May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-) Skepticism and critical thinking is not panacea, but can help to understand the world better
Neocolonialism as Financial Imperialism
and Alliance of Transnational Elites
Neoliberalism is inseparable from imperialism and globalization
All U.S. schoolchildren should be taught, as part of their basic civics education,
by conscientious elementary, middle school and high school teachers, that they live in animperialistcountry. The term itself ought to be popularized. This
is what politicians like Obama actually refer to, elliptically, when they call the U.S. “exceptional.
The idea financial imperialism is simple. Instead of old-fashion military occupation of the country,
take over the countries in crisis, if necessary remove their democratically elected governments from
power by claiming that election are falsified and/or official are corrupted, and/or the government is authoritarian (unlike the puppets
they want to install). They use the installed puppets to mandate austerity, burden the country with debt and facilitate
condition under which most
of which will be stolen and repatriated to the West.
Incite greed of the people or promise substantial increase in living standard (the claims does not need to be realistic;
when the people realize that they were deceived it's too late). Incite via controlled MSM resentment the current government
(which, of course, if far from perfect), use false flag operation to de-legitimize the government (using
Sharp textbook) and via a color revolution, or armed
insurrection, or coup d'état install neoliberal government of completely subservient to West
stooges.
Allow this government to steal as much as they can and create a fifth column of compradors and
oligarchs who are connected to the West. They will keep money they stole in Western banks making them fully
controllable puppets and are afraid of their own people; conceal the negative economic results of such "bandit privatization" of
state assets with loans to cover the
economic rape of the country for a while.
When crisis hit and it is impossible to cover tracks anymore bail the country out which means
just converting limited duration loans into evergreen loans that never will be repaid, but when load
expire you have huge instrument into pressuring the country to do what you want.
Another permanent debt-slave is now born.
After installation of a puppet government, it is relatively easy to use
Fifth column based government to protect foreign financial
interests. Now you can recoup the costs and enjoy the profits. Much cheaper and more humane then bombing the country and killing a
couple of hundred thousand people to achieve the same goals (Iraq variant) or by arming and training jihadists (using Saudi
and Gulf monarchies money) and tribal elements to depose the government (Libya and Syria variants) who kill as much, if nor more.
A classic recent examples were Yeltsin's government in Russia, Yushchenko regime in Ukraine,
Poroshenko-Yatsenyuk duo in Ukraine and sequence of neoliberal governments in Greece.
In the conventional (or mainstream) discourse, imperialism is either absent or, more recently,
proudly presented as the ‘AmericanBurden': to civilize the world and bring to all the benediction
of the Holy Trinity, the green-faced Lord Dollar and its deputies and occasional rivals. Holy
Euro and Saint Yen. New converts win a refurbished international airport, one brand-new branch of
McDonald’s, two luxury hotels, 3,000 NGOs and one US military base.
This offer cannot be refused - or else.2 In turn, globalisation is generally presented as an
inescapable, inexorable and benevolent process leading to greater competition, welfare
improvements and the spread of democracy around the world. In reality, however, the so-called
process of globalisation - to the extent that it actually exists (see Saad-Rlho 2003) - is merely
the international face of neoliberalism: a world-wide strategy of accumulation and social
discipline that doubles up as tin imperialist project, spearheaded by the alliance between the
US ruling class and locally dominant capitalist coalitions.
This ambitious power project centered
on neoliberalism at home and imperial globalism abroad is implemented by diverse social and
economic political alliances in each country, but the interests of local finance and the US
ruling class, itself dominated by finance, are normally hegemonic.
...the United States, the United Kingdom and east and south-east Asia respectively,
neoliberalism is a particular organisation of capitalism, which has evolved to protect
capital(ism) and to reduce the power of labour. This is achieved by means of social, economic and
political transformations imposed by internal forces as well as external pressure. The internal
forces include the coalition between financial interests, leading industrialists, traders and
exporters, media barons, big landowners, local political chieftains, the
top echelons of the civil service and the military, and their intellectual and political proxies.
These groups are closely connected with ‘global’ ideologies emanating from the centre, and they
tend to adapt swiftly to the demands beamed from the metropolis. Their efforts have led to a
significant worldwide shift in powerrelations away from the majority. Corporate power has
increased, while finance hits acquired unrivalled influence, and the political spectrum has
shifted towards the right. Left parties and mass organisations have imploded, while trade unions
have been muzzled or disabled by unemployment. Forms of external pressure have included the
diffusion of Western culture and ideology, foreign support for state and civil society
institutions peddling neolibcral values, the shameless use of foreign aid, debt relief and
balance of payments support to promote the neoliberal programme, and diplomatic pressure,
political unrest and military intervention when necessary.
...the ruling economic and political forces in the European Union have instrumentalised the
process of integration to ensure the hegemony of neoliberalism. This account is complemented by
the segmentation of Eastern Europe into countries that are being drawn into a Western
European-style neoliberalism and others that are following Russia’s business oligarchy model.
In
sum, neoliberalism is everywhere both the outcome and the arena of social conflicts. It sets the
political and economic agenda, limits the possible outcomes, biases expectations, and imposes
urgent tasks on those challenging its assumptions, methods and consequences.
In the meantime, neoliberal theory has not remained static. In order to deal with the most
powerful criticisms leveled against neoliberalism, that it has increased poverty and social
dislocation around the world, neoliberal theory has attempted to present the ogre in a more
favorable light. In spite of the substantial resources invested in this ideologically inspired
make-over, these amendments have remained unconvincing, not least because the heart of the
neoliberal project has remained unchanged. This is discussed in Chapter 15 for poverty and
distribution, while Chapter 21 unpicks the agenda of the ‘Third Way', viewed by many as
‘neoliberalism with a human face’.
Neoliberalism offered a finance-friendly solution to the problems of capital accumulation at
the end of a relatively long cycle of prosperity. Chapters 1. 22 and 30 show that neoliberalism
imposed discipline upon a restless working class through contractionary fiscal and monetary
policies and wide-ranging initiatives to curtail social rights, under the guise of anti-inflation
and productivity-enhancing measures. Neoliberalism also rationalised the transfer of state
capacity to allocate resources inter-temporally (the balance between investment and consumption)
and inter-sectorally (the distribution of investment, employment and output) towards an
increasingly internationally integrated (and US-led) financial sector. In doing so, neoliberalism
facilitated a gigantic transfer of resources to the local rich and the United States, as is shown
by Chapters 11 and 15.
The “elephant in the room” is peak oil (plato oil
to be more correct) and the plato of food production. Without "cheap oil" extraction
growing, it is
more difficult to sustain both population growth and rising standard of living simultaneously.
It became the situation of iether/or.
So the future it does not look pretty. As soon as "cheap oil" escape the current plato, Western financial system gets into trouble: private banks based fractional
reserve banking requires economy expansion for survival. Essentially they add positive
feedback loop to the economy, greatly increasing the instability. That connection was discovered by Hyman Minsky. Minsky
explored a form of
instability that is embedded in neoliberal/financialized economies resulting from the use of fiat currency and fractional
reserve banking. he argued that such an economy automatically generates bubbles, bursting of which result in periodic deep economic
crisis. Which are not an exception, but a feature of neoliberal capitalism (aka "supercapitalism", or "casino capitalism).
When Minsky crisis hits some, less important, banks will
implode and strategically important need to be saved by government at a great expense for taxpayers.
The western elite is well aware of this possibility and will steal, loot and pillage as fast as they
can to prolong the agony... Neoliberal expansion and conversion of other countries into debt slaves
thus serves as a substitute for economic growth.
What actually is devalued in austerity programs imposed on indebted nations via currency depreciation
is the price of local labor (along with standard of living of the most population). So austerity programs
caused a huge drop in the standard of living of population. For example after EuroMaydan color revolution the standard of living in Ukraine
dropped to
the level of the most poor countries of Africa (less then $2 a day for the majority of
population).
This is a pretty instructive example. It qlso cur domestic consumption of fuels and minerals, consumer goods, and food. As wages are sticky and it is
difficult
to reduced them directly (via high unemployment, leading to falling wages). But the currency depreciation can
do the same trick even more effectively. For example since February 22 coup d'état, grivna, the Ukrainian currency depreciated from
8 to 28 grivna to dollar, or approximately 350%.
This is how war of creditors against debtor countries turns into a class war. But to impose such
neoliberal reforms, foreign pressure is necessary to bypass domestic, democratically elected Parliaments.
Not every country’s voters can be expected to be as passive in acting against their own interests as
those of Latvia and Ireland. The financial capital objective is to bypass parliament by demanding a
“consensus” (facilitated by a huge foreign debt) to put foreign creditors first, above the national economy. This is the essence of
the status of debt slave country. Civil war it a perfect tool to accelerate this process.
Buying natural monopolies in transportation, communications, and the land from the public domain
for pennies on the dollar now can be called "rescue package", not the road to debt peonage and a financial neo-feudalism
that is a grim reality of "debt slave" countries, where populations are indentured laborersof international capital. Let me state it
very simply : "the borrower [debtor] is SERVANT to the lender" (
Wikipedia ):
An indentured servant or indentured laborer is an employee (indenturee) within a system of
unfree labor who is
bound by a signed or forced contract (indenture)
to work for a particular employer for a fixed time. The contract often lets the employer sell the labor of an
indenturee to a third party. Indenturees usually enter into an indenture for a specific payment or other benefit, or
to meet a legal obligation, such as debt
bondage.
At the same time then comes to bailing out bankers who overplayed with derivatives, all rules are ignored
– in order to serve the “higher justice” of saving banks and their high-finance counterparties from
taking a loss. This is quite a contrast compared to IMF policy toward labor and “taxpayers.” The class
war is back in business – with a vengeance, and bankers are the winners this time around.
Robert B Reich, former US Secretary of Labor and resident neo-liberal in the Clinton administration
from 1993 to 1997, wrote in the September 14, 2007 edition of The Wall Street Journal an opinion piece,
"CEOs Deserve Their Pay", as part of an orchestrated campaign to promote his new book: Supercapitalism:
The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life (Afred A Knopf).
Reich is a former Harvard professor and the former Maurice B Hexter Professor of Social and Economic
Policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. He is currently
a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California (Berkley) and a regular
liberal gadfly in the unabashed supply-side Larry Kudlow TV show that celebrates the merits of capitalism.
Reich's Supercapitalism brings to mind Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Economic
Strategy of American Empire (1972-2003). While Reich, a liberal turned neo-liberal, sees "supercapitalism"
as the natural evolution of insatiable shareholder appetite for gain, a
polite euphemism for greed, that cannot or should not be reined in by regulation, Hudson,
a Marxist heterodox economist, sees "super imperialism" as the structural outcome of post-World War
II superpower geopolitics, with state interests overwhelming free market
forces, making regulation irrelevant. While Hudson is critical of "super imperialism"
and thinks that it should be resisted by the weaker trading partners of the US, Reich gives the impression
of being ambivalent about the inevitability, if not the benignity, of "supercapitalism".
The structural link between capitalism and imperialism was first observed by John Atkinson Hobson
(1858-1940), an English economist, who wrote in 1902 an insightful analysis of the economic basis of
imperialism. Hobson provided a humanist critique of neoclassical economics, rejecting exclusively materialistic
definitions of value. With Albert Frederick Mummery (1855-1895), the great British mountaineer who was
killed in 1895 by an avalanche while reconnoitering Nanga Parbat, an 8,000-meter Himalayan peak, Hobson
wrote The Physiology of Industry (1889), which argued that an industrial economy requires government
intervention to maintain stability, and developed the theory of over-saving that was given a glowing
tribute by John Maynard Keynes three decades later.
The need for governmental intervention to stabilize an expanding national industrial economy was
the rationale for political imperialism. On the other side of the coin, protectionism was a governmental
counter-intervention on the part of weak trading partners for resisting imperialist expansion of the
dominant power. Historically, the processes of globalization have always been the result of active state
policy and action, as opposed to the mere passive surrender of state sovereignty to market forces. Market
forces cannot operate in a vacuum. They are governed by man-made rules. Globalized markets require the
acceptance by local authorities of established rules of the dominant economy. Currency monopoly of course is the most fundamental trade restraint by one single dominant government.
Adam Smith published Wealth of Nations in 1776, the year of US independence. By the time the
constitution was framed 11 years later, the US founding fathers were deeply influenced by Smith's ideas,
which constituted a reasoned abhorrence of trade monopoly and government policy in restricting trade.
What Smith abhorred most was a policy known as mercantilism, which was practiced by all the major powers
of the time. It is necessary to bear in mind that Smith's notion of the limitation of government action
was exclusively related to mercantilist issues of trade restraint. Smith never advocated government
tolerance of trade restraint, whether by big business monopolies or by other governments in the name
of open markets.
A central aim of mercantilism was to ensure that a nation's exports remained
higher in value than its imports, the surplus in that era being paid only in specie money
(gold-backed as opposed to fiat money). This trade surplus in gold permitted the surplus country, such
as England, to invest in more factories at home to manufacture more for export, thus bringing home more
gold. The importing regions, such as the American colonies, not only found the gold reserves backing
their currency depleted, causing free-fall devaluation (not unlike that faced today by many emerging-economy
currencies), but also wanting in surplus capital for building factories to produce for domestic consumption
and export. So despite plentiful iron ore in America, only pig iron was exported to England in return
for English finished iron goods. The situation was similar to today's oil producing countries where
despite plentiful crude oil, refined petrochemical products such as gasoline and heating oil have to
be imported.
In 1795, when the newly independent Americans began finally to wake up to their disadvantaged trade
relationship and began to raise European (mostly French and Dutch) capital to start a manufacturing
industry, England decreed the Iron Act, forbidding the manufacture of iron
goods in its American colonies, which caused great dissatisfaction among the prospering colonials.
Smith favored an opposite government policy toward promoting domestic economic production and free
foreign trade for the weaker traders, a policy that came to be known as "laissez faire" (because the
English, having nothing to do with such heretical ideas, refuse to give it an English name). Laissez
faire, notwithstanding its literal meaning of "leave alone", meant nothing of the sort. It meant an
activist government policy to counteract mercantilism. Neo-liberal free-market
economists are just bad historians, among their other defective characteristics, when they propagandize
"laissez faire" as no government interference in trade affairs.
Friedrich List, in his National System of Political Economy (1841), asserts that political
economy as espoused in England, far from being a valid science universally, was merely British national
opinion, suited only to English historical conditions. List's institutional school of economics asserts
that the doctrine of free trade was devised to keep England rich and powerful at the expense of its
trading partners and it must be fought with protective tariffs and other protective devices of economic
nationalism by the weaker countries.
Henry Clay's "American system" was a national system of political economy.
US neo-imperialism in the post WWII period disingenuously promotes neo-liberal free-trade against
governmental protectionism to keep the US rich and powerful at the expense of its trading partners.
Before the October Revolution of 1917, many national liberation movements in European
colonies and semi-colonies around the world were influenced by List's economic nationalism. The 1911
Nationalist Revolution in China, led by Sun Yat-sen, was heavily influenced by Lincoln's political ideas
- government of the people, by the people and for the people - and the economic nationalism of List,
until after the October Revolution when Sun realized that the Soviet model was the correct path to national
revival.
Hobson's magnum opus, Imperialism, (1902), argues that imperialistic
expansion is driven not by state hubris, known in US history as "manifest destiny", but by an innate
quest for new markets and investment opportunities overseas for excess capital formed by over-saving
at home for the benefit of the home state. Over-saving during the industrial age came
from Richardo's theory of the iron law of wages, according to which wages were kept perpetually at subsistence
levels as a result of uneven market power between capital and labor. Today, job outsourcing that returns
as low-price imports contributes to the iron law of wages in the US domestic economy. (See my article
Organization of Labor Exporting Countries [OLEC]).
Hobson's analysis of the phenology (study of life cycles) of capitalism was drawn upon by Lenin to
formulate a theory of imperialism as an advanced stage of capitalism:
"Imperialism is capitalism at
that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capitalism is established;
in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world
among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among
the biggest capitalist powers has been completed." (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1916, Imperialism, the
Highest Stage of Capitalism, Chapter 7).
Lenin was also influenced by Rosa Luxemberg, who three year earlier had written her major work, The
Accumulation of Capital: A Contribution to an Economic Explanation of Imperialism (Die Akkumulation
des Kapitals: Ein Beitrag zur ökonomischen Erklärung des Imperialismus), 1913). Luxemberg, together
with Karl Liebknecht a founding leader of the Spartacist League (Spartakusbund), a radical Marxist revolutionary
movement that later renamed itself the Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands,
or KPD), was murdered on January 15, 1919 by members of the Freikorps, rightwing militarists who were
the forerunners of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) led by Ernst Rohm.
The congenital association between capitalism and imperialism requires practically all truly anti-imperialist
movements the world over to be also anti-capitalist. To this day, most nationalist capitalists in emerging
economies are unwitting neo-compradors for super imperialism. Neo-liberalism, in its attempts to break
down all national boundaries to facilitate global trade denominated in fiat dollars, is the ideology
of super imperialism.
Hudson, the American heterodox economist, historian of ancient economies and post-WW II international
balance-of-payments specialist, advanced in his 1972 book the notion of 20th century super imperialism.
Hudson updated Hobson's idea of 19th century imperialism of state industrial policy seeking new markets
to invest home-grown excess capital. To Hudson, super imperialism is a state
financial strategy to export debt denominated in the state's fiat currency as capital to the new financial
colonies to finance the global expansion of a superpower empire.
No necessity, or even
intention, was entertained by the superpower of ever having to pay off these paper debts after the US
dollar was taken off gold in 1971.
Super imperialism transformed into monetary imperialism after the 1973 Middle East oil crisis with
the creation of the petrodollar and two decades later emerged as dollar hegemony through financial globalization
after 1993. As described in my 2002 AToL article,
Dollar
hegemony has to go, a geopolitical phenomenon emerged after the 1973 oil crisis in which
the US dollar, a fiat currency since 1971, continues to serve as the primary reserve currency for
international trade because oil continues to be denominated in fiat dollars as a result of superpower
geopolitics, leading to dollar hegemony in 1993 with the globalization of deregulated financial markets.
Three causal developments allowed dollar hegemony to emerge over a span of two decades after 1973
and finally take hold in 1993. US fiscal deficits from overseas spending since the 1950s caused a massive
drain in US gold holdings, forcing the US in 1971 to abandon the 1945 Bretton Woods regime of fixed
exchange rate based on a gold-backed dollar. Under that international financial architecture, cross-border
flow of funds was not considered necessary or desirable for promoting international trade or domestic
development. The collapse of the 1945 Bretton Woods regime in 1971 was the initial development toward
dollar hegemony.
The second development was the denomination of oil in dollars after the 1973 Middle East oil crisis.
The emergence of petrodollars was the price the US, still only one of two contending superpowers in
1973, extracted from defenseless oil-producing nations for allowing them to nationalize the Western-owned
oil industry on their soil. As long as oil transactions are denominated in fiat dollars, the US essentially
controls all the oil in the world financially regardless of specific ownership, reducing all oil producing
nations to the status of commodity agents of dollar hegemony.
The third development was the global deregulation of financial markets after the Cold War, making
cross-border flow of funds routine, and a general relaxation of capital and foreign exchange control
by most governments involved in international trade. This neo-liberal trade regime brought into existence
a foreign exchange market in which free-floating exchange rates made computerized speculative attacks
on weak currencies a regular occurrence. These three developments permitted the emergence of dollar
hegemony after 1994 and helped the US win the Cold War with financial power derived from fiat money.
Dollar hegemony advanced super imperialism one stage further from the financial to the monetary front.
Industrial imperialism sought to achieve a trade surplus by exporting manufactured good to the colonies
for gold to fund investment for more productive plants at home. Super imperialism sought to extract
real wealth from the colonies by paying for it with fiat dollars to sustain a balance of payments out
of an imbalance in the exchange of commodities. Monetary imperialism under dollar hegemony exports debt
denominated in fiat dollars through a permissive trade deficit with the new colonies, only to re-import
the debt back to the US as capital account surplus to finance the US debt bubble.
The circular recycling of dollar-denominated debt was made operative by the dollar, a fiat currency
that only the US can print at will, continuing as the world's prime reserve currency for international
trade and finance, backed by US geopolitical superpower. Dollars are accepted universally because oil
is denominated in dollars and everyone needs oil and thus needs dollars to buy oil. Any nation that
seeks to denominate key commodities, such as oil, in currencies other than the dollar will soon find
itself invaded by the sole superpower. Thus the war on Iraq is not about oil, as former Federal Reserve
chairman Alan Greenspan suggested recently. It is about keeping oil denominated in dollars to protect
dollar hegemony. The difference is subtle but of essential importance.
Since 1993, central banks of all trading nations around the world, with the exception of the US Federal
Reserve, have been forced to hold more dollar reserves than they otherwise need to ward off the potential
of sudden speculative attacks on their currencies in unregulated global financial markets. Thus "dollar
hegemony" prevents the exporting nations, such as the Asian Tigers, from spending domestically the dollars
they earn from the US trade deficit and forces them to fund the US capital account surplus, shipping
real wealth to the US in exchange for the privilege of financing further growth of the US debt economy.
Not only do these exporting nations have to compete by keeping their domestic wages down and by prostituting
their environment, the dollars that they earn cannot be spent at home without causing a monetary crisis
in their own currencies because the dollars they earn have to be exchanged into local currencies before
they can be spent domestically, causing an excessive rise in their domestic money supply which in turn
causes domestic inflation-pushed bubbles. While the trade-surplus nations are forced to lend their export
earnings back to the US, these same nations are starved for capital, as global capital denominated in
dollars will only invest in their export sectors to earn more dollars. The domestic sector with local
currency earnings remains of little interest to global capital denominated in dollars. As a result,
domestic development stagnates for lack of capital.
Dollar hegemony permits the US to transform itself from a competitor
in world markets to earn hard money, to a fiat-money-making monopoly with fiat dollars that only it
can print at will. Every other trading nation has to exchange low-wage goods for dollars
that the US alone can print freely and that can be spent only in the dollar economy without monetary
penalty.
Japan is a classic victim of monetary imperialism. In 1990, as a result of Japanese export prowess,
the Industrial Bank of Japan was the largest bank in the world, with a market capitalization of $57
billion. The top nine of the 10 largest banks then were all Japanese, trailed by Canadian Alliance in
10th place. No US bank made the top-10 list. By 2001, the effects of dollar hegemony have pushed Citigroup
into first place with a market capitalization of $260 billion. Seven of the top 10 largest financial
institutions in the world in 2001 were US-based, with descending ranking in market capitalization: Citigroup
($260 billion), AIG ($209 billion), HSBC (British-$110 billion), Berkshire Hathaway ($100 billion),
Bank of America ($99 billion), Fanny Mae ($80 billion), Wells Fargo ($74 billion), JP Morgan Chase ($72
billion), RBS (British-$70 billion) and UBS (Swiss-$67 billion). No Japanese bank survived on the list.
China is a neoclassic case of dollar hegemony victimization even though its domestic financial markets
are still not open and the yuan is still not freely convertible. With over $1.4 trillion in foreign
exchange reserves earned at a previously lower fixed exchange rate of 8.2 to a dollar set in 1985, now
growing at the rate of $1 billion a day at a narrow-range floating exchange rate of around 7.5 since
July 2005, China cannot spend much of it dollar holdings on domestic development without domestic inflation
caused by excessive expansion of its yuan money supply. The Chinese economy is overheating because the
bulk of its surplus revenue is in dollars from exports that cannot be spent inside China without monetary
penalty. Chinese wages are too low to absorb sudden expansion of yuan money supply to develop the domestic
economy. And with over $1.4 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, equal to its annual GDP, China cannot
even divest from the dollar without having the market effect of a falling dollar moving against its
remaining holdings.
The People's Bank of China announced on July 20, 2005 that effective immediately the yuan exchange
rate would go up by 2.1% to 8.11 yuan to the US dollar and that China would drop the dollar peg to its
currency. In its place, China would move to a "managed float" of the yuan, pegging the currency's exchange
value to an undisclosed basket of currencies linked to its global trade. In an effort to limit the amount
of volatility, China would not allow the currency to fluctuate by more than 0.3% in any one trading
day. Linking the yuan to a basket of currencies means China's currency is relatively free from market
forces acting on the dollar, shifting to market forces acting on a basket of currencies of China's key
trading partners. The basket is composed of the euro, yen and other Asian currencies as well as the
dollar. Though the precise composition of the basket was not disclosed, it can nevertheless be deduced
by China's trade volume with key trading partners and by mathematical calculation from the set-daily
exchange rate.
Thus China is trapped in a trade regime operating on an international monetary architecture in
which it must continue to export real wealth in the form of underpaid labor and polluted environment
in exchange for dollars that it must reinvest in the US. Ironically, the recent rise of anti-trade
sentiment in US domestic politics offers China a convenient, opportune escape from dollar hegemony to
reduce its dependence on export to concentrate on domestic development. Chinese domestic special interest
groups in the export sector would otherwise oppose any policy to slow the growth in export if not for
the rise of US protectionism which causes shot-term pain for China but long-term benefit in China's
need to restructure its economy toward domestic development. Further trade surplus denominated in dollar
is of no advantage to China.
Even as the domestic US economy declined after the onset of globalization in the early 1990s, US
dominance in global finance has continued to this day on account of dollar hegemony. It should not be
surprising that the nation that can print at will the world's reserve currency for international trade
should come up on top in deregulated global financial markets. The so-called
emerging markets around the world are the new colonies of monetary imperialism in a global neo-liberal
trading regime operating under dollar hegemony geopolitically dominated by the US as the world's sole
remaining superpower.
In Supercapitalism, Reich identifies corporate social responsibility as a diversion from economic
efficiency and an un-capitalistic illusion. Of course the late Milton Friedman had asserted that the
only social responsibility of corporations is to maximize profit, rather than to generate economic well-being
and balanced growth through fair profits. There is ample evidence to suggest that a single-minded quest
for maximizing global corporate profit can lead to domestic economic decline in even the world's sole
remaining superpower. The US public is encouraged to blame such decline on the misbehaving trading partners
of the US rather than US trade policy that permits US transnational corporation to exploit workers in
all trading nations, including those in the US. It is a policy that devalues work by over-rewarding
financial manipulation.
Yet to Reich, the US corporate income tax is regressive and inequitable and should be abolished so
that after-tax corporate profit can be even further enhanced. This pro-profit position is at odds with
even rising US Republican sentiment against transnational corporations and their global trade strategies.
Reich also thinks the concept of corporate criminal liability is based on an "anthropomorphic fallacy"
that ends up hurting innocent people. Reich sees as inevitable an evolutionary path towards an allegedly
perfect new world of a super-energetic capitalism responding to the dictate of all-powerful consumer
preference through market democracy.
Reich argues that corporations cannot be expected to be more "socially responsible" than their shareholders
or even their consumers, and he implies that consumer preference and behavior are the proper and effective
police forces that supersede the need for market regulation. He sees corporations, while viewed by law
as "legal persons", as merely value-neutral institutional respondents of consumer preferences in global
markets. Reich claims that corporate policies, strategies and behavior in market capitalism are effectively
governed by consumer preferences and need no regulation by government. This
is essentially the ideology of neo-liberalism.
Yet US transnational corporations derive profit from global operations serving global consumers to
maximize return on global capital. These transnational corporations will seek to shift production to
where labor is cheapest and environmental standards are lowest and to market their products where prices
are highest and consumer purchasing power the strongest. Often, these corporations find it more profitable
to sell products they themselves do not make, controlling only design and marketing, leaving the dirty
side of manufacturing to others with underdeveloped market power. This means if the US wants a trade
surplus under the current terms of trade, it must lower it wages. The decoupling of consumers from producers
weakens the conventional effects of market pressure on corporate social responsibility. Transnational
corporations have no home community loyalty. Consumers generally do not care about sweat shop conditions
overseas while overseas workers do not care about product safety on goods they produce but cannot afford
to buy. Products may be made in China, but they are not made by China, but by US transnational corporations
which are responsible for the quality and safety of their products.
Further, it is well recognized that corporations routinely and effectively manipulate consumer preference
and market acceptance often through if not false, at least misleading advertising, not for the benefit
of consumers, but to maximize return on faceless capital raised from global capital markets. The subliminal
emphasis by the corporate culture on addictive acquisition of material things, coupled with a structural
deprivation of adequate income to satisfy the manipulated desires, has made consumers less satisfied
than in previous times of less material abundance. Corporations have been allowed to imbed consumption-urging
messages into every aspect of modern life. The result is a disposable culture with packaged waste, an
obesity crisis for all age groups, skyrocketing consumer debt, the privatization of public utilities
that demand the same fee for basic services from rich and poor alike, causing a sharp disparity in affordability.
It is a phenomenon described by Karl Marx as "Fetishism of Commodities".
The relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labor is presented to them as a social
relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labor. This is the reason
why the products of labor become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time
perceptible and imperceptible by the senses … The existence of the things qua commodities,
and the value relation between the products of labor which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely
no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. It
is a definite social relation between men that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation
between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped
regions of the religious world. In that world, the productions of the human brain appear as independent
beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So
it is in the world of commodities with the products of men's hands. This I call the Fetishism which
attaches itself to the products of labor, as soon as they are produced as commodities, and which
is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities. This Fetishism of Commodities has its
origin … in the peculiar social character of the labor that produces them.
Marx asserts that "the mystical character of commodities does not originate in their use-value" (Section
1, p 71). Market value is derived from social relations, not from use-value which is a material phenomenon.
Thus Marx critiques the Marginal Utility Theory by pointing out that market value is affected by social
relationships. For example, the marginal utility of door locks is a function of the burglary rate in
a neighborhood which in turn is a function of the unemployment rate. Unregulated free markets are a
regime of uninhibited price gouging by monopolies and cartels.
Thus the nature of money cannot be adequately explained even in terms of the material-technical properties
of gold, but only in terms of the factors behind man's desire and need for gold. Similarly, it is not
possible to fully understand the price of capital from the technical nature of the means of production,
but only from the social institution of private ownership and the terms of exchange imposed by uneven
market power. Market capitalism is a social institution based on the fetishism of commodities.
While Reich is on target in warning about the danger to democracy posed by the corporate state, and
in claiming that only people can be citizens, and only citizens should participate in democratic decision
making, he misses the point that transnational corporations have transcended national boundaries. Yet
in each community that these transnational corporations operate, they have the congenital incentive,
the financial means and the legal mandate to manipulate the fetishism of commodities even in distant
lands.
Moreover, representative democracy as practiced in the US is increasingly manipulated by corporate
lobbying funded from high-profit-driven corporate financial resources derived from foreign sources controlled
by management. Corporate governance is notoriously abusive of minority shareholder rights on the part
of management. Notwithstanding Reich's rationalization of excessive CEO compensation, CEOs as a class
are the most vocal proponents of corporate statehood. Modern corporations are securely insulated from
any serious threats from consumer revolt. Inter-corporate competition presents only superficial and
trivial choices for consumers. Motorists have never been offered any real choice on gasoline by oil
companies or alternatives on the gasoline-guzzling internal combustion engine by car-makers.
Reich asserts in his Wall Street Journal piece that modern CEOs in finance capitalism nowadays deserve
their high pay because they have to be superstars, unlike their bureaucrat-like predecessors during
industrial capitalism. Notwithstanding that one would expect a former labor secretary to argue that
workers deserve higher pay, the challenge to corporate leadership in market capitalism has always been
and will always remain management's ruthless pursuit of market leadership power, a euphemism for monopoly,
by skirting the rule of law and regulations, framing legislative regimes through political lobbying,
pushing down wages and worker benefits, increasing productivity by downsizing in an expanding market
and manipulating consumer attitude through advertising. At the end of the day, the bottom line for corporate
profit is a factor of lowering wage and benefit levels.
Reich seems to have forgotten that the captains of industry of 19th century free-wheeling capitalism
were all superstars who evoked public admiration by manipulating the awed public into accepting the
Horatio Alger myth of success through hard work, honesty and fairness. The derogatory term "robber barons"
was first coined by protest pamphlets circulated by victimized Kansas farmers against ruthless railroad
tycoons during the Great Depression.
The manipulation of the public will by moneyed interests is the most problematic vulnerability of
US economic and political democracy. In an era when class warfare has taken on new sophistication, the
accusation of resorting to class warfare argument is widely used to silence legitimate socio-economic
protests. The US media is essentially owned by the moneyed interests. The
decline of unionism in the US has been largely the result of anti-labor propaganda campaigns funded
by corporations and government policies influenced by corporate lobbyists. The infiltration
of organized crime was exploited to fan public anti-union sentiments while widespread corporate white
collar crimes were dismissed as mere anomalies. (See
Capitalism's bad apples: It's the barrel that's rotten)
As promoted by his permissive opinion piece, a more apt title for Reich's new book would be Superman
Capitalism, in praise of the super-heroic qualities of successful corporate CEOs who deserve superstar
pay. This view goes beyond even fascist superman ideology. The compensation
of corporate CEOs in Nazi Germany never reached such obscene levels as those in US corporate land today.
