Shut Up Iris

I found this article which supports nicely what I said in a previous blog post about the waste in the CIA and how much I hated it. So I was about to write an article lauding 'Veterans Today' and their adoption of my obviously enlightened stance on the CIA and how it should be abolished and the money used to build a super-robot President that we can just turn off when he says something stupid, but first I looked around their site.

I found stuff I agreed with: The USA shouldn't support our 'allies' that work against us (I'm still looking at you Israel) the CIA should be banned, let's not bomb Iran and lets get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. I then also noticed articles about world Zionist conspiracies, 9/11 and 'false flag' operations and John McCain=EVIL! I noticed that many of the views I hold are presented right alongside views that I consider the domain of crazy whack-jobs.

So I started thinking, am I a crazy whack-job? Is that how people see me??



So then I noticed I have guns, quite a few guns, one of them being an assault rifle. I also noticed that in my office are ten ammo cans and a quick guesstimate is that I've stock piled nearly three thousand rounds of ammunition. I go shooting fairly often, but not that fucking often. I also have a closet full of MRES, for camping, but fuck camping. Water purifiers a gas-mask and a uniform fit for a plucky 1940's British Commando, complete with beret. I own a fez with a Turkish Army General Staff badge on it and I get gun catalogs everyday, and some survival catalogs too.

Fuck, I may be a nutjob. I always thought maybe I was just more sensible than everyone else but maybe not, I could just be a bit off in my mind-tank.



Now I don't advocate overthrowing governments, I'm against that because being very lazy that shit sounds like a lot of work and I'm not wiling to do that. I don't think 9/11 was an inside job it was just a monumental fuck up by the Bush administration. I don't think the Jews that run Hollywood are out to get Oliver Stone, they probably just want to make movies. I've also said my peace about calling any politician 'evil', they are just politicians and just because they don't support what you support doesn't make them evil. Manipulative liars maybe, Evil? No.

So what do we take away from this?

First: Veterans Today is a great source for news and commentary not covered by 'mainstream' media. Second: they also are brave for allowing some nutjobs to articulate their nutjobbery. Third: If the Guv'mint gets on my lawn, they IS gettin shot! Fourth: No news source or blog should be judged by some 'fringe' thinkers and that we should applaud news sources that bring in those fringe ideas so that we can debate them as a society.

I would also like to point out that I filled in my census forms completely and mailed them back in plenty of time. Am I a whack-job? Maybe, but I think that might be okay.

I've read a few articles about this soccer World Cup thing, and seen part of a match or two while flipping past ESPN and here is the opinion I've formed of the entire thing. First: ESPN totally sucks unless it's Friday Night Fights or Pardon the Interruption. Wilbon is a Chicago guy and that's never bad and Kornheiser is a cranky old man with a short circuit between his mouth and his brain. Second: Soccer is still the gayest sport. Third: Soccer fans need to be rounded up and gassed.

Now some fans give me hope:


But most seem to be:


Now I've read some pundits go on and on about how the US of A needs to catch up with the rest of the world on this crazy soccer thing and that the US of A soccer team doing good will finally wake up the US of A to the greatness of soccer and all things soccer. I sure as hell hope not. We're already brain dead enough about politics up in this bitch to join in on the soccer-retardation that the rest of the world suffers from. Honestly invading a few countries for no reason does much less damage to the world than say the vuvuzela.

The vuvuzela is grounds for justifiable homicide. I can understand being a fan and wanting to make some noise for your team but the rest of the world is very bad at this. Normally I make it to about three or four Chicago Bulls games a year, and yes I shout and holler when a play is made, but here in the US, when your team is stinking up the joint or nothing is happening, we all stop the yelling. So far as I've seen soccer fans blow the vuvuzela no matter what, they blow it continuously. Why? I think it's because even soccer fans realize how pathetic and boring soccer is and how low they have become to travel to some arm-pit country in Africa to watch a game so what else can you do? The vuvuzela drowns out the sound of depression apparently.

The other thing I dislike is how hipsters here in the US of A have started calling soccer 'Football' or 'Futbol'. This is America damn it, it's 'soccer' 'football' is a sport with pads and hitting and professional dog-fighting.

On the scale of things that you have to be horribly depressed and/or retarded to like soccer ranks right up there with baseball. You know something isn't any real fun when it's only fun if you're wasted or have to distract yourself with a noise maker.

That is all.

