Moar War, War Fever, Scandal! Scandal! Scandal!

What a freaking mess. What have we done to deserve this? [I'm sure the many targeted peoples under the bombs raining down on them from the Empire Above wonder the same damn thing...]

Views from Damascus overnight resemble Baghdad on Shock n Awe night so many years ago. Remember? I don't know anymore whether people do. There's been so much misery, mayhem and bloodshed Over There, it's hard to keep track, isn't it?

The proximate cause of the latest "coalition" air strikes (primarily from off shore missile launches) of yet another Middle Eastern city is the supposed use of prohibited chemical weapons against a rebel stronghold in the suburbs of Damascus.

Whether it actually happened and who did it if it did is subject of some dispute. There are statements that it didn't happen at all. There are statements that it was staged. There are statements that it was done by outside forces. There are statements that it was done by the rebels themselves... Yadda, yadda.

None of us is in a position to know. Whether our military and civilian rulers know much more than we do is a mystery. All we can say with any certainty is that the protagonists of these wars and rebellions tend to be dissemblers.

The launching of retaliatory missiles is essentially de rigeur these days. It's what's done to show the non-compliant who's the boss. It hasn't worked very well with the Assad regime, and it doesn't seem to quell rebellions either. It's just a Thing. Blowing shit up is the way things are done by the Empire and by the Rebel Alliance. Sometimes I think they cause misery for the fun of it.

So they just blow things up. People are in the way, oh well!

Jeepus, I hate this. I was going round and round about the Stephon Clark Thing in Sacramento. My point was that I just want the killing to stop, and he didn't quite get it. Huh? Whut?

The killing. To. Stop.

We seem to be locked into this situation where killing is the number one option when things go sideways or there's a perception of a threat of some sort. When police kill, they're just taking their cue from our Dauntless Leaders. Killing is their Go To solution to practically everything. They're no too bright are they?

Meanwhile the White House (and many other prominent elements of society) are enveloped in one scandal after another. I don't think we've ever had a mobbed up gangster sitting on the throne, but we do now, and our institutions have no idea how to deal with it/him. He's been hamstrung in various ways, but that's not sufficient. He uses what powers he has remaining for making much mischief and propping up his frail ego. This is hardly presidential, but I don't think it much matters any more.

The presidency itself has long since been diminished by various unfortunate and unpleasant occupants and their scandals, deceptions, and military adventures. It's close to time for something else again.

The Ruling Class seems happy to have the Rabble wallowing in it. Distraction? Sure. Entertainment? Yep. A masque?

The downward spiral seems inescapable.

And yet, there must be hope somewhere.

WAR!

Yesterday marked the hundredth anniversary of the US entry into World War I, a transformative exercise to say the least.

So what does El Caudillo do? He authorizes a missile strike on a Syrian airbase while at dinner with China's Xi Jinping at the Winter Palace in Florida. Hm. Who'd a thunk?

This is supposed to be the Peace-Maker, Deal-Maker God-Emperor who will keep the US out of Syria, make nice with the Russians and preserve, protect and defend us from that horrid warmonger Hag who was just itching to engage in nuclear annihilation with Putin.

Clintons, Obamacrats, and all they represented delenda est! 

Of course it was all fantasy and bullshit, but what the hell. We saw our politics fall through the looking glass a long time ago, and there seems to be no way back. Fantasy and bullshit rule for the duration. Make the most of it.

I pointed out a long time ago that there was never much difference in the policies of Clinton vs Trump on most matters. Their rhetoric tended to emphasize differences, but when you drilled down, their policies were close, in some cases identical. Where they differed was in implementation -- whether radical and harsh (as Trump wanted)  or incremental and "softer" (as Hillary seemed to want -- it was never clear with her.)

So here we are now with Trump executing Hillary's Syria policies without a qualm, a near 180° turn around from statements out of the Regime just days ago.