Reich argues that CEOs deserve their super-high compensation, which has increased 600% in two decades,
because corporate profits have also risen 600% in the same period. The former secretary of labor did
not point out that wages rose only 30% in the same period. The profit/wage disparity is a growing cancer
in the US-dominated global economy, causing over-production resulting from stagnant demand caused by
inadequate wages. A true spokesman for labor would point out that enlightened modern management recognizes
that the performance of a corporation is the sum total of effective team work between management and
labor.
System analysis has long shown that collective effort on the part of the entire work force is indispensable
to success in any complex organism. Further, a healthy consumer market depends on a balance between
corporate earnings and worker earnings. Reich's point would be valid if US wages had risen by the same
multiple as CEO pay and corporate profit, but he apparently thought that it would be poor etiquette
to raise embarrassing issues as a guest writer in an innately anti-labor journal of Wall Street. Even
then, unless real growth also rose 600% in two decades, the rise in corporate earning may be just an
inflation bubble.
To be fair, Reich did address the income gap issue eight months earlier in another article, "An Introduction
to Economic Populism" in the Jan-Feb, 2007 issue of The American Prospect, a magazine that bills itself
as devoted to "liberal ideas". In that article, Reich relates a "philosophical" discussion he had with
fellow neo-liberal cabinet member Robert Rubin, then treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, on two "simple
questions".
The first question was: Suppose a proposed policy will increase the incomes of some people without
decreasing the incomes of any others. Of course Reich must know that it is a question of welfare economics
long ago answered by the "pareto optimum", which asserts that resources are optimally distributed when
an individual cannot move into a better position without putting someone else into a worse position.
In an unjust society, the pareto optimum will perpetuate injustice in the name of optimum resource allocation.
"Should it be implemented? Bob and I agreed it should," writes Reich. Not exactly an earth-shaking liberal
position. Rather, it is a classic neo-liberal posture.
And the second question: But suppose the people whose incomes will rise are already wealthier than
everyone else. Although no one will lose ground, inequality will widen. Should it still be implemented?
"I won't tell you where he and I came out on that second question," writes Reich without explaining
why. He allows that "we agreed that people who don't share in such gains feel relatively poorer. Widening
inequality also further tips the balance of political power in favor of the wealthy."
Of course, clear thinking would have left the second question mute because it would have invalidated
the first question, as the real income of those whose nominal income has not fallen has indeed fallen
relative to those whose nominal income has risen. In a macro monetary sense, it is not possible to raise
the nominal income of some without lowering the real income of others. All incomes must rise together
proportionally or inequality in after-inflation real income will increase.
But for the sake of argument, let's go along with Reich's parable on welfare economics and financial
equality. That conversation occurred a decade ago. Reich says in his January 2007 article that "inequality
is far more worrisome now", as if it had not been or that the policies he and his colleagues in the
Clinton administration, as evidenced by their answer to their own first question, did not cause the
now "more worrisome" inequality. "The incomes of the bottom 90% of Americans have increased about 2%
in real terms since then, while that of the top 1% has increased over 50%," Reich wrote in the matter
of fact tone of an innocent bystander.
It is surprising that a former labor secretary would err even on the record on worker income. The
US Internal Revenue Service reports that while incomes have been rising since 2002, the average income
in 2005 was $55,238, nearly 1% less than in 2000 after adjusting for inflation. Hourly wage costs (including
mandatory welfare contributions and benefits) grew more slowly than hourly productivity from 1993 to
late 1997, the years of Reich's tenure as labor secretary. Corporate profit rose until 1997 before declining,
meaning what should have gone to workers from productivity improvements went instead to corporate profits.
And corporate profit declined after 1997 because of the Asian financial crisis, which reduced offshore
income for all transnational companies, while domestic purchasing power remained weak because of sub-par
worker income growth.
The break in trends in wages occurred when the unemployment rate sank to 5%, below the 6% threshold
of NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment) as job creation was robust from 1993 onwards.
The "reserve army of labor" in the war against inflation disappeared after the 1997 Asian crisis when
the Federal Reserve injected liquidity into the US banking system to launch the debt bubble. According
to NAIRU, when more than 94% of the labor force is employed, the war on wage-pushed inflation will be
on the defensive. Yet while US inflation was held down by low-price imports from low-wage economies,
US domestic wages fell behind productivity growth from 1993 onward. US wages could have risen without
inflationary effects but did not because of the threat of further outsourcing of US jobs overseas. This
caused corporate profit to rise at the expense of labor income during the low-inflation debt bubble
years.
Income inequality in the US today has reached extremes not seen since the 1920s, but the trend started
three decades earlier. More than $1 trillion a year in relative income is now being shifted annually
from roughly 90,000,000 middle and working class families to the wealthiest households and corporations
via corporate profits earned from low-wage workers overseas. This is why nearly 60% of Republicans polled
support more taxes on the rich.
The policies and practices responsible for today's widening income gap date back to the 1977-1981
period of the Carter administration which is justly known as the administration of deregulation. Carter's
deregulation was done in the name of populism but the results were largely anti-populist. Starting with
Carter, policies and practices by both corporations and government underwent a fundamental shift to
restructure the US economy with an overhaul of job markets. This was achieved through widespread de-unionization,
breakup of industry-wide collective bargaining which enabled management to exploit a new international
division of labor at the expense of domestic workers.
The frontal assault on worker collective bargaining power was accompanied by a realigning of the
progressive federal tax structure to cut taxes on the rich, a brutal neo-liberal global free-trade offensive
by transnational corporations and anti-labor government trade policies. The cost shifting of health
care and pension plans from corporations to workers was condoned by government policy. A wave of government-assisted
compression of wages and overtime pay narrowed the wage gap between the lowest and highest paid workers
(which will occur when lower-paid workers receive a relatively larger wage increase than the higher-paid
workers with all workers receiving lower pay increases than managers). There was a recurring diversion
of inflation-driven social security fund surpluses to the US fiscal budget to offset recurring inflation-adjusted
federal deficits. This was accompanied by wholesale anti-trust deregulation and privatization of public
sectors; and most egregious of all, financial market deregulation.
Carter deregulated the US oil industry four years after the 1973 oil crisis in the name of national
security. His Democratic challenger, Senator Ted Kennedy, advocated outright nationalization. The Carter
administration also deregulated the airlines, favoring profitable hub traffic at the expense of traffic
to smaller cities. Air fares fell but service fell further. Delays became routine, frequently tripling
door-to-door travel time. What consumers save in airfare, they pay dearly in time lost in delay and
in in-flight discomfort. The Carter administration also deregulated trucking,
which caused the Teamsters Union to support Ronald Reagan in exchange for a promise to delay trucking
deregulation.
Railroads were also deregulated by Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act of 1976 which
eased regulations on rates, line abandonment, and mergers to allow the industry to compete with truck
and barge transportation that had caused a financial and physical deterioration of the national rail
network railroads. Four years later, Congress followed up with the Staggers Rail Act of 1980 which provided
the railroads with greater pricing freedom, streamlined merger timetables, expedited the line abandonment
process, and allowed confidential contracts with shippers. Although railroads, like other modes of transportation,
must purchase and maintain their own rolling stock and locomotives, they must also, unlike competing
modes, construct and maintain their own roadbed, tracks, terminals, and related facilities. Highway
construction and maintenance are paid for by gasoline taxes. In the regulated environment, recovering
these fixed costs hindered profitability for the rail industry.
After deregulation, the railroads sought to enhance their financial situation and improve their operational
efficiency with a mix of strategies to reduce cost and maximize profit, rather than providing needed
service to passengers around the nation. These strategies included network rationalization by shedding
unprofitable capacity, raising equipment and operational efficiencies by new work rules that reduced
safety margins and union power, using differential pricing to favor big shippers, and pursuing consolidation,
reducing the number of rail companies from 65 to 5 today. The consequence was a significant increase
of market power for the merged rail companies, decreasing transportation options for consumers and increasing
rates for remote, less dense areas.
In the agricultural sector, rail network rationalization has forced shippers to truck their bulk
commodity products greater distances to mainline elevators, resulting in greater pressure on and damage
to rural road systems. For inter-modal shippers, profit-based network rationalization has meant reduced
access - physically and economically - to Container on Flat Car (COFC) and Trailer on Flat Car (TOFC)
facilities and services. Rail deregulation, as is true with most transportation and communication deregulation,
produces sector sub-optimization with dubious benefits for the national economy by distorting distributional
balance, causing congestion and inefficient use of land, network and lines.
Carter's Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) approach to radio and television regulation began
in the mid-1970s as a search for relatively minor "regulatory underbrush" that could be cleared away
for more efficient and cost-effective administration of the important rules that would remain. Congress
largely went along with this updating trend, and initiated a few deregulatory moves of its own to make
regulation more effective and responsive to contemporary conditions.
The Reagan administration under Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Mark Fowler in 1981
shifted deregulation to a fundamental and ideologically-driven reappraisal of regulations away from
long-held principles central to national broadcasting policy appropriate for a democratic society. The
result was removal of many longstanding rules to permit an overall reduction in FCC oversight of station
ownership concentration and network operations. Congress grew increasingly wary of the pace of deregulation,
however, and began to slow the pace of FCC deregulation by the late 1980s.
Specific deregulatory moves included (a) extending television licenses to five years from three in
1981; (b) expanding the number of television stations any single entity could own from seven in 1981
to 12 in 1985, with further changes in 1995; (c) abolishing guidelines for minimal amounts of non-entertainment
programming in 1985; (d) elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987; (e) dropping, in 1985, FCC license
guidelines for how much advertising could be carried; (f) leaving technical standards increasingly in
the hands of licensees rather than FCC mandates; and (g) deregulation of television's competition, especially
cable which went through several regulatory changes in the decade after 1983.
The 1996 Telecommunications Act eliminated the 40-station ownership cap on radio stations. Since
then, the radio industry has experienced unprecedented consolidation. In June 2003, the FCC voted to
overhaul limits on media ownership. Despite having held only one hearing on the complex issue of media
consolidation over a 20-month review period, the FCC, in a party-line vote, voted 3-2 to overhaul limits
on media concentration. The rule would (1) increase the aggregate television ownership cap to enable
one company to own stations reaching 45% of our nation's homes (from 35%), (2) lift the ban on newspaper-television
cross-ownership, and (3) allow a single company to own three television stations in large media markets
and two in medium ones. In the largest markets, the rule would allow a single company to own up to three
television stations, eight radio stations, the cable television system, cable television stations, and
a daily newspaper. A wide range of public-interest groups filed an appeal with the Third Circuit, which
stayed the effective date of the new rules.
According to a BIA Financial Network report released in July 2006, a total of 88 television stations
had been sold in the first six months of 2006, generating a transaction value of $15.7 billion. In 2005,
the same period saw the sale of just 21 stations at a value of $244 million, with total year transactions
of $2.86 billion.
Congress passed a law in 2004 that forbids any network to own a group of stations that reaches more
than 39% of the national television audience. That is lower than the 45% limit set in 2003, but more
than the original cap of 35% set in 1996 under the Clinton administration - leading public interest
groups to argue that the proposed limits lead to a stifling of local voices.
Newspaper-television cross-ownership remains a contentious issue. Currently prohibited, it refers
to the "common ownership of a full-service broadcast station and a daily newspaper when the broadcast
station's area of coverage (or "contour") encompasses the newspaper's city of publication".
Capping of local radio and television ownership is another issue. While the original rule prohibited
it, currently a company can own at least one television and one radio station in a market. In larger
markets, "a single entity may own additional radio stations depending on the number of other independently
owned media outlets in the market".
Most broadcasters and newspaper publishers are lobbying to ease or end restrictions on cross-ownership;
they say it has to be the future of the news business. It allows newsgathering costs to be spread across
platforms, and delivers multiple revenue streams in turn. Their argument is also tied to a rapidly changing
media consumption market, and to the diversity of opinions available to the consumer with the rise of
the Internet and other digital platforms.
The arguments against relaxing media ownership regulations are put forth by consumer unions and other
interest groups on the ground that consolidation in any form inevitably leads to a lack of diversity
of opinion. Cross-ownership limits the choices for consumers, inhibits localism and gives excessive
media power to one entity.
Professional and workers' guilds of the communication industry (the Screen Actors Guild and American
Federation of TV and Radio Artists among others) would like the FCC to keep in mind the independent
voice, and want a quarter of all prime-time programming to come from independent producers. The Children's
Media Policy Coalition suggested that the FCC limit local broadcasters to a single license per market,
so that there is enough original programming for children. Other interest groups like the National Association
of Black Owned Broadcasters are worried about what impact the rules might have on station ownership
by minorities.
Deregulatory proponents see station licensees not as "public trustees" of the public airwaves requiring
the provision of a wide variety of services to many different listening groups. Instead, broadcasting
has been increasingly seen as just another business operating in a commercial marketplace which did
not need its management decisions questioned by government overseers, even though they are granted permission
to use public airways. Opponents argue that deregulation violates a key mandate of the Communications
Act of 1934 which requires licensees to operate in the public interest. Deregulation allows broadcasters
to seek profits with little public service programming.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major overhaul of US telecommunications law in nearly
62 years, amending the Communications Act of 1934, and leading to media consolidation. It was approved
by Congress on January 3, 1996 and signed into law on February 8, 1996 by President Clinton, a Democrat
whom some have labeled as the best president the Republicans ever had. The act claimed to foster competition,
but instead it continued the historic industry consolidation begun by Reagan, whose actions reduced
the number of major media companies from around 50 in 1983 to 10 in 1996 and 6 in 2005.
The Carter administration increased the power of the Federal Reserve through the Depository Institutions
and Monetary Control Act (DIDMCA) of 1980 which was a necessary first step in ending the New Deal restrictions
placed upon financial institutions, such as Regulation Q put in place by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933
and other restrictions on banks and financial institutions. The populist Regulation Q imposed limits
and ceilings on bank and savings-and-loan (S&L) interest rates to provide funds for low-risk home mortgages.
But with financial market deregulation, Regulation Q created incentives for US banks to do business
outside the reach of US law, launching finance globalization. London came to dominate this offshore
dollar business.
The populist Regulation Q, which regulated for several decades limits and ceilings on bank and S&L
interest to serve the home mortgage sector, was phased out completely in March 1986. Banks were allowed
to pay interest on checking account - the NOW accounts - to lure depositors back from the money markets.
The traditional interest-rate advantage of the S&Ls was removed, to provide a "level playing field",
forcing them to take the same risks as commercial banks to survive. Congress also lifted restrictions
on S&Ls' commercial lending, which promptly got the whole industry into trouble that would soon required
an unprecedented government bailout of depositors, with tax money. But the developers who made billions
from easy credit were allowed to keep their profits. State usury laws were unilaterally suspended by
an act of Congress in a flagrant intrusion on state rights. Carter, the
well-intentioned populist, left a legacy of anti-populist policies. To this day, Greenspan
continues to argue disingenuously that subprime mortgages helped the poor toward home ownership, instead
of generating obscene profit for the debt securitization industry.
During the Reagan administration, corporate lobbying and electoral strategies allowed the corporate
elite to wrest control of the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, from conservative populists. In
the late 1980s, supply-side economics was promoted to allow corporate interests to dominate US politics
at the expense of labor by arguing that the only way labor can prosper is to let capital achieve high
returns, notwithstanding the contradiction that high returns on capital must come from low wages.
New legislation and laws, executive orders, federal government rule-making, federal agency decisions,
and think-tank propaganda, etc, subsequently followed the new political landscape, assisting the implementation
of new corporate policies and practices emerging from corporate headquarters rather than from the shop
floor. Economists and analysts who challenged this voodoo theory were largely shut out of the media.
Workers by the million were persuaded to abandon their institutional collective defender to fend for
themselves individually in the name of freedom. It was a freedom to see their job security eroded and
wages and benefits fall with no recourse.
Note
1. Das Kapital, Volume One, Part I: Commodities and Money, Chapter One: Commodities, Section
I.
Next: PART 2: Global war on labor
Henry C K Liu is chairman of a New York-based private investment group. His website is
at http://www.henryckliu.com.
Hudson is a Wall Street economist who used to work at the Chase Manhattan Bank.
In Part One, he describes the rise of the American empire.
Part Two describes its institutions: the US-controlled World Bank, the World Trade Organization
and the International Monetary Fund, which all benefit the USA. The US has the sole veto power
in all three.
Part Three describes what Herman Kahn called `the greatest rip-off ever achieved', the way
the US's ruling class levies us all to pay for its aggressive wars, just as the Roman Empire levied
tribute to pay for its constant wars. Similarly Britain, Germany and Japan all pay for the US's
military bases in their countries.
In 1945, as in 1918, Britain led Europe's capitulation to the USA's debt demands. The British
ruling class chose dependency on the US ruling class. The USA insisted that Britain ended the
sterling bloc, accepted IMF controls, did not impose exchange controls, and did not devalue. As
Hudson writes, "The Anglo-American Loan Agreement spelled the end
of Britain as a Great Power."
The 1945-51 Labour government's huge spending on unnecessary imperial, counter-revolutionary
wars robbed our industry of investment. This excessive military spending meant that we had constantly
to borrow from the IMF, increasing our dependence on the USA. Now Britain is the USA's Trojan
horse in Europe, against Britain's interests.
Hudson immodestly claims that his analysis supersedes Lenin. He says that the US national
government's interests, not the private interests of the capitalist class, drive the system.
He claims that the US government subordinates `the interests of its national bourgeoisie to the
autonomous interests of the national government'. But is the US government really independent
of the capitalist class? How `autonomous' are these interests?...
This review is from: Super Imperialism - New Edition: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S.
World Dominanc (Paperback)
Super-Imperialism is better viewed as a radical alternative to common undergraduate textbooks
such as Joan Edelman Spero's, "The Politics of International Economic Relations" than as an update
to the theories of Lenin or Hobson. (His background and prose style are similar to Spero's and
his book covers similar ground.)
It has three sections, each which could have been a separate book.
Chapters 1-6 are a history of U.S. international economic relations from World War I through
Bretton Woods.
Chapters 7-10 are a critique of the "The Institutions of the American Empire" (GATT, the
World Bank, the IMF and U.S. foreign aid mechanisms). If you have ever wondered what all of
the huge protests of the World Bank and IMF were all about these chapters are for you.
Chapters 11-15 are about the U.S. economic transition in the late 1960s and early 1970s
from running consistent balance of payments surpluses to running consistent deficits. (We used
to export more than we imported; Now we import more than we export.) At the same time the U.S.
stopped backing dollars with gold, which forced other countries to lend the surplus dollars
created by our trade deficit back to the U.S. government (i.e. to buy treasury notes), thereby
also subsidizing our chronic budget deficits. This is the "super-imperialism" of the book's
title. This situation was still new and strange when the first edition was published in 1972,
and the book's reputation rests on the light Hudson was able to shed on it.
The 2003 Edition has a new introduction and two new chapters at the end. The rest of the book
has occasional new material, but does not appear to have been extensively re-written.
It's a difficult and rewarding book. The difficulty lies partly in the subject matter itself,
partly in Hudson's convoluted prose and partly in the numerous typographical errors that mar the
2003 Pluto Press edition.
The book is rewarding because it's honest. Readers educated in the U.S. will initially regard
Hudson's account with some skepticism. We can't help it; We've been systematically miseducated
by pro-U.S. polemics presented in an "objective" tone.
In contrast Hudson is a strident critic of the U.S. management of the global economy. But so
is any reasonably objective person who is apprized of the facts. I much prefer an author who honestly
tells you the real story as he understands it to one who conceals the awful truth behind an ostensibly
impartial facade. But a "revisionist" has to work twice as hard to make his case, and that is
why the book contains the detailed explication of what reviewer Myers calls the "intricacies of
events and negotiations that gave rise to the present order."
I think an open-minded reader will be won over by Hudson's thoughtful use of contemporaneous
sources (e.g. government publications and articles in the business press) and also biographical
sources to illuminate how key decision makers understood the alternatives, and their motives for
pursuing the policies that they did when forging the post-war economic order. As he places these
choices in context it quickly becomes evident that the motives on the U.S. side have been consistently
aggressive and that U.S. policy makers have all along viewed multilateral economic institutions
as instruments of national policy--to the world's detriment.
Hudson also has a keen sense of the painfully narrow horizon of human foresight. The historical
sections sometimes read like a conspiracy theory in which the conspirators are not very smart.
E.g., Franklin Roosevelt's stubborn insistence that World War I debts be repaid prolonged the
Great Depression; When J. M. Keynes was negotiating Bretton Woods for the newly elected Labour
government, he got them a terrible deal; The U.S. transition to "super-imperialism" which is the
main story of the book (chapters 11 through 14) was originally an unintended consequence of the
huge budget and trade deficits caused by the Vietnam War.
If you are interested in "globalization" this book is an important piece of the puzzle, but
it really only covers up through 1973, and it spends more time on the relationship between the
U.S. and Europe than on "North-South" relations. Having said that, Ch. 8 "The Imperialism of U.S.
Foreign Aid" is very good, esp. how foreign aid benefits the U.S. balance of payments and the
harmful effects of U.S. agricultural exports. China is hardly mentioned.
If you are an economics student and you sense that they aren't telling you the whole story,
or just a thoughtful citizen who wants to sharpen your conceptual tools for understanding and
resisting the strategies of U.S. imperialism, this book is for you.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Hudson's historical argument in this book is both brilliant and sometimes a bit rough.
Hudson has always had a great talent for interpreting and sketching out for weaker minds like
us what the US government's abandonment of the gold-standard really
means. When Hudson came forward with his thesis in the mid 1970's, his thesis was
outrageous among orthodox economists: to suggest that the US should be worried about the long-term
consequences of running balance of payments deficits year after year, decade after decade was
crazy leftist nonsense in the 1970s. As long as people continue to need the US markets more than
the US needs any other one country's markets (and people still have faith in the good credit of
the US government) there is no reason US could not run balance of
payment deficits forever, according to the conventional wisdom.
What amazes me is that now, after having done exactly what Hudson warned the US government
not to do in the 1970s, many otherwise relatively orthodox economists are beginning to worry about
this. Hudson may be on the more "sky-is-falling" end of things, but
his analysis was right on the nail in 1972 and is still there today: worst case scenario - massive
recession and massive devaluation of the dollar (by massive I mean, unprecedented).
Former US Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin was quoted in March 16, 2006 WSJ as saying that
"The probabilities are extremely high that if we don't address these imbalances, then at some
point, and it could be years down the road, we'll pay a very big price." We are in a limbo world
where no one really knows how this problem is going to play out, but Hudson should be credited
for being one of the first, and longest-running, advocates for addressing this problem. Too bad
it has taken so many decades for people to recognize what he has been telling us all along about
balance of payments deficits.
The rest of the argument Hudson makes in this book is a bit tough to follow, though. Essentially,
Hudson attempts to show how the US has, during this century but especially since WWII, systematically
sought to manipulate all of the great economic institution-building opportunities following WWII
to advance the interests of the US over other countries. Coming off the gold standard and running
up a balance of payments deficit was just one of many ways in which this occurred. The US largely
succeeded. The GATT (now WTO), World Bank, IMF, all bear American "fingerprints".
I agree that the mega-institutions of the contemporary world economic and political machine
are largely the unilateral creation of the US, imposed on the other great nations at a time when
the other nations were particularly vulnerable to US force of will and not particular inclined
to be heterodox visionaries. I also agree that the US in general has probably used as much leverage
as it could in negotiating all of the defining institutions in which it had any hand in constructing.
And yet, how could it have been any different? National governments pursue their self-interest
and the interest of their citizens, often at the expense of other national governments and their
citizens. The nation-state system is set up to work that way. But is the problem really one of
US bad behavior, as Hudson suggests? Isn't the problem really structural? In the nation-state
world, wherein the world is divided up into pseudo-autonomous political monopolies, each individually
endowed with particular strengths and weaknesses, and all pitted against each other in a laissez-faire
system where the only things that keep nation-states from raping and killing each other to oblivion
are, good faith and the fact that the balance of power among the nation-states is enough to keep
each monopoly contained in its behavior towards the other monopolies, what sort of behavior could
we have expected from the US, a nation-state that, at a series of pivotal moments in 20th century
history, found itself with "golden opportunities" to take advantage of other nations' weaknesses
and advance its own power? Would the French, or the Brits, or the Japanese, or the Italians,
or the Germans, or the Russians have behaved any different if they found themselves holding all
the cards in 1945 instead of the US?
My point is, the facts Hudson lays out are correct -- there clearly
is a problem in the way in which our current world order has been put together and the US is at
the middle of that problem. The conclusions Hudson draws from those facts do not
go deep enough in understanding what those facts mean, however.
It isn't that the Americans behave or behaved "bad" by the standard of good behavior implicit
in the nation-state system, it is that the nation-state system itself
to a certain extent reflects 19th century laissez-faire values of autonomy and individuality that
pit nation-states against each other in a world where each is out to improve its lot through trade
and, when possible and tolerable, violence.
The system itself breaks down when one player becomes too powerful.
To blame the US for the systemic problem of massive power imbalances between nation states is
simply pushing any hope for correction in the wrong direction.
FT.com
/ Columnists / Samuel Brittan - The wrong kind of Third Way: When a book entitled Supercapitalism:
the Battle for Democracy in an Age of Big Business (Icon Books) landed on my desk I took it for just
another of the many anti-capitalist diatribes so beloved by publishers. Its author was Robert Reich,
a former US secretary of labour who parted company from the Clinton administration on the grounds
that it was not interventionist enough. But I was glad I persevered. For it turned out to be one
of the most interesting books on political economy to appear for a long time.
During the postwar
decades up to the early 1970s, the Bretton Woods system of semi-fixed exchange rates worked, after
a fashion; and countries seemed able to combine full employment with low inflation and historically
rapid growth and diminishing income differences. Reich calls them a "not quite golden age". It was
"not quite" because of the treatment of women and minorities and the prevailing conformist and authoritarian
atmosphere.
It has been succeeded by what Reich calls supercapitalism, in which the cult of the bottom line
has replaced the cosy oligopolies of postwar decades, once-dominant companies shrink or disappear,
new ones spring up overnight and the financial sector is (or was until recently) in the driving seat.
He rightly dismisses many of the popular scapegoats – or heroes – of the process.
The changeover began well before Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher could influence anything.
Free-market economists have been preaching essentially the same message since the 18th century. It
is extremely unlikely that there has been a radical change in the psychology or morality of business
operators. His own candidate is the technologies that have empowered consumers and investors to get
ever better deals.
Unfortunately, many of these same consumers have lost in their capacity as citizens. He cites
the failure of the political process even to attempt to correct the increasing skewness of US income
distribution. In later pronouncements he has attributed the subprime loan disaster in part to the
failure of supercapitalism to raise the incomes of the mass of wage earners who have been impelled
to resort to borrowing as a substitute. Moreover, Congress has performed abysmally in correcting
market failures in environmental and other areas. He has a non-partisan
explanation: the staggering increase in business lobbying expenditures affecting Democrats as well
as Republicans, as a result of which the political process, far from correcting the distortions of
unbridled capitalism, has made them worse.
But for me the novel point of the book is his utter dismissal of the
prevailing idea of appealing to the "social responsibility" of business to improve matters.
This is a notion that particularly appeals to soft centre politicians such as David Cameron's Conservatives
in Britain as a new kind of Third Way. Reich argues that it is the job of the democratic political
process by laws, taxes and other interventions to harmonise the pursuit of money-making with the
public good. "The job of the businessman is to make profits." He is completely unabashed by the charge
that he sounds like Milton Friedman and indeed quotes the late Chicago professor approvingly several
times. He argues that the so-called stakeholders who insist on being consulted before legislation
is drafted are increasingly companies whose interests might be affected. One result is the "corruption
of knowledge". We should beware of claims that a company is doing something for the public good.
Corporate executives may donate some of their shareholders' money to a genuinely good cause or forbear
from polluting the atmosphere to forestall a greater legal or fiscal burden. But in that case such
actions are likely to be limited and temporary, "extending only insofar as the conditions that made
such voluntary action pay off continue".
Similarly we should beware of a politician who blames a company for doing something that is legal.
Such words are all too often a cover "for taking no action to change the rules of the game". Above
all, "corporations are not people. They are legal fictions, nothing more than bundles of contractual
agreements ... A company cannot know right from wrong ... Only people know right from wrong and only
people act." One example of the "anthropomorphic fallacy" is when companies are held criminally liable
for the misdeeds of their executives. Not only are the genuinely guilty let off too lightly but many
innocent people get hurt. For instance, "the vast majority of Andersen employees had nothing to do
with Enron but lost their jobs nonetheless".
I have two reservations. One is that I cannot share Reich's confidence that a revived and effective
"democracy" would be a cure-all. You only have to see where democratic
pressures are driving US energy policy. Second, there is a danger that the Friedman-Reich
position could inadvertently give sustenance to the "I was only doing my job" defence for evil actions.
You do not have to hold shares in a company selling arms to Saudi Arabia, or work for it. But do
not deceive yourself that such individual gestures can be a substitute for a change in policy.
According to Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, there was a time
when capitalism and democracy where almost perfectly balanced. This was the period of 1945 to 1975,
which he calls the "Not Quite Golden Age." During this period there was a three-way social contract
among big business, big labor, and big government. Each made sure that they as well as the other
two received a fair share of the pie. Unions recieved their wages and benefits, business their profits,
and regulatory agencies had their power. It was also a time when the gap between the rich and the
poor was the narrowest in our history. It was not quite the golden age because women and minorities
were still second class citizens, but at least there was hope.
Fast forward to 2007, capitalism is thriving and democracy is sputtering. Why has capitlism become
supercapitalism and democracy become enfeebled? Reich explains that it was a combination of things:
deregulation, globe spanning computer networks, better transportation, etc. The changes were mainly
a result of technological breakthroughs; unlike many leftists, he is not conspiratorial thinker.
The winner of this great transformation was the consumer/investor and the loser was the citizen/wage
earner. The consumer has more choices than ever before and at reasonable prices. The investor has
unprecedented opportunities to make profits. The citzen, however, is not doing well. The average
citizen does not have much voice - other than voting - in the body politic. And on the wage earner
has been stagnating for many years. The most salient illustration of this trend is Walmart. Walmart
delivers the goods at low prices, but the trade-off is low wages for their employees. We justify
this dilemma, as Reich nicely puts it, because "The awkward truth is
that most of us are of two minds."
As a left-leaning author, Reich makes some startling pronouncements. One, stop treating corporations
as human beings. They are neither moral or immoral, they are merely "bundles of contracts." I couldn't
agree more. Stop expecting corporations to be socially responsible, see them for what they are: profit-seeking
organizations. Any socially responsible action is a ruse to bolster the bottom line anyway. Don't
even encourage them to be socially responsible because it will wrongly lead us to believe that they
are solving problems when they are not. Corporations play by the rules that they are given and it
is up to citizens and their elected representatives to change the rules.
This is no easy task in the age of supercapitalism. There are currently
38,000 registered lobbyists in Washington DC in a virtual arms race of spending with each other to
buy favors from our so-called representatives. The only way citizens can compete with
this is not by hiring more lobbyists but advocating through new media outlets such as the internet
and cable tv. This, according to Reich, is currently to most effective way to make government more
responsive.
The question that remains, after reading this book, is will consumers be willing to sacrifice
their low prices to achieve their goals as citizens. If the answer is yes, we can possibly rebalance
the equation between democracy and capitalism; if not, we are left to the not so tender mercies of
supercapitalism.
Robert Reich makes a compelling argument that supercapitalism has robbed democracy of much of
its power. Supercapitalism by the definition presented in the book is
simple--the consumer is king and prices ALWAYS go down. What Reich looks at is the
cost of low prices to companies, society, the individual and its impact on the workings of democracy.
So how is democracy compromised? Reich also points out that the rise
of different lobbying groups, the cost of politics and globalization as contributing to this process.
This isn't a surprise. It has just become more pronounced with time.
It's not due to some large conspiracy or any hidden political agenda as much as it is driven by
consumption. Ultimately Reich argues that it robs the common citizen of any control over democracy.
It's not surprising that this is a highly charged issue because the economics of what benefits society
(or "the common good" as Reich calls it)often gets tangled up in the web of politics.
Reich also points out that the cost of supercompetitiveness, constantly
falling prices is a loss to the economic and social health of America. Reich points
out that everyone wants to get the lowest price possible but he also suggests that we must balance
that with our desire to have decent wages and benefits. He also points out that the move towards
regulation was initiated by government and that corporations went along because it kept out competition
and guaranteed a top and bottom for prices allowing companies to get a profit without fear of cutting
prices so low that it would put them out of business.
