Month: June 2016

by William Skink

For those in the LGBT community rallying against hate and intolerance, I’m sure it’s tempting to see the Democratic party as the political party that has your back. But the awkward truth of the matter is you are merely pawns in a larger political game.

Domestically, sure, Democrats have your back because it’s politically advantageous to do so. Religious fundamentalism is the purview of conservatives, after all.

Or is it?

Things get a little more complicated when one moves beyond the borders of this exceptional country because a different sort of calculus is required to maintain global hegemony. LGBT rights in this context only matter if they can be used against a global adversary, like we saw with Russia during the Olympic games:

Gay rights activists across the world have been holding a day of protests against the Russian government, just two days before the Winter Olympics begin in the southern resort of Sochi.

The protests seek to persuade sponsors of the event to speak out over Russia’s controversial laws on homosexuality.

The gay rights protests were organised in 19 cities around the globe.

The issue of gay rights was cynically exploited by western nations to embarrass Russia during the Olympic games. If gay rights were actually supported by western nations, then why the selective outrage against Russia and not, say, Islamic fundamentalists in countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, 2 of the 10 countries were being gay is punishable by death?

Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia declared it wanted to execute gay people who showed their sexuality in public or online:

The government in the Sunni Kingdom is reportedly demanding tougher punishments on those found guilty and claimed social media has caused a boom in homosexuality.

According to Okaz newspaper, the last six months has seen 35 cases of homosexuality and 50 cases of cross-dressers as well as cases of “sexual perversion” in Saudi Arabia.

The judiciary reportedly also claimed there has been a large rise in “perverts” displaying “sins and obscenities” on social media in the Sunni Kingdom.

It comes after a Saudi man was arrested this week when he raised the rainbow flag outside his home in Jeddah.

In the wake of the Orlando massacre, some confusing information is coming out about the shooter that indicates he suffered not just from a mental illness, but very possibly was a conflicted gay man caught between his sexual orientation and his parents intolerance.

Omar Mateen had been a patron of the gay bar, Pulse, ‘for years’ according to a witness.  Mateen also went on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia fives years ago, before he got on the radar of the FBI.

While this complicates matters, for a presidential candidate like Hillary Clinton, it’s pretty simple: say anything to get elected, even if it’s a problematic term like radical Islamism:

Hillary Clinton used the term “radical Islamism” on Monday, marking the first time she has used the controversial phrase and signaling a break from President Barack Obama’s stance on it. She went on to stress that using the much-debated term for terrorism isn’t the point.

“Look, I think Trump, as usual is obsessed with name calling and from my perspective, it matters what we do, not what we say. It mattered that we got bin Laden, not the name we called him,” she said on TODAY on Monday.

“But if he is somehow suggesting I don’t call this for what it is, he hasn’t been listening. I have clearly said that we face terrorist enemies who use Islam to justify slaughtering innocent people. And, to me, radical jihadism, radical Islamism, I think they mean the same thing. I’m happy to say either, but that’s not the point.”

Luckily for Hillary, her supporters are brainwashed cult followers incapable of seeing the reality that terrorists and jihadists are great tools for neoliberal hawks like Hillary Clinton when they are slaughtering innocent people in non-aligned countries, like Libya and Syria.

Also, radical Islamism is just fine when it’s funding a significant part of her campaign for president.

Radical Islamic regimes like Saudi Arabia should remember that Hillary is a serial liar, so they shouldn’t be too upset when she shovels a pile of bullshit like this:

The third area that demands attention is preventing radicalization and countering efforts by ISIS and other international terrorist networks to recruit in the United States and Europe. For starters, it is long past time for the Saudis, the Qataris and the Kuwaitis and others to stop their citizens from funding extremist organizations. And they should stop supporting radical schools and mosques around the world that have set too many young people on a path towards extremism. We also have to use all our capabilities to counter jihadist propaganda online. This is something that I spend a lot of time on at the State Department.

In a response that quickly got deleted and has been disavowed as a hack, the crown prince allegedly stated the Saudis have funded 20% of Hillary’s campaign:

Jordan’s official news agency said on Tuesday that it was hacked when, over the weekend, a story briefly appeared on its website that said Saudi Arabia is a major funder of Hillary Clinton’s campaign to become the next president of the United States.

On Sunday a report appeared on the Petra News Agency website that included what were described as exclusive comments from Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The comments included a claim that Riyadh has provided 20 percent of the total funding to the prospective Democratic candidate’s campaign.

The report did not remain on the website for long, although the Washington-based Institute for Gulf Affairs later re-published an Arabic version of it, which quoted Prince Mohammed as having said Saudi Arabia had provided with “full enthusiasm” an undisclosed amount of money to Clinton.