Of course, things change. Assad (once again) "gassed his own people." The way he does. Ergo, something had to be done. After all, such monstrousness cannot be allowed to stand!

Never mind that Assad may not have intended any such thing, but in WAR!!! strange things happen.

Never mind the hundreds of civilians (including "beautiful babies") slaughtered in Mosul by an American air attack the other day. "Collateral damage, too bad, so sad."

Gotta root out them terrrisss.

Ya.

It's all stupid -- much as WWI was -- and follows a course of events that cannot be controlled.

We should know that by now.

And even Caudillos and God-Emperors cannot make events conform to desires.

They say the cable news nets are wetting themselves with delight over WAR!!! frenzy. Not surprising. It is their stock in trade. They enjoy slaughter for its own sake, for the ratings boost, for the patriotism of it all.

But no.

This won't end well.

Any more than WWI did.

What a whirled.

The Aleppo Thing vs the Mosul Thing vs the Fallujah Things vs All The Other Things...

I'm no Syria expert, far from it, but the propaganda out of Syria especially over Aleppo, is grating to say the least.

We are constantly informed ("") that Russia (read Putin) and Syria (read Assad) are "destroying" Aleppo and that the city might "fall" to these Evil Ones as they kill and maim innocent women and children (the children seen on heartrending video practically every day) and repeatedly blow up the "last remaining hospital" in Aleppo... etc. The horror show just never ends, and obviously Putin-Assad-Satan are guilty of War Crimes worse than those that led to the Nuremberg Trials. Oh, much worse.

Except b over at Moon of Alabama has been explaining in exhaustive detail that this narrative is false from top to bottom. It's not just propaganda, it is the definition of The Big Lie.

"Aleppo" is a very large city in northern Syria, and most of its population has always been under official Syrian government control. The eastern part of the city is under the control of a hodgepodge of "rebel" groups (b insists they're fraudulent and mostly jihadist/terrorist groups -- al Qaida, ISIS and the like -- paid by the USA/CIA to oppose Assad). The eastern part of the city is far less residential than the western part, and not surprisingly most of Aleppo's population lives in the western city, not the eastern.

We never hear this in our "news" about what's going on in Syria. "Aleppo" is always presented as one city united and valiantly fighting for its life against the cruel aggression of Assad and Putin, never is it even hinted that there has always been a large population -- a majority -- living more or less normal lives (as much as anyone can be said to be living "normally" under the circumstances) in West Aleppo. That part of the city and its  residents don't exist in the propaganda narrative. They've been erased.

There is a struggle going on for control of East Aleppo, and that struggle is ugly and violent. The Syrian army and Russian air power are involved in that struggle as they jointly attempt to retake East Aleppo and drive out the jihadists/terrorists. They are making some progress. But it is not without cost. There is much destruction to be sure, but it's nothing like the claims of the "rebels." False reports out of East Aleppo are routine, and everything we hear, see and read about it must be taken skeptically, because most of it is a lie.

One part of the Big Lie is that "Aleppo" -- that is to say East Aleppo -- has a civilian population of several hundred thousand under siege and bombardment by the Evil Ones. b assures us that's false.
He insists there are no more than about 20-30,000 civilians in that part of the city -- and there may be far fewer. There were never as many in East Aleppo -- which is mostly an industrial and quasi-rural part of the city -- as there were in the Western city, which is mostly residential and commercial.

He insists that most of the civilian population of East Aleppo left long ago and those that remain are mostly the families of the jihadists and terrorists -- paid by the USA to fight Assad.

So if I'm understanding this story correctly -- and I can't say I do understand it fully -- most of the population of Aleppo has always been under Syrian government authority. A jihadist/terrorist faction supported and paid by the USA took control of the eastern part of the city some years ago, and now the Syrian government and their Russian allies have launched a campaign to take it back.