I should point out that this is an oversimplification of Reich's points but it does capture some
of the concepts. He also makes some suggestions that would help keep the free market afloat without
undermining democracy and allowing consumers to still benefit from competitive pricing. Since this
is economics we are discussing politics is mixed in and might color whether or not you agree with
his points.
Reich's style is breezy for a book that looks at economics, democracy and the erosion of wages,
benefits. Reich comes across as fair balanced and thoughtful even as he sells his take on what is
undermining American society. Ultimately it's a worthwhile book to read simply because it opens up
dialogue on the social cost of constantly lowering prices and how it impacts those who live next
door to us
Every middle class American should read this book. Many observations about income disparities
have been written up lately but Reich pulls the important points together in a powerful and accessible
way.
Reich's main thesis is that the current transition the US economy is under is misunderstood. Many
of the policy elite (Geithner, Volcker) have repeated the familiar claim that Americans are living
beyond their means. Personally I don't discount that completely but Reich's insight goes much deeper
and rings truer:
"The problem was not that American spent beyond their means but that their means had not kept
up with what the larger economy could and should have been able to provide them."
"We cannot have a sustained recovery until we address it. ... Until this transformation is
made, our economy will continue to experience phantom recoveries and speculative bubbles, each
more distressing than the one before."
Anyone looking at the unemployment data since WWII has to wonder why the unemployment component
of the last three recessions is so prolonged. Instead of a sharp trend up, there are long slopes
of delayed returns to peak employment. (Google "calculated risk blog" and look at Dec. 2010 articles.)
I believe Reich has demonstrated the main culprit this. To be clear, he is not describing the detailed
mechanics of what triggered the Great Recession. (Nouriel Roubini has a good book that I would recommend
for more on the financial fraud, leverage and credit risks involved -
Crisis Economics:
A Crash Course in the Future of Finance. ) But Reich is taking a
long term view and exposes a dysfunctional trait of the US economy that no one can afford to ignore.
It is this weakness that will delay the current recovery and continue to create greater risks in
the future.
Reich draws the parallels between the Great Depression and the Great Recession, particularly the
imbalance of wealth concentrated in fewer hands and middle class workers with less income to convert
into consumer demand. One of the fascinating devices he found to do this was the writings of Marriner
Eccles (Fed chair between '34 to '48):
"As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies
a distribution of wealth - not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -
to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation's
economic machinery. Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by
1929-1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This served
them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers,
the savers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products that would justify
a reinvestment of their capital accumulations in new plants. In consequence as in a poker game
where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the
game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped."
Reich also shares a couple of powerful and disturbing graphs that show how the middle class has
been squeezed and also how since the late 70s, hourly wages have not only not kept up with the rise
in productivity but have remained essentially flat.
Another driving theme Reich presents is the "basic bargain" and he evokes Henry Ford, the man
that took mass production to new heights and paid his workers well:
"[Henry] Ford understood the basic economic bargain that lay at the heart of a modern, highly
productive economy. Workers are also consumers. Their earnings are continuously recycled to buy the
goods and services other workers produce. But if earnings are inadequate
and this basic bargain is broken, an economy produces more goods and services than its people are
capable of purchasing."
I was concerned early in the book that Reich would leave out some of the important complexities
of the topic but he covered related finances, politics and even consumer/voter psychology in a succinct
yet informative way. His summary of changes to the labor market in the last 30+ years was very good.
His ideas for correcting this were interesting if perhaps difficult to implement politically.
My take away however was that this is a strong indicator of how bad he thinks the situation really
is. Many Americans may be yearning to return to "normal". Reich is the first to thoroughly convince
me that it is not going to happen.
This is a very quick read of 144 pages and is well worth the time.
Finance is a form of warfare. Like military conquest, its aim is to gain control
of land, public infrastructure, and to impose tribute. This involves dictating laws to its subjects,
and concentrating social as well as economic planning in centralized hands. This is what now is
being done by financial means, without the cost to the aggressor of fielding an army. But the
economies under attacked may be devastated as deeply by financial stringency as by military attack
when it comes to demographic shrinkage, shortened life spans, emigration and capital flight.
This attack is being mounted not by nation states as such, but by a cosmopolitan financial
class. Finance always has been cosmopolitan more than nationalistic – and always has sought to
impose its priorities and lawmaking power over those of parliamentary democracies.
Like any monopoly or vested interest, the financial strategy seeks to block government power
to regulate or tax it. From the financial vantage point, the ideal function of government is to
enhance and protect finance capital and "the miracle of compound interest" that keeps fortunes
multiplying exponentially, faster than the economy can grow, until they eat into the economic
substance and do to the economy what predatory creditors and rentiers did to the Roman Empire.
Simon Johnson, former IMF Chief Economist, is coming out in May's 2009 edition of The Atlantic
with a fascinating, highly provocative
piece, on the collusion
between the US' "financial oligarchy" and the US government and how its persistence will contribute
to prolonging the economic crisis. Here is the summary (hat tip to
Global Conditions):
One thing you learn rather quickly when working at the International Monetary Fund is that
no one is ever very happy to see you (…)
The reason, of course, is that the IMF specializes in telling its clients what they don't want
to hear.(…)
No, the real concern of the fund's senior staff, and the biggest obstacle to recovery, is almost
invariably the politics of countries in crisis. (…)
Typically, these countries are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason-the
powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks. Emerging-market
governments and their private-sector allies commonly form a tight-knit-and, most of the time,
genteel-oligarchy, running the country rather like a profit-seeking company in which they are
the controlling shareholders (…)
Many IMF programs "go off track" (a euphemism) precisely because the government can't stay
tough on erstwhile cronies, and the consequences are massive inflation or other disasters. A program
"goes back on track" once the government prevails or powerful oligarchs sort out among themselves
who will govern-and thus win or lose-under the IMF-supported plan. (…)
In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent
of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (…).
(…) elite business interests-financiers, in the case of the U.S.-played a central role in creating
the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the
inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the
sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government
seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.
Top investment bankers and government officials like to lay the blame for the current crisis
on the lowering of U.S. interest rates after the dotcom bust or, even better-in a "buck stops
somewhere else" sort of way-on the flow of savings out of China. Some on the right like to complain
about Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, or even about longer-standing efforts to promote broader homeownership.
And, of course, it is axiomatic to everyone that the regulators responsible for "safety and soundness"
were fast asleep at the wheel.
But these various policies-lightweight regulation, cheap money, the unwritten Chinese-American
economic alliance, the promotion of homeownership-had something in common. Even though some are
traditionally associated with Democrats and some with Republicans, they all benefited the financial
sector. Policy changes that might have forestalled the crisis but would have limited the financial
sector's profits-such as Brooksley Born's now-famous attempts to regulate credit-default swaps
at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in 1998-were ignored or swept aside.
The financial industry has not always enjoyed such favored treatment. But for the past 25 years
or so, finance has boomed, becoming ever more powerful. The boom began with the Reagan years,
and it only gained strength with the deregulatory policies of the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.
(…) the American financial industry gained political power by amassing a kind of cultural capital-a
belief system. Once, perhaps, what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Over
the past decade, the attitude took hold that what was good for Wall Street was good for the country.
(…)
One channel of influence was, of course, the flow of individuals between Wall Street and Washington.
Robert Rubin, once the co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, served in Washington as Treasury secretary
under Clinton, and later became chairman of Citigroup's executive committee. Henry Paulson, CEO
of Goldman Sachs during the long boom, became Treasury secretary under George W.Bush. John Snow,
Paulson's predecessor, left to become chairman of Cerberus Capital Management, a large private-equity
firm that also counts Dan Quayle among its executives. Alan Greenspan, after leaving the Federal
Reserve, became a consultant to Pimco, perhaps the biggest player in international bond markets.
A whole generation of policy makers has been mesmerized by Wall Street, always and utterly
convinced that whatever the banks said was true (…).
By now, the princes of the financial world have of course been stripped naked as leaders and
strategists-at least in the eyes of most Americans. But as the months have rolled by, financial
elites have continued to assume that their position as the economy's favored children is safe,
despite the wreckage they have caused (…)
Throughout the crisis, the government has taken extreme care not to upset the interests of
the financial institutions, or to question the basic outlines of the system that got us here.
In September 2008, Henry Paulson asked Congress for $700 billion to buy toxic assets from banks,
with no strings attached and no judicial review of his purchase decisions. Many observers suspected
that the purpose was to overpay for those assets and thereby take the problem off the banks' hands-indeed,
that is the only way that buying toxic assets would have helped anything. Perhaps because there
was no way to make such a blatant subsidy politically acceptable, that plan was shelved.
Instead, the money was used to recapitalize banks, buying shares in them on terms that were
grossly favorable to the banks themselves. As the crisis has deepened and financial institutions
have needed more help, the government has gotten more and more creative in figuring out ways to
provide banks with subsidies that are too complex for the general public to understand (…)
The challenges the United States faces are familiar territory to the people at the IMF. If
you hid the name of the country and just showed them the numbers, there is no doubt what old IMF
hands would say: nationalize troubled banks and break them up as necessary (…)
In some ways, of course, the government has already taken control of the banking system. It
has essentially guaranteed the liabilities of the biggest banks, and it is their only plausible
source of capital today.
Ideally, big banks should be sold in medium-size pieces, divided regionally or by type of business.
Where this proves impractical-since we'll want to sell the banks quickly-they could be sold whole,
but with the requirement of being broken up within a short time. Banks that remain in private
hands should also be subject to size limitations.
This may seem like a crude and arbitrary step, but it is the best way to limit the power of
individual institutions in a sector that is essential to the economy as a whole. Of course, some
people will complain about the "efficiency costs" of a more fragmented banking system, and these
costs are real. But so are the costs when a bank that is too big to fail-a financial weapon of
mass self-destruction-explodes. Anything that is too big to fail is too big to exist.
To ensure systematic bank breakup, and to prevent the eventual reemergence of dangerous behemoths,
we also need to overhaul our antitrust legislation (…)
Caps on executive compensation, while redolent of populism, might help restore the political
balance of power and deter the emergence of a new oligarchy. (…)
(…) Over time, though, the largest part may involve more transparency and competition, which
would bring financial-industry fees down. To those who say this would drive financial activities
to other countries, we can now safely say: fine".
The nature of financial oligarchy is such that the government's capacity to take control of an
entire financial system, and to clean, slice it up and re-privatize it impartially is almost non-existent.
Instead we have growing, potentially corrupt, collusion between financial elites and government officials
which is hall mark of corporatism in this more modern form on neoliberalism.
In 1998 Mark Curtis wrote The Great Deception: Anglo-American Power and World Order, a
work whose stated goal was to shed light on various myths of
Anglo-American
power in the
post-Cold War era.
Curtis attempts to demonstrate how the United Kingdom remained a key partner of the United
States' effort to enforce their hegemony in the world. He analyzes what he refers to as a
special relationship
between the two countries and concludes that quite serious consequences exist for both states.
Trade for Life: Making Trade Work for Poor People is a work published in 2001. It is a
strong critique of the function of international organizations, especially the
World Trade Organization
(WTO). Curtis analyzes the decisions taken by the WTO in developing states and concludes that these
decisions were seldom without bias against the poor countries; he claims that certain of these decisions,
notably certain structural adjustments, caused their intended benefactors more harm than good. Further,
Curtis regrets that some rules are lacking when their need is called for, noting the relative lack
of regulation checking the growth of power of multinational companies. A partner of Christian Aid
in Zimbabwe has said that "the manner in which the WTO functions, is like placing an adult against
a child in a boxing ring, like
Manchester United against
a local Zimbabwean team.
The WTO judges all countries on the same level, while they are not the same. The WTO must help
create a situation where countries are more equal." This is a quotation that Mark Curtis recycles
throughout his book.
Curtis concludes by saying that market forces can be used in a different, more egalitarian, manner
than the one currently employed by the WTO. He believes that it could benefit developing nations
if this goal was pursued.
His book was edited by ChristianAid while Mark Curtis was "Policy and Politics" Director and is
freely available.
In 2003 Mark Curtis published Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World. This book
has been his most successful to date. It offers a new academic approach to the role of the
United Kingdom in the post
1945 world until the current the
War on Terrorism. It
further criticizes the foreign policy of
Tony Blair. Curtis, defending
the idea that Britain is a rogue
state, describes various relations the United Kingdom undertook with repressive regimes and how
he thinks these actions made the world less just.
Moreover, the book analyzes various recent actions of the
British Army in the world,
describing not only what he characterizes as the immorality of the
War in Iraq, but also of the
War in Afghanistan,
and the Kosovo War. Curtis
denounces equally strongly Britain's alliances with states he categorizes as repressive, such as
Israel,
Russia,
Turkey, and
Saudi Arabia. Additionally,
he details and criticizes the non-intervention of Britain in the
Rwandan Genocide.
Curtis draws most of his research from recently declassified documents by the British secret service.
He notably claims to demonstrate the role and complicity of the British in the massacre of millions
of Indonesians in 1965, the toppling of the governments of Iran and British Guyana, and what he describes
as repressive colonial policies in the former colonies of
Kenya,
Oman, and
Malaysia.
In 2004, Mark Curtis published Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses. This book
followed a similar line of thought begun in Web of Deceit. Unpeople is based on various
declassified documents from the British secret service.
Among the declassified secret service reports, Curtis asserts that the United Kingdom had given
aid to Saddam Hussein in
1963 in order that he rised to power in
Iraq; he further posits that the
Western Powers, notably the UK, performed various arms deals with the Iraqi government while the
Iraqi government was involved in the brutal aggression against the Kurdish community. Curtis asserts
that these documents further indict the British government in their role played in the
Vietnam War, the coup d'État
against Idi Amin in 1971, the
coup d'État against Salvador
Allende in Chile in 1973, and
coups in Indonesia and Guyana.
Mark Curtis estimates that approximately ten million deaths throughout the world since 1945 have
been caused by the United Kingdom's foreign policy.
But Johnson is relying on the idea that "America" is a unitary entity, so that the hollowing out
of industry hurts "America", not specific social groups within the country. In reality, US foreign
policymakers work to advance the interests not of "America", but of those same business elites that
have benefited from turning Asia into the world's sweatshop and undermining the unions that built
their strength on American industry. American economic imperialism is not a failed conspiracy
against the people of Asia, but an alliance between American elites and their Japanese, Korean, Indonesian,
and Chinese counterparts - against the potential power of the working majority in all those countries.
But it's more complex than that, too, since the US seeks to prevent the emergence of an independent
military challenge (especially China, but also Japan) to its Asia hegemony while seeking to expand
the power of American commercial interests in the region, even as it tries to keep Asian elites
happy enough with the status quo to prevent their rebellion against it.
In other words, the US system in Asia is more complicated than Johnson conveys, and defending
America's mythical "national interests" will never address its fundamental injustices.
While Johnson seems to have abundant sympathy for the people of Asia, his nationalist framework
prevents his from proposing the only real challenge to American hegemony: a popular anti-imperialist
movement that crosses the barriers of nation-states.
Imperialism has been the most powerful force in world history over the last four or five centuries,
carving up whole continents while oppressing indigenous peoples and obliterating entire civilizations.
Yet, it is seldom accorded any serious attention by our academics, media commentators, and political
leaders. When not ignored outright, the subject of imperialism has been sanitized, so that empires
become "commonwealths," and colonies become "territories" or "dominions" (or, as in the case of Puerto
Rico, "commonwealths" too). Imperialist military interventions become matters of "national defense,"
"national security," and maintaining "stability" in one or another region. In this book I want to
look at imperialism for what it really is.
Across the Entire Globe
By "imperialism" I mean the process whereby the dominant politico-economic interests of one nation
expropriate for their own enrichment the land, labor, raw materials, and markets of another people.The
earliest victims of Western European imperialism were other Europeans. Some 800 years ago, Ireland
became the first colony of what later became known as the British empire. A part of Ireland still
remains under British occupation. Other early Caucasian victims included the Eastern Europeans. The
people Charlemagne worked to death in his mines in the early part of the ninth century were Slavs.
So frequent and prolonged was the enslavement of Eastern Europeans that "Slav" became synonymous
with servitude. Indeed, the word "slave" derives from "Slav." Eastern Europe was an early source
of capital accumulation, having become wholly dependent upon Western manufactures by the seventeenth
century.
A particularly pernicious example of intra-European imperialism was the Nazi aggression during
World War II, which gave the German business cartels and the Nazi state an opportunity to plunder
the resources and exploit the labor of occupied Europe, including the slave labor of concentration
camps.
The preponderant thrust of the European, North American, and Japanese imperial powers has been
directed against Africa, Asia, and Latin America. By the nineteenth century, they saw the Third World
as not only a source of raw materials and slaves but a market for manufactured goods. By the twentieth
century, the industrial nations were exporting not only goods but capital, in the form of machinery,
technology, investments, and loans. To say that we have entered the stage of capital export and investment
is not to imply that the plunder of natural resources has ceased. If anything, the despoliation has
accelerated.
Of the various notions about imperialism circulating today in the United States, the dominant
view is that it does not exist. Imperialism is not recognized as a legitimate concept, certainly
not in regard to the United States. One may speak of "Soviet imperialism" or "nineteenth-century
British imperialism" but not of U.S. imperialism. A graduate student in political science at most
universities in this country would not be granted the opportunity to research U.S. imperialism, on
the grounds that such an undertaking would not be scholarly. While many people throughout the world
charge the United States with being an imperialist power, in this country persons who talk of U.S.
imperialism are usually judged to be mouthing ideological blather.
The Dynamic of Capital Expansion
Imperialism is older than capitalism. The Persian, Macedonian, Roman, and Mongol empires all existed
centuries before the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. Emperors and conquistadors were interested mostly
in plunder and tribute, gold and glory. Capitalist imperialism differs from these earlier forms in
the way it systematically accumulates capital through the organized exploitation of labor and the
penetration of overseas markets. Capitalist imperialism invests in other countries, transforming
and dominating their economies, cultures, and political life, integrating their financial and productive
structures into an international system of capital accumulation.A central imperative of capitalism
is expansion. Investors will not put their money into business ventures unless they can extract more
than they invest. Increased earnings come only with a growth in the enterprise. The capitalist ceaselessly
searches for ways of making more money in order to make still more money. One must always invest
to realize profits, gathering as much strength as possible in the face of competing forces and unpredictable
markets.
Given its expansionist nature, capitalism has little inclination to stay home. Almost 150 years
ago, Marx and Engels described a bourgeoisie that "chases over the whole surface of the globe. It
must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. . . . It creates a world
after its own image." The expansionists destroy whole societies. Self-sufficient peoples are forcibly
transformed into disfranchised wage workers. Indigenous communities and folk cultures are replaced
by mass-market, mass-media, consumer societies. Cooperative lands are supplanted by agribusiness
factory farms, villages by desolate shanty towns, autonomous regions by centralized autocracies.
Consider one of a thousand such instances. A few years ago the Los Angeles Times carried a special
report on the rainforests of Borneo in the South Pacific. By their own testimony, the people there
lived contented lives. They hunted, fished, and raised food in their jungle orchards and groves.
But their entire way of life was ruthlessly wiped out by a few giant companies that destroyed the
rainforest in order to harvest the hardwood for quick profits. Their lands were turned into ecological
disaster areas and they themselves were transformed into disfranchised shantytown dwellers, forced
to work for subsistence wages-when fortunate enough to find employment.
North American and European corporations have acquired control of more than three-fourths of the
known mineral resources of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. But the pursuit of natural resources
is not the only reason for capitalist overseas expansion. There is the additional need to cut production
costs and maximize profits by investing in countries with cheaper labor markets. U.S. corporate foreign
investment grew 84 percent from 1985 to 1990, the most dramatic increase being in cheap-labor countries
like South Korea, Taiwan, Spain, and Singapore.
Because of low wages, low taxes, nonexistent work benefits, weak labor unions, and nonexistent
occupational and environmental protections, U.S. corporate profit rates in the Third World are 50
percent greater than in developed countries. Citibank, one of the largest U.S. firms, earns about
75 percent of its profits from overseas operations. While profit margins at home sometimes have had
a sluggish growth, earnings abroad have continued to rise dramatically, fostering the development
of what has become known as the multinational or transnational corporation. Today some four hundred
transnational companies control about 80 percent of the capital assets of the global free market
and are extending their grasp into the ex-communist countries of Eastern Europe.
Transnationals have developed a global production line. General Motors has factories that produce
cars, trucks and a wide range of auto components in Canada, Brazil, Venezuela, Spain, Belgium, Yugoslavia,
Nigeria, Singapore, Philippines, South Africa, South Korea and a dozen other countries. Such "multiple
sourcing" enables GM to ride out strikes in one country by stepping up production in another, playing
workers of various nations against each other in order to discourage wage and benefit demands and
undermine labor union strategies.
Not Necessary, Just Compelling
Some writers question whether imperialism is a necessary condition for capitalism, pointing out
that most Western capital is invested in Western nations, not in the Third World. If corporations
lost all their Third World investments, they argue, many of them could still survive on their European
and North American markets. In response, one should note that capitalism might be able to survive
without imperialism-but it shows no inclination to do so. It manifests no desire to discard its enormously
profitable Third World enterprises. Imperialism may not be a necessary condition for investor survival
but it seems to be an inherent tendency and a natural outgrowth of advanced capitalism. Imperial
relations may not be the only way to pursue profits, but they are the most lucrative way.Whether
imperialism is necessary for capitalism is really not the question. Many things that are not absolutely
necessary are still highly desirable, therefore strongly preferred and vigorously pursued. Overseas
investors find the Third World's cheap labor, vital natural resources, and various other highly profitable
conditions to be compellingly attractive. Superprofits may not be necessary for capitalism's survival
but survival is not all that capitalists are interested in. Superprofits are strongly preferred to
more modest earnings. That there may be no necessity between capitalism and imperialism does not
mean there is no compelling linkage.
The same is true of other social dynamics. For instance, wealth does not necessarily have to lead
to luxurious living. A higher portion of an owning class's riches could be used for investment rather
personal consumption. The very wealthy could survive on more modest sums but that is not how most
of them prefer to live. Throughout history, wealthy classes generally have shown a preference for
getting the best of everything. After all, the whole purpose of getting rich off other people's labor
is to live well, avoiding all forms of thankless toil and drudgery, enjoying superior opportunities
for lavish life-styles, medical care, education, travel, recreation, security, leisure, and opportunities
for power and prestige. While none of these things are really "necessary," they are fervently clung
to by those who possess them-as witnessed by the violent measures endorsed by advantaged classes
whenever they feel the threat of an equalizing or leveling democratic force.
Myths of Underdevelopment
The impoverished lands of Asia, Africa, and Latin America are known to us as the "Third World,"
to distinguish them from the "First World" of industrialized Europe and North America and the now
largely defunct "Second World" of communist states. Third World poverty, called "underdevelopment,"
is treated by most Western observers as an original historic condition. We are asked to believe that
it always existed, that poor countries are poor because their lands have always been infertile or
their people unproductive. In fact, the lands of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have long produced
great treasures of foods, minerals and other natural resources. That is why the Europeans went through
all the trouble to steal and plunder them. One does not go to poor places for self-enrichment. The
Third World is rich. Only its people are poor-and it is because of the pillage they have endured.
The process of expropriating the natural resources of the Third World began centuries ago and
continues to this day. First, the colonizers extracted gold, silver, furs, silks, and spices, then
flax, hemp, timber, molasses, sugar, rum, rubber, tobacco, calico, cocoa, coffee, cotton, copper,
coal, palm oil, tin, iron, ivory, ebony, and later on, oil, zinc, manganese, mercury, platinum, cobalt,
bauxite, aluminum, and uranium. Not to be overlooked is that most hellish of all expropriations:
the abduction of millions of human beings into slave labor.
Through the centuries of colonization, many self-serving imperialist theories have been spun.
I was taught in school that people in tropical lands are slothful and do not work as hard as we denizens
of the temperate zone. In fact, the inhabitants of warm climates have performed remarkably productive
feats, building magnificent civilizations well before Europe emerged from the Dark Ages. And today
they often work long, hard hours for meager sums. Yet the early stereotype of the "lazy native" is
still with us. In every capitalist society, the poor-both domestic and overseas-regularly are blamed
for their own condition.
We hear that Third World peoples are culturally retarded in their attitudes, customs, and technical
abilities. It is a convenient notion embraced by those who want to depict Western investments as
a rescue operation designed to help backward peoples help themselves. This myth of "cultural backwardness"
goes back to ancient times, when conquerors used it to justify enslaving indigenous peoples. It was
used by European colonizers over the last five centuries for the same purpose.
What cultural supremacy could by claimed by the Europeans of yore? From the fifteenth to nineteenth
centuries Europe was "ahead" in a variety of things, such as the number of hangings, murders, and
other violent crimes; instances of venereal disease, smallpox, typhoid, tuberculosis, plagues, and
other bodily afflictions; social inequality and poverty (both urban and rural); mistreatment of women
and children; and frequency of famines, slavery, prostitution, piracy, religious massacres, and inquisitional
torture. Those who claim the West has been the most advanced civilization should keep such "achievements"
in mind.
More seriously, we might note that Europe enjoyed a telling advantage in navigation and armaments.
Muskets and cannon, Gatling guns and gunboats, and today missiles, helicopter gunships, and fighter
bombers have been the deciding factors when West meets East and North meets South. Superior firepower,
not superior culture, has brought the Europeans and Euro-North Americans to positions of supremacy
that today are still maintained by force, though not by force alone.
It was said that colonized peoples were biologically backward and less evolved than their colonizers.
Their "savagery" and "lower" level of cultural evolution were emblematic of their inferior genetic
evolution. But were they culturally inferior? In many parts of what is now considered the Third World,
people developed impressive skills in architecture, horticulture, crafts, hunting, fishing, midwifery,
medicine, and other such things. Their social customs were often far more gracious and humane and
less autocratic and repressive than anything found in Europe at that time. Of course we must not
romanticize these indigenous societies, some of which had a number of cruel and unusual practices
of their own. But generally, their peoples enjoyed healthier, happier lives, with more leisure time,
than did most of Europe's inhabitants.
Other theories enjoy wide currency. We hear that Third World poverty is due to overpopulation,
too many people having too many children to feed. Actually, over the last several centuries, many
Third World lands have been less densely populated than certain parts of Europe. India has fewer
people per acre-but more poverty-than Holland, Wales, England, Japan, Italy, and a few other industrial
countries. Furthermore, it is the industrialized nations of the First World, not the poor ones of
the Third, that devour some 80 percent of the world's resources and pose the greatest threat to the
planet's ecology.
This is not to deny that overpopulation is a real problem for the planet's ecosphere. Limiting
population growth in all nations would help the global environment but it would not solve the problems
of the poor-because overpopulation in itself is not the cause of poverty but one of its effects.
The poor tend to have large families because children are a source of family labor and income and
a support during old age.
Frances Moore Lappe and Rachel Schurman found that of seventy Third World countries, there were
six-China, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Chile, Burma, and Cuba-and the state of Kerala in India that had
managed to lower their birth rates by one third. They enjoyed neither dramatic industrial expansion
nor high per capita incomes nor extensive family planning programs. The factors they had in common
were public education and health care, a reduction of economic inequality, improvements in women's
rights, food subsidies, and in some cases land reform. In other words, fertility rates were lowered
not by capitalist investments and economic growth as such but by socio-economic betterment, even
of a modest scale, accompanied by the emergence of women's rights.
Artificially Converted to Poverty
What is called "underdevelopment" is a set of social relations that has been forcefully imposed
on countries. With the advent of the Western colonizers, the peoples of the Third World were actually
set back in their development sometimes for centuries. British imperialism in India provides an instructive
example. In 1810, India was exporting more textiles to England than England was exporting to India.
By 1830, the trade flow was reversed. The British had put up prohibitive tariff barriers to shut
out Indian finished goods and were dumping their commodities in India, a practice backed by British
gunboats and military force. Within a matter of years, the great textile centers of Dacca and Madras
were turned into ghost towns. The Indians were sent back to the land to raise the cotton used in
British textile factories. In effect, India was reduced to being a cow milked by British financiers.
By 1850, India's debt had grown to 53 million pounds. From 1850 to 1900, its per capita income dropped
by almost two-thirds. The value of the raw materials and commodities the Indians were obliged to
send to Britain during most of the nineteenth century amounted yearly to more than the total income
of the sixty million Indian agricultural and industrial workers. The massive poverty we associate
with India was not that country's original historical condition. British imperialism did two things:
first, it ended India's development, then it forcibly underdeveloped that country.
Similar bleeding processes occurred throughout the Third World. The enormous wealth extracted
should remind us that there originally were few really poor nations. Countries like Brazil, Indonesia,
Chile, Bolivia, Zaire, Mexico, Malaysia, and the Philippines were and sometimes still are rich in
resources. Some lands have been so thoroughly plundered as to be desolate in all respects. However,
most of the Third World is not "underdeveloped" but overexploited. Western colonization and investments
have created a lower rather than a higher living standard.
Referring to what the English colonizers did to the Irish, Frederick Engels wrote in 1856: "How
often have the Irish started out to achieve something, and every time they have been crushed politically
and industrially. By consistent oppression they have been artificially converted into an utterly
impoverished nation." So with most of the Third World. The Mayan Indians in Guatemala had a more
nutritious and varied diet and better conditions of health in the early 16th century before the Europeans
arrived than they have today. They had more craftspeople, architects, artisans, and horticulturists
than today. What is called underdevelopment is not an original historical condition but a product
of imperialism's superexploitation. Underdevelopment is itself a development.
Imperialism has created what I have termed "maldevelopment": modern office buildings and luxury
hotels in the capital city instead of housing for the poor, cosmetic surgery clinics for the affluent
instead of hospitals for workers, cash export crops for agribusiness instead of food for local markets,
highways that go from the mines and latifundios to the refineries and ports instead of roads in the
back country for those who might hope to see a doctor or a teacher.
Wealth is transferred from Third World peoples to the economic elites of Europe and North America
(and more recently Japan) by direct plunder, by the expropriation of natural resources, the imposition
of ruinous taxes and land rents, the payment of poverty wages, and the forced importation of finished
goods at highly inflated prices. The colonized country is denied the freedom of trade and the opportunity
to develop its own natural resources, markets, and industrial capacity. Self-sustenance and self-employment
gives way to wage labor. From 1970 to 1980, the number of wage workers in the Third World grew from
72 million to 120 million, and the rate is accelerating.
Hundreds of millions of Third World peoples now live in destitution in remote villages and congested
urban slums, suffering hunger, disease, and illiteracy, often because the land they once tilled is
now controlled by agribusiness firms who use it for mining or for commercial export crops such as
coffee, sugar, and beef, instead of growing beans, rice, and corn for home consumption. A study of
twenty of the poorest countries, compiled from official statistics, found that the number of people
living in what is called "absolute poverty" or rockbottom destitution, the poorest of the poor, is
rising 70,000 a day and should reach 1.5 billion by the year 2000 (San Francisco Examiner, June 8,
1994).
Imperialism forces millions of children around the world to live nightmarish lives, their mental
and physical health severely damaged by endless exploitation. A documentary film on the Discovery
Channel (April 24, 1994) reported that in countries like Russia, Thailand, and the Philippines, large
numbers of minors are sold into prostitution to help their desperate families survive. In countries
like Mexico, India, Colombia, and Egypt, children are dragooned into health-shattering, dawn-to-dusk
labor on farms and in factories and mines for pennies an hour, with no opportunity for play, schooling,
or medical care.
In India, 55 million children are pressed into the work force. Tens of thousands labor in glass
factories in temperatures as high as 100 degrees. In one plant, four-year-olds toil from 5 o'clock
in the morning until the dead of night, inhaling fumes and contracting emphysema, tuberculosis, and
other respiratory diseases. In the Philippines and Malaysia corporations have lobbied to drop age
restrictions for labor recruitment. The pursuit of profit becomes a pursuit of evil.
Development Theory
When we say a country is "underdeveloped," we are implying that it is backward and retarded in
some way, that its people have shown little capacity to achieve and evolve. The negative connotations
of "underdeveloped" has caused the United Nations, the Wall Street Journal, and parties of various
political persuasion to refer to Third World countries as "developing" nations, a term somewhat less
insulting than "underdeveloped" but equally misleading. I prefer to use "Third World" because "developing"
seems to be just a euphemistic way of saying "underdeveloped but belatedly starting to do something
about it." It still implies that poverty was an original historic condition and not something imposed
by the imperialists. It also falsely suggests that these countries are developing when actually their
economic conditions are usually worsening.The dominant theory of the last half century, enunciated
repeatedly by writers like Barbara Ward and W. W. Rostow and afforded wide currency in the United
States and other parts of the Western world, maintains that it is up to the rich nations of the North
to help uplift the "backward" nations of the South, bringing them technology and teaching them proper
work habits. This is an updated version of "the White man's burden," a favorite imperialist fantasy.