“Saudi Arabia always has sponsored both Republican and Democratic Party of America and in America current election also provide with full enthusiasm 20 percent of the cost of Hillary Clinton’s election even though some events in the country don’t have a positive look to support the king of a woman (sic) for presidency,” the report quoted Prince Mohammed as having said.

On Monday a spokesperson for American public relations firm the Podesta Group contacted MEE to say that they work with the Saudi Royal Court and to request a correction to our earlier story that said the Jordanian news agency had deleted the quotes from Prince Mohammed.

Hillary should be careful not to bite the jihadist hand that feeds her and her sycophants like Tony Podesta, brother to John Podesta, who is paid to do damage control for the Saudis. This article is from last year, but is very relevant to current events:

New evidence shows that wealthy Saudi Arabian interests continue to invest heavily in getting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton elected president. And Clinton’s ties with one of the world’s most brutal regimes may run deeper than anyone had imagined.

According to a new report from award-winning investigative journalist Michael Isikoff, the Saudi government has quietly handed a lucrative new “public relations” contract to Washington, DC lobbying outfit the Podesta Group. At least $200,000 has already changed hands.

The problem? The company is owned by top Clinton fundraiser Tony Podesta and the contract comes at a time when the Saudi government is facing international scrutiny over airstrikes in Yemen and a crackdown on Saudi political opponents.

When Hillary tries to talk tough on radical Islam, those who haven’t been lobotomized into supporting her should know she is full of shit. Hillary Clinton is fucking bankrolled by these murderous bastards who use undue pressure to get the UN to drop them from the murderous bastard list they deserve to be on:

The United Nations Secretary General excised the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen from an annual UN register of children’s rights violators, after the middle-eastern country and its coalition partners threatened to cut off crucial funding to the world body.

Ban Ki-Moon said the removal of Saudi Arabia from the list was “one of the most painful and difficult decisions” he has had to make as Secretary General, describing the pressure the Arab nation had exerted on the UN as “unacceptable”.

His admission came after the coalition – which comprises the Saudis, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal and Sudan – was cut from the appendix of the UN’s annual Children and Armed Conflict report, to the dismay of human rights groups.

The appendix lists those countries that have violated children’s rights over the preceding 12 months. UN Investigators found that the Saudi coalition was to blame for the deaths of more than half of the 510 children killed in the conflict in Yemen last year.

So Democrats, before attending the next vigil, consider that in a few months you will be voting for a lying sociopath funded by jihadist child killers who sponsor terrorists like the ones who attacked us on 9/11, yet still are protected from exposure by powerful, treasonous forces within our own government.

by William Skink

It looks like the recent coronation of Hillary Clinton combined with the tragedy in Orlando has riled up the conspicuously quiet partisans at Intelligent Discontent, as evidenced by this comment from Pete Talbot on yesterday’s post:

“Keep pimping those guns, Skink”

As liberals gear up to squeeze every last drop of moral indignation they can get from the corpses of dead Latinos (a twofer!) in Orlando, the hypocrisy is glaring for those with the eyes to see. To see what? To see non-American innocent murdered dead people as, you know, people.

I don’t pimp guns, and I’ll eloquently reply that Pete can go fuck himself for making the spurious claim. Attacking me is pretty pathetic when the true pimp of murderous weaponry is the Queen of his sorry-ass political party:

Hillary Clinton’s statement on the mass murder in Orlando is mostly a confection of the empty, saccharine pieties for which the entire American political class is known – but it concluded with a revealing statement.

There she said: “This is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States and it reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets.” (Emphasis, jw)

But those “weapons of war” have been used on the streets of Iraq and in midnight raids on the civilian population in the war there that Hillary so ardently backed.

Does she even grasp what she is saying? She is saying that it is an atrocity to use such weapons on Americans – but not on the brown people, civilians in their homes, in Iraq and throughout the greater Middle East and North Africa in U.S. wars of aggression and the occupation. To be horrified by the use of those weapons on Americans but not on Arabs qualifies as racism of the basest sort.

I know, isn’t it weird he’s calling Hillary Clinton a racist? I thought only Donald Trump and all conservatives and/or stupid white sexist hicks were racist, never ever ever morally righteous liberals.

This is American exceptionalism at its most disgusting. Our casualties get an emotional response from the President, while the literally millions of innocent victims caught in the cross-fire of America’s global war glut will only get more death and destruction if the War Queen and Gun Pimp, Hillary Clinton, obtains the White House.