This almost exactly parallels the just launched effort of Iraqi armed forces together with their American allies to "retake" Mosul from jihadist/terrorist ISIS control, just as previously similar campaigns were launched against Fallujah (for what, the fourth time?) and Tikrit, among other cities in Iraq.

And during these campaigns, the cities are essentially flattened, and the civilian population that can't escape are exterminated. That's the pattern set years ago during the American occupation. It's happened over and over again. And that's the pattern being followed by the Syrian government in East Aleppo and other cities under jihadist/terrorist control in Syria.

Everything that our propagandists claim Putin/Assad are doing in Aleppo is being done or has been done in Mosul, Fallujah and other cities in Iraq by combined American/Iraqi armed forces, and for essentially the same reasons, with approximately the same result. Ruined cities and dead civilians -- and escaped jihadi/terrorists.

It beggars belief.

Accusations of War Crimes are flying thick and fast, and calls for a No Fly Zone over northern Syria -- to protect "Aleppo" -- are intensifying. Of course such an action would mean War With Russia. Which must be approached gingerly, as Russia is a heavily armed nuclear power, and one doesn't want to mess with  that unnecessarily. Does one?

You would think not, but according to many observers, our NeoCon rulers are actually spoiling for a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union -- er, Putin's Russia -- and would welcome the chance to go nuclear on Putin's ass.

How much of this is brinksmanship and posturing I have no idea, but the thought is understandably troubling to more than a few Americans. Are Our Rulers crazy?

Well, I think we've long understood that they are. They are out of their freaking minds.

On the other hand, the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin in particular, appear to be among the sanest of international rulers. They are not going to start a nuclear war with the United States.

There's a widespread assumption among Hag-Haters that Hillary is bound and determined to engage the US with Russia in a nuclear exchange. I think that's ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as the notion that Trump won't start a nuclear war.

We're in realms of pure fantasy and projection when we believe that one or the other will or won't start a war with Russia. There is no way for us to know one way or the other. There is always a risk of nuclear annihilation no matter who sits in the Big Chair, simply because there are so many nuclear weapons on both sides (and others, it's not just two nuclear powers after all) and we can't predict how our rulers or other rulers will behave. We can hope, but we can't know.

Brinkmanship is a long known and practiced form of international "diplomacy," and I think that's what's going on with the current round of nuclear threats. Those of us who lived through the Cold War ought to be thoroughly familiar with  the tactic. It's frightening and potentially deadly, though the point of it is intimidate the other side sufficiently to gain one's objectives without resort to the Ultimate Weapons. A side advantage of Brinkmanship is that it so frightens the domestic population that they are kept in line. Patriotism and all that.

Meanwhile the meatgrinders continue without let up.

Proxy wars without end.

That would be true no matter who sat in the Big Chair, and unless we're willing and able to rise up as one, we the Rabble have no control over it.

I wish it weren't so, but it is.

Miscellany

Random notes that have come up over the last few days that I didn't think warranted a full post at this point.

On the Surveillance State: one of the repeatedly heard issues about the Surveillance State is that  the compromises of corporate integrity and user privacy forced by the government on their corporate partners in surveillance has mortally wounded the American IT Business abroad to the point where no one will do business with them.

Well:

Despite emphatic predictions of waning business prospects, some of the big Internet companies that the former National Security Agency contractor showed to be closely involved in gathering data on people overseas - such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. - say privately that they have felt little if any impact on their businesses.

Insiders at companies that offer remote computing services known as cloud computing, including Amazon and Microsoft Corp, also say they are seeing no fallout.

Meanwhile, smaller U.S. companies offering encryption and related security services are seeing a jump in business overseas, along with an uptick in sales domestically as individuals and companies work harder to protect secrets.

"No fallout?" "Little if any impact?" How ever can it be? We'll see. All I would add at this point it that the NSA's corporate partners have been notorious "untruth" tellers from the day the revelations of massive NSA surveillance broke last June, and I wouldn't take anything they say about anything at face value. They -- like the NSA -- lie. So I question even the statements in this story.