As an American, I'm often struck by how far the United States will go to help and protect some allies and how little we are will do for others. I'm also struck by how few allies actually share any of America's basic interests or goals. Most of these are easy: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Georgia..................all non-democratic states that we share very little in common with that we routinely pony up money and weapons for. You might notice that at least one of those states has a bad hobby of funding terrorists to kill Americans (I'm looking at you Saudi Arabia) however I digress. In light of recent events I decided to look into two of America's allies: The State of Israel and the Republic of Turkey.

First , which is the better bang for the buck?



Israel: A break down of direct aid to Israel compiled in 2008 the tally was 112 billion dollars and that is at a current rate of about 3 billion dollars per year. That is a lot of fucking money. What does it go for? Mainly it goes to keeping Israel a first world economy. Israel is the only nation in the world that has a first world economy and yet still receives foreign monetary aid.

What do we get for that? In the Cold War we had an ally against Soviet Communist encroachment in the Middle East. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq were all Soviet clients as Iran also became after the Islamic Revolution. Since the Cold War? I couldn't tell you. As far as I can rationally determine we've gotten no value for the aid since the end of the Cold War, Who knows, maybe it's a good idea to hedge our bets.



Turkey: Turkish aid was a bit harder to find. You'll see that the data only comes up to 1999 and totals about 17 billion, roughly 1 billion a year, so if we extrapolate we can estimate the total at about 30 billion in total. Holy shit, that is next to nothing compared to Israel, we can also note that very little of the aid is military aid.

Bang for buck? Turkey is a NATO ally, the second largest NATO ally in fact and we get all the military, intelligence and training benefits that entails. During the Cold War Turkey even hosted our mid and short range nukes. Turkey is a member of the Nuclear NPT pact and Turkey has had no fear of swinging it's big stick on our behalf in the Middle East.

For what we pay, that's a win for the Republic of Turkey

Next, As an ally, who gives us actual combat support?

Winner of the last category is up first:

Turkey: Turkey has sent boots on the ground to Korea during the Korean War and the Turkish Brigade is credited as having saved the 2nd US Army from annihilation by the Chines and North Koreans. Turkey as a NATO member maintains the NATO Rapid Deployment Force and Turkey even offered to send troops into Northern Iraq during the first and second Gulf Wars, during the First Gulf War the US was able to use Incerlik Air Base to fly combat missions and supplies into Iraq. However in the Second Gulf War Turkey refused to allow US or coalition troops to use the base unless Turkey was allowed to send troops into Northern Iraq, the US declined, not wanting to anger it's Kurdish allies in Iraq. However Turkey did reconcile with the US and sent ground forces to Afghanistan, which is fine, no Kurds there to upset.

So, good stuff there sort of a dick move in the second of the Gulf Wars but as bad as that has turned out who can blame them?

Israel: Israel cooperates in the US Military's research and development deploying many new and experimental weapon systems and helping to develop them. The port of Haifa in Israel is the main port of call for the US Navy's Mediterranean Sixth Fleet.

That's it. Israel has never allowed the US to ever use it's troops or air bases for any military operation. Fuck, that's 2-0 to Turkey so far.

Third, money, or who buys our shit?

Turkey is up first again: In percentage of trade Turkey imports 8.1% of all consumer goods from the United States and 10.2% of all of Turkey's exports are headed for the United States. Not bad, but not great, a bit of a trade deficit there. Turkey needs to buy more of our shit.

Israel: I wish I could say, but I can find no break down that gives us a total percent of Israeli and US import and export what I did find is that we currently have a trade deficit of 62.65 billion dollars with Israel.

That is a draw, they both want us to buy their shit but have a hard time letting us into their markets. Motherfuckers.

Now we delve into the negatives of both nations, how have our 'allies' hurt us?

First, spying, do our allies spy on us, oh yes they do!

Turkey:If anybody is listening to former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds than we know that the 9/11 terrorists that trained in Turkey were such an embarrassment that Turkey is doing all they can to cover it up. Turkish intelligence has allegedly infiltrated the FBI and the CIA to not only get information but to have the FBI and CIA 'lose' information that may damage Turkey in the eyes of the good ol' US of A. The main point of focus is apparently the ATC or American Turkish Council.

What happened to Sibel Edmonds for exposing both Pakistan and Turkey? She was fired. That is a BIG black mark for Turkey. Not cool guys, not fucking cool.

Israel: The number of Israeli spies that have been arrested and either convicted or expelled from the US is too large to recount here. More Israeli Mossad agents have been caught stealing military and government secrets from the US than all other nations combined including Soviet Russia. A good and detailed article is here.

