How the Right's Rhetoric Fueled the Actions of Arizona's Mass Murderer

Peacenik has a feeling that the discussion about the attempted assassination of Gabriella Giffords won't have anything to do with the sentiment expressed in the above headline. Peacenik suspects that the media's frame will be that it would be mean to blame right wing rhetoric for inciting the shooter. Peacenik suspects the media will call for a mature bi-partisan response to the shooting. Right wingers are already saying it is McCarthyism to blame right wing rhetoric for the shooting. Expect the media to play along. The march to fascism continues.

It's too soon to say what motivated the man apprehended for the shooting. But the Tea Party culture of political intimidation affirmed his violent impulses.

January 8, 2011 |

Photo Credit: A.M. Stan

It's too soon to say what, exactly, motivated the man apprehended for the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and 18 others outside a Tucson supermarket on Saturday. All we really know about Jared Lee Loughner, the 22-year-old alleged shooter, is that he is apparently a profoundly disturbed young man whose paranoia involves some indecipherable notions about the U.S. Constitution.

Some say Loughner regards himself as a leftist, others chart him on the right. But the screen shots of his (now deleted) MySpace page and the incomprehensible videos he posted on YouTube -- as well as another video he named a "favorite" that shows a masked, hooded figure burning an American flag to a soundtrack of a chant, "Let the bodies hit the floor" -- seem short on coherent ideology and long on violent impulse.

So to those who would like to attribute Loughner's actions to the Tea Party, I say, hold up; take a breath. But to those on the far right, and to the more mainstream right-wingers who fail to condemn the poisonous claims of the far right, I say, you're hardly off the hook.

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University Of Calgary Professor And Senior Advisor To Canadian PM Calls For Julian Assange Assassination On National TV

The casual call for the murder or assassination of Julian Assange shows how far society has collapsed. How corrupt it is. Why does the mainstream media give these psychopaths airtime? Christ, the interviewers were yukking it up like it was a big joke, like they had a scoop. And this guy is an adviser to Harper. Will Harper disavow him? Will he be forced to come on tv and say he misspoke himself? Probably not. Peacenik is worried about the welfare of Julian Assange. Peacenik hopes he is somewhere safe.

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/01/2010 10:41 -0500

It is not a good week for Wikileaks. Following yesterday's Interpol arrest warrant, also yesterday, Tom Flanagan, a senior advisor and strategist to the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, called for the assassination of Wikileaks director Julian Assange. On CBS News. On Live TV. As the video notes, "it is believed to be the first ever televised "fatwa" since the edict by the Iranian leadership of the late Ayatollah Khomeini against British writer Salman Rushdie in February 1989." It's a good thing western society, where due process used to mean something, is so much more evolved than that of Iran. Additionally, although news anchor Solomon afforded Flanagan the opportunity to retract his statement, Flanagan balked at doing so and instead reiterated that U.S. President should put out a "contract" on Assange or use "a drone" and that he would not be unhappy if Assange "disappeared." Flanagan who is a trusted member of PM Harper's inner circle of Tory strategists joins Sarah Palin in calling for the death of the Wikileaks director as retribution for the website's release of confidential diplomatic and intelligence "chatter" this week. How long before any senior political advisor has the freedom to issue fatwas on national TV on anyone who dares to utter or publish something that they consider offensive?

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It's Wasn't Only Cheney Who Had Assassination Programs: Clinton Did It, and Obama Does It, Too

This article makes a good point. The whole fucking U.S. government is evil top to bottom. If a spy satellite sees a tall Arab in Afghanistan, or Pakistan or who knows where else, they send in the drones. And no one cares about collateral damage. The U.S. has turned the Middle East into a turkey shoot. And unfortunately Canada is complicit. Peacenik says it is time to bring the troops home now.

By Jeremy Scahill, Rebel Reports. Posted July 16, 2009.

Members of Congress have expressed outrage over the "secret" CIA assassination program that former Vice President Dick Cheney allegedly ordered concealed from Congress.

But this program -- and the media descriptions of it -- sounds a lot like the assassination policy implemented by President Bill Clinton, particularly during his second term in office.

Partisan politics often require selective amnesia. Over the past decade, we have seen this amnesia take hold when it comes to many of President George W. Bush's most vile policies. And we are now seeing a pretty severe case overtake several leading Democrats.



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The Man Who Knew Cheney's Secret

Reading this story about Cheney's assassination squads, caused Peacenik to remember what good movies the Bourne trilogy are. Peacenik wants to go home and watch a Bourne movie right now. But unlike the movies, Peacenik doesn't think there will be any justice for Cheney's assassination squads. Congress cheered when George Bush referred to some executive terminations. Everyone is complicit. The Bush administration, Congress, the media and the sheeple. Everyone liked living in a episode of 24. It took everyone's mind off their problems. They could ignore their rapidly evaporating standard of living. Dick's daughter will probably get elected as president some day. You heard it first from Peacenik.

The Man Who Knew Cheney's Secret



Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh raised eyebrows back in March when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that Dick Cheney ran a secret hit squad that he kept hidden from congressional oversight.

"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on," Hersh said at the time. He added: "Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us."

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Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Ever since she realized back in early March that Obama was going to take the nomination Hillary Clinton’s long-term strategy has been to do her best to ensure McCain will win this November so she can become the Democratic nominee in 2012. But she had a short term strategy too and on Friday she deliberately made it explicit in a newspaper office in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. There she suggested that some is likely to step up to the plate and assassinate Barack Obama in the waning moments of the California primary, just as Bobby Kennedy was forty years go almost to the day. The wish is mother to the deed. If anything does happen to Obama in California Mrs Clinton should surely be indicted as a co-conspirator.

How to else construe her grotesque remarks in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in the editorial offices of the Argus Leader newspaper. Here she told the editors, "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it," she said, dismissing calls to drop out.

There is no other way to construe these sentences, not thrown over her shoulder on a campaign walk, but delivered in measured tones to the Argus-Leader editorial board, but to interpret them as Mrs Clinton’s more or less explicit statement that she is spending a million a day just to keep her hat in the ring because Obama might well get killed. Then, just like the scenario at the end of the Manchurian candidate, Hillary will straddle Obama’s bleeding body, make the speech of her life and become the assured nominee. In fact, right now she’s probably sitting down with some numbed vet and whispering coyly in her best Angela Lansbury mode to the Lawrence Harvey stand-in, “How about passing the time by playing a little solitaire?" I pass on whether Hillary reprises Angela Lansbury’s famous incestuous kiss on her son’s lips. Perhaps Sid Blumenthal is the stand-in, though I doubt he’s a very good shot.

To get added insight into what a truly nasty woman Hillary Clinton is, remember that her remarks on Friday came a couple of days after Edward Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Next thing you know, his fellow senator is saying that California might well be celebrating the fortieth anniversary of his brother’s murder by killing the candidate he has endorsed for the nomination.

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punditman says...Wow.

40 Years Ago Today: Silence is Betrayal (MLK anti-war speech)

punditman says...

Early morning, April 4
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride

U2 - Pride (In the name of Love)

I was just a little kid when, 40 years ago today, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. But I still recall the event vividly: having heard the terrible news of another violent calamnity in America (our neighbour to the south), my mother was crying, sobbing that "they've killed Martin Luther King."

One year earlier to the day, at Riverside Church in New York City, Dr. King delivered an impassioned speech against the Vietnam War.

His assassination led to riots in more than 100 American cities.