Diplomacy Will Out? Let's Not Get Ahead of Ourselves Just Yet

The story being retailed is that Russia and the United States have come to a diplomatic agreement to take care of that little chemical weapons problem in Syria within the next year or so, and this is being hailed far and wide as an example of diplomatic skill almost unparalleled in the modern world, as -- for once in our miserable lives -- war has been averted.

Well. That's good. The less war the better for most of us, and the ideal would be no war at-all, at-all. But of course the Syrian civil war shall continue without let up, much as all kinds of resistance actions and civil wars continue regardless of diplomacy, sometimes for decades or generations, and eventually whatever is left of Syria will be ground into powder by the Israelis, yes?

This is all for Israel's benefit, is it not?

We don't know that. Israel is part of the Problem of the Middle East and is constantly agitating the Arabs to do dirt to one another so as to ensure they are too debilitated to do dirt to the Israelis. It's a form of "diplomacy" I doubt most of us would want to talk about, but it has been going on for thousands of years and it's sometimes successful in preventing a wider struggle from breaking out, or in ensuring that certain interests stay above the fray while the Lesser Ones fight among themselves.

What has happened with Syria is that something along those lines has been worked out on behalf of the "parental units" -- ie: Russia and the United States -- and the Crazy Uncle (Israel) as well. The Syrians will keep fighting among themselves till Doomsday, with active support and armaments from the Powers, but supposedly without the wherewithal to deploy WMD. Only Israel in the region will have that particular grim agency.

I thought it was interesting that Assad said in his interview with Charlie Rose that until Israel disposed of its WMD arsenal, Syria could not agree to do any such thing itself -- while not admitting that there was a Syrian arsenal. Israel is the Problem, after all. And until Israel complies...

But Israel won't comply, and as a client (?) state of the United States, the United States has no interest in compelling compliance.

Assad then agrees to the Russian framework for removing chemical weapons from Syria (in due time), which the United States then agrees to. Success! Or something.

Of course, there are those who will insist till their dying day that all this was nothing more than a kabuki distraction from the Real Story of NSA Surveillance of Americans and the Whole Wide World.  Well, yes, I suppose it is in some sense, though the NSA Story was evaporating on its own, as there were no plans to scale back the Surveillance/Police State despite the complaints. But everything is Kabuki eventually, everything is a distraction from everything else. And it's all a show. What's taking place backstage and behind the scenes creates the "show" we are so fascinated by -- whatever show it is at any given time.

We are not well equipped to observe and appreciate more than one show at a time, it seems.

I was certain that there was Something Big coming After Labor Day, and I was right. It was Syria, yes, but -- apparently -- not in the context of another Anglo-American Imperial War of Aggression. So in that sense, I was wrong, in that I thought we'd see more bloodshed led by American military might. It could still happen, of course, but the likelihood of it is relatively slim.

The punditocracy is furious, of course, because they didn't know in advance what was going to happen. They were as bindsided as anybody else, and they don't like being in that position. They're better than the Rabble, aren't they? Aren't they?

The pundits insist the Real Issue is whacking Iran, the sooner the better, but as we've seen, the whackage planned for Iran never seems to happen. Doesn't mean it won't, but the likelihood diminishes year by year. Or so it seems.

Meanwhile, the Rabble keeps paying for all the miscalculations and destructive policy decisions coming out of Washington and Wall Street.

Apocalypse Averted? How Can This Be?

Oh, I don't know that I'm going to hold my breath over the latest developments in the Syria Thing, but there are signs and portents that indicate we may have barely averted catastrophe once again.

It could be that the military solution to the Syrian Crisis is for the moment set aside while furious efforts are under way to secure whatever chemical weapons the Syrian government has from use, misuse, theft and dispersal.

Might-could-be. Hard to say.

