Despite his arrant stupidity & malignant social hatreds, many say they admire Donald Trump for blunt-speaking. It’s so easy to be blunt-spoken when you can’t get fired or socially ostracized as a result.

But there’s a catch with being forthright. Sometimes it expresses an independent spirit that won’t be cowed. But often it expresses an antisocial spirit that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about other people. The latter is the kind Trump has.

There’s nothing admirable about his frankness; it’s just the arrogance supremacists of all sorts nurture–which makes him contemptible.

It’s one of many national shames that 9/11 first responders (police, firefighters, paramedics, emergency medical technicians) are still not provided adequate healthcare for the pulmonary diseases & cancers that afflict them as a result of their work in that crisis. There’s money for bank bailouts & several wars but the Congressional coffers are dry when it comes to them. Many are incapacitated, many have died as a result.

Despite the criminal default of Congress, there is another resource they should be able to draw on for help. After 9/11, several charities raised more than $1 billion for assistance; the Red Cross alone raised more than $564 million. There’s no accounting nor evidence of Red Cross dispersals except for $154 million nor any reports about the rest of the dough.

Sorry to poke a stick at a political corpse, but is moralizing about gun violence the best Bernie Sanders can do in response to San Bernardino? His sole comment has been a tweet saying “Mass shootings are becoming an almost-everyday occurrence in this country. This sickening & senseless gun violence must stop.”

What about the war-mongering, the inflammatory & threatening anti-Muslim talk, the Trump demands that Muslims be banned from the US? Shouldn’t a progressive candidate say something about all that? Or is Sanders sticking with provincial sewer socialism come hell or high-water?

People who want to understand what’s going on in the world have a hell of a problem because our governments are lying to us & media draws on government press releases & officials rather than investigative work for news analyses. The stories don’t add up & San Bernardino is a classic case in point.

The confusions lend themselves to conspiracy theorizing so that nothing is believable & everything becomes political theater directed by the CIA or Mossad. The Arab uprisings involving millions of people to the school shootings at Sandy Hook now become dismissed as frauds.

Last week, media showed a photo of an Afghan man making tea. Today, they show a woman visiting a graveyard in Kabul. The US war & bombing have been going on there over 14 years. What happened to war journalism? It’s even worse when it comes to Iraq & as bad as the coverage of Kashmir.

After the Vietnam War, media attributed antiwar sentiment to its war coverage–neglecting to attribute the intransigence of the Vietnamese or the massive power of the international antiwar movement. The war coverage was puny, like has always been true of war, but it was broader & more extensive than coverage of previous wars. There was coverage of war-weary & injured soldiers in the field & even photographic documentation of war crimes like napalm victims & summary executions of Vietnamese–unlike WWII coverage which was primarily “heroic” moments for propaganda purpose–like the posed shot of raising the US flag at Iwo Jima or US marines landing at Normandy. Is there any coverage at all of the Korean War?

All the news networks are inflammatory about San Bernardino but ABC takes the cake. David Muir, the parvenu being groomed as anchor, reads the news like he’s on amphetamines–which is perfectly suited for the modern Grimm fairy tales they’re passing off as news. Muslim boogeymen & women everywhere.

Yesterday Muir reported, in than panicked style of his, that every day YouTube, FB, & Twitter receive 90,000 messages from ISIS. Their algorithms must be working full tilt. Or does some schnook have to go in there & delete all 90,000 by hand? And how do they know the messages are from ISIS & not some teenage pranksters?

One could call the McCarthy witch-hunt the propaganda apparatus of the US Cold War with the USSR which began after WWII. The fear & war-mongering, the promotion of surveillance & curtailment of civil liberties were unbridled–& quite frankly unhinged. For children, it was a real-life version of Grimm fairy tales, filled with violence & dangers for children.

The McCarthy era developed as I came of age & because my mother was political & right-wing, we grew up schooled in every accusation against “commies” & “pinkos.” Every liberal was suspect, including the TV weatherman & Minnesota’s Democratic Party senators.

