The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Feed Me Sweet Dumdrops

    By A Guy Called LULU on Tue, 04/17/2018 - 3:35am |

    Feed Me Sweet Dumbdrops

    But do not steer me to black holes expecting me to see the sucked-up truth

    Copied and edited  from somewhere forgotten: So many people hate and distrust alternate news sites because they give airtime to journalists, experts, and perspectives that are filtered out on their behalf by capital’s preferred propaganda networks, which keeps them comfortable in their dangerous ignorance. 

    I stole this too:

    Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget

    falls drop by drop upon the heart,

    until, in our own despair,

    against our will,

    comes wisdom

    through the awful grace of God.

      Well, that awful God has denied me wisdom but hope springs eternal. Or until it doesn't.

    They make me fat and they make me lazy, make my clear vision hazy,  and push me towards crazy. I would become a Stoic poet but that only rhymes with orange.   So I will try it this way:

    Feed me Sweet dumbdrops

    News for the lazy

    Then forget being Stoic

    React with crazy

        If there’s an original thought out there, I could use it,   right now.

    To get to the point: Here is one way the evil stinking bastard Russians fowl our news, as described by “experts”.

    Which images here are true and which are contrived? I need to know because I need to hate somebody. It is so satisfying.

    Join the rebellious crowd that resents being fed bitter pills while seeing the dispensary staff get rewards as we choke. I have stood in the parade and watched as the chickenshit medallioned bosses gave each other medals as they giggled at the conscripted audience.

           “ Lazy bastards, fuck them - this one should have have gone to citizen journalists, …” Exactly, as they say,  but what a concept. Hope it catches on.  

    Comments

    LULU, life is short so I’m not going to all your bogus pictures. I will comment on one in which you accuse CNN of showing the same girl in multiple “events”. Snopes analyzed the photos and reports that only on event was reported by CNN. The little girl was handed off to different rescue workers during the same event.

    https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cnn-same-refugee-girl/

    Please take the time to do basic fact-checking

    Edit to add:

    I changed my mind. Your crap pissed me off. Here is an article about the child lying next to supposedly dead parents. The photograph is of the photographer’s nephew. It was not taken in Syria.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/heartbreaking-syria-orphan-photo-wasnt-taken-in-syria-and-not-of-orphan-9067956.html

    LULU, you are gullible. It is easy to fact check this nonsense.


    by rmrd0000 on Tue, 04/17/2018 - 10:48am

    rmrd,  as I composed my blog I remember thinking that the standard of critics here is to find one thing that can be disproved or argued with some merit and then claim that every part of the blog is worthless. I stand convicted on the part of my blog that you are responding to. I forgot to acknowledge explicitly, as I believed, that there were likely at least some false claims in what Zero Hedge published and I did not check google about any, much less all the pictures as I suspect you did. My error for being in a hurry. Good work on your part and my dumb mistake. I know that it is  ‘possible’ that every single thing in that string of photos was contrived. It is also possible that our designated enemies are the only one who put out mendacious propaganda. It is also possible, actually likely based on your common responses to anything I post casting doubt on our governments claims regarding foreign policy, that you believe that to be the case.

     I believe that what is claimed about Israel in my links in this case is true of the U.S.A and Russia, and virtually every significant country. Notice that I asked which pictures are contrived and which represent the truth about the pictures. I “accused” no party of anything regarding them but I do now acknowledge that I would still bet there is more truth than fiction in what the link intends to convey.

    Did you read the previous two  links which I said were the point of the blog and which I should have posted as stand alone articles since I had greater confidence in there veracity? Are they  shown to be worthless contrived lies from highly questionable sources intended to deceive readers into believing wrongly that “our side” uses bs propaganda too for the explicit purpose of making people believe crap so they will go along with crimes that violate international law as well as the demands of common human decency? 

     I hope you will give equal time to those links and respond  to them also. Meanwhile, I would clean up this response a bit but I am about to leave for a personal meeting and then shortly after get on a  flight of 21 hours including connections, so a delay in getting back will not necessarily mean I am ignoring anything else that follows. 