I watched Charlie Rose's interview with The Devil Assad last night, and it seemed to me that the soft-spoken Assad was running rings around Rose, literally tying him in knots and forcing numerous errors as Rose was exposed again and again as simply acting as the spokesman for the Obama Regime, not as a journalist at all. He was clearly ignorant of anything about Syria that he hadn't been fed by the White House, DoD, and State Departments. Assad easily exposed Rose's ignorance and hypocrisy as he pointed out repeatedly that the US has presented no evidence whatever that the Syrian government used chemical weapons on August 21, the date of the alleged sarin gas attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. None. Zero. And he offered a plausible explanation for what happened: there may have been an accidental release of home-made sarin by the rebels. His point was that with current information, there is no way to tell for sure, but in any case, there is no compelling evidence that the Syrian government -- rather than some other interest involved in the Syrian civil war -- was responsible. There is only assertion. And in the end, even so-called "evidence" -- such as that presented by Colin Powell at the UN to justify attacking Iraq, can be false.

The US has no credibility in these matters in other words.

Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts, triggered by John Kerry's "rhetorical" offer to withhold missile strikes on the Syrian government if it agrees to turn over all its chemical weapons to "international control" within the week, are apparently underway in earnest as the Russians and Syrian government have agreed to attempt to comply. Oh my, who would have thought?

Some people are saying this is Obama's brilliance in action; I will withhold judgement on that. It's obvious to me that preparations for direct military intervention in the Syrian civil war by the United States have been under way since spring at the latest and were probably in work well before that. I recently read a series of stories in the Economist published in May that explored the possibilities and potentials of direct US military intervention in Syria, stories that indicated that preparations to intervene had been made long before.

The notion that the whole Syria Thing is nothing but a distraction from the NSA revelations has been taking hold among some of those who see the NSA Thing to be Bigger Than God. Well, I don't see it quite that way.

I'll put it this way: the government operates on numerous parallel tracks all the time. While it often seems to be responding to various pressures -- whether driven by the media or by its corporate partners or what have you -- in fact, the government is juggling a bunch of shit all the time, and it is quite capable of asserting and acting on its own interests as chosen (at the top) from a menu of options at any given moment.

In other words, the government can easily use something that's in the to do list pipeline to overwhelm something else that has been captivating the media -- especially captivating summer stories.

And so it is with the Syria Thing. Is it a "distraction"? Hardly. It's serious as fuck. It's Post Labor Day now, and the Summer Shark and Missing White Boy stories would have faded on their own -- because that's how the media works. Now the news cycle is dominated by the White House and the Serious Matters that the White House has to deal with. That would have happened with or without the Syria Thing.

Of course, the White House and whatever Spookery has been running the summer con (I say it's likely to be the CIA) are going to use Syria and whatever else is in the offing to tamp down the NSA story or at least make it a minor issue rather than a major one. Of course they are. How much the Congress gets its panties in a collective wad over domestic surveillance remains to be seen, but I suspect the only real upshot is that certain categories of the Overclass will be granted the exemptions and immunities they seek while everyone else will be subjected to ever more intrusive surveillance. That's what the indications have been since the opening salvos of the Story of the Century. Or Summer. Or whatever.

We should understand that the CIA has been operating in Syria at least since last year and probably well before that, attempting to undermine the Syrian government enough to enable their favored rebel factions to march into Damascus and take over. It's not been going well, and I wouldn't be surprised if the CIA didn't blame the difficulties they're having in Syria on bad intelligence from the NSA. And it would be surprising if they'd try to cripple the NSA and run their own intelligence operations as they've done in the past (to often disastrous results.) These sorts of Inner Party squabbles have been commonplace for many decades. What we can see of them is usually only a tiny portion of what's really going on.

Keeping the public focus on Syria or the NSA or what have you is useful to those who are squabbling over their prerogatives and powers behind the scenes. We won't be likely to know for years what this whole thing is really about -- if we ever find out. But what we are allowed to see is rarely more than a glimpse of the whole picture.