According to the development scenario, with the introduction of Western investments, the backward
economic sectors of the poor nations will release their workers, who then will find more productive
employment in the modern sector at higher wages. As capital accumulates, business will reinvest its
profits, thus creating still more products, jobs, buying power, and markets. Eventually a more prosperous
economy evolves.
This "development theory" or "modernization theory," as it is sometimes called, bears little relation
to reality. What has emerged in the Third World is an intensely exploitive form of dependent capitalism.
Economic conditions have worsened drastically with the growth of transnational corporate investment.
The problem is not poor lands or unproductive populations but foreign exploitation and class inequality.
Investors go into a country not to uplift it but to enrich themselves.
People in these countries do not need to be taught how to farm. They need the land and the implements
to farm. They do not need to be taught how to fish. They need the boats and the nets and access to
shore frontage, bays, and oceans. They need industrial plants to cease dumping toxic effusions into
the waters. They do not need to be convinced that they should use hygienic standards. They do not
need a Peace Corps Volunteer to tell them to boil their water, especially when they cannot afford
fuel or have no access to firewood. They need the conditions that will allow them to have clean drinking
water and clean clothes and homes. They do not need advice about balanced diets from North Americans.
They usually know what foods best serve their nutritional requirements. They need to be given back
their land and labor so that they might work for themselves and grow food for their own consumption.
The legacy of imperial domination is not only misery and strife, but an economic structure dominated
by a network of international corporations which themselves are beholden to parent companies based
in North America, Europe and Japan. If there is any harmonization or integration, it occurs among
the global investor classes, not among the indigenous economies of these countries. Third World economies
remain fragmented and unintegrated both between each other and within themselves, both in the flow
of capital and goods and in technology and organization. In sum, what we have is a world economy
that has little to do with the economic needs of the world's people.
Neoimperialism: Skimming the Cream
Sometimes imperial domination is explained as arising from an innate desire for domination and
expansion, a "territorial imperative." In fact, territorial imperialism is no longer the prevailing
mode. Compared to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the European powers carved up
the world among themselves, today there is almost no colonial dominion left. Colonel Blimp is dead
and buried, replaced by men in business suits. Rather than being directly colonized by the imperial
power, the weaker countries have been granted the trappings of sovereignty-while Western finance
capital retains control of the lion's share of their profitable resources. This relationship has
gone under various names: "informal empire," "colonialism without colonies," "neocolonialism," and
"neoimperialism. "U.S. political and business leaders were among the earliest practitioners of this
new kind of empire, most notably in Cuba at the beginning of the twentieth century. Having forcibly
wrested the island from Spain in the war of 1898, they eventually gave Cuba its formal independence.
The Cubans now had their own government, constitution, flag, currency, and security force. But major
foreign policy decisions remained in U.S. hands as did the island's wealth, including its sugar,
tobacco, and tourist industries, and major imports and exports.
Historically U.S. capitalist interests have been less interested in acquiring more colonies than
in acquiring more wealth, preferring to make off with the treasure of other nations without bothering
to own and administer the nations themselves. Under neoimperialism, the flag stays home, while the
dollar goes everywhere - frequently assisted by the sword.
After World War II, European powers like Britain and France adopted a strategy of neoimperialism.
Left financially depleted by years of warfare, and facing intensified popular resistance from within
the Third World itself, they reluctantly decided that indirect economic hegemony was less costly
and politically more expedient than outright colonial rule. They discovered that the removal of a
conspicuously intrusive colonial rule made it more difficult for nationalist elements within the
previously colonized countries to mobilize anti-imperialist sentiments.
Though the newly established government might be far from completely independent, it usually enjoyed
more legitimacy in the eyes of its populace than a colonial administration controlled by the imperial
power. Furthermore, under neoimperialism the native government takes up the costs of administering
the country while the imperialist interests are free to concentrate on accumulating capital-which
is all they really want to do.
After years of colonialism, the Third World country finds it extremely difficult to extricate
itself from the unequal relationship with its former colonizer and impossible to depart from the
global capitalist sphere. Those countries that try to make a break are subjected to punishing economic
and military treatment by one or another major power, nowadays usually the United States.
The leaders of the new nations may voice revolutionary slogans, yet they find themselves locked
into the global capitalist orbit, cooperating perforce with the First World nations for investment,
trade, and aid. So we witnessed the curious phenomenon of leaders of newly independent Third World
nations denouncing imperialism as the source of their countries' ills, while dissidents in these
countries denounced these same leaders as collaborators of imperialism.
In many instances a comprador class emerged or was installed as a first condition for independence.
A comprador class is one that cooperates in turning its own country into a client state for foreign
interests. A client state is one that is open to investments on terms that are decidedly favorable
to the foreign investors. In a client state, corporate investors enjoy direct subsidies and land
grants, access to raw materials and cheap labor, light or nonexistent taxes, few effective labor
unions, no minimum wage or child labor or occupational safety laws, and no consumer or environmental
protections to speak of. The protective laws that do exist go largely unenforced.
In all, the Third World is something of a capitalist paradise, offering life as it was in Europe
and the United States during the nineteenth century, with a rate of profit vastly higher than what
might be earned today in a country with strong economic regulations. The comprador class is well
recompensed for its cooperation. Its leaders enjoy opportunities to line their pockets with the foreign
aid sent by the U.S. government. Stability is assured with the establishment of security forces,
armed and trained by the United States in the latest technologies of terror and repression. Still,
neoimperialism carries risks. The achievement of de jure independence eventually fosters expectations
of de facto independence. The forms of self rule incite a desire for the fruits of self rule. Sometimes
a national leader emerges who is a patriot and reformer rather than a comprador collaborator. Therefore,
the changeover from colonialism to neocolonialism is not without risks for the imperialists and represents
a net gain for popular forces in the world.
Chapter 1 of Against Empire by Michael Parenti
Michael Parenti is an internationally known award-winning author and lecturer.
He is one of the nation's leading progressive political analysts. His highly informative and entertaining
books and talks have reached a wide range of audiences in North America and abroad.
http://www.michaelparenti.org/
By 2016 the concept of "liberal democracy," once bright with promise, had dulled into a
neoliberal politics that was neither liberal nor democratic. The Democratic Party's turn toward
market-driven policies, the bipartisan dismantling of the public sphere, the inflight marriage
of Wall Street and Silicon Valley in the cockpit of globalization -- these interventions
constituted the long con of neoliberal governance, which enriched a small minority of Americans
while ravaging most of the rest.
Jackson Lears is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers,
Editor in Chief of Raritan, and the author of Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern
America, 1877–1920, among other books. (January 2021)
>>Today, the Trump administration filed an appeal against the UK decision not to
extradite Assange. I must imagine that means that Trump has no intention of pardoning
Assange.
Trump was a desperate "Murica must have the biggest dick" imperialist massively triggered
by the US decline and trying to save the US Empire. Like a rabid dog that is wounded, he
attacked anything that moves, including those who helped him get into power.
Anyone who thought that he will help the likes of Russia or Assange does not understand
the psychology of elite US WASPs.
These people thought that they and the US should rule the world and that they are the
cream of the cream. Anything denying them that would lead to crazed reactions, hysteria,
rabid animalistic behavior, and snarling and gnashing of teeth at anything that moves.
Simply put, their decline caused them to go rabid. A rabid dog attacks anything that
moves, whether friendly or not. Unfortunately for the likes of Russia and Assange.
Casino magnate and Israeli patriot multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson, one of the world's
richest men, died in Las Vegas on January 11 th at age 87. He had been suffering
from cancer and has been buried at the
Mount of Olives Cemetery in Israel . When his body arrived in Israel it was met by Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as Jonathan Pollard, the most damaging spy in United States
history. Tributes to the fallen "hero" poured in from the political class in both the United
States and Israel and it has even been reported that President Donald Trump was intending to
hoist the American flag at half mast over federal buildings to honor the "great humanitarian
philanthropist." Unfortunately, the flag was already at half mast honoring the death of Capitol
Police Force officer Brian Sicknick, who was murdered in the Capitol building last
Wednesday.
Trump has not mentioned the service unto death of Sicknick and the flag lowering itself was
apparently a bit of an afterthought on behalf of the White House, but he had plenty to say
about his good buddy Adelson, who has been the principal funder of the Republican Party over
the past five years. As he can no longer use Twitter, the president's
condolences were posted on the White House site: "Melania and I mourn the passing of
Sheldon Adelson, and send our heartfelt condolences to his wife Miriam, his children and
grandchildren. Sheldon lived the true American dream. His ingenuity, genius, and creativity
earned him immense wealth, but his character and philanthropic generosity his great name.
Sheldon was also a staunch supporter of our great ally the State of Israel. He tirelessly
advocated for the relocation of the United States embassy to Jerusalem, the recognition of
Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and the pursuit of peace between Israel and its
neighbors. Sheldon was true to his family, his country, and all those that knew him. The world
has lost a great man. He will be missed."
Missing from the Trump eulogy is any mention of what Adelson did for the United States,
which is his country of birth and where he made his fortune engaging in activity that many
would consider to be a vice. In fact, Adelson was all about the Jewish state, positioning
himself as the principal funder of the Republican Party under Donald Trump and receiving in
return as a quid pro quo the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA),
the move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the recognition of Israeli annexation of
the Syrian Golan Heights, and a virtual concession that the Jewish state could do whatever it
wants vis-à-vis the Palestinians, to include expelling them from Palestine. Adelson once
commented that Israel does not have to pretend to be a democracy but it must be Jewish,
presumably to help the process of Arab genocide move along.
Adelson's mechanism, initiated under George W. Bush, is familiar to how the Israel Lobby
operates more generally. It consisted of the exploitation of the incessant need of campaign
money by the GOP, which Adelson provided with strings attached. He worked with the Republicans
to completely derail the admittedly faux peace process begun under Bill Clinton, which
depended on a two-state solution, and instead give the Jewish state a free hand to implement
its own unilateral Greater Israel Project extending from "the Jordan River to the
Mediterranean." As part of that expansion, Israel has been building illegal settlements while
also bombing and killing Lebanese, Syrians, and Iranians and assassinating scientists and
technicians throughout the region.
All of the interventions against Israel's neighbors took place even though the Jewish state
was not technically at war with anyone. The U.S. meanwhile funded Israeli aggression and
watched the spectacle without any complaint, providing political cover as necessary, while also
maintaining a major military presence in the Middle East to "protect Israel," as Trump recently
admitted.
In short, Sheldon Adelson committed as much as half a billion dollars from his vast fortune
to buy control over a major element of U.S. foreign policy and subordinated American interests
to those of Israel. In addition to direct donations to both major political parties, he also
paid for Congressional "fact finding" trips to Israel and funded a number of pro-Israel
lobbies, so-called charities and other related Jewish projects. It is indisputable that he
wielded an incredible degree of power to shape Washington's actions in the Middle East. In
her own tribute to her dead husband, Miriam Adelson, an Israeli, described how he "crafted
the course of nations."
Adelson was actively engaged on Israel's behalf until the week before his death. He provided
his casino's private 737 luxury executive jet to transport Jonathan Pollard "home" to Israel.
Pollard has served 30 years in prison after being convicted of espionage and was on parole,
which restricted his travel. As yet another a gift to Israel, Donald Trump lifted that
restriction, allowing him to fly to Israel where he received a hero's welcome. It is generally
agreed that Pollard was the most damaging spy in American history, having stolen the keys to
accessing U.S. communications and information gathering systems. A month after Pollard's arrest
in 1985, C.I.A director William Casey stated: "The Israelis used Pollard to obtain our war
plans against the USSR – all of it: the co-ordinates, the firing locations, the
sequences, and Israel sold that information to Moscow for more exit visas for Soviet Jews."
Sheldon Adelson used his wealth and political connections to shield himself from any
criticism due to his openly expressed preference for Israel over the land of his birth. He
famously publicly
stated that he wished he had worn the Israeli Army uniform instead of that of the U.S.
Army, where he served briefly as a draftee. He also expressed his desire that his son would
serve as an Israeli army sniper, presumably allowing him to blow the heads off of Palestinians.
In 2013
Adelson advocated ending nuclear negotiations with Iran and instead detonating a nuclear weapon
in "the middle of the [Iranian] desert," followed by a threat to annihilate the capital city
Tehran, home to 8.6 million, to force Iran to surrender its essentially non-existent nuclear
program.
Other acknowledgements of the impact of Adelson came from officials in
the Trump Administration. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo commented how his "efforts to
strengthen the alliance between Israel and the United States the world, Israel and the United
States are safer because of his work." Yeah, right Mike.
So, the world is definitely a better place due to the passing of Sheldon Adelson. Or is it?
His Israeli wife Miriam owns more than 40% of Las Vegas Sands Corp Casinos Inc.,
estimated to be worth in excess of $17 billion. She has proposed that a new chapter be
included in the Jewish bible, the Book of Trump, and has pledged herself to continue her
husband's work. Trump had previously given her the highest award that a president can bestow,
the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Freedom, of course, does not apply to Palestinians. And if
one is concerned that the Democrats will not be cooperative, they too have their own major
donor similar to Adelson. He is an Israeli film producer named Haim Saban, who, echoing a
similar statement by Adelson, said that he is a one issue guy and that issue is Israel.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest,
a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a
more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website ishttps://councilforthenationalinterest.orgaddress is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
46 Follow RT on Outgoing US
President Donald Trump has delivered his "parting gift" to the Moscow-led Nord Stream 2 gas
pipeline, with newly announced sanctions targeting a pipe-laying vessel and companies involved
in the multinational project.
The specialist ship concerned, named, 'Fortuna,' and oil tanker 'Maksim Gorky', as well as
two Russian firms, KVT-Rus and Rustanker, were blacklisted on Tuesday under CAATSA (Countering
America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act) as part of Washington's economic war on Moscow.
The same legislation had been previously used by the US to target numerous Russian officials
and enterprises.
Russian energy giant Gazprom warned its investors earlier on Tuesday that Nord Stream 2
could be suspended or even canceled if more US restrictions are introduced.
However, Moscow has assured its partners that it intends to complete the project despite
"harsh pressure on the part of Washington," according to Kremlin press secretary Dmitry
Peskov. Reacting to the new package of sanctions on Tuesday, Peskov called them
"unlawful."
Meanwhile, the EU said it is in no rush to join the Washington-led sanction war on Nord
Stream 2. EU foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, said that the bloc is not going to resist
the construction of the project.
"Because we're talking about a private project, we can't hamper the operations of those
companies if the German government agrees to it," Borrell said Tuesday.
Nord Stream 2 is an offshore gas pipeline, linking Russia and Germany with aim of providing
cheaper energy to Central European customers. Under the agreement between Moscow and Berlin, it
was to be launched in mid-2020, but the construction has been delayed due to strong opposition
from Washington.
The US, which is hoping to sell its Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) to Europe, has hit the
project with several rounds of sanctions over scarcely credible claims that it could undermine
European energy security. Critics say the real intent is to force EU members to buy from
American companies.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
46 Follow RT on
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Fatback33 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:20 AM
The group that owns Washington makes the foreign policy. That policy is not for the benefit
of the people.
DukeLeo Fatback33 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:06 PM
That is correct. The private banks and corporations in the US are very upset about Nord
Stream - 2, as they want Europe to buy US gas at double price. Washington thus introduces
additional political gangsterism in the shape of new unilateral sanctions which have no merit
in international law.
noremedy 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:22 AM
Is the U.S. so stupid that they do not realize that they are isolating themselves? Russia has
developed SPFS, China CIPS, together with Iran, China and Russia are further developing a
payment transfer system. Once in place and functioning this system will replace the western
SWIFT system for international payment transfers. It will be the death knell for the US
dollar. 327 million Americans are no match for the rest of the billions of the world's
population. The next decade will see the total debasement of the US monetary system and the
fall from power of the decaying and crumbling in every way U.S.A.
Hanonymouse noremedy 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 01:37 PM
They don't care. They have the most advanced military in the world. Might makes right, even
today.
Shelbouy 3 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 12:25 PM
Russia currently supplies over 50% of the natural gas consumed by The EU. Germany and Italy
are the largest importers of Russian natural gas. What is the issue of sanctions stemming
from and why are the Americans doing this? A no brainer question I suppose. It's to make more
money than the other supplier, and exert political pressure and demand obedience from its
lackey. Germany.
David R. Evans Shelbouy 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 01:58 PM
Russia and Iran challenge perpetual US wars for Israel's Oded Yinon Plan. Washington is
Israel-controlled territory.
Jewel Gyn 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:34 AM
Sanctions work both ways. With the outgoing Trump administration desperately laying mines for
Biden, we await how sleepy Joe is going to mend strayed ties with EU.
Count_Cash 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:20 AM
The US mafia state continues with the same practices. The dog is barking but the caravan is
going. The counter productiveness of sanctions always shows through in the end! I am sure
with active efforts of Germany and Russia against US mafia oppression that a blowback will be
felt by the US over time!
Dachaguy 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:24 AM
This is an act of war against Germany. NATO should respond and act against the aggressor,
America.
xyz47 Dachaguy 42 minutes ago 19 Jan, 2021 03:20 PM
NATO is run by the US...
lovethy Dachaguy 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 01:04 PM
NATO has no separate existence. It's the USA's arm of aggression, suppression and domination.
Germany after WWII is an occupied country of USA. Thousand of armed personnel stationed in
Germany enforcing that occupation.
Chaz Dadkhah 3 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 12:19 PM
Further proof that Trump is no friend of Russia and is in a rush to punish them while he
still has power. If it was the swamp telling him to do that, like his supporters suggest,
then they would have waited till their man Biden came in to power in less than 24 hours to do
it. Wake up!
Mac Kio 3 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 12:34 PM
USA hates fair competition. USA ignores all WTO rules.
Russkiy09 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 01:33 PM
By whining and not completing in the face of US, Russia is losing credibility. They should
not have delayed to mobilize the pipe laying vessel and other equipment for one whole year.
They should have mobilized in three months and finished by now. Same happens when Jewtin does
not shoot down Zio air force bombing Syria everyday. But best option should have been to tell
European vassals that "if you can, take our gas. But we will charge the highest amount and
sell as much as we want, exclude Russophobic Baltic countries and Poland and neo-vassal
Ukraine. Pay us not in your ponzi paper money but real goods and services or precious metals
or other commodities or our own currency Ruble." I so wish I could be the President of
Russia. Russians deserve to be as wealthy as the Swiss or SIngapore etc., not what they are
getting. Their leaders should stand up for their interest. And stop empowering the greedy
merchantalist Chinese and brotherhood Erdogan.
BlackIntel 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:27 PM
America i captured by private interest; this project threatens American private companies
hence the government is forced to protect capitalism. This is illegal
Ohhho 3 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 12:15 PM
That project was a mistake from the start: Russia should distance itself from the Evil
empire, EU included! Stop wasting time and resources on trying to please the haters and
keeping them more competitive with cheaper Russian natural gas: focus on real partners and
potential allies elsewhere!
butterfly123 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 01:58 PM
I have said it before that part of the problem is at the door of the policy-makers and
politicians in Russia. Pipeline project didn't spring up in the minds of politicians in
Russia one morning, presumably. There should have been foresight, detailed planning, and
opportunity creation for firms in Russia to acquire the skill-set and resources to advance
this project. Not doing so has come to bite Russia hard and painful. Lessons learnt I hope Mr
President!
jakro 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:37 AM
Good news. The swamp is getting deeper and bigger.
hermaflorissen 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:49 AM
Trump finally severed my expectations for the past 4 years. He should indeed perish.
ariadnatheo 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 03:06 PM
That is one Trump measure that will not be overturned by the Senile One. They will need to
amplify the RussiaRussiaRussia barking and scratching to divert attention from their dealings
with China
Neville52 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:01 PM
Its time the other nations of the world turned their backs on the US. Its too risky if you
are an international corporation to suddenly have large portions of your income cancelled due
to some crazy politician in the US
5th Eye 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:03 PM
From empire to the collapse of empire, US follows UK to the letters. Soon it will be
irrelevant. The only thing that remains for UK is the language. Probably hotdog for the US.
VonnDuff1 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:10 PM
The USA Congress and its corrupt foreign policy dictates work to the detriment of Europe and
Russia, while providing no tangible benefits to US states or citizens. So globalist demands
wrapped in the stars & stripes, should be laughed at, by all freedom loving nations.
A major scandal is unfolding in the US naval community. It turned out that a whole class
of ships, on which America had pinned great hopes a couple of decades ago, turned out to be
utterly incapable of combat. What exactly are the problems with these ships? Why did they
only show up now? What does the massive corruption in the United States have to do with what
is happening?
Political events in the United States have overshadowed everything that happens in this
country. Including one event related to the Navy, which would indeed have exploded.
We are talking about a whole type of warships, both already delivered to the US Navy, and
those still under construction – the so-called Littoral combat ship (LCS) of the
Freedom type. And it's not that they're useless. And not at the prohibitive cost. And not
even that the gearboxes of the ship's main power plant (GEM) do not withstand the maximum
stroke, and with the speed of 47 knots, which was the ridge of this project, he will never be
able to walk – they also resigned themselves to this.
But at the end of 2020, it turned out that they generally cannot move faster than a dry
cargo ship for more or less a long time. That is, it is not just scrapping metal; it is also
almost stationary scrap metal.
A central rule of a color revolution is to avoid an "orderly transition". The new regime
must have a revolutionary mandate instead of a democratic one. Only then can it operate
outside the constitution and outside the law.
The plan here is to declare not only Trump illegitimate but his whole administration
illegitimate. The new regime can then undo all of Trump's executive decisions. There is no
need to "stuff" the Supreme Court with extra judges. Simply declare Trump's appointments null
and void.
Victoria Nuland, former foreign policy adviser to vice president Dick Cheney, should not be
nominated for undersecretary of state [for political affairs], and if nominated should be
rejected by the Senate.
Nuland played a key role in facilitating a coup in Ukraine that created a civil war costing
10,000 lives and displacing over a million people. She played a key role in arming Ukraine as
well. She advocates radically increased military spending, NATO expansion, hostility toward
Russia, and efforts to overthrow the Russian government.
The United States invested $5 billion in shaping Ukrainian politics, including overthrowing
a democratically elected president who had refused to join NATO. Then-Assistant Secretary of
State Nuland is on
video talking about the U.S. investment and on
audiotape planning to install Ukraine's next leader, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who was
subsequently installed.
The Maidan protests, at which Nuland handed out cookies to protesters, were violently
escalated by neo-Nazis and by snipers who opened fire on police. When Poland, Germany, and
France negotiated a deal for the Maidan demands and an early election, neo-Nazis instead
attacked the government and took over. The U.S. State Department immediately recognized the
coup government, and Arseniy Yatsenyuk was installed as Prime Minister.
Nuland has
worked with the openly pro-Nazi Svoboda Party in Ukraine. She was long a leading
proponent of arming Ukraine. She was also an advocate for removing from office the
prosecutor general of Ukraine, whom then-Vice President Joe Biden pushed the president to
remove.
Nuland
wrote this past year that "The challenge for the United States in 2021 will be to lead the
democracies of the world in crafting a more effective approach to Russia - one that builds on
their strengths and puts stress on Putin where he is vulnerable, including among his own
citizens."
She added:
" Moscow should also see that Washington and its allies are taking concrete steps to shore
up their security and raise the cost of Russian confrontation and militarization. That
includes maintaining robust defense budgets, continuing to modernize U.S. and allied nuclear
weapons systems, and deploying new conventional missiles and missile defenses, . . .
establish permanent bases along NATO's eastern border, and increase the pace and visibility
of joint training exercises."
The United States walked out of the ABM Treaty and later the INF Treaty, began putting
missiles into Romania and Poland, expanded NATO to Russia's border, facilitated a coup in
Ukraine, began arming Ukraine, and started holding massive war rehearsal exercises in Eastern
Europe. But to read Victoria Nuland's account, Russia is simply an irrationally evil and
aggressive force that must be countered by yet more military spending, bases, and hostility.
Some U.S.
military officials say this demonizing of Russia is all about weapons profits and
bureaucratic power, no more fact-based than the Steele Dossier that was
given to the FBI by Victoria Nuland.
SIGNED BY:
Alaska Peace Center
Center for Encounter and Active Non-Violence
CODEPINK
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
Greater Brunswick PeaceWorks
Jemez Peacemakers
Knowdrones.com
Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Nukewatch
Peace Action Maine
PEACEWORKERS
Physicians for Social Responsibility – Kansas City
Progressive Democrats of America
Peace Fresno
Peace, Justice, Sustainability NOW!
The Resistance Center for Peace and Justice
RootsAction.org
Veterans For Peace Chapter 001
Veterans For Peace Chapter 63
Veterans For Peace Chapter 113
Veterans For Peace Chapter 115
Veterans For Peace Chapter 132
Wage Peace
World BEYOND War
TimeTraveller 36 minutes ago (Edited)
The funny thing about appointment of Nuland, is that basically every European government
hates her.
Those idiots in the EU complained about Trump. Well the American Empire war machine is
about to ratchet up a notch or three, btches.
Max21c 50 minutes ago
The U.S. State Department immediately recognized the coup government, and Arseniy
Yatsenyuk was installed as Prime Minister.
The Washington establishment immediately recognized the coup government, and Joe Schmoe
Biden was installed as ruler.
replaceme 52 minutes ago
Why wouldn't they appoint a murderer?
TimeTraveller 50 minutes ago (Edited)
It is funny that they oppose that. After all, every single person in the Democrat party
was in agreement with those foreign coup and wars. If we're going to all of a sudden start
pointing the finger, then there would be no Democrats left in congress
aspnaz again 38 minutes ago
Nationalist, extremist, exceptionalist, white supremicists are okay if they are
democrats.
eatapeach 13 minutes ago
She's an Israel-firster, thus has a pass?
TimeTraveller 51 minutes ago
Those 25 organizations are about to be cancelled. Social Media thought police will be
working overtime tonight.
You_Cant_Quit_Me 52 minutes ago
So we go around the world interfering with every country's internal affairs but when they
do it to the US is meddling in US elections.
does nooner know how hypocritical Washington sounds?
Ms No PREMIUM 36 minutes ago
"pro-Nazi Svoboda party"
That is a headfake there. They are definitely tyrannical and Bolshevik, but not targeting
Jewish people.
As a matter of fact Nuland's Council on Foreign Relations huband-brother (whatever they
really are) is a Kagan, like Kagan-ovich, and that ain't a coincidence.
So you can see what the mob did there. It helps with plausible deniability down the road
when they get charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity, terrorism, aggression,
etc
xious 37 minutes ago
They don't care what you think. You will watch child molesters on TV and like it.
TryingSomethingNew 38 minutes ago
But she's Jewish and a woman, right? Those 25 organizations are clearly Anti-Semitic and
sexist.
Ms No PREMIUM 35 minutes ago
Why would a Jewish Mobster set up a Nazi like color revolutionary group and coup the
Ukraine with it?
Already looking at plausible deniability down the road. Nobody's *** is covered anywhere
but theirs. Their apparatchiks should ponder that.
Pliskin 43 minutes ago
Amurikans should keep the fcuk out of other countries affairs...!
Sad-sacks!
Dzerzhhinsky 48 minutes ago
People think Zionists are anti Nazi, but Zionism is the non Christian version of Nazism.
Herzl the founder of the Zionist party was enamoured with the Nazis, but they rejected him on
religious grounds.
It's natural for Nuland and the other Kaganites to be in bed with Ukrainian Nazis.
Ms No PREMIUM 22 minutes ago remove link
I remember Lavrov getting grilled by angry journalists about why Russia wasn't bombing the
**** out of the color revolutionaries that took the Ukraine with US money.
He basically said, What would you have us do, cause countless deaths of our own Russian
speaking people? They don't care about their deaths but we have to.
Then the first thing the US did was put in illegal bioweapons labs in the Ukraine. There
was a super weird outbreak prior to the color revolution takeover too..Then Russians were
really pissed off. So Putin drew red line in Syria
Russia will get the Ukraine back someday. They have to. It was their bread basket during
last grand minimum.
bluskyes 14 minutes ago
perhaps, when the western threat become stronger than ethnic bias. Though it will probably
split first.
Anthraxed 38 minutes ago
Victoria Noodlebrain should be on Interpol's top 10 most wanted list.
Cautiously Pessimistic 49 minutes ago
Man....I had all but forgotten about many of these scumbags that are resurfacing now in
the Biden administration. This woman should be waterboarded until deceased.
Dzerzhhinsky 46 minutes ago
It's always the same people, the front men change, but behind the scenes it's always the
same people.
RKKA 6 minutes ago
Again, all these demons of the Obama era are striving for power. During the Trump
presidency, we have already forgotten about these devils.
Victoria Nuland, her real Jewish surname is Nudelman, her parents are Moldovan ****. The
parents of the former Ukrainian President Poroshenko, who seized power as a result of the
Maidan and the coup d'etat, are also Moldovan **** by the name of Valtsman. Already in
adulthood, Petr Valtsman took the name of his wife and became - Poroshenko. They are the
father and mother of the war in Ukraine, and Joe Biden blessed them for this.
Another Ukrainian oligarch, also a ***, Igor Kolomoisky, financed the Ukrainian
nationalist battalions of Azov, Dnepr and Aydar. Tell me, what are these Nazis who are
financed and serve the ****? Adolf spins tirelessly in his coffin!
And you probably thought that the **** are such poor and offended children of the
Holocaust and the Nazis are their enemies? No, **** and Nazis merged in violent ecstasy and
it is time to introduce the term - Jewish Nazism into the lexicon!
de tocqueville's ghost 28 minutes ago
that was a good four years...no new wars. Good going liberals, you voted for a war
monger.
Lt. Shicekopf 14 minutes ago
Yes! Maybe we can do to all kinds of countries what we did to Libya. The continuing
calamity that has been going on in Libya since Obama and Hillary got done with them has been
studiously ignored by all the Western media. Anarchy, chaos, death, an open slave market in
which black Africans are bought and sold by Arab traders. All good stuff to the American
left.
David Q. Little 45 minutes ago
Joe and Hunter owe her a favor.
Musum 19 minutes ago
Neocons are returning with a vengeance.
Death2Fiat 28 minutes ago
Her job is to destroy the US and do the bidding of the Globalists.
tbone654 28 minutes ago
none of it matters... with the dems controlling everything the [M]ilitary [I]ndustrial
[I]ntelligence [C]omplex is gonna ramp up and spend a crap-ton on wars all over the globe...
it's how it works when they have the throttle... everyone was worried about Trump, but he
de-escalated everywhere...
The people have spoken (I mean cheated) and now they must be punished... Ed Koch
Lyman54 34 minutes ago
Yatsenyuk, Nulands pick, was given a Canadian passport. Likely hiding in Manitoba.
ThomasEdmonds 36 minutes ago
Some things in this life don't matter and Biden cares squat. Perhaps these groups can
express their contempt for Samantha Power as well. Let's extend that to his foreign policy
team.
WTFUD 13 minutes ago remove link
Joseph Biden reminds me of Hedley Lamar in Blazing Saddles, forming a posse of the biggest
wackjobs available.
As long as he doesn't put Hunter in charge of the Afghani Poppy Crop Investment Fund then
his Middle-East and Central Asian policy could prove fruitful.
"Diesen takes on and brings together two large phenomena, namely the revolution in
technology and the change in global power relations."
My continual question: Will the Western world's morality evolve quickly enough to keep
pace with technological progress? I have no worries about Eurasian morality. Rather, it's the
West's loss of its 500 years of domination and what it will do to recoup that immoral
position that's most troublesome.
@anarchyst hen made
public utilities available for all (obviously without compensation to the owners). No more of
the sad "private company" excuse, and no more billions into the pockets of criminals who hate
us.
Also, make Dorsey, Zuckerberg, Pichai et al. serve serious jail time for election
tampering if nothing else. Both to send out a clear warning to others, and for the simple
decency to see justice served.
Of course this will not happen short of a French Revolution-style regime shift. But since
(sadly) the same is equally true even for your extremely generous and modest proposal, I see
no harm in dreaming a little bigger.
It seems even more relevant today than it did then. It's longish, so hang in there if you're
able. In these post-'Capitol' social media de-platforming days, remember that (Chrome) Google
algorithms suppress websites from the conservative and religious right to the 'subversive left
(wsws and popular resistance, for instance). And Google bought Youtube in Oct. of 2006 for a
paltry $1.65 billion.
If you haven't read it and seen the captioned photos, you'll love ' Google Is Not What It
Seems' by Julian Assange, an extract from his new book When Google Met Wikileaks,
wikileaks.org
Also see Scott Ritter's 'By banning Trump and his supporters, Google and Twitter are turning
the US into a facsimile of the regimes we once condemned', RT.com, Jan. 9, 2021 Two excerpts:
"Digital democracy became privatized when its primary architect, Jared Cohen, left the State
Department in September 2010 to take a new position with internet giant Google as the head of
'Google Ideas' now known as 'Jigsaw'. Jigsaw is a global initiative 'think tank' intended to
"spearhead initiatives to apply technology solutions to problems faced by the developing
world." This was the same job Cohen was doing while at the State Department.