The above quote comes from Counterpunch, and I know how those ID writers feel about Counterpunch, so here’s a little bit from Mother Jones about their Democratic gun pimp presidential candidate:

In 2011, the State Department cleared an enormous arms deal: Led by Boeing, a consortium of American defense contractors would deliver $29 billion worth of advanced fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, despite concerns over the kingdom’s troublesome human rights record. In the years before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, Saudi Arabia had contributed $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, and just two months before the jet deal was finalized, Boeing donated $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to an International Business Times investigation released Tuesday.

The Saudi transaction is just one example of nations and companies that had donated to the Clinton Foundation seeing an increase in arms deals while Hillary Clinton oversaw the State Department. IBT found that between October 2010 and September 2012, State approved $165 billion in commercial arms sales to 20 nations that had donated to the foundation, plus another $151 billion worth of Pentagon-brokered arms deals to 16 of those countries—a 143 percent increase over the same time frame under the Bush Administration. The sales boosted the military power of authoritarian regimes such as Qatar, Algeria, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman, which, like Saudi Arabia, had been criticized by the department for human rights abuses.

I’m not the gun pimp here, and I won’t be the one with blood on my hands by voting for this evil political creature.

by William Skink

Tonight I went downtown for a date night with the wife (and baby) because grandma and grandpa had our other wild creatures for the evening. We got a good 20 minutes in the wine bar before baby got fussy, requiring that I take a quick stroll outside to calm her down.

The first person I saw, a woman walking toward me, appeared slightly disoriented and was audibly talking to herself, muttering profanities. I took a left down the alley to avoid her. I looped around to Pine street, where the new art park will soon be installed, and as I walked toward Higgins I noticed another mentally unstable person who I recognized from the shelter, primarily because he pulled a knife on me as I escorted him from the building one day. For that offense he got a disorderly conduct ticket, a misdemeanor.

The systemic atrophy that keeps unstable people from getting the help they need, for me, is more threatening than the possibility of becoming a victim of a statistically rare mass-casualty shooting event. Obviously that perspective won’t be a part of the unfolding narrative that will ensue this week after the deadliest mass-casualty shooting event to happen on American soil went down early this morning in Orlando.

Regarding the political narrative, the reaction from opposing camps will be the same stale, predictable reactions we have become disturbingly accustomed to. To put it in terms of the presidential campaign, The Donald will demonize followers of Islam, while Hillary will perform the liberal alchemy of transforming tragedy into a call for gun control.

And both will be wrong.

If what is initially being reported holds up, the assailant of this massacre doesn’t fit the quick mold of an Islamic fundamentalist or a deranged killer that more gun controlling regulation would have stopped. He had a firearms license that not just anyone can obtain, and despite the reported catalyst of seeing men kiss in public, dad is saying his alleged killer son wasn’t religious.

And then there’s that company he worked for, G4S:

In a surprising discovery, the Palm Beach Post first reported that according to state records, Orlando shooter Omar Mateen – who as we reported earlier was licensed as a security guard and also holds a firearms license – was employed by the US subsidiary of G4S plc, a British multinational security services company, whose US-headquarters are located in Jupiter, Fla, and which also happens to be the world’s largest security company by revenue.

The article cites a claim by Judicial Watch that G4S has been contracted by Uncle Sam to essentially drive and dump illegal immigrants in locations like Phoenix, avoiding those bothersome bureaucratic processes the Feds would be required to adhere to, were they doing the dumping. From the link:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is quietly transporting illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to Phoenix and releasing them without proper processing or issuing court appearance documents, Border Patrol sources tell Judicial Watch. The government classifies them as Other Than Mexican (OTM) and this week around 35 were transferred 116 miles north from Tucson to a Phoenix bus station where they went their separate way. Judicial Watch was present when one of the white vans carrying a group of OTMs arrived at the Phoenix Greyhound station on Buckeye Road.
…
A security company contracted by the U.S. government is driving the OTMs from the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector where they were in custody to Phoenix, sources said. The firm is called G4S and claims to be the world’s leading security solutions group with operations in more than 100 countries and 610,000 employees. G4S has more than 50,000 employees in the U.S. and its domestic headquarters is in Jupiter, Florida. Judicial Watch is filing a number of public records requests to get more information involving the arrangement between G4S and the government, specifically the transport of illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to other parts of the country. The photo accompanying this story shows the uniformed G4S guard that transported the OTMs this week from Tucson to Phoenix.

Fodder for the right, and fodder for the less-right (because the left doesn’t exist).

