Worldwide Nightmare Theatre, Empire of Chaos Enhanced and Expanded

[kladner]

Originally Posted by xilman

.....
When the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department says Wernher von Braun.

Some have harsh words for this man of renown
But some say our attitude should be one of gratitude
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun

[kladner]

I don't really know what is the best place to post this. It does, at least, involve a nightmarish situation in the Amazon.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52178.htm

In a wide-ranging, two-hour, world exclusive interview out of a prison room at the Federal Police building in Curitiba, southern Brazil, former president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva not only made the case to global public opinion for his innocence in the whole Car Wash corruption saga, confirmed by the bombshell leaks revealed by The Intercept, but also repositioned himself to resume his status as a global leader. Arguably sooner rather than later – depending on a fateful, upcoming decision by the Brazilian Supreme Court, for which Justice is not exactly blind.

The request for the interview was entered five months ago. Lula talked to journalists Mauro Lopes, Paulo Moreira Leite and myself, representing in all three cases the website Brasil247 and in my case Asia Times. A rough cut, with only one camera focusing on Lula, was released this past Thursday, the day of the interview. A full, edited version, with English subtitles, targeting global public opinion, should be released by the end of the week.

Lula is a visible embodiment of Nietzsche’s maxim: whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Fully fit (he hits the treadmill at least two hours a day), sharp, with plenty of time to read (his most recent was an essay on Alexander von Humboldt), he exhibited his trademark breadth, reach and command of multiple issues – sometimes rolled out as if part of a Garcia Marquez fantastic realism narrative.

The former president lives in a three-by-three-meter cell, with no bars, with the door open but always two Federal policemen outside, with no access to the internet or cable TV. One of his aides dutifully brings him a pen drive every day crammed with political news, and departs with myriad messages and letters.

[kladner]

i am using this thread for the following, based on the continuity of empire from the UK to the US. Also, Chaos seems to be a signature goal for Boris Johnson.


One question: The article repeatedly refers to "constitutional" choices and duties. To what constitution is Murray referring? Is there a UK Constitution?

The monarch appoints the UK Prime Minister. The convention is that this must be the person who can command the support of the majority in the House of Commons. That does not necessarily have to be from a single party, it can be via a coalition or pact with other parties, but the essential point, established since Hanoverian times, is that the individual must have a majority in the Commons.

The very appointment of Boris Johnson by Elizabeth Saxe Coburg Gotha was a constitutional outrage. Johnson may have been selected by Conservative Party members, but that is not the qualification to be PM. Johnson very plainly did not command a majority in the House of Commons, proven by the fact that still at no stage has he demonstrated that he does.

Johnson’s flagship policy was always No Deal Brexit. Contrary to the monarchist propaganda spewed out across the entire MSM, not only is it untrue that the Queen had “no constitutional choice” but to appoint Johnson, the Queen had a clear constitutional duty not to appoint a Prime Minister whose flagship policy had already been specifically voted down time and again by the House of Commons.

The Queen has now doubled down on this original outrage by proroguing the Westminster parliament in conspiracy with old Etonians Rees Mogg and Johnson, specifically so that the House of Commons cannot vote down Johnson.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by kladner

One question: The article repeatedly refers to "constitutional" choices and duties. To what constitution is Murray referring? Is there a UK Constitution?

Unequivocably yes.

The UK constitution is not a single written document, possibly as amended over time.. It is perhaps best described as a conglomeration of legal precedents.

Constitution of the United Kingdom may be of assistance.

[ewmayer]

Film ‘Official Secrets’ is the Tip of a Mammoth Iceberg | Consortium News

Katharine Gun worked as an analyst for Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of the secretive U.S. National Security Agency. She tried to stop the impending invasion of Iraq in early 2003 by exposing the deceit of George W. Bush and Tony Blair in their claims about that country. For doing that she was prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act — a juiced up version of the U.S. Espionage Act, which in recent years has been used repeatedly by the Obama administration against whistleblowers and now by the Trump administration against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.

Gun was charged for exposing— around the time of Colin Powell’s infamous testimony to the UN about Iraq’s alleged WMDs – a top secret U.S. government memo showing it was mounting an illegal spying “surge” against other U.N. Security Council delegations in an effort to manipulate them into voting for an Iraq invasion resolution. The U.S. and Britain had successfully forced through a trumped up resolution, 1441 in November 2002. In early 2003, they were poised to threaten, bribe or blackmail their way to get formal United Nations authorization for the invasion. [See recent interview with Gun.]

The leaked memo, published by the British Observer, was big news in parts of the world, especially the targeted countries on the Security Council, and helped prevent Bush and Blair from getting the second UN Security Council resolution they said they wanted. Veto powers Russia, China and France were opposed as well as U.S. ally Germany.

Washington invaded anyway of course — without Security Council authorization — by telling the UN weapons inspectors to leave Iraq and issuing a unilateral demand that Saddam Hussein leave Iraq in 48 hours— and then saying the invasion would commence regardless.
...
“Official Secrets” director Gavin Hood is perhaps more right than he realizes when he says that his depiction of the Gun case is like the “tip of an iceberg,” pointing to other deceits surrounding the Iraq war. His record with political films has been uneven until now. Peace activist David Swanson, for instance, derided his film on drones, “Eye in the Sky.” At a D.C. showing of “Official Secrets,” Hood depicted those who backed the Iraq war as being discredited. But that’s simply untrue.

Leading presidential candidate Joe Biden — who not only voted for the Iraq invasion, but presided over rigged hearings on in 2002 – has recently falsified his record repeatedly on Iraq at presidential debates with hardly a murmur. Nor is he alone. Those refusing to be held accountable for their Iraq war lies include not just Bush and Cheney, but John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi.