Cohen promoted the notion of a "digital democracy contagion" based upon his belief
that the "young people in the Middle East are just a mouse click away, they're just a
Facebook connection away, they're just an instant message away, they're just a text message
away" from sufficiently organizing to effect regime change. Cohen and Google were heavily
involved the January 2011 demonstrations in Egypt, using social networking sites to call for
demonstrations and political reform; the "Egyptian contagion" version of 'digital democracy'
phenomena was fueled by social networking internet sites run by Egyptian youth groups which
took a very public stance opposing the Mubarak regime and calling for political reform."
*************************************
On Sept. 18 , Julian Assange's new book of that name was published. The material was largely
fashioned by conversations he'd had with Google's Eric Schmidt in 2011 at Ellingham Hall in
Norfolk, England where Assange was living under house arrest. The ostensible purpose of the
requested meeting was to discuss idea for a book that Schmidt and Jared Cohen (advisor to both
Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton) were going to write, and in fact did: ' The New Digital
Age ' (2013). They were accompanied by the book's editor Scott Malcomson, former senior
advisor for the UN and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, who eventually worked at the
US State Department, plus Lisa Shields, vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations,
closely tied to the State Department, who was Schmidt's partner at the time. Hmmm. The plot, as
they say, thickens. From the book's blurb :
'For several hours the besieged leader of the world's most famous insurgent publishing
organization and the billionaire head of the world's largest information empire locked horns.
The two men debated the political problems faced by society, and the technological solutions
engendered by the global network -- from the Arab Spring to Bitcoin. They outlined radically
opposing perspectives: for Assange, the liberating power of the Internet is based on its
freedom and statelessness. For Schmidt, emancipation is at one with US foreign policy
objectives and is driven by connecting non-Western countries to American companies and markets.
These differences embodied a tug-of-war over the Internet's future that has only gathered force
subsequently.'
Some background that will hopefully entice you to listen to the 42-minute Telesur video
(sorry, no transcript) I'll embed below; this is the short version: ' Assange claims Google is
in bed with US government'
Note that in other interviews Assange names 'other private and public security agencies' as
well, and names the figures showing how deep Google is into smartphones and almost every nation
on the planet. 'Do not be evil'.
If your appetite hasn't been sufficiently whetted to watch the 38-minute Telesur interview,
you might at a minimum read 'When Google Met WikiLeaks: Battle for a New Digital Age' by
Nozomi Hayase . An excerpt or three, after reminding us that in his earlier 2012 book
Cypherpunks, Assange had said that " the internet, our greatest tool for emancipation,
has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen
":
'Assange unveils how, contrary to Google's efforts to create a positive public image by
giving away free storage, making it appear not like a corporation driven solely by profit
motives, this seemingly philanthropic company is a willing participant in its own government
co-optation. Indeed, he argues, Google Ideas was birthed as a brainchild of a Washington
think-tank.
Assange described how "Google's bosses
genuinely believe in the civilizing power of enlightened multinational corporations, and they
see this mission as continuous with the shaping of the world according to the better judgment
of the 'benevolent superpower.'" (p. 35). This process is so gradual and discrete that it is
hardly conscious on the part of the actors. This digital mega-corporation, through getting too
close to the US State Department and NSA, began to incorporate their ambitions and come to see
no evil. This internalization of imperial values created what Assange called " the impenetrable
banality of 'don't be evil' " (p. 35). It appears that bosses at Google genuinely think they
are doing good, while they are quickly becoming part of a power structure that Assange
described as a " capricious
global system of secret loyalties , owed favors, and false consensus, of saying one thing in
public and the opposite in private" (p. 7). Allegiance creates obedience and an unspoken
alliance creates a web of self-deception through which one comes to believe one's own lies and
becomes entangled in them. [snip]
' Assange pointed to how "the hidden fist
that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the US Army,
Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps" (p. 43).
Google does not see evil in itself. By embedding with U.S. central authority, this global
tech company not only fails to see the invisible fist of "American strategic and economic
hegemony" that dictates the market, but moreover aspires "to adorn the hidden
fist like a velvet glove" (p. 43). By advancing the force of monopoly, they subordinate civic
values to economic and U.S. hegemonic interests and escape any real accountability. They no
longer recognize the unmediated market that responds to people's demands, a true market that
functions as a space of democratic accountability. This normalization of control leads to a
subversion of law, creating a rogue state where a ripple effect of corruption is created, as
individuals, companies and the state each betray their own stated principles.'
'In a sense, one might conclude that Assange's new book is in itself another leak . In
publishing what one might call the "GoogleFiles", Assange conducts his usual job of publishing
in the public interest with due diligence by providing the verbatim transcript and audio of the
secret meeting. This time, the source of the material was Google themselves who sought out
Assange for their publication.'
How wonderful it is that he's rocking Google's Very Large Boat. Hayase also writes that
Cohen and Schmidt engage in their own 'statist' version of the 'good whistleblower/bad
whistleblower meme we're familiar with. Pfffft.
Google used its front page to back
the US government's campaign to bomb Syria: snapshot
More if you'd like it:
From HuffPo's : Julian Assange Fires Back At Eric Schmidt and Google's 'Digital
Colonialism', one exchange that's significant:
' HP : What about the substance of Schmidt's defense, that Google is pretty much at war with
the U.S. government and that they don't cooperate? He claims that they're working to encrypt
everything so that neither the NSA nor anyone else can get in. What would you say to that?
JA : It's a duplicitous statement. It's a lawyerly statement. Eric Schmidt did not say that
Google encrypts everything so that the US government can't get at them. He said quite
deliberately that Google has started to encrypt exchanges of information -- and that's hardly
true, but it has increased amount of encrypted exchanges. But Google has not been encrypting
their storage information. Google's whole business model is predicated on Google being able to
access the vast reservoir of private information collected from billions of people each day.
And if Google can access it, then of course the U.S. government has the legal right to access
it, and that's what's been going on.
As a result of the Snowden revelation, Google was caught out. It tried to pretend that those
revelations were not valid, and when that failed, it started to engage in a public relations
campaign to try and say that it wasn't happy with what the National Security Agency was doing,
and was fighting against it. Now, I'm sure that many people in Google are not happy with what
has been occurring. But that doesn't stop it happening, because Google's business model is to
collect as much information as possible and people store it, index and turn it into predictive
profiles. Similarly, at Eric Schmidt's level, Google is very closely related to the U.S.
government and there's a revolving door between the State Department and Google . '
For the Pffft factor plus some history of WikiLeaks' betrayal by both Daniel
Domscheit-Berg ( his Wiki ), and the Guardian,
the
Daily Dot's : ' When WikiLeaks cold-called Hillary Clinton',
including:
'Within hours, Harrison's call was answered via State Department backchannels. Lisa Shields,
then- Google Executive Eric
Schmidt's girlfriend and vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations, reached out
through one of WikiLeak's own, Joseph Farrell, to confirm it was indeed WikiLeaks calling to
speak with Clinton. [snip]
'But in an act of gross negligence the Guardian newspaper -- our former partner -- had
published the confidential decryption
password to all 251,000 cables in a chapter heading in its book, rushed out hastily in
February 2011.(1) By mid-August we discovered that a former German employee -- whom I had
suspended in 2010 -- was cultivating business relationships with a variety of organizations and
individuals by shopping around the location of the encrypted file, paired with the password's
whereabouts in the book. At the rate the information was spreading, we estimated that within
two weeks most intelligence agencies, contractors, and middlemen would have all the cables, but
the public would not.'
Background on
the Rassmussen story to make sure he was elected head of NATO by shutting down Roj TV:
Interview: Roj TV, ECHR and Wikileaks by Naila Bozo
Note: Easy Copying from the Café to the Café didn't go well. Everything
doubled up, and not in the same order, and none of the quotation font colors hopped aboard. But
it is what it is, and trying to repair it further seems Quixotic.
@84:
As sometimes said: don't sweat the small stuff.
This "We are all Taiwanese now" stunt is Pompeo's act of petty spite for getting outfoxed in
the Hong Kong colour revolution play.
Empire's useful idiots were let loose to trash the hapless city, fired up by the Western
propaganda machinery.
Now Beijing is putting the stock on those pompous minions with the National Security Law, and
their foreign masters can't do nuffin' except squeal human rights and apply some nuisance
sanctions.
The West fails because it looks at China through ideological lenses and sees Communists, who
can fall back on 5000 years of statecraft to push back at interlopers.
Beijing's moves can be likened to two classic strategies.
1. Zhuge Liang fools the enemy to fire all their arrows at straw men, which become ammunition
against them.
2. The Empty City strategy. Invaders take over an ostensibly abandoned city, only to be
trapped inside.
Global Times is cantankerous and sometimes risible, but even a broken clock is right, twice a
day.
So when it says that crossing Beijing's red line on the Taiwan issue is not in the island's
best interests, the incoming BiMala administration should take note.
From comments: "The lady martyr, a 14 year air force veteran will be a rallying cry to bring
down the corrupt swamp. As Pepe says, the deplorables will become the ungovernables. The real
red necks from the intermountain west were not represented. They will be there next time and
angry."
Notable quotes:
"... Since the global private finance elite can't start a global war they have to resort to manufactured civil warfare to keep the masses under control and brainwashed against the private finance TINA. ..."
"... The election was stolen. The fraud was blatant, in your face. The election process, the only peaceful means for a transfer of power according to the wishes of the electorate is seen as fatally undermined by a significant portion of the electorate. ..."
Here's what Steve Bannon's MAGA war-room had to say on today's events..."...What people need
to understand is that there's a growing sense among the Deplorables that they've been betrayed
not only by their political leaders, but the very institutions that were designed theoretically
to protect their liberties."
Who by the way knew that members of Congress have gas masks
under their seats ?
Tear gas was deployed in the Capitol rotunda, so the order came down for lawmakers to ready
gas masks that are stored under their seats. Allred helped some his colleagues take out
their masks as Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Marine Corps veteran, provided instruction.
"When you put your mask on, breathe slowly or you'll hyperventilate," Gallego said,
according to Allred.
There surely is a lot of hyperventilating right now. Trump is accused of inciting
violence.
It
doesn't read like that . In fact Trump spoke out against violence and called on the
people to leave peacefully only to get censored by the blue tick monopoly:
If this was the nakedcapitalism web site I would have no question about what the TINA
referenced (private finance) but in this posting I am not so sure that is so clear.
How can America have an epiphany moment about the mythological left/right when top/bottom
is the reality that TINA should be all about?
Since the global private finance elite can't start a global war they have to resort to
manufactured civil warfare to keep the masses under control and brainwashed against the
private finance TINA.
A shit show civil war to keep focus off the real TINA of global private finance......and b
wants to call that style.....
The election was stolen. The fraud was blatant, in your face. The election process, the only peaceful means for a
transfer of power according to the wishes of the electorate is seen as fatally undermined by
a significant portion of the electorate.
SCOTUS washed their hands of it.
So if their votes don't count and the highest court in the land won't remedy the situation
then the only alternative is either dissolve the union or a radical overhaul of the union.
Personally I don't think the latter will ever happen.
The only question is will the dissolution of the union be peaceful or violent!
Trump obviously wants better diplomatic relations with Russia. He is reluctant to
counter its military might. He is doing his best to make it richer. Just consider the
headlines below. With all those good things Trump did for Putin, intense suspicions of
Russian influence over him is surely justified.
There followed 34 headlines and links to stories about Trump actions, from closing Russian
consulates to U.S. attacks on Russian troops, that were hostile to Russia.
In fact no other U.S. administration since the cold war has been more aggressive towards
Russia than Trump's.
But some U.S. media continue to claim that Trump's behavior towards Russia has not been
hostile at all. Consider this line
in Politico about anti-Russian hawks in the incoming Biden administration:
Nuland and Sherman, who entered academia and the think tank world after leaving the Obama
administration, have been outspoken critics of President Donald Trump's foreign policy --
particularly his appeasement of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Where please has Trump 'appeased' Vladimir Putin?
Here are a number of headlines which appeared in U.S. media since we published our first
list two years ago. Which of the described actions were designed to 'appease' Putin or
Russia?
When one adds up all those actions one can only find that Trump cares more about Russia,
than about the U.S. and its NATO allies. Only with Trump being under Putin's influence,
knowingly or unwittingly, could he end up doing Russia so many favors.
Why, you certainly could view most (if not all) of those actions as favors.
People feel attacked, unite, rally around the flag. Internal problems are blamed on the
external enemy. The sanctions, the sort the West likes to impose, help develop domestic
industries. Etc. Yeah, favors.
Point on! Trump was never 'the Russians' bitch'. He was the whore of the Russian
émigré mafia that had relocated to the US in south Queens in New York City. A
major difference!
Well, the logic is to destroy or ad least severely weaken Russia. Yet damn Russia is
getting stronger and stronger, hence what ever happened under Trump's watch must have been a
favor to Russia.
Competent government would look itself in the mirror and admit it is their own fault and
stupidity, but that ship sailed long time ago for US.
"... It is difficult to know or to ensure that the ballots are actual ballots from registered voters. For example in the early hours of the morning of November 4 large ballot drops occurred in Michigan and Wisconsin that wiped out Trump's lead. State officials have reported that people not registered -- probably illegals -- were permitted to vote. Postal service workers have reported being ordered to backdate ballots that suddenly appeared in the middle of the night after the deadline. These techniques were used to erase Trump's substantial leads in the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. ..."
"... Digital technology has also made it easy to alter vote counts. US Air Force General Thomas McInerney is familiar with this technology. He says it was developed by the National Security Agency in order to interfere in foreign elections, but now is in the hands of the CIA and was used to defeat Trump. Trump is considered to be an enemy of the military/security complex because of his wish to normalize relations with Russia, thus taking away the enemy that justifies the CIA's budget and power. ..."
"... The military/security complex favors the disunity that the Democrat Party and media have fostered with their ideology of Identity Politics. ..."
"... I would take it a little further and say that voting by mail is a method of vote fraud. The supposed safeguards are easily circumvented, as some whistleblowers have illustrated with ballots being brought forth in large numbers after election day without postmarks and postal workers being ordered to stamp them with acceptable postmarks. ..."
"... Eisenhower is always lauded for his MIC warning. Frankly he ticks me off. Thanks for the warning AFTER you were in some position to mitigate. ..."
"... the most likely source of fraud that is hard to detect, is ballot harvesting. This should be outlawed as it violates the idea of a secret ballot. Somebody comes to the home of a disinterested voter and makes sure he votes (of course they will never admit to hounding the person) and "helps" them with the ballot. If the voter cannot be cajoled into voting the correct way, you merely throw his ballot in the trash. ..."
"... Living in an urban setting I often had to visit apartment buildings. Without fail, there was always a pile of undeliverable mail in the lobby under the mailboxes. ..."
"... His farewell address was just flapdoodle; it wasn't really dredged up till the 70s. Eisenhower spent eight years spreading tripwires and mines and then said "Watch out." Thanks buddy. ..."
"... As the German newspaper editor Udo Ulfkotte revealed in his book, Bought Journalism, the European and US media speak with one voice -- the voice of the CIA. The very profitable and powerful US military/security complex needs foreign enemies. ..."
"... inventive creative new ways to deceive.. first it was election machines, then mail in votes. ..."
"... The phrase "there's no evidence" is just a public commitment to ignore any evidence, no matter how blatant or obvious. ..."
"... Paper ballots as ascribed by Tulsi Gabbard legislation is the only safe option for elections. Kudos to Tulsi! ..."
"... Everyone knew about the potential for voter fraud to occur, but the entire system is corrupt, including Trump who has allowed the massive corruption within the system that was present when he entered office to persist and grow because he is a wimpy, spineless, coward, that was too afraid to make any waves and take the heat that he promised his voters. ..."
"... Why anyone voted for Trump in 2020 confounds me. I voted for him in 2016 and he has turned out to be one of the worst presidents in history. ..."
"... Trump in his cowardess and dishonesty knew that the ailing economy would harm his chances of being re-elected, so he allowed the health scare scamdemic to occur and destroy the livelihoods, lives, and businesses of hundreds of millions of Americans because he is a psychopath. Trump did not do what he promised. Trump made America worse than it has ever been since the end of slavery. ..."
"... Trump has also demanded the extradition of Assange after telling his voters that he loved wikileaks. Trump is a two-faced, lying, fraud. It has been his pattern. He consistently supports various groups and people like Wikileaks, Proud Boys, and others and panders to them and voters and tells people that he loves them, and then every time without fail when the heat is on, Trump says," I really don't know anything about them." ..."
"... "I know nothing." Trump saying "I know nothing." defines his presidency and who he is as a person, a spineless, pandering, corrupt, two-faced, narcissist, loser, and wimp! ..."
A few months ago it looked like the re-election of Trump was almost certain, but now there was a close race between Trump
and Biden? What happen during the last months?
In the months before the election, the Democrats used the "Covid pandemic" to put in place voting by mail. The argument was used
that people who safely go to supermarkets and restaurants could catch Covid if they stood in voting lines. Never before used on a
large scale, voting by mail is subject to massive vote fraud.
There are many credible reports of organized vote fraud committed by Democrats. The only question is whether the Republican establishment
will support challenging the documented fraud or whether Trump will be pressured to concede in order to protect the reputation of
American Democracy.
It is difficult to know or to ensure that the ballots are actual ballots from registered voters. For example in the early
hours of the morning of November 4 large ballot drops occurred in Michigan and Wisconsin that wiped out Trump's lead. State officials
have reported that people not registered -- probably illegals -- were permitted to vote. Postal service workers have reported being
ordered to backdate ballots that suddenly appeared in the middle of the night after the deadline. These techniques were used to erase
Trump's substantial leads in the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia.
Digital technology has also made it easy to alter vote counts. US Air Force General Thomas McInerney is familiar with this
technology. He says it was developed by the National Security Agency in order to interfere in foreign elections, but now is in the
hands of the CIA and was used to defeat Trump. Trump is considered to be an enemy of the military/security complex because of his
wish to normalize relations with Russia, thus taking away the enemy that justifies the CIA's budget and power.
People do not understand. They think an election has been held when in fact what has occurred is that massive vote fraud has been
used to effect a revolution against red state white America. Leaders of the revolution, such as Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
are demanding a list of Trump supporters who are "to be held accountable." Calls are being made for the arrest of Tucker Carlson,
the only mainstream journalist who supported President Trump.
In a recent column I wrote:
"Think what it means that the entirety of the US media, allegedly the 'watchdogs of democracy,' are openly involved in participating
in the theft of a presidential election.
"Think what it means that a large number of Democrat public and election officials are openly involved in the theft of a presidential
election.
"It means that the United States is split irredeemably. The hatred for white people that has been cultivated for many years,
portraying white Americans as "systemic racists," together with the Democrats' lust for power and money, has destroyed national
unity. The consequence will be the replacement of rules with force."
Mainstream media in Europe claim, that Trump had "divided" the United States. But isn`t it actually the other way around,
that his opponents have divided the country?
As the German newspaper editor Udo Ulfkotte revealed in his book, Bought Journalism , the European and US media speak with
one voice -- the voice of the CIA. The very profitable and powerful US military/security complex needs foreign enemies. Russiagate
was a CIA/FBI successful effort to block Trump from reducing tensions with Russia. In 1961 in his last address to the American people
President Dwight Eisenhower warned that the growing power of the military/industrial complex was a threat to American democracy.
We ignored his warning and now have security agencies more powerful than the President.
The military/security complex favors the disunity that the Democrat Party and media have fostered with their ideology of Identity
Politics. Identity politics replaced Marxist class war with race and gender war. White people, and especially white heterosexual
males, are the new oppressor class. This ideology causes race and gender disunity and prevents any unified opposition to the security
agencies ability to impose its agendas by controlling explanations. Opposition to Trump cemented the alliance between Democrats,
media, and the Deep State.
It is possible that the courts will decide who will be sworn into office at January 20, 2021. Do you except a phase of uncertainty
or even a constitutional crisis?
There is no doubt that numerous irregularities indicate that the election was stolen and that the ground was well laid in advance.
Trump intends to challenge the obvious theft. However, his challenges will be rejected in Democrat ruled states, as they were part
of the theft and will not indict themselves. This means Trump and his attorneys will have to have constitutional grounds for taking
their cases to the federal Supreme Court. The Republicans have a majority on the Court, but the Court is not always partisan.
Republicans tend to be more patriotic than Democrats, who denounce America as racist, fascist, sexist, imperialist. This patriotism
makes Republicans impotent when it comes to political warfare that could adversely affect America's reputation. The inclination of
Republicans is for Trump to protect America's reputation by conceding the election. Republicans fear the impact on America's reputation
of having it revealed that America's other major party plotted to steal a presidental election.
Red state Americans, on the other hand, have no such fear. They understand that they are the targets of the Democrats, having
been defined by Democrats as "racist white supremacist Trump deplorables."
The introduction of a report of the Heritage Foundation states that "the United States has a long and unfortunate history
of election fraud". Are the 2020 presidential elections another inglorious chapter in this long history?
This time the fraud is not local as in the past. It is the result of a well organized national effort to get rid of a president
that the Establishment does not accept.
Somehow you get the impression that in the USA – as in many European countries democracy is just a facade – or am I wrong?
You are correct. Trump is the first non-establishment president who became President without being vetted by the Establishment
since Ronald Reagan. Trump was able to be elected only because the Establishment thought he had no chance and took no measures to
prevent his election. A number of studies have concluded that in the US the people, despite democracy and voting, have zero input
into public policy.
Democracy cannot work in America because the money of the elite prevails. American democracy is organized in order to prevent
the people from having a voice. A political campaign is expensive. The money for candidates comes from interest groups, such as defense
contractors, Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, the Israel Lobby. Consequently, the winning candidate is indebted to his funders,
and these are the people whom he serves.
European mainstream media are portraying Biden as a luminous figure. Should Biden become president, what can be expected
in terms of foreign and security policy, especially in regard to China, Russia and the Middle East? I mean, the deep state and the
military-industrial complex remain surely nearly unchanged.
Biden will be a puppet, one unlikely to be long in office. His obvious mental confusion will be used either to rule through him
or to remove him on grounds of mental incompetence. No one wants the nuclear button in the hands of a president who doesn't know
which day of the week it is or where he is.
The military/security complex needs enemies for its power and profit and will be certain to retain the list of desirable foreign
enemies -- Russia, Iran, China, and any independent-inclined country in Latin America. Being at war is also a way of distracting
the people of the war against their liberties.
What the military/security complex might not appreciate is that among its Democrat allies there are some, such as Representative
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who are ideological revolutionaries. Having demonized red state America and got rid of Trump (assuming
the electoral fraud is not overturned by the courts), Ocasio-Cortez and her allies intend to revolutionize the Democrat Party and
make it a non-establishment force. In her mind white people are the Establishment, which we already see from her demands for a list
of Trump supporters to be punished.
I think I'm not wrong in assuming that a Biden-presidency would mean more identity politics, more political correctness
etc. for the USA. How do you see this?
Identity politics turns races and genders against one another. As white people -- "systemic racists" -- are defined as the oppressor
class, white people are not protected from hate speech and hate crimes. Anything can be said or done to a white American and it is
not considered politically incorrect.
With Trump and his supporters demonized, under Democrat rule the transition of white Americans into second or third class citizens
will be completed.
How do you access Trump's first term in office? Where was he successful and where he failed?
Trump spent his entire term in office fighting off fake accusations -- Russiagate, Impeachgate, failure to bomb Russia for paying
Taliban to kill American occupiers of Afghanistan, causing Covid by not wearing a mask, and so on and on.
That Trump survived all the false charges shows that he is a real person, a powerful character. Who else could have survived what
Trump has been subjected to by the Establishment and their media prostitutes. In the United States the media is known as "presstitutes"
-- press prostitutes. That is what Udo Ulfkotte says they are in Europe. As a former Wall Street Journal editor, I say with complete
confidence that there is no one in the American media today I would have hired. The total absence of integrity in the Western media
is sufficient indication that the West is doomed.
Never before used on a large scale, voting by mail is subject to massive vote fraud.
I would take it a little further and say that voting by mail is a method of vote fraud. The supposed safeguards are easily
circumvented, as some whistleblowers have illustrated with ballots being brought forth in large numbers after election day without
postmarks and postal workers being ordered to stamp them with acceptable postmarks.
It really seems to me that there would be no democrat majorities in Congress or in so many state legislatures without vote
fraud.
Worse than the fraud available with vote by mail is the voting of people normally who don't bother to vote. Think of how stupid
and uninformed that average American voter is. Now realize how much more stupid and uninformed the non-voter is, only now he votes.
However, the most likely source of fraud that is hard to detect, is ballot harvesting. This should be outlawed as it violates
the idea of a secret ballot. Somebody comes to the home of a disinterested voter and makes sure he votes (of course they will
never admit to hounding the person) and "helps" them with the ballot. If the voter cannot be cajoled into voting the correct way,
you merely throw his ballot in the trash.
I have little doubt that there have been massive "irregularities", particularly in the so-called battleground states, that
are at play in "stealing" the election.
...The favourite phrase these days is "no evidence of wide spread voter fraud". Let's break that down. Only 6 states have been
challenged for vote fraud. In the big scheme of things, 6 states is not wide spread, even if there is massive vote fraud within
those 6 states. That the vote fraud is not widespread, implies that some vote fraud is acceptable, and that the listener should
ignore it. Last and most importantly, in the narrowest of legalistic terms, testimony or affidavits are not evidence. Testimony
and affidavits become evidence when supported by physical evidence. An affidavit with a photograph demonstrating the statement
would be evidence.
Another phrase is something like "election officials say they have seen no evidence of voter fraud". I have yet to hear a reporter
challenge the "seen no evidence of " part of the statement, regardless of the subject, by asking if the speaker had looked for
any evidence. They won't, because they know damn well no one has.
That is how the liars operate. Not so different from Rumsfeld's "plausible deniability".
Living in an urban setting I often had to visit apartment buildings. Without fail, there was always a pile of undeliverable
mail in the lobby under the mailboxes.
The envelopes were mostly addressed to people who had moved out or died. If ballots were sent to these people based on incorrect
voter rolls, then these too would likely have been left sitting on the floor or on a ledge for anyone to take.
It doesn't take a leap of faith to know what a Trump-hating leftist would do when no one is looking. This moral hazard was
intentionally created by Dems, who know that urban dwellers are transient and lean left politically.
Eisenhower is always lauded for his MIC warning. Frankly he ticks me off. Thanks for the warning AFTER you were in some
position to mitigate.
Ike's a mystery. Why did he NOT question Harry Truman's commitments to NATO, the UN, and all that rubbish? Ike was a WWII guy.
He knew Americans hated the UN in 1953 as much as they hated the League of Nations after WWI. But he let it all slide and get
bigger.
His farewell address was just flapdoodle; it wasn't really dredged up till the 70s. Eisenhower spent eight years spreading
tripwires and mines and then said "Watch out." Thanks buddy.
Well, agree on your points however, on the other side of the ledger, he never understood the stupidity of the Korean war (that
he could have ended) and majorly up-ramped CIA activities in all manner of regime change (bay of pigs anyone?). Almost a direct
path to our foreign policy now (and now domestic policy)
He did deploy the military assistance advisory group to Vietnam in 1955. This is considered the beginning of U.S. involvement
in the war. This allowed the French to moonwalk out the back door leaving us holding the bag. In fairness this was Johnson's war
however. Eisenhower did cut the military budget as a peace dividend to fund interstate system and other domestic projects. In
today political spectrum he would be considered a flaming liberal.
As the German newspaper editor Udo Ulfkotte revealed in his book, Bought Journalism, the European and US media speak
with one voice -- the voice of the CIA. The very profitable and powerful US military/security complex needs foreign enemies.
What intrigues me is the ultimate political goal of the UN and the WEF when they anticipate a single global government centered
at the UN and the absence of nation-states.
So what is the MIC going to do when there are no existential threats of competing nation-states? Or will the MIC re-engineer
religious wars between the various religious groups, secular and theological? It seems the aspirations of the WEF and its fellow
travellers preclude the occurrence of future armed conflicts.
Of course one needs capitalistic economies to produce the ordnance and materiels for the engineered social factions to war
with each other. Yet if the Greens have their way, there will be no mining period.
More likely is the possibility that none of them actually understand what they are doing. As Nassim Taleb is alleged to have
remarked, 99% of humans are stupid.
The total absence of integrity in the Western media is sufficient indication that the West is doomed.
It's because Western media is completely under the control of Jews, the world's foremost End Justifies Means people. The Fourth
Estate has become the world's most powerful Bully Pulpit. There are still a few good ones though, brave souls they are: Kim Strassel
of WSJ, Daniel Larison of The American Conservative , Neil Munro of Breitbart.
The rest are more or less lying scums, including everyone on NYTimes, WSJ, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, MSNBC, Fox News (minus
Tucker Carlson and Maria Bartiromo), The Economist , and let's not forget the new media: Google, Facebook, Twitter. The
world would be a much better place without any of them.
@Beavertales
-- with either vote flipping on machines or having the totals that paper ballot scanners tabulate adjust via a pre-programmed
algorithm. Many elections have already been stolen this way.
Nancy Pelosi claims that Biden's victory gives the Democrats a "MANDATE" to alter the economy as they see fit with 50.5%.
This proves that Biden will NOT represent everyone – only the left! I have warned that this has been their agenda from day one.
Now, three whistleblowers from the Democratic software company Dominion Voting Systems, alleging that the company's software stole
38 million votes from Trump. There are people claiming that Dominion Voting Systems is linked to Soros, Dianae Finesteing, Clintons,
and Pelosi's husband. I cannot verify any of these allegations so far.
We are at the Rubicon. Civil War is on the other side. There should NEVER be this type of drastic change to the economy
from Capitalism to Marxism on 50.5% of the popular vote. NOBODY should be able to restructure the government and the economy on
less than 2/3rds of the majority. That would be a mandate. Trying to change everything with a claim of 50.5% of the vote will
only signal, like the Dread Scot decision, that there is no solution by rule of law. This is the end of civilization and it will
turn ugly from here because there is no middle ground anymore. As I have warned, historically the left will never tolerate opposition.
Yes, the theft is blatant. But what are you, us, going to do about it? We really can't do much as the Office of the President
Elect requires us to wear masks. For our safety.
"in the narrowest of legalistic terms, testimony or affidavits are not evidence. Testimony and affidavits become evidence when
supported by physical evidence. " Correct – but they also can become evidence by verbal testimony. ie "I saw the defendant hit
the victim with a rock"
Not only have they stolen the election but when Joe Biden and other democrats claim that President Trump caused the deaths
of hundreds of thousands of Americans because of his handling of Covid 19, they are in sane. No world leader could stop the spread
of this respiratory virus. However, Joe Biden and democrats have caused the deaths of hundreds of white people, while whipping
up weak minded people to kill many whites. Biden and the democrats are criminals. Any one who is white, man or woman, that supports
the democratic party is enabling a criminal organization to perpetrate violence on white people, including murder.
Since the article was from a German magazine it's understandable that there is no mention of "the one who shall not be named".
No mention of the people behind the Lawfare group, the same people behind the impeachment, the same people providing financial
and ideological support for the BLM/Antifa, the same people that own the media that spewed lies for 5 years and censored any mention
of the Biden family corruption, no mention of the people behind this Color Revolution, the same people who promoted the mail in
voting and those that managed the narrative for the media on election night to stop Trump's momentum.
For the public consumption the election will be described in vague terms, like this article, blaming special interests and
institutions like the FBI, CIA and MIC without naming names as if an institution, not the oligarchs and chosen pulling the strings,
are somehow Marxist, anti-white or anti-Christian.
The interviewer quotes the Heritage Foundation does anyone even care what they say? The English Tavistock Institute by way
of the CIA which the British molded from the OSS created programs for the Heritage Foundation as well as the Hoover Institute,
MIT, Stanford University, Wharton, Rand etc. These "rightwing think tanks" were created to counter the CIA's "leftwing think tanks"
at Columbia, Berkeley etc. Thank you British Intelligence.
Steve Bannon was just interviewing someone (can't remember his name). Apparently there are about 200 to 300 IT professionals/engineers
working on these so-called "glitches" (not glitches at all) which mysteriously "disappeared" thousands of Trump votes. Then they'd
dump phony Biden votes into the mix. These IT professionals are going to follow the trail.
I've also heard that Dominion Voting Systems played a big part in this scam by using algorithms. One Trump lawyer said that
big revelations are coming.
We're going to have to be patient and just wait.
"The inclination of Republicans is for Trump to protect America's reputation by conceding the election."