As for G4S, I can’t imagine a private security firm’s business culture could contribute to a monster that so efficiently dehumanized socially constructed “others” he was capable of laying waste to a gay nightclub in Orlando. I’m sure the Democrats and Republican in Florida who have taken G4S money this election cycle will want to know more about the kind of business G4S is doing in the states, right?

I wish I could do myself the favor of just avoiding the news cycle this week. It’s June in Westeros, so I might as well enjoy it. Besides, it’s too late to build any more walls.

Winter is coming…

by William Skink

Escaping the cult

Recently I read that Sally Field is using adjectives like “brilliant” and “miraculous” to promote Hillary Clinton. The actor and I agree. War enthusiast HRC brilliantly and miraculously uses the vagina card to firmly hold onto mostly older female and male feminists. War orgasmic Clinton has brilliantly and miraculously convinced a significant number of voters that she’ll work on their behalf, not Wall Street’s.

Democrats are now the aggressive war party

But the larger picture for the Democrats is that they have just adopted an extraordinary historical reversal whether they understand it or not. They have replaced the Republicans as the party of aggressive war, though clearly many Republicans still dance to the neocon drummer just as Clinton and “liberal interventionists” do. Still, Donald Trump, for all his faults, has adopted a relatively peaceful point of view, especially in the Mideast and with Russia.

While today many Democrats are congratulating themselves for becoming the first major party to make a woman the presumptive nominee, they may soon have to decide whether that distinction justifies putting an aggressive war hawk in the White House. In a way, the issue is an old one for Democrats, whether “identity politics” or anti-war policies are more important.

How Clinton donor got on sensitive intelligence board

Newly released State Department emails help reveal how a major Clinton Foundation donor was placed on a sensitive government intelligence advisory board even though he had no obvious experience in the field, a decision that appeared to baffle the department’s professional staff.

The emails further reveal how, after inquiries from ABC News, the Clinton staff sought to “protect the name” of the Secretary, “stall” the ABC News reporter and ultimately accept the resignation of the donor just two days later.

Hillary’s victory and next to last hurrah

Everybody knew that the awful day would come when the Queen of Chaos, the Empress of Ineptitude, would become the Democratic Party’s “presumptive” nominee.

It did last Tuesday. Wall Streeters, Cold Warriors, “humanitarian” interveners, Zionist settler supporters, and other assorted miscreants can now rejoice!

Add to that list those who think that, at last, little girls can grow up thinking that the “glass ceiling” is gone – as if it wasn’t already by 1984, when Walter Mondale selected Geraldine Ferraro to run as his Vice President.

Even the most retrograde right-wingers understand this: how else to explain the Sarah Palin cult? It is only liberal ladies of a certain age that are married to their nonsense.

In truth, Hillary’s problem has never been that she is a woman; it is that she is the woman she is.

But compelling evidence and sound arguments are useless in the face of ideologically fixed ideas; and so, the Gloria Steinem types are happy too. However, for everyone whose moral compass is sound and whose head is screwed on right, this final “super Tuesday” was, and always will be, a day of infamy.

Take your unity, Democrats, and put where the sun don’t shine.

by William Skink

Congratulations to Hillary Clinton, presumptive nominee of the Democrat Party for president of these here United States of America. Identity politics reigns supreme, and it is now time for the rank and file to bow to their Queen.

Identity politics is truly the most potent form of politics known to non-moron, non-racist, post-enlightenment liberals. It is like a strong elixir that, when taken in the right dosage, renders any and all contradicting pieces of data totally mute.

The list of what doesn’t matter is impressive.

The wreckage in the Middle East doesn’t matter, corporate corruption doesn’t matter, committing felonies doesn’t matter, exposing classified information to foreign governments doesn’t matter, lying doesn’t matter, changing positions like a shameless huckster doesn’t matter, none of it matters if one sips on the magical elixir of identity politics. Bam! Poof! Gone!

Just as it was with electing a black man, so strongly did the emotions swell last night in the breasts and chests of starry-eyed liberals, drunk on the notion that symbolic ascendancy means a goddamn thing to those left behind in misery. I heard it on NPR. The host described Hillary raising her arms, symbolically beneath an actual glass ceiling. Tears flowed.

It’s broken, the metaphor goes. No, the Democratic party is broken, and now a new generation will know it intimately as the wars get worse and the ticking time-bomb of our economy gets closer to cataclysm.

And you think the woman the banks lavished cash on will do the undoing of the banks necessary to save the country from these despicable oligarchs fucking over entire nations every chance they get?

Quiet, angry/sexist male. Be silent, B-Bro. The ceiling has been shattered, and now we can share an equal view of the coming storm.