Monday, June 27, 2016

British Sterling Took a Pounding, The CIA's Mid-Eastern Arms Rabbit Hole



"Dear Brits: We Americans want to congratulate you on your vote to exit the modern world. Now that your prime minister is resigning, you need a brave new leader who can Make Britain Great Again (circa 1775?)

We have just the man for you: He will round up all those pesky immigrants, he'll negotiate unbelievably good deals with those trading partners you just shoved off, and in a pinch he'll rebuild Hadrian's Wall.

Quite frankly, we would appreciate it if you would take him off our hands. You're welcome to Donald Trump!"
                                                                                                                     - Sebastian Kuhn


Stories were reported of folks going home after voting and Googling to find out what the EU was... Voting seemed split by a generational divide, with the older folks voting to leave, and the younger ones complaining that now they'd have to give up espresso for milky tea and eat weird food like spotted dick and other historical bad choices... Guess we can't let grandma out unattended anymore...

And soon it may be just lonely ol' Britain instead of the United Kingdom. Scotland and Northern Ireland do not want to leave the EU, and may vote again on whether to leave the UK, setting the stage once again for hostilities between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, one dominated by Catholicism the other by the Anglican Church... Jeez, it's bad enough I can't go into an Irish bar without getting into an argument or witnessing one, just because I'm Welsh and we could give a fuck about the Irish ( I actually said this in a bar in San Francisco and lived to tell the tale...). Back to Llareggub for me...

The most costly repercussion of the Brexit vote will be on the City of London, the financial hub inside London town, and has become a rival to New York and Tokyo. We may see an exit of lizard people who no longer have the camouflage of respectability to cloak themselves and have to migrate to Germany or Brussels... Most of the dumping of stock that sent the pound down, happened overnight in Hong Kong and Tokyo.





"May all join in striving to ensure that whenever conflicts emerge between nations, dialogue, the endearing and authentic quest of peace, cooperation between states and the constant commitment of international organizations will always prevail."
                                                                                                                              - Pope Francis




So where does ISIS and other hostile groups get their guns? Yeah, some were captured, some were stolen, and the rest was provided by the good ol' USA, under the care of the CIA...

Over the past few years the CIA has been trying to train anti-ISIS troops in the Kingdom of Jordan. They also have been buying up lots of rifles made in Bulgaria, rocket-propelled grenades ( you didn't think these were provided by jihadist sympathizers did you? ), ammo from America and pistols from everywhere. They would fly this stuff into Jordan, where the Jordanian security service, originally created by the USA, would then distribute the armory to our good rebel groups. Or so we were told...

Seems members of the Jordanian security service like to buy bling and luxury goods as much as the Russians do, and have taken much of the guns and sold them on Beirut's black market, where you literally can buy anything, from iphones to SUV's... Of course, both the CIA and Jordan say this doesn't happen, but the serial numbers off of some rifles used in ISIS attacks were traced back to this program. Jordan insists that they track all weapons that pass through their hands but refused to input the serial numbers of the rifles in question to their database...

If the US would stop providing guns and stop bombing civilians, most of these radical conflicts would dry up and go away. But as long as we keep providing more fuel to the fire, these conflicts will rise and burn...






Friday, June 24, 2016

Time For The Queen To Get A Job, WHO is Zika Calling?




Well, it's official, Britain has voted to leave the European Union. Now perhaps the newspapers will stop using that stupid phrase, "Brexit." It may not happen for a few years, as nobody has a plan what to do next; there could be another vote on a "Nexit" ... to untangle themselves from 27 other countries...

Britain's prime minister, David Cameron, resigned...

The British stock market has taken a dive... world markets are falling faster than I can type...


Donald Trump just happened to be in Scotland, because his Turnberry golf course is in financial trouble, and he had to go in person to fix it... Previously, like last week, Donald didn't know what "Brexit" was, responding to a question about it with a "huh?" before quickly gaining his legendary wits and then giving a more proper response of "yeah..."

So he gave a press conference that sounded like an infomercial for his golf course, with a bagpipe player behind him, and staff members wearing hats that said Make Turnberry Great Again. The Washington Post described it:

“I think it’s a great thing that happened," Trump told reporters shortly after his helicopter landed at Trump Turnberry. “People are angry, all over the world. People, they’re angry.”

“When the pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry, frankly. For traveling and for other things, I think it very well could turn out to be a positive.”

He also suggested that running a golf course was comparable to running a nation: “You’ll be amazed how similar it is. It’s a place that has to be fixed.”

Donald also avoided answering any questions if Scotland should stay a part of Great Britain, or vote again to leave...