If the Apocalypse has actually been averted and the diplomatic solution to the apparent crisis is implemented, we can breathe a sigh of relief -- at least temporarily. But never forget, as the Bard once put it:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

And that's putting it mildly.

Peace -- Building A Better Future

The wardrums continue pounding for the cause of whacking Syria on the way to the Ultimate Prize of "Doing" Iran. The Birth Pangs of the New Middle East simply go on and on and on, unendingly, and yet the vessel is empty. No New Middle East has been birthed. Or if one has been, it's a monster.

While sitting in the auto-repair waiting room yesterday, the teevee was showing a Fox "news" panel discussion of the Syria Thing, actually fairly rational given the source, and one of the panelists -- I have no idea who -- put forth the proposition that "doing" Syria was a waste of time and effort and military might. Everyone knew, he said, that the Real Objective was Iran, so why not just "do" Iran and get it over with? These diversions into places like Syria and Lebanon and Iraq and whatnot were not helping accomplish the Objective.

Well, yes. Iran is the primary objective of the War Party as it has been all along. As someone on the Internets pointed out, the end game of this misbegotten foreign policy is to surround Russia and China with bases and to make it impossible for either of these potential superpowers to rise far enough to threaten United States hegemony for ever and ever, so let it be written, so let it be done, amen.

Peace -- the very idea of it -- is forbidden for the duration.

And the duration may be forever.

Peace is not an acceptable solution to anything so long as there are "threats" -- whether real or fabricated.

Yet Peace is the only rational solution to the war-madness we have been immersed in for far too long.

There is no hint of a movement toward Peace in the current spate of warmongering over Syria and the use (or perhaps accidental release) of Sarin gas in the ongoing civil war there, a civil war that appears to be the product of American Imperial Provocation and Aggression, if the stories of CIA trained death squads roaming at will are to be believed.

How do you get Peace out of this mess?

Peace flows naturally from the three vital principles of Dignity, Justice and Community previously mentioned in this series. Given the appropriate foundational principles, Peace is the almost inevitable outcome.

But Our Rulers have made clear that they don't want Peace, no way, no how. They want perpetual wars, wars of provocation, wars of aggression, a destructive paradise. We, the Rabble, are to have no say whatever in their plans for endless war and devastation.

And yet we must declare their error and we must reject their violence. We must avow Peace as an ultimate goal and reward.

Peace will enable a better future for all, and that is something Our Rulers will fight to the bitter end to prevent.

I say Peace is the natural outcome of adherence to the principles of Dignity, Justice and Community; others may disagree. But without those principles and priorities, we will inevitably be mired in war.

The Roadblock

Interesting developments on the Syria Front. Indeed, it makes one wonder if there isn't some other game being played here than simply wars and distractions and palace intrigues.

The Obama campaign to send Sadda... erm, Assad a "message" ground to a halt as the week came to a close. The British Parliament had said "no" to Blighty involvement in the operation; Hollande in France said he was eager to participate, but the French People said "non!" The Saudis suddenly put on the brakes. Even the always belligerent Israelis were skeptical of a Syrian operation at this time...

Obama went before the cameras -- once the protestors were removed from beyond the West Wing of the White House -- and said he was still ever-so-firm and ever-so-resolute, and he would put the question of further actions against Sadda... err, Assad to a Congressional vote, and the Congressional leaders said, "OK, we'll get back to you after our vay-kay, mkay?"

Yeah. Right.

Something -- ooou my, what could it be -- occurred between the Kerry Speech on Thursday and the Obama Apparition in the Rose Garden on Friday Saturday. There was an intervention of some sort by someone.

The very kind of intervention, if I may be so bold, that I and many others longed for to put the brakes on the misbegotten Imperial adventures of the Bush/Cheney Regime. The very kind of intervention that never came.