You both lose. Assholes.

A biggie here, whose military has killed the most Americans?

Turkey: Zero. That's right, no American has been killed by the Turkish army that I can find. I researched this for about a week now and Americans killed in Turkey were the victims of Islamic terrorists that were also targeting the Turks. Good job, now how about you get your spying on us thing down to zero too?

Israel: Oh boy, this is another big number. When you consider that during the six day war Israel attacked and killed 33 American sailors aboard the USS Liberty (even after it was identified several times as American and was in international waters) wounding dozens of others and machine gunning the life boats, Israel isn't off to a good start. More Americans killed are detailed here.

Israel has committed more acts of war and killed more American citizens than Iran. Think about that for a moment.

That is big, BIG win for Turkey.

Finally, The swimsuit competition:



Prime Minister Erdogan. First of all, fantastic 1970's porn star mustache, truly, truly epically bad. I'll also point out he has very broad shoulders. He looks like he could kill an Armenian or two.



Prime Minister Netanyahu. What can I say that hasn't been said about all used car salesmen the world over? When you're sitting for an official picture as a head of state try not to smirk like a jackass.

The result? A big loss for both. Both Erdogan and Netanyahu don't qualify as 'eye candy' not even for the blind. You ugly sons of bitches!

The total result: Turkey 3 Israel 0

I hope that current events will make Americans think long and hard about who our 'friends' are and who deserve or help and support. Turkey deserves much better from the US of A than the shaft that we are giving them currently. We also need to stop writing blank checks for Israel and tell them that to stay our ally they have to start acting like a responsible citizen of the world.

That's all I have to say.

O.J. Simpson. The DNA said he was guilty but then his money, fame and the infamous 'Chewbacca Defense' got him off. That's what white America says anyhow, well that and some of black America and most of light brown and yellow America as well. Case closed.

Or was it?? Now according to the defense in the O.J. case the Los Angeles Police lost somewhere between ten millimeters and thirteen milliliters of the blood that O.J. gave in a sample to be tested against blood stains at Nicole Simpson's house, the crime scene. This was confirmed by the L.A. Crime Lab and further it was proved that only a few of the blood stains that 'proved' O.J. Simpson guilty were larger than half a milliliter, or 500 picoliters. That small of a sample was ample for a PCR DNA test and match, so say DNA experts in America. Keep that in mind as you read on.



Or is it?? Now, you may have heard about the Amanda Knox trial over in Italy, you know that country shaped like a boot that dangles out of Europe's groin. I'll recap, attractive girl A.)



Is brutally butchered by Some Italian black guy and/or Amanda Knox and her Italian douche bag boyfriend B.)



They rape, torture and murder her, allegedly. Now I have a few problems with this case and no it's not going to be a shrill guilty or not guilty diatribe. I wasn't there, I don't know who killed whom or why or who was in the bathroom with the mud-butt from a bad kebab (hint, it wasn't the Italian douche bag)I wasn't there, I have no opinion on who is actually guilty or not guilty. What I am concerned with is the American Reaction to the whole case.

Here in America, attractive , white teenage girl=incapable of committing a crime. Which is where Amanda Knox fits in.



So of course the Attorney General of Amanda's home state calls the trial and prosecution a sham and a mockery (a shamockery!) of justice, and her family calls 'DNA foul' and even Hillary Clinton is getting involved as poor Amanda Knox has been found guilty along with her alleged co-conspirators. Whatever, the jury has decided, I'm done with matter. However Amanda Knox's family and supporters aren't done with the matter.



Or are they?? No, they aren't. Here is their contention: the DNA evidence found on the apparent murder weapon that links the knife via blood DNA on the blade to Meredith Kerchner (the victim) and on the handle to Amanda Knox (the adorable defendant) is too small a sample to have yielded a DNA result. Oh and this knife was found at Italian douche bag boyfriends house. Case closed, too small a sample for DNA, right? WRONG!

How big was the sample you may ask? Well it was 500 picoliters. So we arrive at my point. 500 picoliters of blood is a large enough, reliable enough sample to charge a black man with murder, and would have been enough to convict if not for his money. YET it is total scandal that Italian police would use it as evidence against a white, moderately attractive piece of jail-bait like Amanda Knox.