If I were an Evangelical, I certainly would believe that mankind's days on earth will come to an end soon. It's getting too hot, we are running out of sand for concrete, running out of water for farming and drinking, too many people are homeless and it's going to get a lot worse... and to top it all off, the World Health Organization says go ahead, go to Brazil for the Summer Olympics... And if it causes a world-wide outbreak of the untreatable Zika virus, with babies born deformed, don't blame us...








Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Rage On Democrats, Largest Purveyor Of Terrorism and It All Comes Back To Donald Trump




Get a good look at these old guys, 40 Senators sitting on the floor of the House, demanding that a gun reform law be crafted and passed. This happened after four gun control laws were voted down by Senate Republicans, who also turned off the CSPAN cameras to put off the embarrassment. Of course, one might ask why Senate Democrats are invading the House chambers, when their ire is against Senate Republicans? Maybe they feel that the House guys are easier to intimidate, or they just like the carpet better, it's more thickly padded for their old butts. Who can decipher the logic of politicians? OK, I'm trying to be silly, the Democrats are holding up all other Congressional business by filibustering and demanding that Republicans get their bony butts back into the chambers and let's have a vote, Mr. Paul Ryan...

The main gist of the debate is whether to exclude people on the government's terrorist watch list from buying guns, The would include the infamously buggy no-fly list that seems to have no rhyme or reason for including some folks, and almost impossible to get off. Even a pardon from the President is easier to get... The closest the Republicans could offer was a 72 hour window for the person to be vetted by the FBI. As we all know, the FBI can't do anything in 72  hours, much less evaluate a person's mental state, check their criminal record, and go through those labyrinthine records. What happens if the person isn't vetted within 72 hours? The gun dealer should be made to give the gun to the person for free, like certain pizza chains do for promotion... Then again, maybe we could get some gun reform if someone passed around some LSD...







The website Truthdig has an interesting article about the use of planes and bombings in modern warfare. The original use of bombs during WW11 was to terrorize the enemy. We won the battle of air superiority and today have the best fighter jets crammed with the latest technology and we dominate the skies. But, as shown in Iraq and Afghanistan, we also have decimated towns and whole populations, turning them into rubble and creating vast numbers of homeless, who are trying to escape these bombings just as much as they wish to escape the war zones that ISIS occupies. The age old liberal argument is that with every bombing and drone strike that kill innocent bystanders, we help to create the next generation of extremist fighters. By that logic, the US is the biggest purveyor of terrorism in our current world situation, and don't get me started on the President's drone kill list...

The vast amounts, tons of bombs amounting to thousands times of what we dropped on Hiroshima, and none of it helped us to win a war in Southeast Asia, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Syria. Instead, Europe is so bloated with refugees that they cannot accommodate them all, there are thousands of homeless children within the flow of migrants, and thousands more killed in boats capsizing. Of course, we know fucking Trump's solution...



Saturday, June 18, 2016

Neccessity And The Mothers Of Invention




The funniest story in the news today comes from the feuding estate of Frank Zappa. He had four children, two, Ahmet and Diva Zappa, were set up as trustees in the family trust, and two, Dweezil and Moon Zappa, are the beneficiaries of that trust. Ol' Frank had a perverse sense of humor when it came to his kids...

Dweezil is a guitarist, and had been touring with the name Zappa plays Zappa. His brother Ahmet, who claims to protect Frank's intellectual property, said that he had to pay a nominal fee of $1 per year, or change the name... weird argument, but Dweezil then changed the name to Dweezil Zappa Plays Frank Zappa. Ahmet said that wasn't good enough...

In order to avoid lawyer and court costs, Dweezil is now embarking on  50 Years of Frank: Dweezil Zappa Plays Whatever The Hell He Wants - The Cease And Desist Tour

Maybe Ahmet will let him play on, maybe Ahmet will pay Dweezil and Moon the $25 million he owes them in merchandizing... And where was Diva through all of this? I don't know, but if she were my daughter, I'd...


Friday, June 17, 2016

Hot Nazi Summer, Bear-Putin...



Ahh, me... first we have a homegrown ISIS dude killing folks in an Orlando nightclub, and it seems that he has a long history of getting in fights since elementary school, drawn to violence and knowing that his life will end in an act of violence. It's just a tragedy that he chose this time to act out. Potentially, the next battleground will happen at the European soccer championships going on this month. France has already deported over 35 people, most of them Russians, for fighting in the stands. And another "lone wolf" killed a policeman and was then shot by police.