But last week, at the last moment, Somebody Who Matters said, "No. We're not going to do this thing now, maybe not ever."

Huh.

Who'd a thunk?

Of course many sabers were being rattled during the run up to the Aktion. Among them were Russian and Iranian sabers, direct threats to our client states of Israel and Saudi Arabia. If we were to "do" Syria -- at this time at any rate -- then there would be more than Hell to Pay, capice? Of course it's gangster business, but we've known that all along. The whole world has become a gangster world, hasn't it? Maybe it always was one.

Someone must have said, "You know, this could be serious."

Yes. Well.

So are all these Imperial aggressions. So are they all.

I guess we can return our focus to the NSA now.

Carry on.

Surely there will be a good story about Greenwald any minute now...
---------------------------------------------------

UPDATE:  This is what they're saying happened to forestall the Syrian Aktion. Make of it what you will.

Justice -- Building A Better Future

There is no term more perverted in recent history than the thing called "Justice."

Throughout the many wars of aggression perpetrated after 9/11, one term has constantly stood out:

"Bring 'em to justice."

What that's meant is death and destruction on the ground and from above, kidnapping, torture, gulags, and worse.

Justice? There's no hint of justice in these actions, in fact just the opposite. But then, these actions mirror so much of what is purported to be 'justice' in the civilian world, where millions are held in custody, tens of thousands in solitary confinement, where torture and brutality are routine, where the concept of a fair trial was long ago subverted, where everyone is subject to constant and often invasive surveillance and whole communities are routinely subject to terror campaigns by police. Where the High and the Mighty get away with just about anything, whereas the lowly Rabble is constantly -- and literally -- under the gun.

Justice?

What a sad, sick joke.

Along with Dignity, Justice is the most frequently heard call of rebels and revolutionaries at home and abroad.

Justice.

What would it mean if we were to build a better future?

The Red Flag In Kerry's Speech

As performance art, SoS John Kerry did a remarkable job yesterday laying out the government's "case against Syria." Just so, and in much the same way, David Cameron and the rest of the British government laid out their "case against Syria" before Parliament earlier.

Of course we're told that "stunningly" Parliament "rejected" going to war -- or indeed, taking any action -- against Syria (though if I understand the arcana of the Parliamentary game correctly, they weren't actually voting for or against a "Syria Campaign, " they were voting on whether to proceed toward such a vote... but never mind.)  The "stunning rejection" was fairly easy to predict once the debate got underway. It was clear that the Honorable and Right Honorable Members were not inclined to take the word of the Government on this matter. "Trust us" wouldn't do. They wanted to see the evidence, and they wanted time to evaluate it. They had been burned by previous demands based on purported evidence, and they were in no mood to comply this time. The level of fraud the British Government had perpetrated on the Parliament and People of Britain over the Iraq Invasion (and much else besides) still rankles, though the perpetrators will not have to face Justice. The Honorable and Right Honorable Members have decided, though, that they won't get fooled soon again. Not soon again.

Meanwhile, we are told that the President is pressing ahead with his determination to "send Syria a message" that the Assad regime cannot "gas its own people" without serious consequences.

Leave aside for the moment that there is no conclusive evidence regarding who was responsible for the attack on the 21st in the suburbs of Damascus. The Assad regime denies culpability. The UN has not made a report. And witness testimony is all over the map with claims and counterclaims flying. Who did what to whom in a civil war is frequently impossible to sort out until long after hostilities have concluded, and they may still be disputed into eternity. Cf. Srebrenica among so many examples in the civil wars concomitant on the break up of Yugoslavia.

John Kerry gave one of his better performances yesterday as he laid out the US Government's "case against Syria" for the public. He has tended to be mealy-mouthed and confused when publicly speaking for the last many years, but yesterday he was firm and coherent and stentorian. This is important for credibility, dontchaknow.

But the red flag for me was his precise figure of "at least 1,429" dead in the attack on the 21st, a number that had never previously been heard or reported. He also listed a precise number of children killed, a number never previously heard before as well.