     


    by A Guy Called LULU on Tue, 04/17/2018 - 11:53am

    the standard of critics here is to find one thing that can be disproved or argued with some merit and then claim that every part of the blog is worthless.

    That's not what's happening here lulu. When a large easily discovered error is found it does draw into question the rest of the blog. That error should have been discovered by the editors. Now we know we can't trust the editor. The rest of the blog isn't worthless but now we just don't know. We now have to research and investigate every claim to sort fact from fiction. You're asking us to do the work the editor and journalists should be doing. That's incredibly time consuming so rather than do that work we dismiss the article and spend most of our time on sites with a higher reputation for journalistic standards.

    None of us are independent reporters. While we all should question the news we read mostly we have to trust the source of that news. Both you and I trust our news sources without independently verifying every claim. We have to, no one has the time to independently verify every claim in every news article we read. What we're saying is many of the sites you link to have been caught often in egregious errors of fact. Consequently we don't trust them anymore. And we wonder why you still do.


    by ocean-kat on Tue, 04/17/2018 - 1:37pm

    LULU, the problem with your links is that they were easily proven to be false. CNN is a news organization that would issue a correction for stories that placed the same girl at different events. You are biased against the United States, this allows you to wind up defending Putin and Assad. 


    by rmrd0000 on Tue, 04/17/2018 - 3:03pm

    Ok, I looked at your link. All of them are pics on twitter that appear to have been faked. There are no links to major news publications that were taken in by the fake pictures. If your point is that twitter should not be considered a reliable news source I agree. I've never been on twitter nor have I every followed twitter feeds on my computer. I occasionally pay scant attention to what's going viral on twitter merely to try to understand popular culture. That's all twitter is useful for, to understand what's happening in the popular imagination. To point out the obvious, that twitter is not a reliable news source, doesn't discredit any of the arguments made by major reputable news organizations.


    by ocean-kat on Tue, 04/17/2018 - 2:08pm

    Tyler Durden is fake:

    Zerohedge: news portion of the site is written by a group of editors who collectively write under the pseudonym "Tyler Durden" (a character from the novel and film Fight  Club.

    Zero Hedge's content has been classified as "alt-right", anti-establishment, conspiratorial, and economically pessimistic, and has been criticized for presenting extreme and sometimes pro-Russian views.


    by NCD on Tue, 04/17/2018 - 2:29pm

    allow me to pile on? and then there's the Bob Dylan thing cheeky


    by artappraiser on Tue, 04/17/2018 - 2:48pm

    AA, you describe your posting of a link critical of Dylan as “piling on”.  I wonder what your point is. I would like you to explain. I don’t think you will. I doubt you can.

    I think that The Electronic Intifada has mountains of evidence supporting their positions re the Israeli/Palestinian situation but the conclusions about "Neighborhood Bully" reached by the critic you linked to can be debated if there is any point in doing so. Michael F. Brown really stretches to make his case.

       With its opening lyrics parroting Israel’s own narrative of being the blameless, perpetual victim of Arab violence, “Neighborhood Bully” came just a year after Israel’s bloody invasion of Lebanon that would claim tens of thousands of lives:

    Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man

    His enemies say he’s on their land

    They got him outnumbered about a million to one

    He got no place to escape to, no place to run

    He’s the neighborhood bully

     Dylan calls Israel a “bully”. Is that a compliment? Is calling Israel a bully a way to “hold Israel blameless”? Is being a bully ever a good thing? Does Israel call itself a bully or like being called one? Does calling Israel a bully indicate an embrace of their bullying? I don’ tsee it.   “His enemies say he’s on their land.” Yes, they do say that. So does most of the the rest of the world. They say it as an indictment. Does repeating that indictment indicate that Dylan approves?

    Brown goes on to say:

    Yet Dylan sang these words exonerating Israel even after the world had witnessed the horrifying massacres of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by an Israeli-allied militia during the occupation of Beirut.

