of-atrocity free card from the American government. And today most of us, if asked, wouldn’t even recognize his name.

However, lessers of the Third Reich were punished for war crimes, and von Braun ran an operation that employed slave labor from the conquered countries. Prisoners were treated as the Reich treated all its concentration and death camp captives.

From the New Yorker:

He may not have liked using slave labor to increase V-2 production, but he did not protest. During the last years of the war, thousands of rag-clad prisoners from the Dora concentration camp unloaded parts for the gleaming rockets and then returned to underground tunnels to sleep, and be beaten, in conditions of almost unimaginable filth and contagion. The death rates were astonishing (five thousand in the first three months of 1944), and, whether or not von Braun saw any of the beatings or hangings to which his fellow S.S. officers subjected the prisoners, Neufeld makes it meticulously clear that “he saw a lot.???

So there’s an almost full circle element to news of use of an American missile system in a campaign justly classified as a modern war crime, delivered in a symposium to sell more missile systems, at the center named in von Braun’s honor.

And as of 2004, it was still very much a bone of contention on whether the Patriot works as advertised or not.


Nb: Americans have no more say in what their military in the great democracy does than citizens of the Third Reich had a say over WWII. That war in Yemen? No one home in the Culture of Lickspittle. Do whatever.

08.17.16

America’s Wehrmacht

Posted in Bombing Paupers, Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror at 12:25 pm by George Smith

One of the toadies of America’s global Wehrmacht, Saudi Arabia, bombed a potato chip factory in Yemen last week. Today they bombed a hospital, This on top of bombing supermarkets, aid organizations, cement factories and civilians — with American support.

We provide the training, the bombers, the bombs, the targeting and refueling.

The bombing campaign is considered a war crime by various organizations, like Human Rights Watch and Doctors Without Borders.

The civil war, in which American weapons have cratered Yemen is all because the Houthi tribe kicked out the US and Saudi-backed government, forcing it to flee offshore. The Houthis occupy the capital, Sana, and the bombing hasn’t changed their minds, just created another humanitarian crisis, another rubble-ized Middle Eastern country and more atrocities. (The other big driver is Saudi Arabia’s hot war with anyone seen as proxies of Iran, in this case, the Houthis. Secondarily, we enable and support them in it.)

In any case, nothing can be allowed to escape the technological gaze of our military targeting systems, not even potato chip factories.

And today even the New York Times couldn’t stand by anymore:

A hospital associated with Doctors Without Borders. A school. A potato chip factory. Under international law, those facilities in Yemen are not legitimate military targets. Yet all were bombed in recent days by warplanes belonging to a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, killing more than 40 civilians.

The United States is complicit in this carnage…

Given the civilian casualties, further American support for this war is indefensible. As [a Connecticut politican] told CNN on Tuesday: “There’s an American imprint on every civilian life lost in Yemen.???

Without the United States Air Force as a refueling linchpin for the Saudis, the bombing campaign in Yemen would collapse.

From the Air Force Times:

As of Aug. 8, “we’ve flown 1,144 aerial refueling sorties totaling approximately 9,793 flying hours and providing 40,535,200 pounds of fuel to 5,525 receiving aircraft,??? Dougherty told Air Force Times in an email Monday. The latest statistics show sorties in support of the Saudi-led coalition against Yemeni rebels have increased roughly 61 percent since AFCENT last provided data in February …

Drily, the Air Force paper describes a vicious cycle of bombing.

The bombing campaign against the Houthis “dislodged” them from some areas, creating a “vacuum” in which alleged operations of al Qaeda were said to have increased. This has resulted in another bombing campaign over Yemen, one conducted directly by America’s Wehrmacht. In addition to the black bag operations conducted in a fractured country on the ground.

Historically, think Guernica, only with far more might, as it’s now obvious we have our own Condor Legion and a variety of Operation Rugens.


Technically, I should probably call it America’s Luftwaffe. But when you get down to it, globally the US military is a joint operation. The biggest arm of the Third Reich’s military was the army, the Heer. Operationally, at high tide, it reached from deep inside the old Soviet Union to the Atlantic, south to North Africa, to the islands of Greece and north to the Arctic Circle.

The Wehrmacht, while generally thought of in the US as the army of the Third Reich (entertainment, you see), encompassed all the service arms: the Kriegsmarine, the Luftwaffe, the regular army, and the Waffen SS. Because the German army was, by far, the dominant service, its command organization, OKH, or Oberkommando das Heer, was frequently in conflict with the joint command staff, OKW, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht.

Therefore, in terms of understanding, America’s Wehrmacht is apt.

And I will continue to ram home the point. Americans, all of us, have no more say in the matters of their military than citizens of the Third Reich did. It’s a fact.

08.12.16

The Thomas Frank blues

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Made in China at 12:42 pm by George Smith

Matt Taibbi sees the road ahead:

“The problem with all of this is that the Democrats went so far in the direction of advocacy for the global religion that they made something as idiotic as the rise of unabashed nativist Donald Trump possible … And maybe the next strongman those voters pick to lead them out of the wilderness won’t be quite as huge an idiot, or as suicidal a campaigner, as Trump…”

There are a lot of lacerating bits in Taibbi’s piece.

“We never really had a referendum on globalization in America,” he writes. “It just sort of happened. People had jobs one day, then the next morning they were fired, replaced by 14-year-olds in Indonesia …”

Business as usual

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Stumble and Fail at 12:31 pm by George Smith

Macy’s announces it will close 100 stores. Wall Street boosts its stock 16 percent on the news. “Nearly all its stores are cash flow positive,” reads a business report.