Biden has actually faulted Bush for not doing enough to get United Nations approval for the Iraq invasion. But as the Gun case helps show, there was no legitimate case for invasion and the Bush administration had done virtually everything, both legal and illegal, to get UN authorization.

Many who supported the invasion try to distance themselves from it. But the repercussions of that illegal act are enormous: It led directly or indirectly to the rise of ISIS, the civil war in Iraq and the war in Syria. Journalists who pushed for the Iraq invasion are prosperous and atop major news organizations, such as Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt. The editor who argued most strongly against publication of the NSA document at The Observer, Kamal Ahmed, is now editorial director of BBC News.

The British government — unlike the U.S.– did ultimately produce a study ostensibly around the decision-making leading to the invasion of Iraq, the Chilcot Report of 2016. But that report — called “devastating” by the The New York Times–made no mention of the Gun case. [See accuracy.org release from 2016: “Chilcot Report Avoids Smoking Gun.”]

After Gun’s identity became known, the Institute for Public Accuracy brought on Jeff Cohen, the founder of FAIR, to work with program director Hollie Ainbinder to get prominent individuals to support Gun. The film — quite plausibly — depicts the charges being dropped against Gun for the simple reason that the British government feared that a high profile proceeding would effectively put the war on trial, which to them would be have been a nightmare.

Ah, the chutzpah of the The New York Times to refer to the 2016 Chilcot Report as “devastating” - not that that's in inaccurate characterization, rather that the NYT was of course one of the leading US "papers of record" leading the charge into the war, behind the 'reporting' of lying Pentagon shills like Judith Miller. And they've not changed one whit as a consequence of any kind of self-examination of their own "devastating" role in helping foment said illegal war. One reader/commenter of the above article notes that the state of the MSM in the UK has actually gotten worse in the "more propagandistic" direction since 2003:

"One thing is certain: The Observer of 2019 would not publish a story like this. That is one of the major changes since 2003: the capitalist media has tightened up. There are no longer papers competing to attract readers at risk of cozy relations with the State. The Observer/Guardian today – since the Snowden revelations- does what it is told."

[garo]

So true about the Guardian. The new editor is a lot more pliable.

[kladner]

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/...0901-0006.html
Just keeping this at least somewhat in the general awareness. There is an ongoing litany of illegal outrages, including piracy against a food ship. Actually, that one's rather stale in news cycle terms.

At least eight million Venezuelans added their signatures to a document rejecting the U.S. blockade, which will be presented to the United Nations, according to official reports.
Since August 10, Bolivar squares across the country and makeshift stands have seen thousands of Venezuelans reiterate their repudiation of Washington's coercive measures.

The signing of the document is part, along with marches and protests, of the global 'No More Trump' campaign, promoted by the Venezuelan government to denounce to the world the damages of the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on Venezuela.

President Nicolas Maduro assured last Friday that this campaign demonstrates courage, the will to fight, desire, passion and what Venezuelans feel towards Trump.

[kladner]

https://apnews.com/63e7e47666914bf79eff7366e8eb411b

Separated from his father at the U.S.-Mexico border last year, the little boy, about 7 or 8, was under the delusion that his dad had been killed. And he thought he was next.

Other children believed their parents had abandoned them. And some suffered physical symptoms because of their mental trauma, clinicians reported to investigators with a government watchdog.

“You get a lot of ‘my chest hurts,’ even though everything is fine” medically, a clinician told investigators. The children would describe emotional symptoms: “Every heartbeat hurts,” or “I can’t feel my heart.”

Children separated during the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance policy” last year, many already distressed in their home countries or by their journey, showed more fear, feelings of abandonment and post-traumatic stress symptoms than children who were not separated, according to a report Wednesday from the inspector general’s office in the Department of Health and Human Services.

The chaotic reunification process only added to their ordeal.

Some cried inconsolably. Some were angry and confused. “Other children expressed feelings of fear or guilt and became concerned for their parents’ welfare,” according to the report.

The child who believed his father was killed “ultimately required emergency psychiatric care to address his mental health distress,” a program director told investigators.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Trump fires national security adviser John Bolton

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has fired national security adviser John Bolton.

Trump tweeted Tuesday that he told Bolton Monday night that his services were no longer needed at the White House. He says Bolton submitted his resignation on Tuesday morning.

Trump tweeted that he “disagreed strongly” with many of Bolton’s suggestions, “as did others in the administration.”

[ewmayer]

@Bolton firing - that couldn't come soon enough. I wonder if the decisive moment when Trump realized that these true-believer neocons are truly, willing-to-burn-the-whole-world nuts was the attempted runup to a hot war with Iran and the done-shootdown incident that got Trump to blink.

The really scary thing is that these warmongering neocon creeps are everywhere in DC, and seem to slither their way around multiple administrations, like unkillable vampires - Bolton was the natsec advisor who got W. Bush to pull the US out of the ABM treaty, among other things. And over the weekend I read a long piece in The Guardian about the CIA's cold-war-era MK/Ultra LSD/mind-control 'research' program, which I highly recommend - when you get to the part about then-president Ford apologizing to the family of the likely-murdered scientist 2 decades later, look who the two named natsec advisors are.

[kladner]

I recommend "Acid Dreams." It is packed and moved so I can't give more details, but it concerns CIA use of hallucinogens in hopes of getting interrogation results. They also dosed each other surreptitiously at cocktail parties. I have other CIA-related books. I remember the title "Endless Enemies." But all that is at our new apartment, to which we are gradually moving.