    I do not see exoneration or apology or embrace of Israeli actions in Dylan's song as much as I see description of the Israel/Palestinian situation in which Israel is clearly a "bully".  There is of course more that can be interpreted and then argued about in the rest of the lyrics but so what? Whatever argument might carry the day I would still wonder; In what way is the weak critique of a single Dylan song you linked to, ‘piling on’, to criticisms of a link which proves without a doubt that someone is lying their ass off. That link does so even if you are convinced that I am mistaken about which side, something I did not assert or claim to know, is doing the lying? Pile on more clearly and tell me what connection to Dylan do you see that undermines everything or anything about my blog, even, apparently, the parts regarding Israel's fake news programs as described by '+972 Magazine' which you and everyone else responding so far have studiously avoided touching upon in any way.  

    edited to add the underlined word "not" where it needed to be.


    by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 04/21/2018 - 7:03am

    re: Zero Hedge's content has been classified as "alt-right", anti-establishment, conspiratorial,....

    Didn't need to be told that because to believe the whole false flag thing for which they present a few pictures as supposed evidence, one also has to believe that the U.S. has total control of the U.N., including organizations like WHO. Whether Obama or Trump is in control of the U.S., the U.N. is our deep-state's puppet.Comes to mind that   this Is an unfortunate sorry side effect of Bush administration machinations over the Iraq invasion.

    No surprise that some rightieTrump fans like Trump because while campaigning he made that an issue. Is a classic, actually, they deep state thing, the Illuminati or the Trilateral commission running the world, making Kennedy go into Vietnam, then killing him when he supposedly was thinking of withdrawing, in the end it's soothing to feel some big bosses are out there causing everything and it's not just chaos.

    Ah but  what's new? Russia as a friendly, not an enemy! Just a bunch of honest  isolationist oligarchs that don't want anything special but to lead a quiet nationalistic life, not party to the one world conspiracy, out of the loop. Helping poor leaders when the hegemon picks on them out of the goodness of their hearts.


    by artappraiser on Tue, 04/17/2018 - 3:50pm

    Zero Hedge does seem to be a right wing conspiracy site. Sites like this have a long history among the right, the Illuminati, Trilateral commission, Agenda 21 etc. You're right that Trump did play into that. But I think you're mixing up some right wing conspiracy memes and left wing conspiracy memes. Lulu usually links to the left wing conspiracy sites. Zero Hedge is unusual for him.

    Some of the older far left liberals know the history of Latin America and remember American support for right wing dictators, their atrocities and the left wing revolutionaries that fought them. There's some merit to that view in that our government and CIA covert ops did support these murderous allies of America. Baptista was as bad as he's portrayed and he was our puppet. As was Pinochet and others. It's a sordid chapter in our history. Those fighting him were justified,were often Marxists and supported by Russia. So Che Guevarra becomes a hero in the good fight against these dictators.

    These modern conspiracy sites for the left play on that old dynamic, America as the evil hegemon, Russia as the supporter of the downtrodden and oppressed. It's not really a right wing meme. What they miss, these American "revolutionaries" wearing their Che Guevarra T-shirts, is Che was a murderous thug on the same level as Baptista and Russia had it's own left wing dictators committing atrocities against their own people that equaled or exceeded America's Pinochet. We can rightly condemn American behavior as it fought the cold war with Russia but when you look at it the atrocities committed by the communist regimes was worse. That doesn't excuse American behavior. I'm just pushing back on the America bad Russia good left wing meme Lulu espouses.


    by ocean-kat on Fri, 04/20/2018 - 4:55pm

    Some of the older far left liberals know the history of Latin America and remember American support for right wing dictators, their atrocities and the left wing revolutionaries that fought them.     Yes, some do and to the extent that others do not know that history it is a crying shame because that history itself is a crying shame and it is the actual history of our country.   There's some merit to that view in that our government and CIA covert ops did support these murderous allies of America.   Some merit? It is an absolutely unequivocal truth that our government and CIA covert ops did support many corrupt murderous leaders and actually installed some of them.    We can rightly condemn American behavior as it fought the cold war with Russia but when you look at it the atrocities committed by the communist regimes was worse. That doesn't excuse American behavior. I'm just pushing back on the America bad Russia good left wing meme Lulu espouses.    You put the bad behavior that you acknowledge in the past tense during the Cold War as if it does not go on to this day. That is a mistake that should be obvious. You say Russian atrocities have been worse. Maybe, but who did worse in the sense of being responsible for more atrocities in more countries in modern history after Russia’s revolution was consolidated is debatable. Neither side comes out looking good, much less innocent. All that said, I do not push an America bad Russia good meme as you say. I say Russia bad, America bad too. I am an American. If I have any responsibility along with any right to try to change either country then that right and responsibility should be directed at America first. 

