In the news...

Let's take a quick look around...

Inconvenient democracy. Charles Murray, author of the racist "classic" The Bell Curve, has come out with a new diatribe outlining the problem with democracy: It provides an instrument by which poor people might benefit themselves at the expense of rich people. This is pretty much the same critique inherent in Mitt Romney's infamous "47 percent" remark and in some of Sharron Angle's pronouncements.

Murray suggests using the court system to subvert democracy. This trick will work, but only to an extent. The one-percenters are coming to understand that nothing short of revolution will get rid of the hated D-word once and for all.

Filibuster? Rand Paul has threatened to semi-filibuster the reauthorization of parts of the Patriot Act. I hate to admit it (because I am hardly a Paul fan) but this is precisely the right move.

Privacy is not a simplistic right-v-left issue. On national security, the two parties have coalesced, despite much snarling rhetorical pretense to the contrary. Most people on the left support privacy rights. Unfortunately, the Democratic party is stuck with Obama -- and with Hillary Clinton, who will probably do no better on that topic. If, to placate critics within his own party, Obama makes some feints toward NSA reform, the neocon right will slam him as soft on terrorism -- because, y'know, he's a Muslim socialist Marxist Satanic atheist jihadi who hates baby Jesus and wants to eat your puppy.

Privacy has enemies and defenders within both parties. Like it or not, if we are going to defeat the NSA, we will need a left/right coalition of radical liberals and radical libertarians. (Of course, the libertarians will become our enemies again when the talk turns to reining in the power of the large corporations. This must be understood and accepted from the outset.)

The bulk telephone collection system will start to shut down this Friday if these Patriot Act provisions are not re-upped. Normally, I can't stand Rand. But in this case, I stand with Rand.

Terrifying: ISIS has taken the historic Syrian town of Palymra, where precious archeological sites are located.

If anything happens to those irreplaceable historical artifacts, blame Barack Obama and blame the neocons. Never forget that the neocons created ISIS as a proxy army to unseat Assad -- although perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers were allowed to create ISIS and to fund the Nusra front. If Obama and Hillary Clinton had not signed onto this psychotic scheme for regime change in Syria, Palmyra would now be safe.

ISIS could be destroyed within weeks if Obama would simply work with Assad. Keep that last sentence in mind every single time this administration -- or its right-wing critics -- makes any sort of reference to ISIS.

Consider this metaphor: Suppose someone were to bring an untethered tiger into a schoolyard. If the beast begins to eat children, should you blame the tiger? Or do you blame the idiot who brought the tiger to that place?

If ISIS wreaks destruction upon Palmyra, blame Obama. More importantly, blame his neocon masters. They are the ones who brought an army of tigers into the Levant.

Chris gets it. To my surprise, Chris Matthews -- normally one of our most befuddled teevee pundits -- has finally started to figure things out. The other night, he weighed in on the current "Why Iraq" debate...

...the people who wanted that war in the worst ways, neocons so called, Wolfowitz, certainly Cheney.. it’s the same crowd of people that want us to overthrow Bashar Assad, .. it’s the same group of people that don’t want to negotiate at all with the Iranians, don’t want any kind of rapprochement with the Iranians, they want to fight that war. They’re willing to go in there and bomb. They have a consistent impulsive desire to make war on Arab and Islamic states in a neverending campaign, almost like an Orwellian campaign they will never outlive, that’s why I have a problem with that thinking. … we’ve got to get to the bottom of it. Why did they take us to Iraq, because that’s the same reason they want to take us into Damascus and why they want to have permanent war with Iran.

Bravo! He's asking the right question.

I'll add this: It is far too simplistic to define the term neoconservative as a synonym for "pro-Israel." The neocons are also pro-Saudi and anti-Russia. Indeed, the Saudis may be the driving force.

Eric Draitser refers to the war in Syria as the new Nakba.

Another day, another false flag: The Australian news show 60 Minutes argued that Vladimir Putin was responsible for the downing of Malaysian Airliner Flight 17. Unfortunately, the evidence adduced in that program seems to have been pure fake, as Robert Parry points out here and here.

The whole argument comes down to BUK missiles, which were supposedly fired from territory held by Russian-speaking Ukrainians fighting against the American-supported neo-Nazi government in Kiev. In fact, the fighting lines were very fluid at that time. At first, our mainstream media propagandists told us that only the Russians possessed such missiles -- but as noted in a previous Cannonfire post, the Ukrainians had such weapons, and had even used them in a previous incident.

As always, our first and best question is cui bono. How could Putin possibly benefit from the downing of a cvilian jet?

What I was told by a source briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts was that at least some of them – after reviewing electronic intercepts, overhead satellite images and other intelligence – had reached the conclusion that the shoot-down was a provocation, or a false-flag operation, carried out by a rogue element of the Ukrainian military operating under one of the hard-line oligarchs.

I'm reminded of the debate over the sarin attack in Syria, which the media tried to pin on Assad, even though he could not have benefited in any way from gassing civilians. We now know that, behind the scenes, there were those within the American intelligence community who understood the truth.

Of course, other people within the intelligence community have a phobic reaction to anything that reeks of honesty. Case in point...

Michael Morell's a real piece of work. Remember Mike? He's the former CIA guy we talked about in an earlier post. I suspect that he hopes to be running the Agency in a coming Republican administration. Here he is again, trying to rewrite history in all sorts of neoconnish ways...

SAM HUSSEINI: You’re not acknowledging that the Bush administration falsified information on Iraqi WMDs and other aspects in the build up to the Iraq war.

MICHAEL MORELL: I’m not acknowledging it because it’s not true. It is a great myth. It is a great myth that the Bush White House or hard-liners in the Bush administration pushed the Central Intelligence Agency, pushed the U.S. intelligence community and every other intelligence service in the world that looked at this issue to believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Oh, and that Downing Street memo? Another myth. No such memo ever existed. And all of that stuff you heard about Joe and Valerie Wilson? Again, pure myth. Those two individuals are figments of your imagination. Everything you've heard about Curveball is wrong. He was completely reliable. If you doubt his word, what's next? Are you going to doubt ANATOLY GOLITSYN? And Colin Powell didn't tell as single lie when he spoke at the U.N...

As he walked away from the interview, Morell was heard to mutter: And I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white suits as they're coming to take me awaaaaayyy! Hee hee ha ha ho ho...