Common Dreams, the progressive news website, has just published the most remarkable article entitled “Without Prosecution of Bush Officials, Obama Legacy ‘Forever Poisoned’.” The article is a monument to either a bad case of cognitive dissonance, historical ignorance, or despicable apologetics for the Obama regime. Because the site was initiated by Democratic Party operatives, the latter is more likely.

Drawing on a campaign by Human Rights Watch (HRW), a conservative establishment human rights group (which cannot bring itself to condemn US wars), Common Dreams editors call for a full criminal investigation of former President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, & all U.S. officials behind the CIA torture program. HRW is going after Obama & his administration for refusing to pursue criminal investigations into CIA torture by claiming there is insufficient evidence for prosecution.

It seems to be a de rigueur moment in Israeli propaganda that dignitaries & celebrities visiting Israel meet with Shimon Peres for a photo op. Media reports of Sean Penn’s recent meet & greet with Peres all say it was an awkward encounter between the boor & the terrorist. Why it would be uncomfortable for either one is unexplained.

Penn was in Tel Aviv to give the keynote address at a conference on Israeli aid to Haiti sponsored by IsraAID. No one could doubt the spirit of largesse exists among Israelis but it might be curious that it doesn’t extend to Palestinians except that IsraAID’s money comes primarily from the biggest Zionist organizations in the world. That doesn’t make the organization so much tainted as tendentious–& quite frankly calls into question its actual role in Haiti.

Some will be disappointed in Penn for hobnobbing with Israeli apartheid & with Peres, one of its chief architects. But for those who follow his pernicious role in Haiti, this is par for the course. Penn is a longtime, close collaborator with Haitian president Michel Martelly, a committed Duvalierist & admitted former terrorist member of the Tonton Macoutes. The Macoutes were Haitian paramilitary death squads created by dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier which continued to operate under the regime of his son dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.

Both Duvaliers used the Macoutes against political opponents in a reign of terror where hundreds of thousands of people were disappeared, tortured, murdered, stoned, burned alive, their corpses put on display & often hung in trees. Family members who tried to remove the bodies for burial were themselves disappeared. Shades of the Naqba carried out by Zionist paramilitary death squads against Palestinians.

In 2011, when the US brought their ally Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier back from the exile he had been driven into by popular revolt in 1986, Penn socialized & collaborated openly with him. None are too contemptible or monstrous in criminality for Penn to associate with.

Martelly & Penn collaborated with Hillary Clinton (as US Secretary of State) & Bill Clinton (orchestrating activities for the US government in Haiti while enriching his personal fortunes) in turning post-hurricane Haiti into a sweatshop economy. Using coercion & ignoring the needs & demands of the Haitian people, they prioritized & fast-tracked infrastructure projects like industrial parks with sweatshops, highways, telecom, building the tourist industry, & privatizing public services–all of which suit the needs of international capital & exploitation. They refused to build homes, health centers, & schools–which suit the needs of the Haitian people, many of whom still live in squalid camps after the 2010 hurricane. Penn was/is with the Clintons & Martelly every step of the way, trying to provide a babyfaced, “good-guy” humanitarian image to ruthless plunder.

If there was any discomfort on Penn’s part in shaking hands with Peres, it wouldn’t be due to the latter’s role as architect of Israeli apartheid & ethnic cleansing but that Penn’s role in Haiti is now open to question. At least now the truth is out about the contemptible fraud called the humanitarianism of Sean Penn.

(Photo of Penn & Peres from still shot of video)

Those lauding or chastising Charlie Windsor’s decline of Netanyahu’s invitation to visit Israel are missing out on the last nearly 68 years of history & the political relationship between Israel & the UK. The two colonial powers remain on the best of terms & cooperation since Britain handed over Palestine to Zionist paramilitary forces for colonization.

The British moochocracy doesn’t refuse to go to Israel to show solidarity or express concern for Palestinian self-determination or take a stand against Israeli apartheid but only to avoid any unseemly uproars that would muss Betty or Charlie’s coifs & bring down criticism on them. They leave their dirty work to minions like Cameron & war criminal Tony Blair.