It seems that hate groups will try to one-up each other this summer. Two brothers with Nazi sympathies, Sean and Edward Perkowski, were arrested on weapons charges, for owning assault weapons and having bomb-making instructions. The New York Times reports that they will also be charged for drug possession, a bogus charge for finding some mushrooms and marijuana. The creepier aspect of what the police found was that the weapons were laid out on a table with a Nazi flag behind it and a framed picture of Adolf Hitler set in the middle. I guess the boys got off dressing up the part and parading around their house at night, pretending that they were part of the Master Race... Thankfully, they just used this stuff for jerking off, and hadn't gotten the courage up to load up and use the weapons publically...



Now we go to the even murkier and creepier World of Cyber Hacking... It's a practice learned when kids are bored during the summer and they got nothing else to do, and now that the kids have grown up, they can make a lot of money hacking for their government and spy agencies. It's been going on since the birth of computers and the Internet...

The US has established a Cyber Command through the military, and has installed over 130 units around the world to monitor other government's networks, both friends and foes. They also have installed a malware on those networks that can be activated with a command from a computer, much like we did to Iran. Most major countries have done the same, well, at least they will admit to the listening part...

The best country at wiping clean their cyber footprints are the Russians. They also are the most aggressive and heavy handed in using their intrusion devices, the most recent was the hacking of the DNC network, extracting files on how the Democratic Party were planning on dealing with Donald Trump, and then releasing them to Gawker, to help it out of bankruptcy... Two of the hackers called themselves cute Bear names ( I wonder if the FBI has investigated Fozzy Bear for his hacking skills ), making me wonder if there isn't a cult of hirsute gay hackers working for Vladimir Putin... Perhaps his team of evil cyber-geniuses could be known as Vladheads or CyberPutins, instead of cartoonish, derivative nicknames...

Whatever they call themselves, they have a knack of infiltrating networks and making them crash. Most of the time you know it was them when Russia or Putin was criticized by another country. They shut down a power grid in the Ukraine in 2015, with practice runs before that with power grids in Brazil, Venezuela, and Estonia. Basically, they have been saying that we can do what we want, whenever we want, and even the US has trouble finding us in their networks, with the golden ring being a power grid in some major US city...

This week is the first time that NATO exercises will be stationed out of Finland. The cyber-putins have already crashed the Finnish Minister of Defence's website. Germany thinks that they are behind the destruction of a German steel mill, and of course, conducted electronic espionage on a Dutch commission that was looking into the Russian BUK missile that caused a Malaysian jet to crash in the Ukraine, killing 298 passengers and causing the leader of the pro-Russian resistance to flee back into Russia like a kicked dog...

Maybe I should let Google know that I am writing this innocent article in case the hackers decide that I have dissed them, bless their 15 year-old hearts... Curiously, the Russian hackers also could be behind the rash of child pornography sites that pop up every few years in a different country, The most recent one was busted in Lisbon, while San Jose, so close to Silicon Valley, had hosted the Wonderland  Club site...


Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Great Satan's Airline, On Orlando Aftermath




Our new BFF's, our endearing old enemy, Iran, has a deal in the works to buy new passenger planes from Boeing aircraft. This is a deal worth billions of dollars, before the discount we give to countries that also buy munitions from  us... ohh grumpy old man, don't go there!

Of course, several anti-Iranian groups are against this deal, but then they also don't want Russia or France to win it, so they are left to say bad things about "the Obama administration" to the press. Airbus recently concluded a deal for 118 airplanes, and this deal is for about 100.

The president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, is up for election next year. If he can prove that successful interaction with the west is beneficial to the Iranian economy, then he might get re-elected, and his moderate policies validated. Just like in every country that used to have extreme right-wing cranks in charge, those Iranian right-wing cranks are just waiting for the tiniest of slip-ups before sending his ass into high security prison. How much more fun growing up in this kind of atmosphere and the psychological scars it leaves on its young citizens...




  • An interesting note in the media coverage of the aftermath of the Orlando shooting. The Angry Arab reports that most official news outlets in the middle east have stopped referring to homosexuals as "sexual deviants," except for Turkey's presidential news outlet. Here in the US, we have been treated to sermons from preachers saying that it's too bad that all of the patrons weren't shot... Just think what the difference might have been if we had a system of counseling, so that conflicted individuals can go for counseling and learn to confront and accept the turmoil going on inside of them. I was going to apply that analogy to folks who make war, but you can't fix stupid...