These figures are far, far higher than any independent source had reported up to that time, which made Kerry's repeated statement that "we know" this or that more than a little problematical. If "we know" something that no one else on earth does, and those who are there "know" something quite different, then somehow someone isn't telling the truth or there is something else is going on that we, the Rabble, are simply not privy to.

Where did Kerry's numbers come from, and how have they been so precisely determined in the midst of the chaos of the attack and its aftermath? How is it that the US Government can so precisely determine what those on the ground cannot?

Yes, it's a big red flag.

The Syria Thing, NSA, CIA and That Old Man's Hard On

I've been pretty strident about the NSA story that has dominated so much of the political media throughout the summer. I saw it and see it as a Summer Shark and Missing White Boy story that has been purpose made to obscure something else, something much more immediate and consequential -- and probably dreadful.

We now know what it is: A planned US attack on Syria which may well turn into an apocalyptic conflagration.

Jeebus Dancing Christo.

What the Holy Hell is wrong with these people?

While it's fun to make a whipping boy of the NSA -- or any other spookery -- the issue of domestic surveillance and the concomitant police state is far too serious for far too many people to let the singular issue of "NSA" surveillance overwhelm the reality of how deep-seated and pervasive the surveillance state really is in this country. It's far too serious to let NSA surveillance be seen as the only or even the most serious threat to privacy in the whole wide world -- as it has been promoted throughout the summer.

It's not. It's simply not. It never was. Other threats however...

We don't know what happened in Syria, nor do we know who was responsible. Because of the consistency of the falsehoods that emanate from our government and our spookeries, let alone the falsehoods that come from the Israeli "intelligence" (the source, apparently, for the claim that intercepted phone calls among Syrian officials were the "smoking gun" that "proved" the Assad regime was responsible for the CW attack), people must be skeptical of any pronouncement from On High about what they are doing, or anything they say about what anyone else has done.

They lie.

It's in their nature, and in the nature of the agencies and operations they have nominal charge of.

They lie, and they will do what they wilt, and they will do it without let or hindrance from We, the Rabble.

That Old Man's Hard On will have its release, no matter what.

Our government has now fully divorced itself from We, the Rabble.

The "intelligence" services will have their way. The MIC will have its way.

And that, as they say, is that.

Snowden Who?

All eyes are now on the upcoming American war of aggression against Syria/Iran (they're joined at the hip, dontchaknow) and the NSA Scandal has been all but forgotten. Of course the NSA would have provided all of the necessary signals intelligence for the successful prosecution of this war of aggression because that's what they do, what they're supposed to be doing at any rate, on behalf of the Department of (War)Defense, of which the NSA is a part.

You'd never know any of that from this hysteria over NSA surveillance of you'n'me, for none of that ever entered any of the stories about the agency and its whistleblower, Young Snowden. Of course not.

What the agency is supposed to be doing on behalf of the Department of Defense, of which they are a part, was never at issue. It was all the other things they had the potential to do and sometimes did as an exploit or lark that raised all the libertarian hackles out there. Yes, most of those hackles were libertarian, and most of the story-telling was typical of libertarian propaganda about government, criminal government employees, and potentials for government intrusion into all of our lives, yadda yadda.

I've seen it too many times to count on the internets.

But here we are, literally moments before the launch of yet another war of aggression in the Middle East, and the news cycle will admit of nothing else for the duration.

After Labor Day we will once again enter some vestibule of hell.

Had our attention been focused on the looming new war of aggression, we might have raised a stink about it well before now. But instead, we'll slouch into a killing spree in Syria, which may precipitate further hostilities with Iran, and That Old Man's Hard On may finally find release as he sees yet more brown people blown to smithereens. It's his greatest joy.

"Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."

Propaganda and its uses have matured since Orwell's day; but the upshot of endless war is the same.