I honestly think it's more like the old established Republicans (corporate bought) want Trump to lose because that is what
their campaign donors want (Big Pharma, Wall Street, etc.) They are part of the elite, and the elite (both the Democrats AND Republicans)
want Trump gone so they can continue their crony capitalist looting. They've got to appear like they're behind Trump, but I don't
think they are. Of course, that's not all Republican representatives.
Sounds like they've been rigging elections for awhile now. I bet they just messed up with Hillary. I think that's why she was
so upset. She had it, but they screwed up and didn't supply enough ballots.
@KenHinventive creative new ways to deceive.. first it was election machines, then mail in votes. next it will be magic carpet
voting. But the votes don't count, cause it is the electoral college that elects the President.
Trump also lost a significant number who did not understand Trump was an Israeli at heart, they thought he was a uncoothed
NYC red blooded American.
As far as white, black or pokadot color or any of the religions ganging up against Trump I don't think that happened, the fall
out into statistically discoverable categories is just that, fall out, not those categories conspiring to vote or not vote one
way or the other.
PCR seems to have trouble seeing a difference between the counting of perfectly proper votes which Pres Trump's post office
delivered late which may or may not be allowed by law which can be determined in court, and fraud like the dead voting or votes
being forged.
The fraud is all so transparent but no one in the power elite seems to give a crap whether the public catches on or not these
days. They know that the entire media which creates the false matrix of contrived "truth" that we all live in will back them to
the hilt because they are actually just one more working part in the grand conspiracy. We all know that when "O'Brian" says 2
+ 2 equals 5 we must all believe it, or at least say we do. We interface with "O'Brian's" minions on a daily basis but we don't
know the ultimate identity of "O'Brian" (in the singular or multiple). Many guesses are made, but they hide that from us fairly
well with the aid of their militaries and "intelligence" agencies (aka secret police in other times and places).
For example in the early hours of the morning of November 4 large ballot drops occurred in Michigan and Wisconsin that wiped
out Trump's lead.
In a very similar vein, it is the same thing that happened to Bernie Sanders during the primary's. Joe was down and out, and
Bernie was enjoying the lead and then "Bam!" Overnight Joe is back on top.
Well, fool me once,,,,,, .,and blah, blah whatever Bush said .
Dr Roberts has referenced in the interview a UR article that goes into considerable detail about the massive electoral fraud
by the Democrats and their partners. You've obviously not bothered to read it.
You're like one of those MSM hacks who denies electoral fraud without making any attempt to look at the evidence.
@Begemot
And it's almost always a closer race than anyone would have guessed beforehand -- which I also find suspicious. How likely is
it that the majority of presidential elections over the last century were decided by more or less even numbers of voters from
each party, between more or less evenly matched candidates?
Really seems like they've perfected the art of putting on rigged political shows that you can't quite believe in, but don't
have anything really solid to back up your suspicions. It's like the "no evidence of fraud" canard -- anything solid enough to
show obvious manipulation is explained away as the exception, rather than the tip of a very deep iceberg
Like the false accusations about Russia, delegitimizing the presidential election as fraud is turning out to be much ado
about nothing.
Let's review. The Democrats perpetrated the phony 2016 Russian influence fraud, and now the Democrats are perpetrating the
phony 2020 election victory.
The common elements are Democrats perpetrate fraud.
IMO this is a simple remedy to settle the election fraud mess or we will be arguing about this 20 years from now .from the
American Thinker.
The candidates on the ballot must have an opportunity to have observers whom they choose to oversee the entire process so
the candidates are satisfied that they won or lost a free and fair election.
That is not what happened in the 2020 election. That is the single most important and simple fact that needs to be understood
and communicated. The 2020 election was not a free and fair election, because poll-watchers were not allowed to do their essential
job. The 2020 election can still be a free and fair election with a clear winner, whoever that may be, but time is running
out.
In every instance where poll-watchers were not allowed to observe the process, those votes must be recounted. They must
be recounted with poll-watchers from both sides present. If there are votes that cannot be recounted because the envelops were
discarded, those votes must be discarded. Put the blame for this on the officials who decided to count the votes in secret.
Consider it a way to discourage secret vote counts in the future.
The pandemic has not been fearful enough to close liquor stores, and it in should not be used as excuse to remove the poll-watchers
who are essential to a free and fair election. If we must have social distancing, then use cameras.
Certainly, there are other issues with the 2020 election. There may be problems with software, and there are issues like
signature verification and dead people voting. Everything should be considered and examined, but no other issue should distract
from the simple fact that both sides must be able to view the entire process. If one side is not allowed to view the vote-counting,
then that side should be calling it a fraud. We should all be calling it a fraud.
...Trump had control of the Senate, the House and of course the Executive between his inauguration in January of 2017 and the
Midterm Elections of 2018, a total time period of 1 year and 10 months. What did he do during this time? He deregulated financial
services and passed corporate tax cuts.
At the end of the day, being emotionally invested in US elections is no different to being emotionally invested in Keeping
up with the Kardashians , that is to say your life wouldn't be that different if your don't follow either.
The Democrats Have Stolen the Presidential Election
The Deep State Has Stolen the Presidential Election. FIFY. But they have been in control for decades they just don't care who
knows now. They are taking final steps to make their control impervious to attack.
This is the reason that the establishment latched on to the Eisenhowerian bon mot but entirely memory hole Trumman's
far more explicit warning a freaking month after a sitting president is shot like a turkey in Dallas: it white washes CIA and
NSC .
The place to begin, and it's mind-blowing when you think about it this way, is that nothing was resolved on election night.
Not who will take the oath on January 20th. Nor which party will control the Senate. Nor even who will be Speaker and which party
will control the House.
Suffice it to say, a still raging factional struggle has simply moved to a greater degree behind the curtain.
I noted this movie reference on another thread here:
If your father dies, you'll make the deal, Sonny.
-- "The Godfather"
My point being, you're foolish if you ascribe certainty as to outcome at this point.
Being rid of Trump has been as close to a dues ex machina for the establishment as imaginable since he took the oath. This
ineluctable observation elicits no end of foot-stomping by those who assume it necessarily says anything positive about the man.
With every persistent revision of the script they wrote for him, all ending with his political demise at least, Trump has not
just survived but grown stronger. While the Democrats turned our elections into something only seen in a third-world shit hole,
Trump legitimately drew 71M votes from Americans.
That's a lot of air in the balloon. Believe me, filth like Russian mole Brennan may think everything is finished once they
get rid of terrible, awful Trump, but those above his pay grade know better.
Like him or hate him, Trump is the only principal not wholly or largely discredited. He was saved from destruction during his
first term by the Republican base moving to protect him. That was the import of his 90-95% approval among them, destroy him and
you destroy the Republican Party.
Now, despite -- or perhaps, because of -- everything they've done, that base now includes a significant number of Democrats
and independents. Trump is merely a vessel for an American majority attached to this constitutional republic thingie we've got
going.
Don't get lost in the details. This isn't a puzzle you can solve by internet sleuthing. The plan they executed -- to steal
sufficiently to make the outcome inevitable by the morning after the election at the latest -- failed. This was evident early
on Election Day (e.g. fake water main breaks in Atlanta) and necessitated their playing their Fox/AZ card and shutting down the
count at least until they had removed Republican monitors.
"In 22 states, Republicans will hold unified control over the governor's office and both houses of the legislature, giving
the party wide political latitude -- including in states like Florida and Georgia."
"Eleven states will have divided governments in 2021, unchanged from this year: Democratic governors will need to work with
Republican legislators in eight states, and Republican governors will contend with Democratic lawmakers in three."
The Democrats have: Joe Biden, and a slim majority in the House of Representatives which they are almost certain to lose in
two years.
What the Republicans are going to do is everything we hate, but they will pretend they were "forced" to do it by the Democrats
– the Democrats being the minority party.
Who else could have survived what Trump has been subjected to by the Establishment and their media prostitutes. In the United
States the media is known as "presstitutes" -- press prostitutes. That is what Udo Ulfkotte says they are in Europe.
Left and right.
(What you small brains do not understand is this.)
Democrats enabling the elite to invest in far east (lower wage costs, higher profits) did abandon the working class in America.
Democrats by this act did throw away the working class as a dirty rug.
Democrats with their TPP exporting most of the production to far east would totally destroy working class in USA. Trump's first
act was to cancel this insanity. Democrats are insanely delusional.
Democrats were left. Left is a party that supports the working people.
So here switch occurred. Democratic party now represent the elite, and Republicans now represent the working people.
(The irony of the fate)
The headline for PCR's article is a prediction, not yet established, and incomplete.
There is an ongoing massive attempt to steal the Presidential election as well as to steal an unknown number of House and Senate
seats, and who knows what else.
The 'game' is still on. Many tens of millions of citizens – actual total unknown but possibly in numbers unprecedented in American
history – voted for Trump. Republican candidates for office generally had strong support, but again, the actual percentage of
support is unknown but presumably larger than now 'recorded'.
There are also the many millions who ardently supported Trump, know that Biden is illegitimate, deeply corrupt, and the precursor
to perils unknown. Their determination and backbone and intelligence will now be tested.
There is the electoral college process; there are the state legislators that have a say in the process; there is the Supreme
Court.
There is also the possibility of pertinent executive orders that mandate transparent processes in the face of, say, apprehended
insurrection via fraudulent voting processes.
There is also the matter of how millions of 'deplorables' with trucks and tractors and firearms and other means to make their
point will react to obvious massive election travesty.
The conjunction of the COVID global scamdemic/plandemic, with crazed Bill Gates and kin lurking in the background with needles,
'peaceful' protesters in many cities setting fires and looting with near impunity, and a mass media that is clearly comprehensively
committed to a demonic degree of dishonesty and manipulation, and lunatic levels of 'identity politics' ideology, are among the
elements setting the stage for what may be an historical watershed.
The American Revolution in the 18th century, against the British Crown's authority, came about after years of simmering anger
and sporadic resistance against British injustice. At some point there was a 'tipping point'. When Germany invaded and occupied
Norway early in the 2nd WW, an effective resistance quickly formed in reaction, where death and torture were the known willing
risk. Two years before, those forming the resistance would have been just going on with their lives.
Who's Afraid of an Open Debate? The Truth About the Commission on Presidential Debates. The CPD is a duopoly which allows the
major party candidates to draft secret agreements about debate arrangements including moderators, debate format and even participants.
Ben Swann explains how the new coalition of EndPartisanship org is working to break the 2 party hold on primary elections,
which currently lock around 50% of voters out of the process.
I am currently watching an interview with SD Governor Kristi Noem, who went on ABC to challenge George Stenopolosus' claim
that there is no fraud in this election. She pointed out that there has been many allegations, including dead people voting in
PA and GA, she says we don't know how widespread this is, but we owe it to the 70+ million people who voted for Trump to investigate
and ensure a clean and fair election. She said we gave Al Gore 37 days to investigate the result in 2000, why aren't we giving
the same to Trump?
She is extremely articulate and sounds intelligent and honest, and what's more courageous to come forward like this. I hope
she runs for president in 2024, I'd vote for her.
Am I the only one who sees something profoundly spiritual happening in front of our eyes?
Yes. In reality, 5% of White men sent Trump packing. That doesn't match the GOP negrophile narrative where "based" Hindustanis
join the emerging conservative coalition to make sure White people can't get affordable healthcare in their own countries, though.
So we'll have to watch you parasites spool up this pedantic "fraud" nonsense until the fat orange zioclown gracelessly gets dragged
out.
Good post. You will gain more insight from this background on the speech and drafting.
Jan 19, 2011 Eisenhower's "Military-Industrial Complex" Speech Origins and Significance US National Archives
President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address, known for its warnings about the growing power of the "military-industrial
complex," was nearly two years in the making. This Inside the Vaults video short follows newly discovered papers revealing that
Eisenhower was deeply involved in crafting the speech.
Great article. Thanks. Agree with you about the big stealing being electronic. Trump tweeted out yesterday that over 2 million
votes were stolen this way. For him to say this, they must have evidence.
Dinesh D'Souza said he hopes that when this matter comes before the Supreme Court that they will tackle once and for all what
constitutes a legal vote.
Some pretty big names are involved with this Dominion Voting. It will be interesting to see what Trump's team of IT experts
discover re the use of algorithms to swing the vote.
Why (Oh, why) did Trump had to go? Because Trump is an enema to the Deep State. He was threatening to expose the biggest lie
of the last 100 years – the supposed "liberalism" of US...
The author refers to a body of overwhelmingly persuasive evidence of voter fraud that can be specified and quantified to provide
proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal cases, not to mention hands down proof in civil cases requiring only a preponderance
of the evidence to establish guilt. Furthermore, the Democrats' easily documented, elaborate efforts at concealing the vote counting
process by shutting down the counting prior to sneaking truckloads of ballots in the back door is by itself powerful circumstantial
evidence of their guilt. You have no idea what "evidence" means, either in general usage or in its strictly legal sense.
The election cannot be trusted at all, just based on the insane entitled emotional state of the Globalist establishment alone.
The system as-a-whole cannot be trusted, for the same reason. They are actively corrupting it in every way they can, and fully
believe (as a matter of religious conviction) that they are right to do so.
That's one of the Jew/Anglo Puritan Establishment's new catch-phrases. There's also "no evidence" that Joe Biden acted in a
corrupt manner in Ukraine, even though he admitted to it on tape. There's "no evidence" that Big Tech is biased against conservative
plebians, despite their removing conservative plebians' published content arbitrarily and with no State compulsion to do so.
The phrase "there's no evidence" is just a public commitment to ignore any evidence, no matter how blatant or obvious.
This newly discovered legal standard goes beyond "preponderance of the evidence" or even "guilt beyond a reasonable doubt"
to establish absolute certainty as the standard.
Just the obvious and necessary complement of the Bob Mueller standard for Russian collusion, don't you think -- "could not
(quite) exonerate"? /s
They went for a softer approach in KY in 2019. The first-term Repub Gov had a Yankee's forthrightness so they just latched
onto comments he made regarding the underfunded teachers pension program and amped-it to high heaven getting teachers all in a
frightful frenzy.
In that solidly Red state, with all other prominent offices on the ballot (AG, SoS, etc.) going overwhelmingly Repub
, somehow the Repub Gov loses to the Dem by around 5000 votes. The "teachers pension" narrative was rolled-out as the reason.
(Btw, it seems that Dominion, or another type, software was used to switch the votes in that race. I've seen video about it.)
@Orville
H. Larson out how the winds are blowing. There is nothing good about it.
Why not this:
-- ONLY in-person voting over a 2-day period, a Sat and Sun, with polls being open from 6AM to 9PM both days.
-- Exceptions are the traditional requested absentee ballot where the voter can be authenticated.
-- Paper ballots must be used at the polls and no single box of 'Straight Vote by Party' is offered.
-- Some kind of SIMPLE scanning tabulator could be used of the ballots and with it NOT being connected to the internet.
There is far too much cheating opportunity built into our current system. That's intended, of course. It needs to end!
Because you don't get it. You are missing the big picture. It was well known that these systems had the ability to be hacked
as soon as they were implemented. It is also a well known fact that massive mail in ballots increases the likelihood that corrupt
individuals are more likely to get away with election fraud.
Everyone knew about the potential for voter fraud to occur, but the entire system is corrupt, including Trump who has allowed
the massive corruption within the system that was present when he entered office to persist and grow because he is a wimpy, spineless,
coward, that was too afraid to make any waves and take the heat that he promised his voters.
Why anyone voted for Trump in 2020 confounds me. I voted for him in 2016 and he has turned out to be one of the worst presidents
in history.
Trump in his cowardess and dishonesty knew that the ailing economy would harm his chances of being re-elected, so he allowed
the health scare scamdemic to occur and destroy the livelihoods, lives, and businesses of hundreds of millions of Americans
because he is a psychopath. Trump did not do what he promised. Trump made America worse than it has ever been since the end of
slavery. Jeremy Powell said today that the economy is dead and will never recover.
The only injustices that Trump gave a damn about were the injustices against himself and his family, and has committed countless
injustices against the entire country and world during his term. Trump is a corrupt narcissist. The facts prove it. Trump is such
a corrupt narcissist that he was willing to destroy the entire economy based on scientific fraud, high crimes, and treason to
use as political cover for his own incompetency which is the most offensive and disgusting diabolical act ever perpetrated on
the entire country.
Trump has also demanded the extradition of Assange after telling his voters that he loved wikileaks. Trump is a two-faced,
lying, fraud. It has been his pattern. He consistently supports various groups and people like Wikileaks, Proud Boys, and others
and panders to them and voters and tells people that he loves them, and then every time without fail when the heat is on, Trump
says," I really don't know anything about them."
"I know nothing." Trump saying "I know nothing." defines his presidency and who he is as a person, a spineless, pandering,
corrupt, two-faced, narcissist, loser, and wimp!
Why would anyone vote for him the second time around after a record of pathological incompetency and pathological corruption?
What's to approve of about him? Go ahead, investigate voter fraud it if is permitted, and if it isn't then ask yourselves why
it is that a system that enables election fraud is in place, and ask yourselves who had the ability to change it and, who had
the ability to benefit from it!
The current term "globalization" was originated by Ted Levitt in an article in the Harvard
Business Review in the 80s and taken up by the Reaganites to push for offshoring of factories
to countries with fewer workers rights and environmental concerns. He edited the magazine and
was a professor at Harvard Business School. Those "weirdos" who championed the term were the
corporate and financial behemoths that preferred it as a euphemism for "economic
imperialism"
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jan 4 2021 1:07 utc | 56
Our nation, right now, is on the cusp of a great earthquake which will change its
arrangement so that the interior will not be beholden to the coastal elites much longer,
who have themselves thrown off the mantle of nationhood in favor of the globalist paradigm
which values nihilistic individualism over all.
So, in short, you're describing capitalism. A capitalist economy favors individualism,
profits over morality, and is mostly centered around the idea of private property as
described by John Locke. This worked wonders in the vast uncharted territories of America in
the 18th and 19th century, when the population of the United States was below 20 million and
they needed to compete, FAST, against agressive european civilizations who looked at them
with envy.
Now that they are 332 millions and counting, that their natural resources are slowly
depleting and that other civilizations have adapted to the previously unknown phenomenon of
the American empire, USans are faced with a crisis in all sectors, including faith. How come
a system that worked so well for you these past 300 years suddenly fails? well, not suddenly,
but realizing that took a while.
Oh, I know!! It must be because of all those treacherous businessmen who traded their
souls and their country for a quick buck! but we need to condemn them without condemning the
whole system, and saying "capitalism sucks" makes us sound like Ivan the Red Commie. What a
pickle. Let's call them "globalists"! so we can rally the nationalists as a bonus and say
it's all because of evil foreigners.
On certain sites, it goes as far as calling "globalists" ... communists. Or Chinese. Or
Russian. Sure, why not, everyone needs their Emmanuel Goldstein.
"Globalism" is a funny name some weirdos invented since the first Wall Street crashes
happened to justify the worst excesses of the current capitalist economic system without
pointing the finger at the real culprits. I say it's funny because it looks like nationalist
clickbait for the 2 minutes of hate everyone in the West is prescribed each day in this
hyper-social Internet.
Sad fact is, "globalists" are run-of-the-mill bosses who decided it was better for their
end-of-year bonuses if they outsourced some or all of their production to cheap chinese
companies, and not have to pay US salaries anymore. That's not globalist, that's called
looking to make a profit in the short term.
Tell me a better term than "globalist" for nationals who are titans of industry who
betray their fellow nationals in the labor force by looking outside their own nation?
A term of rather recent vintage is Labour arbitrage that is substituting less
costly labour for higher costing labour. The driving motive for all offshoring or
externalising labour resources from the home marketplace. Walmart made billions doing this as
does Amazon.
I agree with Lemming's position on this. And I think Nemesis Calling is wrong about what
the term "Globalist" implies. If a "nationalist" is someone who's loyal to a nation, then
isn't a "globalist" someone who is loyal to the whole globe? Humanity today has many massive
problems that are extremely difficult and perhaps impossible to deal with on a purely
national basis. Nuclear weapons, global climate change, pandemic diseases, the potential
threats and benefits of real artificial intelligence, the extinction of so many species,
controlling multinational corporations, the threat of mass starvation, global inequality...
these are all problems which seem to many people to need the whole human species, or the
whole globe, working together to address them.
I think the major reason why many capitalists started calling themselves "globalists" back
in the 1980's was because they saw this was an idea which was becoming increasingly popular,
and they wanted to try and coopt it for their own benefit.
The trouble was that the CEO's who decided it would be personally profitable for them to
ship their companies jobs to low wage countries were not "real" globalists. If they had
really understood what the decisions they were making would do to their countries, or even to
the corporations they were responsible to their shareholders for managing, they might be
accused of being frauds or even traitors. But they probably didn't understand, so it's
probably more accurate to just call them parts of a greedy and shortsighted elite, which was
far too arrogant to realize how countries like China would be able to exploit their
shortsighted folly. They thought they were being so clever about their plans to exploit the
Chinese. But the irony is that a major reason why they underestimated the Chinese is that
they didn't understand that the fact that the Chinese were Marxists meant that the Chinese
had a different and in some ways better understanding of how Capitalism worked than they did.
They never dreamed that the Chinese would be able to make Lenin's prediction that capitalists
would sell them the rope they needed to hang capitalism come true.
"... Imagine for a while that Pompeo and Netanyahu were able to ignite the huge conflict with Iran which they have been trying to do for years. The wider Middle East would become a land of ruins, and on top of that we would have also the corona crisis. It would be the end for the Chinese project One belt One road and a very promising beginning for Trump’s programme of “decoupling” from China. The same could happen if we go to a Greek-Turkish war, the most probable result of which is enormous destruction in both states and also in Cyprus. Given the destructive capacity of the Greek and Turkish weapons and the impossibility of destroying them by a surprise first strike, the two countries, if they go to war, risk going back two or three hundred years. A conflict around Iran, or between Greece and Turkey would also put enormous pressure on Russia. ..."
"... Spreading Chaos is another way of staging world war when you cannot use ‘normal’, ‘frontal’ methods of war. The policy of Trump and his allies contributes greatly to preparing for world war by attacking the very institutions of bourgeois democracy, any kind of national or international rule, by attacking the very principles of Logic, Logos and Science, necessary in order to transform human societies into herds of wild animals, in a sui generis repetition of the Nazi experiment. ..."
"... The way to get Greece and Turkey to war is by sending them ‘false signals’, either encouraging and supporting them, or implying a threat from the other country. Somebody was able to persuade Ankara to down the Russian jet in 2015, which was a case of extreme miscalculation. It is easier to make a miscalculation regarding Greece and Turkey, and there is an enormity of contradictory signals emanating from the US and Israel towards the two capitals. ..."
"... PS. The above article provides a possible explanation of the present Greek-Turkish crisis. A second explanation is that big oil multinationals want to provoke a crisis in order to exploit the hydrocarbons of the region, but we have no serious indications that big reserves really exist and are exploitable economically. A third explanation, not mutually excluded from what we have analyzed, is that third forces are trying to provoke a war in order to overthrow Erdogan and also have all the other consequences we described. ..."
Twenty years ago, I was covering the Munich Security Forum as a journalist and I took an interview from Brent Scawcroft,
National Security Adviser for President Bush (the father). I believe he was one of the men who played a huge role in pushing
Boris Yeltsin to the crisis which culminated into the bombing of the Russian parliament in October 1993, thus opening the way to
the biggest looting in the history of mankind, the so-called Russian privatisations. I asked Scawcroft what the US policy
towards Russia and China should be . He answered: “We need to have better relations with Moscow and Beijing, than they can have
between themselves”.
The way for the Empire to dominate in the Eastern Mediterranean, imposing its pax or pushing for war, is by having better
relations with Athens and Ankara than they can have between themselves. Now they don’t have any at all.
Maidan Square, Kiev, 2014
The plane carrying the three EU Foreign Ministers, the French, the German and the Polish, had just taken off from Kiev when
the agreement they had negotiated for a peaceful, negotiated settlement of the Ukrainian crisis collapsed and the carnage began
in the Ukrainian capital. This was followed by the civil war and the unimaginable destruction of European-Russian relations.
The Ukrainian coup was a huge blow to Russia and the Ukraine, which is now in an extremely miserable state, a harbinger of
Nazi militias and mafia groups, but also, indirectly, to Europe, which, destroying its relations with Russia at the behest of
the Americans, is not only ridiculed, but has deprived itself of the possibility of an independent policy, an achievement which
it is now going to ‘complete’ with the Navalny affair, if it leads to the cancelling of the strategic pipeline project
NordStream II.
‘Fuck the EU’ was not only a phrase from Neocon Assistant Secretary of State Nuland to Ambassador Pyatt (then in Kiev, now
in Athens); it was in reality one of the main purposes of the Maidan operation, that is the inauguration chapter of the new Cold
War. Some weeks ago, Mike Pompeo repeated the Nuland coup, by using his influence on the Greek FM Dendias and on the Egyptian
dictator Sissi to blow up the moratorium between Greece and Turkey the German chancellor Merkel had negotiated. ‘Fuck Germany
and its moratoriums’!
The Coming War
The destruction of the Ukraine, Ukrainian-Russian and European-Russian relations was a very big step in the direction of
preparing for world war against Russia and China. This is the central plan that defines many of the individual crises and
episodes around the globe; and if one does not understand this, one cannot understand anything. As for Trump’s friendship with
Russia, we are afraid that it is of no more value than Hitler’s friendship with Stalin or the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact.
The war with China and Russia is the main project of the extremist, radical wing of the Western capitalist establishment. But
such a war cannot happen easily and it will not take a frontal form as WWI and WWII, because of the existence of nuclear
weapons. But it will take all other possible forms.
Imagine for a while that Pompeo and Netanyahu were able to ignite the huge conflict with Iran which they have been trying
to do for years. The wider Middle East would become a land of ruins, and on top of that we would have also the corona crisis. It
would be the end for the Chinese project One belt One road and a very promising beginning for Trump’s programme of “decoupling”
from China. The same could happen if we go to a Greek-Turkish war, the most probable result of which is enormous destruction in
both states and also in Cyprus. Given the destructive capacity of the Greek and Turkish weapons and the impossibility of
destroying them by a surprise first strike, the two countries, if they go to war, risk going back two or three hundred years. A
conflict around Iran, or between Greece and Turkey would also put enormous pressure on Russia.
Spreading Chaos is another way of staging world war when you cannot use ‘normal’, ‘frontal’ methods of war. The policy of
Trump and his allies contributes greatly to preparing for world war by attacking the very institutions of bourgeois democracy,
any kind of national or international rule, by attacking the very principles of Logic, Logos and Science, necessary in order to
transform human societies into herds of wild animals, in a sui generis repetition of the Nazi experiment.
You cannot wage war on Russia or China by any form of ‘liberal capitalism’. To wage such a huge war you need a totalitarian
regime in the West, and this is the real programme, the historic mission of Trump, Pompeo, Thiel, Netanyahu etc.
The way to get Greece and Turkey to war is by sending them ‘false signals’, either encouraging and supporting them, or
implying a threat from the other country. Somebody was able to persuade Ankara to down the Russian jet in 2015, which was a
case of extreme miscalculation. It is easier to make a miscalculation regarding Greece and Turkey, and there is an enormity of
contradictory signals emanating from the US and Israel towards the two capitals.
For example, a very strange article in the Foreign Affairs magazine states that the red line behind which Ankara
will not be permitted to go is south of Crete. This red light is indirectly a green light for Turkey to go to the east or
south-east of Crete. If Turkey sends its ships there the Greek government will be under tremendous pressure from both public
opinion and the Armed Forces to react. This is not something Foreign Affairs can ignore, making us wonder if in fact some
people want a war between Greece and Turkey to overthrow Erdogan, to weaken Turkey for decades, to attack Chinese projects and
the EU. We could multiply such examples, including Trump’s encouragement of Erdogan. Insofar as the Turkish President does not
want to go to a full rupture with the West, he is better prepared to accept as genuine any encouraging signals from Washington.
But they can be a trap, as happened for example with Milosevich or Sadam.
Russia, NATO and a Greek-Turkish war
The other day a friend told me that a conflict between Greece and Turkey would only harm NATO: only the Russians would
benefit, so it could not happen.
I replied that he was wrong. ‘If you are preparing for a world war, you do not even care so much about NATO. Instead you have
to tear down all the institutions of bourgoies society and of the liberal capitalist order, including the EU, maybe even NATO
itself, because they are not really made for such a war. They are certainly made to contain Russia, but not to play Russian
roulette with the very existence of the world. A world war will not be decided by a Senate, no matter how oligarchic it will be.
For such decisions you need Nero, Caligula, Heliogabalus. Such are Trump, Bolsonaro, Pompeo, Netanyahu and those behind them.
They would certainly prefer a Russia-Turkey conflict and have already tried to provoke it. But it is not easy.
A conflict with Greece is their second best alternative, because Greece has the means to destroy Turkey by destroying itself.
A war between the two countries will destroy them and would set them back 200 or 300 years.
It is doubtful, after all, that Russia would benefit from such a development, even if it would be a blow to NATO. First,
because Moscow would see the destruction of Hellenism, the main strategic ally of Russia in the Mediterranean for a thousand
years. Governments and regimes can change, but losing a nation is another matter.
Second, Moscow will likely see, as a result of a war, a pro-Western dictatorship set up in Ankara. Having contributed to the
destruction of a historic country like Greece, Turkey would not have the slightest future. It would be considered the outcast of
all civilised nations, like Germany after World War II.
And of course, the big victims of the war will be China, with the One Belt, One Road plans and Europe itself.
This is the Chaos Strategy. It remains to be seen whether her opponents also have a strategy or not.
PS. The above article provides a possible explanation of the present Greek-Turkish crisis. A second explanation is that
big oil multinationals want to provoke a crisis in order to exploit the hydrocarbons of the region, but we have no serious
indications that big reserves really exist and are exploitable economically. A third explanation, not mutually excluded from
what we have analyzed, is that third forces are trying to provoke a war in order to overthrow Erdogan and also have all the
other consequences we described.
rump the New Yorker was a stranger in a strange land, having nothing of the sensibility of
the insular, self-serving swamp-dwellers in Washington and no grasp whatsoever of the power of
the Deep State, whose ire he quickly aroused. Trump was a terrible statesman, too
seat-of-the-pants, but what was to him dealmaking was at bottom diplomacy, an activity
Washington has little time for.
Why did Trump surround himself with people who opposed him and not infrequently sabotaged
those few foreign policy ideas one can approve of -- constructive ties with Russia, an end to
wasteful wars, peace in Northeast Asia, sending "obsolete" NATO into the history books? What
were H.R. McMaster, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and numerous others like them but of lesser
visibility doing in his administration?
I am asked this not infrequently. My reply is simple: It is not at all clear Trump appointed
these people and at least as likely they were imposed upon him by the Deep State, the permanent
state, the administrative state -- whatever term makes one comfortable. Let us not forget,
Trump knew nobody in Washington and had a lot of swivel chairs to fill.
We must add to this Trump's personal shortcomings. He is by all appearances shallow of mind,
poorly read (to put it generously), of weak moral and ethical character, and overly concerned
with appearances.
Put these various factors together and you get none other than the Trump administration's
nearly illegible record on the foreign policy side.
Trump is to be credited with sticking to his guns on the big stuff: He held out for a
new-détente with Russia, getting the troops out of the Middle East and Afghanistan,
making a banner-headline deal with the North Koreans. He was scuttled in all cases.
Complicating the tableau, the prideful Trump time and again covered his impotence by
publicly approving of what those around him did to subvert his purposes. A year ago, the record
shows, Pompeo and Mark Esper (then the defense secretary) concocted plans to assassinate Qasem
Soleimani, the Iranian military leader, flew to Mar –a –Lago, and presented
Trump with a fait accompli -- whereupon Trump acquiesced as the administration and the
press pretended it was White House policy all along.
Now We Come to Iran
Hassan Rouhani, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, addresses the 74th session of the
United Nations General Assembly's General Debate, Sept. 25, 2019. (UN Photo/Cia Pak)
Pulling out of the Iran nuclear accord a year into his administration was among the most
destructive moves Trump made during his four years in office. It was afterward that the
shamefully inhumane "maximum pressure" campaign against Iranians was set in motion.
Trump's intention, however miscalculated, was the dealmaker's: He expected to force Tehran
back to the mahogany table to get a new nuclear deal. As secretary of state, Pompeo's was to
cultivate a coup or provoke a war. It was cross-purposes from then on, notably since Pompeo
sabotaged the proposed encounter between Trump and Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN GA.
Now we have some context for the recent spate of Iranophobic posturing and the new military
deployments in the Persian Gulf. We have just been treated to four years of a recklessly
chaotic foreign policy, outcome of a war the Deep State waged against a pitifully weak
president who threatened it: This is the truth of what we witness as Trump and his people fold
their tents.