    I add and emphasize that stressing the circular Russia-bad meme while exonerating or ignoring everything America does because Russia is so bad to the point that Russia is evil, evil being an ultimate term,  even when the examples showing Russia to be evil are things we have done throughout our history and are continuing to do now, is crazy not to acknowledge.  I do not criticize America to support Russia over America in any way.  I do it to voice my non-support for America's continuing the same murderous stupidity going forward. It is not done with any high hope of success.


    by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 04/21/2018 - 8:34am

    Russia hacked our election. Fake Russian BlackLivesMatter websites were used to instill fear in white voters. Russia s also used fake websites to encourage black to stay home rather than vote. Russia is run by Putin, a man  who presides over a country that makes sport of assaulting African students. In fact, many wingnuts view Russia as the prime example of a pure white, anti-Gay country. Criticizing Putin’s actions seem to be the rational thing to do. Why am I obligated to criticize the United States before I am allowed to point out Putin’s actions? 


    by rmrd0000 on Sat, 04/21/2018 - 11:00am

    You are not obligated in any meaningful way to do anything. What makes obsessing with Russia's fault different than doing so about America's faults is this: You can blame everything on the Russians and agree that we need to respond against them with some kind of overt force until your face turns blue and you will be spending all your breath in the wrong direction. Putin will be unmoved. I guess it is hypothetical until it works but our own government is supposedly obligated to consider our wishes.  We have the right, and some would say the obligation, to consider soberly what we wish for and then to demand that consideration from our government. Something I feel a bit of a moral obligation to speak out about is the indiscriminate killing of brown and black people all over the world, not just in America. I love my country just as I am sure you do too. I don't "love" my government as it operates and I am free to know and say that because I am not confused into thinking that my country and my government are the same thing. 


    by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 04/21/2018 - 12:33pm

    I want the government to Black Russian interference. Trump is enamored with Putin, so that won’t happe My option is to decrease Trump’s power by voting out Republicans. Democrats will make an effort to block the Russians from targeting blacks. I don’t expect much from Trump or Putin because they are both white supremacists. 

    Other then complaining on websites, what are you doing to stop foreign abuses?


    by iPhonermrd (not verified) on Sat, 04/21/2018 - 1:30pm

    Except for Israel, I've never seen Lulu complain about foreign abuses. His stuff always comes across as a very clear message that the U.S. and Israel cause all the trouble in the world, one way or another. As if we just became like Sweden, most of all the other bad stuff in the world would go away, because we are so powerful economically and size-wise, like in the end, we cause it all.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 04/21/2018 - 5:26pm

    Lulu, your "circular meme" is: stressing the circular America-bad meme while exonerating or ignoring everything Russia does because America is so bad.

    Your meme is so rigid, it throws in EU governments with the US when they implicate Russia in major crimes.


    by NCD on Sat, 04/21/2018 - 11:14am

    You claim you don't criticize America to support Russia yet every time there's some incident you ignore the findings all journalists from all major news organizations and several country's investigations as well as investigations by international bodies to link us to some obscure site that invariably claims they're all part of a vast conspiracy to hide the truth and blame poor innocent beleaguered Putin and Russia. Sites that have been repeatedly caught in egregious errors of fact and never issue corrections when caught. Yet you continue to trust them. /shrug, what ever. I stand by my analysis.


    by ocean-kat on Sat, 04/21/2018 - 2:14pm

    Just for the record, what the heck, here's more lazy bastards reporting what must somehow be very crafty U.S. deep state propaganda:

    Syrian medics 'subjected to extreme intimidation' after Douma attack

    Doctors say those who treated patients after attack have been told they and their families will be targeted if they speak out

    By Martin Chulov in Beirut and Kareem Shaheem in Istanbul for TheGuardian.com, April 17

    The head of the largest medical relief agency in Syria claims that medics who responded to the suspected gas attack in Douma have been subjected to “extreme intimidation” by Syrian officials who seized biological samples, forced them to abandon patients and demanded their silence.