For fucks sake America, can we at least try to be a little less hypocritical at least part of the time? If DNA is air tight enough to convict people over here in America then how about we let the Italian Police have the same credibility? Any one who says that evidence is a sham or isn't compelling enough needs to take a good hard look at the DNA evidence used here in the U.S. to send people to death row every single day.

Is Amanda Knox guilty? Fuck if I know, I wasn't there so the best that any of us can do is to let the Italian justice system do it's job and let a jury of her peers decide her fate. Which they did, and they said she is guilty and that is good enough for me.

I may have mentioned before some of the things I hate (American cars,BMW's, scientists,Christians, conservatives, liberals, computers, Dell computers, laptops, racists, Americans, Iranians, Afghanistan, let's face it, I just don't like that many things...........) and I think I should add to that list:Major News Outlets. I just don't see why reporting has to be as hard as they make it. The thing that set me off today is the coverage of the Fort Hood shooting. I left work last night having read articles and seen coverage of the shooting in which one shooter was killed, one had escaped, a police officer was killed and eight people were dead and twelve were wounded. These reports came from Fox News, MSNBC, Rawstory.com. I come to work today to find that every single fact that was released about the Fort Hood shootings before I went to bed last night was absolutely wrong.



The only 'fact' from last night that has remained 'accurate' is the shooter has a muslim sounding name and that he is (not was) an army psychiatrist.



The worst part in all of this is that it's very easy to see why mistakes were made and it boggles the mind to see that they are the exact same mistakes that 'journalists' made in covering Michael Jackson's death, the balloon boy and the shooter at the holocaust museum stories and those mistakes are stem from news outlets wanting to be the first with a news story.



I can see the allure of getting to the scoop first, the problem is that in American news outlets 'first' has completely replaced 'accurate' in journalism. Let's take a look at the Fort Hood shooting story, erroneous headline by erroneous headline.

First: Last night it was reported by Fox and MSNBC that one shooter had been killed and that one was still being sought and then went on to cover how the base and all surrounding schools had been put on lock down. Because everyone knows that in a murder spree the obvious place to hide is a school. What? The fact is that there was one shooter, he was shot and detained and is in stable condition.The worst part is that no single news site cites a source for the erroneous information. Which means they assumed, or they made it up. Both of those things are what a 'reporter' does when he wants a headline but can't be bothered to wait for the facts.



Second part of the anatomy of this news clusterfuck fail: Police officer shot and killed. Wrong. Had any single journalist checked they would have found last night that the hospital was reporting that the officer had been shot, was in stable condition after undergoing surgery. Who cares, LIVE police officers don't make headlines, DEAD police officers do, let's call her dead, there is your headline, next story!?

Lastly we now know that twelve people were killed, not eight and that thirty one were wounded. Now I know you are thinking 'well I'm sure that eight people were probably killed at the scene, and others died later, that's not lazy journalism' ah-ha! But only ONE person died in the hospital, eleven were killed at the scene, and if the reporters didn't know how many were dead WHY DID THEY PUT IT IN THE STORY.

Fuck. It's hard enough to make sense of the world with the facts but when major news outlets are so purposefully stupid putting news being first before news being accurate it makes it impossible to trust any news source, well, you CAN trust one new source.



That's right, some boring asshole in Englandland decided to use caution in reporting last night. When I looked last night after checking Fox, MSNBC and Rawstory, I went to bbc.co.uk and saw the headline and it was about the Fort Hood massacre, just like the other news sources. The main difference? The BBC listed no body count , listed no speculation and simply listed the facts, shooting at Fort Hood, several wounded, several possibly dead more information as the story develops.

Now this morning Fox, MSNBC and Rawstory have scrubbed their sites to try and hide their wild and inaccurate speculation while the BBC simply updated last nights story with the facts to fill in the blanks , the BBC even waited all night to post the shooters picture to make sure they had confirmation that the picture was in fact the shooter.

Some day Americans will wake up and stop buying news from inaccurate, overblown sources. There ought to be some law against sensationalist, inaccurate reporting. It also turns out that one of the facts today in the US media is STILL wrong, the gunman isn't an Arab, he is a Palestinian raised in Virginia. It says so right on the BBC news page and the in depth well researched 'shooters profile' another thing our major media missed. Instead of trying to get a 'scoop' and and running all over the lives and bodies of the victims why can't we just wait and get the story right? The American public deserves it and more importantly the victims of the shooting deserve it.

The Fort Hood shooting is indeed a tragedy, unfortunately a tragedy now compounded by the slanderous and tabloid reporting by our major 'trusted' news outlets.