Trump the dealmaker a year ago now contemplates an attack on Natanz on the pretext Iran is
not holding to the terms of an accord he abandoned two years ago? The only way to make sense of
this is to conclude that there is no sense to be made of it.
Who ordered the B–52 sorties and the Nimitz patrols? This question promises a
revealing answer. It is very highly doubtful Trump had anything to do with this, very highly
likely Pompeo and his allies in hawkery got it done and told the president about it
afterward.
Trump is out in a few weeks. The self-perpetuating bureaucracy that made a mess of his
administration -- or a bigger mess than it may have been anyway -- will remain. It will now
serve a president who is consonant with its purposes. And the eyes of most people who support
him will remain wide shut.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International
Herald Tribune , is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is
Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century . Follow him on Twitter
@thefloutist . His web site is
Patrick Lawrence . Support his
work via his Patreon site
.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of
Consortium News.
Ed Rickert , December 31, 2020 at 10:06
A first rate analysis of the inconsistent and inchoate policies of Trump as well as an
acute assessment of his psychology, notably his weakness when challenged. Equal cogent is
Lawrence's trepidation and concern over the policies and potential actions of the
administration that is to replacement Trump. Thank you for your thoughtful work.
Pierre Guerlain , December 31, 2020 at 06:51
I would just like to have a linkto the sources for Pompeo hoodwinking Trump for the
assassination of Soleimani.
Linda , December 30, 2020 at 18:42
Thank you, Patrick, for this very clear article summarizing Trump's clumsy attempts at
making peace with other countries (a campaign offering to voters) and the Deep State's
thwarting of those attempts. My friends and I intuitively knew the people taking roles around
the Trump presidency were put there by the "system". Trump had been made into a pariah by the
Press, his own Republican Party, and shrieks for 'Resistance' by Hillary Democrats in the
millions across the country even before he was inaugurated. There was no 'respectable' person
in Washington DC who would dare help Trump make his way in that new, strange land. Remember
one of the Resistanace calls to the front? . "Become ungovernable!!!!" Tantrums, not
negotiations, have become the norm
So long, any semblance of Washington DC respectability. It was nice to think you were
there at one time.
Dear readers and supporters of Consortium News around the Earth,
Please pass the following important message along to the genuine war criminals United
States President Donald Trump and United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson:
"Do the right & moral thing for once in your hideous, miserable & pathetic lives,
– and free genuine peacemaker Julian Assange."
***
Please consider making the (1st ever in history) establishment of genuine Peace on Earth
the absolute overwhelming #1 New Year's Resolution worldwide for 2021. The quality of life
for future generations depends on the good actions of this generation.. Thank you.
I thank these commentators, a couple of whom read these pieces regularly, and all others
who've taken the time this year gone by to put down their thoughts. I read them always and
almost always learn things from them. Blessings to all and wishes for a superb new year! --
Patrick.
Lee C Ng , December 30, 2020 at 14:02
I agree 100% with the writer. Example; if Bolton, probably pushed into the administration
by the Deep State, didn't sabotage Trump's talks with the N. Koreans in Vietnam, we might've
had a peaceful settlement on the Korean peninsular by now. And it's no surprise that Trump on
several occasions prevented the success of US-China trade talks – it was more than
likely he was forced to do so. Trump wasn't a politician, much less a statesman. But he
wasn't an orgre either, despite the hostility of the corporate press towards him (and I'm no
fan of Trump).
Biden will represent better the real forces behind all US administrations – the
forces responsible for the over 200 wars/military interventions in its 242 years of
Independence.
Jeff Harrison , December 30, 2020 at 00:19
Thank you, Patrick, you have made some sense out of a nonsensical situation. "We have just
been treated to four years of a recklessly chaotic foreign policy, outcome of a war the Deep
State waged against a pitifully weak president who threatened it: This is the truth of what
we witness as Trump and his people fold their tents." What is it that the Brits call their
Deep State? It's something like the civil service but it's actually called something
else.
You called Donnie Murdo a deal maker. Donnie Murdo is a New York hustler. His
"negotiation" style only works when his interlocutor must make a deal with him. If his
interlocutor can walk away, he will and Donnie Murdo will go bankrupt. The real problem is
that the US doesn't need a deal maker – we have people for that. The Prezzy & CEO
is frequently called that, the chief executive officer. But that's an administrative title.
He is also frequently called the commander in chief but that really only applies if we are at
war which we should be at as little as possible. What the prezzy really is supposed to be is
a leader. If Donnie Murdo were, in fact, a leader, John Bolton would have been taking a
commercial flight back to the US after his little stunt in Vietnam. But he didn't. So the
question isn't what could Donnie Murdo do in the next three weeks, it's what can Donnie
Murdo's henchmen do in the next three weeks?
Casper , December 29, 2020 at 18:19
One of the other personal things about Donald Trump, was that he had no skill nor
experience in leading and manipulating a bureaucracy. He had basically directed a family
business and his personal publicity machine. To the extent that Trump hotels had thousands of
employees, Trump hired managers to do that. It would appear that the Trump family business
largely concentrated on making of new deals for new hotels.
Thus, Donald Trump arrived in Washington completely unprepared to be the leader of a
bureaucracy and completely unskilled at being able to get it to do what he wanted it do
do.
I'm not a Joe Biden fan, but he's been in Washington since the 1970's. He's seen the
bureaucracy from the Senate point of view for 40 years, then got at least a view of what it
was like to try to direct it from watching as Veep. I still suspect the real power lies with
the military command, and has since the 1950's, but this administration is going to come in
with at least some skills in terms of trying to get a government to do what it wants.
PEG , December 29, 2020 at 17:46
Perfect article – and epitaph on Trump's foreign policy record.
Anne , December 29, 2020 at 14:00
Indeed, Patrick, they (the eyes of most of the electorate) will remain shut, eyelids
deftly closed Only other peoples commit barbaric, heinous war crimes, invade other cultures
completely without cause, bomb other peoples to death, devastation, loss of livelihood, home
water supply We, the perfecto (along with one other group now ensconced – illegally,
but apparently western acceptably – in the ME) people do what we do because, well, we
are perfecto and thus when we commit these barbarisms, they aren't such. And are, it would
seem, totally ignorable. Wake me in the morning style .
Truly, the vast majority of those – whatever their skin hue, ethnic background
– who voted for the B-H duo are comfortably off, consider themselves oh so bloody
"liberal" (do they really know what that means, in fact? Or don't they care?), so to the left
of Attila the Hun (which obviously doesn't mean much, Left wise) .and what the MICMATT does
to other people in other societies matters not flying F .After all, aren't they usually of
"swarthy" skin hue and likely not western and of that offshoot religion of the one gawd, the
third go around?
The west (US, UK, FR, GY etc ) really and truly need to develop a Conscience, a real
morality, humanity but I fear that that is all too late
Veterans For Peace members in Asheville, North Carolina participated in a Reject Raytheon
Demonstration on Dec. 9th.
"Prior to the county vote on the incentives, a spokesperson for the company said it made $21
billion in sales last year. More than half came from the manufacturing of commercial engines
used for passengers and cargo. He said military engines made up about 20-30 percent of
sales.
"So much of our military hardware gets made here and is sent overseas and used in proxy wars
and in purposes that don't really serve the security of the United States itself," Veterans for
Peace's Gerry Werhan said."
"... The most overrepresented group in Washington, the "hard power primacists," is also the one with the most destructive track record. This is the group that cheers on John Bolton and Mike Pompeo as they trash America's reputation while putting us at greater risk of pointless wars. Only 10% of the respondents belonged to this group, and even among Republicans they make up less than 25%. There is remarkably little popular support for the position that has become the default Republican Party agenda. ..."
"... The EGF survey likewise asked a question about American exceptionalism, but phrased it a bit differently. They asked if America was exceptional for what it had done in the world (20% agreed), exceptional because of what it represented (40%), or not exceptional (38%). While most of these respondents still affirmed some support for the idea, support is declining with each generation. While the president proposes "teaching American exceptionalism" in schools (whatever that might mean in practice), such lessons seem likely to fall on deaf ears. ..."
"... It becomes increasingly difficult to maintain a myth of exceptionalism when our institutions are so faulty, our infrastructure so derelict, and our political leaders so inept. If each new generation is more disillusioned than the last with this myth, it is because they have seen how false it is in real life and they have seen how it has been used to rationalize some of the worst policies imaginable. ..."
The American public is increasingly supportive of a foreign policy that is more engaged diplomatically and more restrained in
its use of force. Large majorities want the U.S. to rejoin agreements and institutions that the U.S. has left over the last four
years, but there is also substantial support for reducing America's military footprint in many other parts of the world. Most Americans
don't care for the wrecking of successful agreements, including the nuclear deal with Iran, but many would welcome troop withdrawals
from deployments overseas.
Those are some of the findings from the Eurasia Group Foundation's annual
survey of what Americans think
about U.S. foreign policy and our country's role in the world. There is a major constituency in both parties for a foreign policy
that is less militarized and more involved in constructive international cooperation. This could be the foundation for a broad coalition
in favor of greater restraint, and it shows that most of the public is not interested in maintaining the status quo of militarized
hegemony.
The survey divides the respondents into four groupings based on their answers.
There are the "traditional internationalists" that don't want to reduce U.S. forces overseas and want to remain in international
institutions,
And then there are the "hard power primacists" that have no use for institutions and treaties but want to dominate militarily.
There are the "global ambassadors" that want deeper diplomatic engagement, but also want to reduce military forces overseas
and move away from a militarized U.S. foreign policy.
Finally, there are the respondents that the survey classified as so-called "genuine isolationists." The choice of isolationist
here was unfortunate because even among these respondents the preference is for reduced engagement of all kinds, but not necessarily
the separation from the world that the isolationist label implies. When push comes to shove, almost no one is a "genuine isolationist"
in this country or anywhere else, and a more extensive survey might be able to tease out how these "isolationists" really think
the U.S. should act in the world.
Out of these four, the "global ambassadors" made up the largest contingent: "The most popular position was that of the Global
Ambassadors, who support active diplomacy and participation in international institutions, trade and treaties but oppose global military
primacy." It would be fair to say that this position is closest to the views held by advocates of restraint. According to the survey,
38% of respondents fit this description, and they were pretty evenly distributed between different political affiliations. 40% of
Democrats gave answers that put them in this group, and the same was true for 32% of Republicans.
There is a clear majority that doesn't support a strategy of primacy. As the report notes, "When "engagement" is split into military
and non-military components, only three in ten Americans favor liberal hegemony." Between the "global ambassadors" and so-called
"genuine isolationists," those opposed to primacy to one degree or another made up almost 60% of the total. These are potentially
huge blocs of voters that prefer a more peaceful, less interventionist foreign policy, and they are woefully underrepresented in
Washington today. This is a large audience that would seem to be receptive to what advocates of restraint have to say, and so we
need to find more ways to reach them.
The most overrepresented group in Washington, the "hard power primacists," is also the one with the most destructive track
record. This is the group that cheers on John Bolton and Mike Pompeo as they trash America's reputation while putting us at greater
risk of pointless wars. Only 10% of the respondents belonged to this group, and even among Republicans they make up less than 25%.
There is remarkably little popular support for the position that has become the default Republican Party agenda.
There is more popular support for bringing U.S. forces home from all over than there is for keeping them there. 44% say that the
U.S. should decrease the number of troops it has in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and they also say that the U.S. should reduce
its commitments to other countries in these regions. Only 31% were in favor of the status quo or an increase in troop levels. This
is consistent with the findings of other surveys, including the new
poll from the
Chicago Council on Global Affairs, which found that 57% approved of the announced troop withdrawal from Germany, and another 16%
wanted full withdrawal of all of the remaining troops.
One of the other interesting results that the Chicago Council
survey found is the growing partisan
gap over the question of "American exceptionalism." 80% Republicans are in agreement with the definition of exceptionalism the survey
provided (the U.S. has a "unique character that makes it the greatest country in the world"), and only 35% of Democrats held the
same view. It is possible that this gap is exaggerated by the fact that Democrats seem to have soured on the idea during Trump's
presidency, and the numbers may go up again in the future, but there seems to be something more significant going on. Insofar as
"American exceptionalism" has been turned into a motto for excusing U.S. rogue behavior in the world, it has become an increasingly
loaded phrase that provokes strong reactions in both directions. The experience of the last twenty years would also give many people
good reasons to doubt that the U.S. deserves to be called the greatest country.
The EGF survey likewise asked a question about American exceptionalism, but phrased it a bit differently. They asked if America
was exceptional for what it had done in the world (20% agreed), exceptional because of what it represented (40%), or not exceptional
(38%). While most of these respondents still affirmed some support for the idea, support is declining with each generation. While
the president proposes "teaching American exceptionalism" in schools (whatever that might mean in practice), such lessons seem likely
to fall on deaf ears.
It becomes increasingly difficult to maintain a myth of exceptionalism when our institutions are so faulty, our infrastructure
so derelict, and our political leaders so inept. If each new generation is more disillusioned than the last with this myth, it is
because they have seen how false it is in real life and they have seen how it has been used to rationalize some of the worst policies
imaginable.
Probably the most discouraging result in the EGF survey came in response to a question about war powers. There is a large majority
that thinks that Congress has to authorize the use of force first, and that is something that advocates of restraint can build on,
but it is disturbing that so many would support presidential overreach in matters of war. When asked if the president needed Congressional
authorization before ordering military action abroad, 26% said that he didn't. While this is a distinctly minority view, it was supported
by half of the Republican respondents, and it shows that roughly a quarter of the public holds an important part of the Constitution
in contempt. When such a large group endorses illegal presidential warmaking, it is another sign that our political culture has been
badly corrupted by decades of war and arbitrary presidential power grabs. The failure to prevent previous illegal wars and the failure
to hold presidents accountable for trampling on the Constitution have paved the way for this.
Foreign policy tends to be a low priority for most voters, and few use these issues to determine their voting decisions, but public
opinion still has to be kept in mind in any foreign policy debate. Most Americans are not paying close attention to what the government
is doing in the world, but there are limits to what they will tolerate. The public also has fairly clear preferences for greater
international cooperation without the unnecessary burdens of endless wars and excessive military commitments around the world. There
is an opening here for a prudential and restrained internationalism that draws support from across the political spectrum, but to
take advantage of that will require organizing these disparate groups of Americans to achieve greater influence in both parties.
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC , where he also keeps a solo
blog . He has been published in the New York Times Book
Review , Dallas Morning News , World Politics Review , Politico Magazine , Orthodox Life , Front Porch Republic, The American Scene,
and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week . He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster,
PA. Follow him on Twitter .
Foreign policy tends to be a low priority for most voters, and few use these issues to determine their voting decisions
Unfortunately, I think this is the most important sentence in the article. The fact of the matter is FP stuff is a very low
priority for most Americans and "supporting the troops" is often conflated with money for the pentagon.
Worst of all, Americans will oppose attacking Country X until the president says "We need to attack Country X" and then they
are all for it. I mean, during all of 2017 half the country suddenly knew we absolutely needed to attack North Korea.
I agree with Tom. These polls rarely mean much on any topic, and when it's as low priority as foreign affairs, there's even
less significance. There is some brave talk among Democrats about cutting defense spending, but in the past both parties have
been happy to give the Pentagon as much, and frequently more, than it wants. And the military is devoted above all else to maintaining
its global presence, so that all its toys can be given at least a veneer of purpose. Trump, with all his disgusting bluster, is
clearly more risk averse than Obama, who stupidly cost his party the presidency by trying to play the hero in Libya. I'm am (pretty)
sure that Biden will continue this restraint, but on the other hand his administration will almost surely be stocked with Wilsonian
interventionists, who have learned nothing and forgot plenty.
The polls have been consistent for a long time now. But this is America - what the elites want, the elites get and since when
did the voters start to matter?
Agreed. But to be precise, the "elites" in this particular case are nothing other than the military brass, the military contractors,
and the senators/reps they've purchased. Well funded and unbelievably well-placed to influence/leverage/etc. whoever is the President.
And what powerful/wealthy interests are lobbying on the other side? Few, if any.
The building block is the UN Charter and agreed upon International Law. but while Russia 7 China & others would love to have
those treaties respected, the US Gob wants to follow the "rules based order". Moon of Alabama and others talk about these very
fundamental issues, and how the West in fact has lost all its legal and moral ground and became in fact Mordor ru by Sauron:
The best thing that could happen to tilt American foreign policy more in the direction of restraint would be a consistently
populist, in the true sense, political force. Interventionist foreign policy is a dream world and plaything of elites, for elite
gain.
Right now you have way too many peace-inclined left wing people fighting peace-inclined right wing people, in a clear divide
and conquer setup. Left and right identity politics are being used to preserve a decadent status quo a bit longer, including in
foreign policy.
The war in Afghanistan, now in its 19th year, is the longest and most intractable of America's forever wars. There are now
American
soldiers fighting in Afghanistan
who were born after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the ostensible
casus
belli
. The American public has long ago grown tired of the war. A
YouGov
poll
conducted in July of 2020 showed that 46 percent of Americans strongly supported withdrawing troops from Afghanistan,
with another 30 percent saying they "somewhat" approved of troop withdrawal.
But this 76 percent majority is deceptive. Given the fact that America has a volunteer army and American casualties in
Afghanistan remain sporadic, this is not an issue that the public is passionate about. An inchoate dissatisfaction is compatible
either with disengagement or just a lack of interest. Conversely, those in the national security establishment who do
passionately support the war are able to thwart political leaders who want a drawdown. Under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump,
presidential efforts to disengage from Afghanistan and the larger Middle East were met with resistance from a foreign policy
elite that sees any withdrawal as a humiliating defeat.
Trump tried to resolve the contradiction between his desire to remove troops and the foreign policy elite's commitment to the
Afghan war by
loosening
the rules of war
. The thinking of the Trump administration was that by unleashing the military and intelligence agencies, it
could subdue the Taliban -- thus preparing the way for a drawdown of troops. Special priority was given to CIA-run covert operations
using Afghan paramilitaries, with the belief that this would lead to a more sustainable war that didn't require American soldiers
to participate in fighting.
A report in
The Intercept
, written by reporter Andrew Quilty,
documents
the horrifying consequences
of this policy: Afghan paramilitary units, known as 01 and 02, have acted as death squads,
launching raids against civilians that have turned into massacres. Many of these raids have attacked religious schools, the
famous madrassas, leading to the death of children as young as 8 years old.
According to Quilty, "Residents from four districts in Wardak -- Nerkh, Chak, Sayedabad, and Daymirdad -- spoke of a string of
massacres, executions, mutilation, forced disappearances, attacks on medical facilities, and airstrikes targeting structures
known to house civilians. The victims, according to these residents, were rarely Taliban. Yet the Afghan unit and its American
masters have never been publicly held accountable by either the Afghan or U.S. governments."
These raids all involve Afghan paramilitaries who are outside the control of the Afghan government and working in conjunction
with American handlers who provide high-tech aid and direction, Quilty reports.
The units' American CIA advisers go by pseudonyms or call signs rather than
names.They not only train Afghan unit members, but also choose their targets, which the Americans call "jackpots"; issue
detailed pre-mission briefings; and accompany Afghan paramilitaries on the ground during raids. The Afghans and Americans are
ferried to remote villages at night by American helicopters, and American assault aircraft hover overhead while they conduct
their raids, providing lethal firepower that is sometimes directed at health clinics, madrassa dormitories, or civilian homes.
Despite providing detailed accounts of American-led war crimes,
The
Intercept
's report has been met with near-silence from the American media. Jake Tapper of CNN
retweeted
the article
, but otherwise there is little indication that the American media cares.
As
Intercept
reporter Ryan Grim
notes
,
"It's been two days since this story was published, and the mainstream media has been largely silent on it. Imagine if the media
treated the My Lai massacre this way." (In fact, the mainstream press sat on whistleblower Ron Ridenhour's warnings about My Lai
for a year before Seymour Hersh and the scruffy Dispatch News Service finally broke the silence.)
Grim also suggested that the Biden administration might want to bring justice to the perpetrators of these alleged war crimes.
"One of the most outspoken proponents of bringing a fine legal eye to war has been Avril Haines, who will be Joe Biden's Director
of National Intelligence," Grim observes. "She'll have the authority and the ability to discover who in the CIA was involved in
these operations, and bring them to justice."
This is a forlorn hope given the Obama administration's
failure
to go after war crimes
committed by the CIA under George W. Bush. Further, Biden himself is ambiguous on Afghanistan in a way
that calls to mind Trump himself.
As Quincy Institute president Andrew Bacevich
noted
in
The
Nation
earlier this month, Biden "wants to have it both ways" on the Afghan war. Biden will occasionally say, "These
'forever wars' have to end," but he will also say that America needs to keep a contingent of forces in Afghanistan. As Bacevich
observes, "Biden proposes to declare that the longest war in US history has ended, while simultaneously underwriting its
perpetuation." Biden's support for a light military footprint could very easily lead him to the same position as Trump: using
covert CIA operations to maintain American power in Afghanistan with minimal use of uniformed troops. This is a recipe for more
massacres.
Writing in
The Washington Post
last month, veteran Afghanistan
analyst Carter Malkasian
made
a compelling case
that the United States is facing a "stark choice" between "complete withdrawal by May or keeping 2,500
troops in place indefinitely to conduct counterterrorism operations and to try to prevent the collapse of the Afghan government.
There's no doubt that withdrawal will spell the end of the Afghan government that the United States has supported for 19 years."
Malkasian makes clear that the counterterrorism operations would merely be an exercise of staving off defeat, with no prospect of
an end to the war. Given the enormous moral costs of this counterterrorism, unflinchingly described by
The
Intercept
, the argument for complete withdrawal becomes stronger.
It's likely that Biden will continue the policy of previous presidents of kicking the can down the road by using covert CIA
operators to fend off defeat. But Americans should have no illusions: That means perpetuation of horrific war crimes in a
conflict that cannot be won.
"... Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is ..."
The upcoming year should be interesting. The Establishment "Deep State" has won a major
victory in the United States with the election of Joe Biden as president. What remains to be
seen is whether or not there will be significant bloodletting as a consequence, revenge for the
presumed misdeeds that constituted the core legacy of four years of Donald J. Trump as chief
executive. Many in the Democratic Party harbor deep resentments that go back to the election of
2016, which spawned the myth that foreign interference by the Russians was responsible for the
upset victory by the GOP candidate. Even at this distance, few if any Democrats are willing to
admit that Hillary Clinton was a deeply flawed candidate whose condescension towards whole
categories of voters ultimately inspired many "undecideds" to vote against her.
Indeed, Trump came closer to repeating his improbable victory in 2020 than anyone would have
predicted and the stench of possible widespread fraud continues to hang over the result. Donald
Trump entered office with a pledge to "drain the swamp," something that he found more difficult
to actually do rather than just talk about doing. The Democrats will surely now work hard to
methodically eliminate all political appointees in the vast bureaucracy guilty of Trumpism.
That replacement of bureaucrats is referred to as the "spoils systems" and it is to be
expected, but there is something more sinister in the works with leading Democrats and some
journalists calling for heads to roll, metaphorically to be sure but with real impact on the
lives of those who supported the losing side. The Washington Post 's resident
Trump-hating Zionist Jennifer Rubin summed it up nicely in a tweet three days after the
election, posting "Any R now promoting rejection of an election or calling to not to follow the
will of voters or making baseless allegations of fraud should never serve in office, join a
corporate board, find a faculty position or be accepted into 'polite' society. We have a
list."
And Bill Clinton's former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has been even more explicit,
tweeting a demand to create a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission." The commission borrows
the name and would be modeled on the organization set up in South Africa after the fall of the
apartheid government and the establishment of majority black rule, an exercise in attempted
democratization that has nevertheless failed to put an end to extremely high levels of
corruption and communal violence in the country.
Reich's objective is not limited to punishing the Trump White House's top officials who may
have promoted policies considered anathema by the incoming Democratic administration. He has
also tweeted "When this nightmare is over, we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It
would erase Trump's lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every
official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this
catastrophe." The Reich proposal would potentially mean punishing thousands of otherwise
innocent individuals who had little influence over what happened during the past four years.
"Enabled" covers a lot of ground, and is prone to devolve into something like a witch hunt.
One Reich supporter wrote
in defense of the proposal "As long as unresolved historic injustices continue to fester in
the world, there will be a demand for truth commissions" and there have been numerous comments
on social media sites like Facebook insisting that "something be done" about the "deplorables"
who voted for and supported Trump. Interestingly, even though the comments constitute actual
threats, Facebook has not deleted them, unlike the elimination of posts that run afoul of the
censors by questioning the validity of the election or challenging conventional wisdom on
COVID-19.
Another commenter on twitter agreed with Reich, though complaining "But it doesn't go far
enough, clearly. Trump's assets and those of his voters should be seized by the state through
legislation and distributed to those he's harmed as reparations. Surely that's the only way to
heal our nation. Land of the free!" And finally, still another cheerleader enthused "Robert
you're right. And after we win we'll come for you all we're pretty much over trying to share a
country with you anyway. Four years ago I thought you were people with bad ideas. I was wrong:
YOU'RE BAD PEOPLE."
To be sure, Trump invited much of the hostile response to what he represents when he held
rallies where supporters called out Hillary Clinton with chants of "Lock her up!" So the anger
is there on both sides and momentum is building not just to replace or ignore Trump's
associates and his supporters, but to punish them for their alleged inability to comprehend the
many benefits derived from Democratic Party rule. As no mechanism actually exists to enable the
new regime to punish supporters of the previous administration, unless they have actually
committed a crime, one suspects the process of purging the bureaucracy and voters rolls will
pretty much be improvised while Biden and Harris get settled in.
Donald Trump also does not help either himself or the cause he represents. His insults and
abusive language invite hostility, having his tweets turn allies into enemies and making
friends of the "revolution" that he represents wish that he would just shut up. Current media
reports suggesting that he might not
vacate the White House on January 20 th as he continues to be convinced that he
won invite a nasty response from the Democrats. Ex-president Barack Obama
has warned , possibly in jest, that Trump might need to be removed forcibly by Navy
SEALS.
And, of course, violence could beget violence. If denigration of Trump supporters followed
by a real purge does take place it will impact on the tens of millions of voters who still
believe President Trump should have won re-election but for fraud. They are ready for a fight,
and not necessarily limited to the metaphoric. As I said in the beginning, it could be an
interesting year here in America.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that
seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website ishttps://councilforthenationalinterest.orgaddress is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email isinform@cnionline.org
To be sure, Trump invited much of the hostile response to what he represents when he
held rallies where supporters called out Hillary Clinton with chants of "Lock her
up!"
So it's Trump's fault – not for anything he has said or done, but for what his
supporters have said.
Indeed, Trump came closer to repeating his improbable victory in 2020 than anyone would
have predicted and the stench of possible widespread fraud continues to hang over the
result.
I could continue, but won't. Even when criticising the Democrats, his hostility towards
Trump and his supporters never lets up. Any dispassionate observer can see that widespread
electoral fraud was actual and likely swung the election Biden's way. Even honest leftist
observers agree. Giraldi should have mentioned this, but didn't. Having perpetrated it once,
the Democrats will do it again. The likelihood is that there will be no fair elections in
future. So the Democrats will have the time to enforce their revenge agenda in perpetuity.
Again Giraldi fails to mention this.
Donald Trump entered office with a pledge to "drain the swamp," something that he found
more difficult to actually do rather than just talk about doing.
Especially when Trump himself hired nothing but nevertrumpers and swamp rats and
listened to his know-nothing rat-in-law.
(Didn't this guy have a tv show for 13 years about hiring the best people?)
It's secession time, has been for years before Orange Golfbag. Don't worry about whether
the federal mafia approves of the parting of ways, their new scamulus includes $300,000,000
to bring in more rapefugees aka your replacements.
"... USAID led at that time by someone named Rajiv Khan, I think it was, and directed by Hill, comandeered the few landing spots at the airport for themselves preventing planes carrying Actual Aid -- you know, food, clothing, meds -- from landing and unloading. ..."
"... I have friends who lived in Haiti at the time and years after the disaster only 6 new residences had been built and the promised factories? As far as I know, never did get built. ..."
"... USAID seems to be about anything but AID. ..."
"... When pressed about the lack of progress made in the (housing) rebuilding efforts, including inabilities to provide shelter, Secretary of State Clinton said "Those who expect progress immediately are unrealistic and doing a disservice to the many people who are working so hard. ..."
USAID led at that time by someone named Rajiv Khan, I think it was, and directed by Hill,
comandeered the few landing spots at the airport for themselves preventing planes carrying
Actual Aid -- you know, food, clothing, meds -- from landing and unloading.
Then Bill was named "Ambassador to Haiti" and the situation Never improved.
I have friends who lived in Haiti at the time and years after the disaster only 6 new
residences had been built and the promised factories? As far as I know, never did get
built.
good example! I vote Power and Sunstein to head USAID! i was a bit more than surprised
that ann garrison never mentioned it's a CIA cut-out, to say the truth.
on edit: ach; you'd meant Bill Fuck over haiti Clinton!
' F*cking the Haitian 99%: Another Clinton Family Project ', October
27, 2015 by wendyedavis (longish, but this key excerpt)
"Sure, Bill and Hill love sweatshop industrial complexes (from nacla.org) more than houses
for Haiti, and love HELP™ (comically ironic acronym):
"On September 20, Haitian prime minister Jean-Marc Bellerive, U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, and the World Bank's International Finance Corporation announced their
partnership with the South Korean garment firm Sae-A Trading Company to establish an
industrial park that will create 10,000 garment assembly jobs in Haiti. Without a doubt,
earthquake-ravaged Haiti needs jobs, mainly to provide the country's 1.3 million homeless
with the means necessary to rebuild their destroyed homes.
While little progress has been made on Haiti's immense housing needs since the January 12
earthquake, Clinton assured the investing public that factory development was moving full
steam ahead. These 10,000 jobs, she assured critics "are not just any jobs. These are good
jobs with fair pay that adhere to international labor standards, . . . Haiti is open for
business again."
Well, sure; at a $3.09 daily minimum wage (upped later to $5, but almost no one actually
gets paid at that rate), what's not to love?
"When pressed about the lack of progress made in the (housing) rebuilding efforts,
including inabilities to provide shelter, Secretary of State Clinton said "Those who expect
progress immediately are unrealistic and doing a disservice to the many people who are
working so hard."
Bill Clinton, UN Special Envoy to Haiti, has been equally optimistic about Haiti's cheap
labor prospects, especially since the passing of the Haitian Economic Lift Program (HELP) in
May. The bill would increase the amount of Haitian assembled goods that could be imported
into the United States duty free. "This important step," Clinton said, "responds to the needs
of the Haitian people for more tools to lift themselves from poverty, while standing to
benefit U.S. consumers."
But my, oh, my; the Big Dog loves high-end resort tourism, too. The Marriott opening was
well-attended by toffs, including Senn Penn, as I remember it.
@ uncle tungsten #24 with the appreciated link containing this quote
" A former insider at the World Bank, ex-Senior Counsel Karen Hudes, says the global
financial system is dominated by a small group of corrupt, power-hungry figures centered
around the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve.
"
The posting ends with this quote
"We have a system of "neo-feudalism" in which all of us and our national governments
are enslaved to debt. This system is governed by the central banks and by the Bank for
International Settlements, and it systematically transfers the wealth of the world out of
our hands and into the hands of the global elite.
But most people have no idea that any of this is happening because the global elite also
control what we see, hear and think about. Today, there are just six giant media
corporations that control more than 90 percent of the news and entertainment that you watch
on your television in the United States."
What an ugly way to run a society. Moving society to public finance and abolishing private
finance is what is needed to save our species and what we can of the world we live in. I am
with China in advocating for Ad Astra because we can see the end of our ability to live on
this planet because of historical faith-based disrespect of it.
No we are not dealing with the analogue of the feudalism of Western Europe, with its
interlocking panoply of mutual obligations that was built around God.
No, we are witnessing the re-birth of the Asiatic mode of production in the Euro-American
countries as the absence of manufacturing production makes itself felt. To wit, like South
American countries, one sees the emergence of two classes, Masters and their Service Servants
(needed for performing all manner of useful but tedious manual service labor, from
dog-walkers to barbers to cooks...)
Significantly, as Americans, French, English and many others sold their jobs to Mexico,
China, Korea, Singapore, and Japan, it was precisely those countries that were given an extra
shot in the arm for breaking from the chains of the Asiatic Mode of Production.
It is particularly interesting that in America, the long-hair guy driving a 50-dollar
Chevy, is supporting Republicans, who have no better future for him than being a servant to
Financiers.
"The march of freedom of the past one hundred and fifty years has been a long-drawn-out
people's revolution. In this Great Revolution of the people, there were the American Revolution
of 1775, The French Revolution of 1792, The Latin-American revolutions of the Bolivarian era,
The German Revolution of 1848, and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Each spoke for the common
man in terms of blood on the battlefield. Some went to excess. But the significant thing is
that the people groped their way to the light. More of them learned to think and work
together....