    Dr Ghanem Tayara, the director of the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organisations (UOSSM) said doctors responsible for treating patients in the hours after the 7 April attack have been told that their families will be at risk if they offer public testimonies about what took place.

    A number of doctors who spoke to the Guardian this week say the intimidation from the regime has increased in the past five days, a timeframe that coincides with the arrival in Damascus of a team from the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which aims to determine whether chemical weapons were used. All the medics insisted on anonymity, citing the fear for their lives and those of their families.

    “There has been a very heavy security presence on the ground ever since the attack and they have been targeting doctors and medics in a very straightforward way,” said Tayara, a Birmingham-based physician, now in Turkey where he is supervising the departure from Syria of some of the Douma medics. “Any medic who tried to leave Douma was searched so vigorously, especially for samples. At one medical point, seven casualties were taken away. The Russian military police were heavily involved. They were directing things [....]

     


    by artappraiser on Tue, 04/17/2018 - 7:39pm

    looks like another toady of the U.S. deep state:

    Syria: Sustained fighting taking ‘enormous’ toll on civilians, UN aid chief tells Security Council

    @ UN News Service, April 17

    Despite the Security Council’s demand for cessation of hostilities in Syria, civilians in the war-torn country continue to bear the “enormous” cost of intense military activity by parties to the conflict, the top United Nations relief official said Tuesday.

    “Since the passage of resolution 2401, the Secretary-General has on many occasions called for its full implementation,” stated Mark Lowcock, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, referring to the the Council text adopted in late February calling for a 30-day ceasefire across Syria.

    “However, rather than implement the resolution of this Council, we have seen parties to the conflict sustain intense military activity at an enormous human cost.”

    Briefing the 15-member Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Syria [....]

    “I cannot overstate the importance of sustaining and scaling up the international response,” stressed the UN aid chief. [.....]

    They also have this, all 14 nations falling for the U.S. propaganda against righteous mother Russia:

    Security Council rejects Russian request to condemn airstrikes in Syria

    14 April 2018

    In an address to an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Saturday, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres cautioned against the crisis in Syria “spiraling out of control."

    [....] It was called by Russia which failed to get the other 14 Council members to adopt a resolution condemning the airstrikes [....]

     


    by artappraiser on Tue, 04/17/2018 - 7:55pm

    Syria After Trump’s Withdrawal: Top Reasons an “Arab Force” will Fail

    By  @ JuanCole.com

    [.....] The plan raises questions, however, on several fronts. Without US presence and backing, will the Kurds be willing and able to stay in Arab southern Raqqa and parts of Deir al-Zor?

    Without the US troop presence, will ISIL remnants be able to regroup and take back territory in eastern Syria, reconstituting a mini-caliphate from which they can plot further attacks on Paris and perhaps on Iraq?

    The US policy elite had hoped to use its presence in eastern Syria to block overland truck shipments of weapons to Lebanon’s Hizbullah from Iran. Would Iran be strengthened by Trump’s departure from that region?

    At the suggestion of the notoriously unstable and corrupt Newt Gingrich, Trump appointed as his national security adviser the perpetually angry, aide-abusing, dishonest warmonger John Bolton (who has shadowy ties with the People’s Jihadi Organization or MEK of Iran, which was long on the terrorist watchlist). Bolton wants to create a Sunni Arab patrol in the region which could prevent any resurgence of ISIL and could block the Iranian truck trade coming from Iraq.

    Here are the problems with Bolton’s wild-eyed and impracticable plan:

    [....]

    Russia and its client, the Syrian Baath government of Bashar al-Assad, also object strenuously to the US presence in eastern Syria and the apparent attempt to create an autonomous Kurdish-ruled entity there. That is one reason Trump seems eager to get out.


    by artappraiser on Thu, 04/19/2018 - 3:40am