  • I'd like to see all of the clients of the Panama papers, and those who set up dummy and shell corporations outside of their respective countries, have their money confiscated and used to provide food and shelter for our poorer brethren and sisters. Most of that money came from ripping off those poor folks, so why not give it back and provide basic necessities? Lord knows, most of South America could use the help... Instead of billions donated anonymously to political PAC funds, have the Koch brothers and Sheldon Addelson help rebuild our ghettos...


Monday, June 13, 2016

Orlando Shooting Not a Politically Motivated Attack




Let's split a few hairs when regarding Omar Mateen's rampage through the Orlando nightclub, Pulse.

Everyone from President Obama. to James Comey have called it a terrorist act inspired by the online writings and videos of ISIS. To me, it has nothing to do with a political act and more to do with homophobia, a more powerful emotional act. ISIS was on the periphery, not central to the shooting. By that I mean that the popularity of ISIS among angry young men of middle eastern descent merely set the tone, gave suggestion for an outlet, but was not the root cause of the shootings.

Omar's ex-wife supposedly gave an interview to a Boulder, CO journalist, saying that he was more bi-polar than religious, and prone to acts of violence. The reason she left him was because he beat her up a lot in the four months they were together, and her family literally had to tear her out of his arms to get her away... And yet, this guy had a job carrying a gun and guarding areas important to our national security. NBC news has given a report saying that his wife accompanied him to a gun store when he bought a handgun and ammo, and also drove him to the Pulse nightclub a time or two, so her role in all of this is kinda murky...

Omar himself was a conflicted guy. After his divorce, he doesn't seem to have had anymore girlfriends, and became obsessed with the gay lifestyle. Several patrons of the club said that he approached them, but gave off hostile vibes, and he had been kicked out of the club for being too drunk and aggressive. So, here's a boy, a failure to his own culture in being divorced, a failure in the gay culture that he was interested in and loathed himself for it, dismissed by the FBI as not really being much of a threat...

Right-wing Christians and right-wing Muslims both sound terribly alike in their foaming at the mouth denunciations of homosexuality, while neither the Bible nor the Koran mentions them. The Angry Arab writes in his blog that it was the Victorian Europeans, who conquered the middle east, and imposed their version of "moral authority," being responsible originally for promoting homophobia.  Those who cannot progress beyond the ignorance of our past are doomed to repeat it, and we see it manifest from this shooting in Orlando, to tribal villagers throwing acid at a girl's face. By calling this an act of Islamic extremism just throws fuel to the flames and does nothing to help understand the twisted insides of the guy who did it. He probably was gay himself, but so repressed it internally, that watching two people kiss on the street triggered off his own feelings of loneliness and loss into rage...

Friday, June 10, 2016

The Next UN - American, Brad Thor Promotes Assassination



" The UN was created not to lead mankind to heaven, but in order to save humanity from hell."
                                                                                                                         - Dag Hammarskjold


Hello, I Must Be Going...

Next year the UN will have to choose a new Secretary General, as Ban Ki-Moon's tenure will come to an end. So, another job possibility for Bill Clinton, and it will keep him away from Washington a lot... But, times have been one going from world crisis to world crisis, without leaving any time to take a deep breath.

One of the things the UN likes to do is make lists. One list comprises armies that indiscriminately kills women and children. The Saudi led coalition army was put on this list last week for the way they battled the Houthi tribe in Yemen. This displeased the House of Saud, and they told the UN that either they get taken off the list, or they would withdraw financial support for sponsored humanitarian aid in Palestine, Syria, and South Sudan.

Bullshit like this happens all of the time. Previously, the Israeli Defense Force and Hamas were about to be criticized for their killing of innocent women and children during their two recent military campaigns, but Israel and the US put pressure not to release the report, but the gist could be leaked anonymously to the newspapers... He also has been pressured by the Russians, Chinese, and various members of the European Union.

It doesn't really matter how many candidates vie for the position of secretary general, since the ones doing the actual choosing are the 5 members of the Security Council, and you can be sure that they will choose a lap-dog, not someone who is willing to speak their mind.



Back In the USA...

  • Radio show host Glen Beck was suspended from Sirius XM's Patriot Channel for a week. He was interviewing jingoistic author Brad Thor. Brad advocated that it would be a good thing if someone assassinated Donald Trump, because he is such a danger to our country. The radio channel felt that Mr. Beck didn't jump down Brad's throat and disavow his statements, hence the censure...


  • The incoming Republican Party Chairman for Travis County, Texas is actually a foul-mouthed libertarian, who raised money to get on the ballot unopposed. He has vowed to use his position to influence the promotion of "big titties!" The Republican Committee met to limit the duties that he will have to perform, so that he will merely become a figurehead for them huge tata's...