“Although this is partly a reaction to being in a tough competitive position within the landscape, they are being more offensive than most, and this is the right move,” one of Wall Street’s vampires said. “It is not only good for Macy’s but also for the industry.”

“Good,” in this case, being shedding the employees.

Macy’s had “offloaded” 40 stores in January and, my, this is a bleak article.

08.08.16

Perpetual warmongers flee to Clinton

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, Psychopath & Sociopath, The Corporate Bund at 2:29 pm by George Smith

You can’t be a Commie symp anymore.

But, better still, you can be a Russian Manchurian candidate or a Russian symp, particularly if you think pushing missile batteries in NATO always closer to Moscow is a lousy idea. It’s genuinely fascinating how my party became more cynically paranoid and pro-pre-thermonuclear war than the other side.

GOP & center-right Strangeloves are now welcome after ridicule by the nuts guy.

The same people who wholeheartedly supported or made the most horrendous mistakes in the last fifteen years:

[If] there’s a common theme to this most recent wave of GOP dissenters, it’s just how eerily close they sound to Hillary Clinton’s talking points.

“He is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood,??? the GOP national security leaders said in the letter. “He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate personal criticism. He has alarmed our closest allies with his erratic behavior. All of these are dangerous qualities in an individual who aspires to be president and commander in chief, with command of the US nuclear arsenal.???

Trump is a cat’s paw of Putin. WikiLeaks, The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald, others are all in the tank for Russia to influence the US infection. If you’re not pro-HRC, you’re for Russian hackers.

“[Let’s] hope the unlikely unity extends beyond the neocons and with any luck, lasts longer than the election,” writes the explainer at The Guardian.

A most Culture of Lickspittle historical moment.

TV: Homeland, why was it good?

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror at 12:12 pm by George Smith

Hulu has been pushing four seasons-worth of “Homeland,” a TV show I’ve read a lot about but still avoided. Finally took the plunge and watched season 1 (from way back in 2011) over the weekend. I laughed at the season finish: Nuts CIA operative Carrie Matheson being given electroshock, the cliff-hanger suspense delivered by whether or not she would remember the name “Issa”. For a show on terrorism, it consigns its “terrorists” to secondary roles and makes the idea of two Marines being traitors (Brody really isn’t, it seems, just someone with a conscience) more odious by shooting the African-American at the end just to wrap things up.

And the security of the “homeland,” resting on the result of electroshock? Please. “The first season received near universal acclaim,” reads Wiki. Did it fill a need for upper middle class Americans who wanted a war on terror drama about snivelling white people (Carrie, Saul, Nick)?


Do all teams of government agents drive Chevy Suburbans?

08.06.16

WWII Time Tourist Cat

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Phlogiston at 3:44 pm by George Smith

Travel Tips from WWII Time Tourist Cat:

“I really like the Wienerschnitzel at the Berghof!”

08.03.16

Mean Future download

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Rock 'n' Roll at 12:49 pm by George Smith

“Guess this turned out to be even righter than I thought.” — Chuck Eddy

The US Military: Like an HIV infection

Posted in Bombing Moe, Bombing Paupers, Culture of Lickspittle, Permanent Fail, War On Terror at 11:31 am by George Smith

America’s Wehrmacht continues its press campaign on the new rebombing of the region formerly known as Libya.

You’ll recall that recommending the bombing of Libya, which turned it into a failed state, was HRC’s highest achievement as Sec’y of State. So if you rebomb a failed state can you make it unfailed?

Perhaps the American Wehrmacht has been influenced by the high school science experiment in which you beat a magnet with a hammer which causes it to demagnetize, to be failed, so to speak. But if it it is totally demagnetized, the beating will restore a little magnetism to it. Or maybe not, it’s hard to follow.

Ashton Carter, the Sec’y of Defense, has been fond of using cancer as a metaphor to describe ISIS. The US military must fight the ISIS cancer by removing the “parent tumor” bits of it and to combat its “metastases.”

But if you have known loved ones or friends who have died of cancer, you may have seen the phenomenon first hand in which cancer treatment, chemotherapy or radiotherapy, indeed kills cancer cells but also selects for the most hardy so that, eventually, the cancer doesn’t respond at all to treatment. And the patient dies.

And unlike the US military, often doctors stop treatment because it does no good, making even worse the time the patient has left.

The Pentagon’s treatment of terrorism in foreign countries is never halted, no matter the consequences for the patient.

Ashton Carter is just another high-button apparatchik whose career was in buying weapons systems and writing pamphlets about the MX missile and communications systems for thermonuclear war before becoming Sec’y of Defnse so perhaps another medical definition for the war on terror is in order.

How about this?

The US military is like an HIV infection. If it infects a country in the Middle East or Africa, whether it be by special operations in the night, drone attacks, so-called surgical bombing, the training and equipping of local proxy hit squads or a combination of all these things, all the functions that keep a society together are eaten away and weakened, just like the HIV destroys the body’s white T-blood cells for fighting infection. And eventually your country is so depleted and burned out it collapses, becoming a shell of warring factions that cannot be restored.

By this time the US military, like the HIV, is off working over another country, perhaps a close neighbor, someone with which it normally had relations.

In America today, HIV is a very serious disease but manageable through the use of effective anti-viral drugs and medications to stop secondary infections. However, there is nothing that can be used to make a country survivable once the US military has been turned loose in and on it.

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