Wednesday, June 8, 2016

On To The Political Conventions!

Hillary Clinton made history by becoming the first woman presidential candidate, beating poor old Bernie Sanders by a healthy margin. The remaining question is what will Bernie do now? He could let his frustration turn into bitterness and try to destroy the process at the convention, but he doesn't have the clout to get the changes he really wants... to swing the process in his favor. His best bet is to figure out how to get the majority of his supporters to get out and vote for Hillary, because the primary voter turnout this year was lower than 2008. My primary argument against Bernie is that he has spent all of those years in the Senate and accomplished very little beyond rhetoric. He was chairman of the Veteran's Affairs committee and didn't do anything to improve their situations until public embarrassment forced the committee into simulated action, leaving the problems at the VA hospitals the same, if not worse...

For Hillary, she needs to keep on giving well thought out speeches like the last two, and to avoid doing something stupid that the right wing crazies can go nuts over. They already have tried at least nine times with Benghazi investigations, and the current committee is waiting until after the conventions to publish their report or at least try to stir up some dust. The email server scandal is much ado over nothing, but her adversaries will try to get her indicted over it before the general election.

The other big question is who will she pick to be her running mate? The Washington Post has collected 27 potential candidates, ranging from Joe Biden to Elizabeth Warren. Personally, I'd like to see either Al Franken or John Hickenlooper, the governor of Colorado, to be the next elevated. The creepy nominee would be her husband, Bill Clinton, though he would do an excellent job. But I'll bet she makes him ambassador to the United Nations instead...



The funny part about the Republican primaries was watching who was still on the ballot against Donald Trump, either John Kasich or Ted Cruz. Though Donald was running virtually unopposed, I kept waiting to see if he was going to lose the vote in the last nine primary states, even better if it was to some write-in vote, like Donald Duck... Donald's job, which he will ignore, is to keep a lower profile until the convention, and learn how to retract a statement with an apology instead of doubling down and making things worse. He is driving the Republican establishment nuts, and it is entertaining watching how each strategy they come up with to harm Donald, just bounce back at them. The smarter strategy is what the Democrats are doing now, showing how the Emperor has no clothes, or billions of dollars, or donated to charities like veteran's groups, unless he is publically embarrassed to do so. The ticket for the season will be the Republican convention, to further watch the Grand Old Party implode.

Who will Donald Trump pick as his running mate? Oh, the list of former adversaries who will lick his boots is a long one, with the most colorful choice would be Sarah Palin again. What a fucking train-wreck that would be... But he will probably reward the smarmy Jeff Sessions for all of the behind the scenes hard work he has done. The creepy choice is his own daughter, Ivanka Trump, who is a botox queen and probably still registered as a Democrat. He really needs someone who will run the day to day affairs, while he concentrates on the big, blustery speeches he likes so much, a presidency honed by reality television...

So, there we have it. Hillary and Bill Clinton, running against Donald and Ivanka Trump, showing just how nepotistic politics has become!!!


Saturday, June 4, 2016

Hillary's Speech on Trump's Foreign Policy




"If Donald Trump were to be elected president... the America of George W. Bush would seem like a land of logic and reason in retrospect." - Der Spiegal


The crazier Donald Trump sounds, the more fearful and neurotic Europe, and Germany in particular, are of him. This last week has had The Donald ranting against Jeff Bezos, the press, a federal judge, reporters from the Washington Post, reporters in general, and the validity of a law-suite against Trump University claiming fraud...


To top off his very bad, awful week, Hillary Clinton diagnosed Donald Trump's foreign policy experience and decisions.Here are some of the quotes from Hillary Clinton's recent speech in California, where she dinged Donald Trump. Many people are calling this a turning point for Ms Clinton... I got these from CNN's Politics web page:

"Donald Trump's ideas aren't just different -- they are dangerously incoherent. They're not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies."

"He's not just unprepared -- he's temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility."

"This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes because it's not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin."


"He has no ideas on education. No ideas on innovation. He has lots of ideas about who to blame but no clue about what to do."

"He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia,"

"I will leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his attraction to tyrants"

"Imagine Donald Trump sitting in the Situation Room, making life-or-death decisions on behalf of the United States. Imagine him deciding whether to send your spouses or children into battle. Imagine if he had not just his Twitter account at his disposal when he's angry, but America's entire arsenal, do we want him making those calls -- someone thin-skinned and quick to anger, who lashes out at the smallest criticism? Do we want his finger anywhere near the button?"


Donald's response has only to call her performance pathetic. At one rally he complained that he had been Trumped!!!