"The people are on the march toward even fuller freedom than the most fortunate peoples of
the earth have hitherto enjoyed. No Nazi counter-revolution will stop it. The common man will
smoke the Hitler stooges out into the open in the United States, in Latin America, and in
India. He will destroy their influence. No Lavals, no Mussolinis will be tolerated in a Free
World.
"The people, in their millennial and revolutionary march toward manifesting here on earth
the dignity that is in every human soul, hold as their credo the Four Freedoms enunciated by
President Roosevelt in his message to Congress on January 6, 1941. These four freedoms are the
very core of the revolution for which the United Nations have taken their stand. We who live in
the United States may think there is nothing very revolutionary about freedom of religion,
freedom of expression, and freedom from the fear of secret police. But when we begin to
think about the significance of freedom from want for the average man, then we know that the
revolution of the past one hundred and fifty years has not been completed, either here in the
United States or in any other nation in the world. We know that this revolution can not stop
until freedom from want has actually been attained .
"And now, as we move forward toward realizing the Four Freedoms of this people's revolution,
I would like to speak about four duties. It is my belief that every freedom, every right, every
privilege has its price, its corresponding duty without which it can not be enjoyed. The four
duties of the people's revolution, as I see them today, are these:
1. The duty to produce the limit.
2. The duty to transport as rapidly as possible to the field of battle.
3. The duty to fight with all that is in us.
4. The duty to build a peace -- just, charitable and enduring.
"The fourth duty is that which inspires the other three ."
Wallace laments about the failure after WW1; but when he spoke, few knew the actual reasons
for the war, although Wallace was correct that it wasn't to serve the Common Man's interest. To
solve the basic problem that in reality goes back 4-5,000 years. Wallace then drives the nail
home:
"We did not build a peace treaty on the fundamental doctrine of the people's revolution.
We did not strive whole-heartedly to create a world where there could be freedom from want
for all peoples . But by our very errors we learned much, and after this war we shall be in
position to utilize our knowledge in building a world which is economically, politically and, I
hope, spiritually sound."
The United Nations contained within it the above vision that it could become the vehicle for
attaining the goals enunciated in that last sentence. It's now 75 years later, and it appears
we might have an opportunity to attain Wallace's, FDR's, and numerous others dream goal of an
unfettered people living in harmony while enjoying those four basic freedoms, but most
importantly, the freedom from want and the chains of debt that attends it always .
Wallace knew about banks and finance from the farmer's POV for he was a member of a
longstanding Iowa farming family--the Iowa Asgards. And he knew about the Devilish threats
within the USA to the Four Freedoms as he noted in his speech. Although the focus was on
Germany, Wallace knew the Nazi Devil lived in many places:
"Through the leaders of the Nazi revolution, Satan now is trying to lead the common man of
the whole world back into slavery and darkness. For the stark truth is that the violence
preached by the Nazis is the devil's own religion of darkness. So also is the doctrine that
one race or one class is by heredity superior and that all other races or classes are supposed
to be slaves . THE belief in one Satan-inspired Fuhrer, with his Quislings, his Lavals, and
his Mussolinis -- his "gauleiters" in every nation in the world -- is the last and ultimate
darkness. Is there any hell hotter than that of being a Quisling, unless it is that of being a
Laval or a Mussolini?" (Quisling was a Norwegian Fascist executed in 1945 for treason.) [My
Emphasis]
Wallace knew and he displayed his knowledge in a very famous op/ed written at the request of
the NY Times and vetted by FDR, "The Dangers of American
Fascism," published 9 April 1944. Besides that message, Wallace's most powerful message was
spoken toward the conclusion of his speech which provides an excellent benchmark to measure
just how far we've come and how much farther we need to go:
"Some [Henry Luce] have spoken of the 'American Century.' I say that the century on which we
are entering -- The century which will come out of this war -- can be and must be the century
of the common man. Perhaps it will be America's opportunity to suggest that Freedoms and duties
by which the common man must live. Everywhere the common man must learn to build his own
industries with his own hands is a practical fashion. Everywhere the common man must learn to
increase his productivity so that he and his children can eventually pay to the world community
all that they have received. No nation will have the God-given right to exploit other
nations. Older nations will have the privilege to help younger nations get started on the path
to industrialization, but there must be neither military nor economic imperialism . The
methods of the nineteenth century will not work in the people's century which is now about to
begin. India, China, and Latin America have a tremendous stake in the people's century. As
their masses learn to read and write, and as they become productive mechanics, their standard
of living will double and treble. Modern science, when devoted whole-heartedly to the general
welfare, has in it potentialities of which we do not yet dream.
"And modern science must be released from German slavery. International cartels that serve
American greed and the German will to power must go. Cartels in the peace to come must be
subjected to international control for the common man, as well as being under adequate control
by the respective home governments . In this way, we can prevent the Germans from again
building a war machine while we sleep. With international monopoly pools under control, it will
be possible for inventions to serve all the people instead of only a few.
"Yes, and when the time of peace comes, The citizen will again have a duty, The supreme
duty of sacrificing the lesser interest for the greater interest of the general welfare. Those
who write the peace must think of the whole world. There can be no privileged peoples. We
ourselves in the United States are no more a master race than the Nazis. And we can not
perpetuate economic warfare without planting the seeds of military warfare. We must use our
power at the peace table to build an economic peace that is just, charitable and enduring
.
"If we really believe that we are fighting for a people's peace, all the rest becomes easy."
[All Emphasis Mine]
Reading between the lines, we can sense Wallace's apprehensions about what the USA will
become; and as we've witnessed, he was quite correct in his suspicions. But the people were
quickly duped and he didn't have any chance of besting Truman in 1948 being attacked in media
by those who supported him and FDR during the Depression and war--very much like the attacks on
Sanders during the last two election cycles. As Wallace feared, something very similar to
Nazism took hold within the USA quickly after the war. Behind it then as now stood Private
Finance and the Neoliberals went to work, their goal to privatize everything and ensure the
Common Folk owned nothing but the debt that enslaved him/her. No other political-economic
example was to be allowed to exist; their one greatest failure and the only reason we're now on
the path to the better world we should have already attained if the sort of Christian
Commonwealth vision Wallace had and many shared could have arisen instead of the latent fascism
within the USA gaining control.
Money quote: "First thing to do when 'unrest rears its ugly head' is shut down external
communications and kick out any of the Five Eyes operating an embassy in your country. It
happnens so often."
The most unfortunate aspect of these large scale disruption and regime change operations
exploit actual grievances and truly indigenous civil society reform movements, thereby
compromising even the most authentic efforts by the people. Not only that but this casts
serious doubt on both authenticity and goals of all kind of demonstrations and civil
unrest, even in more developed countries, including ostensibly First World.
Take the HK demonstrations for example - how much of it was real, genuine unrest caused
by this or that more heavy handed China policy? truth is we don't know because by
definition, the exploitation of such protest movements - almost always led by supposedly
disaffected youth - includes a very sophisticated propaganda handbook that seeks to
effectively "erase" the controlling hands behind the scenes.
Or, even the BLM movement - a lot that happened with these protests seem to jive with
the instruction manuals per the ARK. Notice how these could be turned on and off - in this
or that city, made to appear organic, when in fact those invisible hands from behind
directed much of the action.
Another aspect that is very noticeable for both the HK and BLM movements is the way they
were directed at some very specific issue that most people would have a hard time
disagreeing with - on its face. Be it political "freedom", new "rules", new "taxes" and/or
police brutality - there are numerous commonalities - too many to dismiss as mere
coincidences.
At the same time, much care seems to have been taken to not allow these protests to be
directed at the actual ruling class, the 1%, the elites, big finance and the
corporatocracy. I always thought it was kind of funny the way these BLM protesters somehow
were not there when Bernie sanders ran his campaign, even though Bernie had their
grievances near the top of his list on the official platform (police brutality, uneven
criminal justice system and prison reform were huge issues for him). Yes, there were plenty
of black youths who voted with the Sanders movement in the primary (the one that was
basically a fraudulent one, due to outright vote flipping, as was exposed by several
credible analysts). But the BLM protests only came into being following the one GF killing
and were directed mostly against police in large cities, and, of course against anything
the federal government could try and do.
Now that Biden is all but declared as 'elect", those protests have died down (except for
a few flare-up points like Portland, where they seem to have taken permanent residence).
Funny that....must be that the "defund the police" was successful and black people no
longer suffer from unequal law enforcement.....so all is well now.....
Sometimes I thought something like this happened in Libya. Libyan army cleared this
town, that city, next town, moving east to west, then just before Benghazi, we get our
consent manufacturing message that Gaddafi said there would be a slaughter in Benghazi. So
NATO just had to attack, to save Benghazi.
After Libya was smashed, turns out a whole gang of British "diplomats & SAS" were in
Benghazi.
thanks b! informative... this ARK is not noahs or boris's... who is behind this grand
scheme?? it seems the idea of keeping lebannon and syria in a state of tension is the
goal.. whose purpose does this serve? it seems like an agenda written in tel aviv, or is it
washington?? who is behind all this?? it seems clear enough that the goal is to coddle
israel... take this money and make sure israel continues to dominate in the middle east and
all other countries are destabilized basket cases... these are sick people behind all
this.. that much is very clear... who would spend money like this??
the really shocking thing is the UK gov't is in on it, but don't want it to appear this
way.. the people in the UK sure are a weird lot.. i think they are weirder then the people
in the USA!
ARK (Analysis Research Knowledge) has a website and its founder, former British diplomat
Alistair Harris has a LinkedIn account you can look up on Google or whatever search engine
you normally use. The company is based in Dubai.
Among ARK's various activities in Syria was managing the Facebook page and probably
other PR for the White Helmets. The propaganda surrounding Bana Alabed and other Syrian
children seems to be of a type similar to White Helmets propaganda - designed to appeal to
people's emotions, particularly women's emotions - so there is a possibility all this
rubbish was being generated by the same organisation.
In the end the target audience for all this propaganda is us, as our support is needed
to justify an eventual US or NATO invasion of Syria and Lebanon.
First thing to do when 'unrest rears its ugly head' is shut down external communications
and kick out any of the Five Eyes operating an emmbasy in your country. It happnens so
often. Kick Out the Five Eyes (I live in one of them). Media Communications (the industry I
work in) is the publicly acceptable term for Information Program, Propaganda, Information
Warfare. It's all the same thing, with Event Management being the sister of and information
program.
I've worked in both areas; external media communications programs and event
coordination and management , often dovetailing the two and switching between roles in
order to 'maximise stakeholder value' for the benefit of the client. Who is the
client..? If the client isn't obvious then Follow the money. It is always the person
paying the bill. Follow the money people... follow the money and you will understand the
objectives of even the most obtuse communications programs.
As an aside, with all the hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons being pumped into
the MENA, 'no one in Government' is able to 'shut down the wars. It's a joke, Government
can track your spending down to the last cent and hit you up with a fine for 'incorrect tax
return' but they 'can't follow the hundreds of billions of dollars' in weapons that gets
flown around the world. Follow the money people. Follow the money and you'll catch the
culprit.
Color revolution tactics that have been used against foreign leaders are now being used by
President Donald
Trump 's opponents to oust him, a former special forces officer has warned.
"A color revolution is a tactic to affect regime change," the officer, who asked to remain
anonymous, told The Epoch Times.
"What I see happening is a Marxist insurgency that's using a color revolution to affect
regime change."
The 2019 Transition
Integrity Project , according to the officer, is an indicator that the events of this
year's presidential election were "transparently orchestrated" by "Marxist elements within the
Democratic Party and their Marxist allies in foreign governments."
"It may not have fallen out just as they wanted, because anytime you carry out an
operation like this, the enemy will get a vote. But the plan was we will not concede the
election. The goal here was never the presidency, " the officer said.
"The goal of the opposition was to fundamentally change the country. They are attacking
the efficacy of the Constitution."
To achieve their goal, the anti-Trump opposition focused their main effort on affecting the
election, the officer said.
Some of the most notable color revolutions took place amid turmoil sparked by disputed
elections. In 2004, mass protests in Ukraine following allegations of a fraudulent presidential
election, which initially showed pro-Russia Viktor Yanukovych as the winner, led to a new vote
won by Viktor Yushchenko, the candidate backed by the European Union and the United States.
The officer said the tactics used by the anti-Trump opposition can be found in the Special
Forces' guide for overthrowing a government.
"What you're getting from me, this is supported in all older unconventional warfare
doctrines," the officer said.
"You could go to our manuals and pull from them the information I'm telling you. This
isn't from someone who's a rabid Trump supporter. This is what's happening ."
The officer then talked about how President Barack Obama used his eight years in office to
"seed his political allies all through the institutions," created an "underground" or "shadow
government" supported by legacy media and rioters.
"With the president being unable to get his own people into the administration, we
effectively had a third administration of Obama," the officer said.
"So we come to what we have today: The underground are the elements within the government.
We saw how they opposed the president, how they tried the impeachment ."
"The press is the auxiliary on the outside. The only thing we're missing is a real guerrilla
force, and we would be mistaken to think that's just Antifa or Black Lives Matter. There are
professional revolutionaries within those movements."
According to the regulator, the direct pipeline from Russia to Germany impedes competition
on European Union energy markets and "violates the interests of consumers." The fine
amounts to 10 percent of Gazprom's annual revenues – the maximum allowed penalty. Other
companies participating in the construction of Nord Stream 2 have been fined $100 million.
UOKiK gave Gazprom and its partners 30 days to terminate financing agreements and
"restore" competition.
"The construction of Nord Stream 2 is a clear violation of market regulations," UOKiK
head Tomasz Chróstny said in Warsaw on Wednesday, as cited by Bloomberg. Gas prices for
consumers must be "the result of fair competition, and, once Nord Stream 2 is operational,
it's likely that gas prices will increase and there'll be a risk of interruption to
supplies," he said.
Warsaw has long been opposing the expansion of the gas link directly connecting Russia with
Germany, Europe's biggest market for the fuel, arguing it would deepen Europe's dependence on
Russian energy. Meanwhile, many European nations have stressed that they want to diversify
their energy sources, and Nord Stream 2 could be one of the ways to achieve that.
In 2019, Poland's President Andrzej Duda met US President Donald Trump to discuss the
possibility of halting the implementation of the Nord Stream 2 project. Warsaw also inked
several contracts with American companies to replace Russian supplies. The intention was to
make Poland the future center for the re-export of US liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the
region, according to US Ambassador to Poland Georgette Mosbacher.
The US administration has repeatedly criticized the Nord Stream 2 project, aiming to derail
it in order to boost sales of American LNG to Europe.
The construction of the project's two pipelines, which will extend from the Russian coast to
Germany and on to other European countries through the Baltic Sea, is nearing completion. It
will have the capacity to deliver 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year, and Berlin has
insisted it will help Germany meet its growing energy demand as it phases out coal and nuclear
power.
I for one am getting really excited by the staff that Honest Joe Biden is pulling together
for the White House. When I first heard the name Tony Blinken during the Obama kleptocracy I
assumed that he was one of those Ivy League lawyer types that proliferate in Washington, likely
affiliated with the firm of Winken, Blinken and Nod, which we all know to be in partnership
with Dewey, Cheatem and Howe. But I was wrong. He actually was affiliated to a much bigger
fraternity, which one might call Zionists in government. You know, those nice well educated,
always polite Jewish boys and sometimes girls who have self-designated as foreign policy
experts and who work their way up through the various levels of power that might lead to the
most coveted positions at the top in the state department and national security apparatus.
Blinken was one such striver, and I began to feel the pricking in my thumbs that was telling me
that something evil this way was coming when he was mentioned now and again as a former close
adviser to the already beatified Barack Obama. And some in the media had observed with approval
that he had more recently been briefing Joe Biden, particularly about Israel and the Middle
East.
In an interview in
the Times of Israel Blinken confirmed Biden's position on possibly reducing aid to
Israel if the Jewish state were to do things that damaged U.S. interests. Blinken " reiterated
Biden's position that he would not condition aid to Israel. He [Biden] is resolutely opposed to
it. He would not tie military assistance to Israel to any political decisions it makes, full
stop."
The question of withholding aid is itself moot as Israel does nothing but "do things" that
damage U.S. interests, knowing that no president or the Congress would dare to turn off the
money tap, but it is an interesting unambiguous admission from Blinken that both he and Joe
Biden put Israeli interests ahead of those of the United States.
Blinken's personal view of unfettered support for Israel allegedly derives from his
stepfather having claimed to be a survivor of the so-called holocaust, a tale that
he invoked several times during his acceptance speech on November 24 th . The
Times interview
concludes with Blinken asserting that "One of the things that's really shaped the vice
president's career-long support for Israel and its security is the lesson of the Holocaust. He
believes strongly that a secure Jewish homeland in Israel is the single best guarantee to
ensure that never again will the Jewish people be threatened with destruction."
The indefatigable Israel-firster Tony Blinken has also served
as a "conduit" to those in government for Israel advocacy groups like the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). And now that we have Tony Blinken as Secretary of State
Designate the door will soon be wide open to the Israel Lobby.
If you need to know more about what Tony Blinken is all about you only have to look at his
friends and his track record. Israel was inevitably quick off the mark in saluting the
appointment, both in its media and through its mouthpieces in the United States. Stalwart
Canadian Zionist Mark Dubowitz, who heads the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD),
tweeted
that Blinken would be part of a " superb national security team. The country will be very
fortunate to have them in public service."
The signal from FDD is particularly important as the organization is directed by the Israeli
Embassy in Washington. FDD is the leading neoconservative bastion seeking a war with Iran,
Israel's bête noir . Its Leadership Council has featured former CIA Director James
Woolsey, Senator Joe Lieberman, and Bill Kristol. Its advisors and experts are mostly Jewish
and most of its funding comes from Jewish oligarchs.
A recent
expose by al-Jazeera exposed how FDD and other Lobby groups work directly with the Israeli
government, collecting information on U.S. citizens, spying on legal organizations, and both
planning and executing disinformation at Israeli direction, making it an Israeli agent by the
definition of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA). Unfortunately, the Department
of Justice has never sought to compel FDD to register under FARA. In fact, the U.S. government
has never compelled any part of the vast and powerful Israel Lobby to register.
Tony, inevitably a Harvard graduate plus a JD from Columbia who has never served in the U.S.
military, is inevitably a chicken-hawk because that is what America's Zionists and their
political neocon wing are made of. It is a phenomenon that has often been noted. In 2017,
Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Tzipi Hotovely
called out American Jews as "people that never send their children to fight for their
country, most of the Jews don't have children serving as soldiers, going to the Marines, going
to Afghanistan, or to Iraq. Most of them are having quite convenient lives " Of 1,300,000
active duty personnel in the U.S. armed forces, only 4,515 are Jewish.
This is how it works: instead of actually fighting in the wars you are promoting, you have
your tax-exempt "educational foundations" pour tons of money into a project to go to war and
corrupt the politicians to issue the necessary orders so unemployed kids from Arkansas and
North Dakota can go off and die for Israel. You yourself remain safe at home, free to deliver
bellicose speeches about how Iran threatens the world through its "meddling" in the Middle
East. And, of course, about how the dumbass Palestinians have failed to accept the hand of
Israel offered in peace.
That is what Tony's record demonstrates. Blinken has come a long way with Biden, all the way
back to the Clinton Administration. And he
he has always been there for the Jewish state. During the Obama Administration when
relations with Israel were often strained, Blinken was the contact point for "Jewish leaders
[differentiating] him from others in the White House at the time who weren't as sympathetic to
Israel's position." Dennis Ross, often described as Israel's lawyer, praises him for having "
an instinctive emotional attachment to Israel," referring to Blinken's frequently cited Jewish
and refugee roots.
Other media reporting
indicates that "Blinken was a top aide to Biden when the then-Senator voted
to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and Blinken helped Biden develop a
proposal to partition
Iraq into three separate regions based on ethnic and sectarian
identity. As deputy national security adviser, Blinken supported
the disastrous military intervention in Libya in 2011, and in
2018 he helped launch WestExec Advisors, a 'strategic
advisory firm' that is secretive about its clients, along with other
Obama administration alumni like Michèle Flournoy. Jonathan
Guyer writes
in The American Prospect , 'I learned that Blinken and Flournoy used
their networks to build a large client base at the intersection of tech and
defense. An Israeli surveillance startup turned to them. So did a major U.S.
defense company."
Beyond the intersection of government policy and personal profit exhibited by Blinken, the
Washington Post in 2013 described Blinken as "[o]ne of the government's key players in
drafting Syria policy" and he recalled that "This is a little bit personal to me, and any of us
-- and I start with myself -- who had any responsibility for our Syria policy in the last
administration has to acknowledge that we failed. Not for want of trying, but we failed." What
Tony failed at was overthrowing Syria's legitimate government and turning the country over to
the terrorist linked groups that he and Hillary and Obama were supporting.
The Democrats are particularly good at coming up with secretaries of state that one would
like to forget, and that is saying quite a lot given the recent appointees by the Republicans.
One recalls immediately the big-hearted Madeleine Albright, who found the killing of 500,000
Iraqi children by sanctions "worth it," or Hillary Clinton, who laughed out loud as she
recalled the death of Libya ruler Muammar Ghaddafi by having a bayonet inserted up his anus.
Clinton, who more than anyone launched the war against Africa's most developed nation,
paraphrased Julius Caesar, who, upon returning from a rapid victory in Asia during the Rome's
Second Civil war, described the event as "Veni, vidi, vici," in English "I came, I saw, I
conquered." For the laughing Hillary it was "I came, I saw, he died!" The anarchy in Libya
persists to this day and it included the payback killing of four U.S. Embassy employees in
Benghazi in 2012, with Hillary and Susan Rice at the helm. It is generally believed that both
Clinton and Rice might well have senior positions in the incoming Biden Administration.
But back to Blinken. Israel loved the way the Trump Administration showered favors upon it,
nearly always without any quid pro quo . But for all his Dispensationalist fervor,
salesmen like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were little more than goys who had been seduced by
the myth of Israel. They were, as Lenin would have described it, little more than "useful
idiots," which is allegedly an expression that certain Israeli politicians have used to
describe their passionate Christian Zionist supporters in the U.S. Now, with Blinken, the
Israeli hard liners will have the "real thing," a convincing Jewish boy who fatuously
describes an apartheid Israel as "the anchor and foundation for democracy in the region."
Tony believes in the Zionist cause and will do the Jewish state's bidding with a malleable Joe
Biden. And if Joe should go, there is always Kamala Harris, who is married to a Jewish lawyer
lobbyist. Win-win either way.
Even though it's early days, Blinken joins a number of other American Jews already tagged
for senior positions, including Alejandro Mayorkas, the nominee for Secretary of Homeland
Security who is a Latino Jew. Ron Klain, Biden's Chief of Staff and Janet Yellen, his pick for
Treasury Secretary, are also Jewish. The liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz
reports how "Having Jewish men and women in prominent government positions is so standard
that it's barely even a talking point " before observing that "The fact that some of
President-elect Joe Biden's top cabinet picks are Jewish should be a source of pride for the
community 'These people are being chosen because they're incredibly competent, because they're
incredibly talented, because they're incredibly experienced,' Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan
Greenblatt told Haaretz in a phone interview." Indeed, if one believes Greenblatt
pressure from the Israel Lobby, the media and billionaire donors as well as networking by the
Jewish mafia inside the government itself have nothing to do with it.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest,
a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a
more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email isinform@cnionline.org .
Only good thing that could come out of this development, should the Harris-Biden selectees
actually come into power is that this massive infusion of rabid Zionists into high levels in
the Demo administration is so blatant that the awakeners will increase in numbers and in
determination.
President Trump gave to Israel all she could wish for; he hoped that in return, the Jews
would give him America to rule another term. A simple give-and-take, but it didn't work out as
intended. If he were to run for the presidency of Israel, he would have it. If Brooklyn were to
decide who'd inhabit the White House, he would be the Chosen one. But Trump's plan to bribe US
Jews by bearing gifts to Israel failed completely.
East Europeans define the difference between Jews and Hungarians (or Poles) as follows. All
of these would sell their grandmother for a fistful of coins; but only a Jew would deliver.
This non-delivery of America will be remembered by future US presidents. Perhaps we witness a
defining moment for the downturn in American support of Israel, in direct contradiction to the
main thesis of our colleague Philip Giraldi who said this week that "Israel's Power Is
Unlimited". Why did it happen? The US Jews didn't take the bait. And now for details.
"Zionist" is a euphemism for "Jew", isn't it? Up to a point. Zionists, that is Jews (and
others) who care and work for Israel, are strongly supportive of the US President, but Jews
that matter, that is elite liberal progressive US Jews, won't support Trump even if he were to
pave Tel Aviv with golden bricks. Three out of
four US Jews voted for Joe Biden , about the same proportion of Jews who voted for Barack
Obama, though Obama was quite critical towards Israel, while Trump did all the Israelis could
wish for.
The Jews that cared more about Israel voted for Trump, but they are powerless. They have
money, they have good positions in society, but they aren't top dogs. The Orthodox Jews are for
Trump; not so much for the sake of Israel but rather for his conservative agenda. They do not
like gay parades, do not care for transgenderism, and for them, Black Lives do not matter much.
Social justice is not their credo.They have little influence outside their own milieu. They
voted 77 to 23 for Trump. Right-wing Jews are strongly Zionist and support Trump. Their
publication FrontPage Magazine is all out for Trump. But they would be for Trump even if he
hadn't left Iran agreement.
Polls of Jewish voters show that they do not care much about the steps taken by Trump in
order to please Israel. They are worried about Covid pandemics, about medical care, while
economics occupies fifth place in their concerns, and Israeli-related acts are at the very
bottom. The only place where one can notice some positive change is Florida, where
Jews actually shifted in noticeable numbers to Republicans. But even there it seems to be a
part of a
Latino shift rather than a separate phenomenon.
Elite Jews voted for Biden and for Dems as advised by the NY Times. For them, Trump's
friendship with PM Netanyahu was a drawback rather than an advantage. If they care for Israel,
they would prefer a quieter approach as usual, within the Two States paradigm. None of what
Trump did for Israel found a response in their hearts.
According to the AJC (American Jewish Committee) Biden bested Trump on every issue including
handling the coronavirus pandemic, 78%-19%; combatting terrorism, 71%-26%; dealing with Iran,
71%-27%; handling crime, 72%-24%, and strengthening U.S.-Israel relations, 54%-42%. (The
Republican Jewish Coalition has slightly better numbers, as they polled older Jews.) Trump has
expressed frustration that his Israel decisions have not garnered greater support in the Jewish
community, and many activists have spoken of "treason".
If Trump had known in advance that courting Jews would bring neither votes nor political
profit, probably he would have wasted less time in the Zionist cul-de-sac. Jews are connected
with the Dem Party, remember! All Jewish congressmen but two are Democrats; strongly pro-Israel
Senator Chuck Schumer, the Dem leader in the Senate, is as hostile to Trump as any man. Only
those Jews really matter; only those Jews have their unique access to media, movies, art,
politics, and universities. Perhaps they would act differently if Israel were in danger; but
thanks to the generous politics of Donald Trump they didn't need to worry about Israel.
(Preceding American presidents were aware of this catch, and were careful not to give too much
to Israel. This was also the view of Dr Kissinger).
Israeli Jews are much more pro-Trump than their American cousins. If Israel were a US state,
it would be deep red. They feel gratitude to the man who moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem and
recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. They appreciate his drive for normalisation with
the Arab states; his non-interference in the Palestinian issue; his recognition of the Golan
Heights. Being more conservative, they are on the same page as Trump on many issues. However,
even before Trump, the majority of Israeli Likud-voters are and have been for the Republicans
for many years. They did not like Obama and Clinton, and they do not care for Biden. A
prominent high tech Israeli personality prophesied that Biden would bring disaster for
Israel.
However, in Israel, too, there is a sharp division between elites and Deplorable masses. The
Deplorables support Netanyahu and Trump, vote domestically for Likud or religious parties. The
Deplorables rule Israel for over twenty years; Netanyahu is the Israeli Trump who succeeded to
keep power.
The Israeli elites support Biden. For them Trump is a mirror image of their own PM
Netanyahu, the man they hate with gusto. The problem with Israeli elites is that they have lost
their ability to govern. Their parties disintegrate; their causes are lost. If there is a
common cause for Israeli elites it is rejection of PM Netanyahu mirroring the NeverTrump
spirit of American elites, and their belief that they are elites and destined to govern.
They want to get rid of Netanyahu, like the US elites wanted to get rid of Trump. This
desire caused three rounds of national elections in the last year, but despite trying hard,
they could not vote him out. Now they hope he will be removed by the Supreme Court, and by
massive demonstrations near the PM's residence. They say he is corrupt, that he takes bribes,
that he didn't save Israel from Coronavirus – just like the Dems had tried to impeach
Trump for ridiculous reasons. They want Netanyahu to die in jail, just like the Dems hope to
see Trump rotting in Guantanamo. (There are hundreds of women ready to swear Trump almost-raped
them fifty years ago when they were underage.)
The case against Netanyahu is feeble at best. He received a pack of cigars and a box of
champagne from an American film producer; he promised to help a newspaper publisher if he would
stop attacking him. A murky case connects him to a German submarine sale, but it is too opaque
even for Netanyahu haters.The PM had been indicted by the state attorney, but by Israeli law,
he does not have to resign unless found guilty. Israel is experiencing huge and violent demos
against Netanyahu almost daily. But the deplorables still support their Bibi, and vote for him.
As opposed to Trump, Netanyahu has a newspaper, and it makes a lot of difference.
It would be nice if there were some positive differences between the Israeli Left and Right
on important issues. No such luck. There is practically no difference between Likud and the
liberal parties regarding the really important Palestinian question. The Left-wing and
Right-wing Jews are on the same page: they do not want to grant equality to non-Jews. They
treat Palestinians much worse than the Blacks were treated in Alabama a hundred years ago. They
aren't even interested in Palestinians.
The Israeli liberal left is interested in Lesbians and Gays; the main point of the election
campaign of the once-radical-left Meretz (I was their spokesman 40 years ago) was gay adoption
and access to surrogate mothers. And that in a society where workers earn less and less every
year, while houses cost more and more; where regular employment is a dream for workers; where
trade unions collapsed, and instead of employment, workers are offered a contract with
unlimited working hours, no holidays and no security at all. All in a country where
Palestinians are not allowed even to bathe in the sea a few miles from their besieged
villages.
Another topic of the liberal elite is their fight against religion.They are equal haters,
hating religious Jews as well as Christians and Muslims. The outbreak of Covid provided them
with a new reason to hate the believing Jews: they go to synagogues instead of staying at home
or going to demos against Netanyahu. I do not know any redeeming feature of this group, but
they are quite similar to liberal elites elsewhere.
In France, too, the ruling elite hates Islam and promotes Charlie Hebdo; but they hate
Christianity, too. The first thing Macron did in the present lockdown was to ban the Mass. And
his support groups, the elite liberals, were mighty pleased. In this video , you can see young
liberals asking police to disperse Catholics praying outside of Church. The same happens in
Israel, and in New York, where police have interfered with praying Jews.
The main difference between the populists of Netanyahu and the elitists is in their attitude
to ordinary people. The populists exude empathy while elitists just deplore. At the practical
level, they do not differ. Both are equally bad for workers, for ordinary Jews and
Palestinians. Populists waste public money on Jewish settlements in the occupied territories,
while elitists offer free Nepalese surrogate mothers for every gay.
As for Covid lockdowns, the elitists approve of them, just like Biden and his Dems do. The
deplorables dislike them greatly, for they lose their jobs, and they can't afford it, but they
still do not rebel.
In the US, the populists of Trump did not get much from his first cadence. A possible
solution would be the integration of left populists and right populists, of Trump taking Tulsi
Gabbard as his VP or at least as Secretary of State, of Trump giving every American citizen
medical care as in Europe, of him providing quality education free, of him taxing billionaires
and supporting workers. Such a ticket would be unbeatable. And stop bothering with the Jews and
Israel; they have nuisance value, but nothing more.
Now we can explain why the Trump Zionist Offensive didn't help him. The US (as well as US
Jews and Israel) is split into incompetent but cocksure elites and gullible but angry
Deplorables. The vote in the recent elections was a test of loyalty: are you with the elites or
with the Deplorables (in Hebrew, עמך)? In the US, where many Jews actually
belong to elites, even those outside accept elite values and narratives and still hope to get
invited in. A US Jew has to despair to join Trump and his counter-élites, and they are
still hopeful.
The Jewish newspaper Forward
tells of "two young Jewish political activists who formed the Jewish Unity PAC and raised all
of $31,000, and every cent of it was spent supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris." It's not
that they care for Biden, but these young people know where their bright future may lie.
In Israel, the elites are against Netanyahu, but the majority of Israelis, Jews or non-Jews,
have already despaired of being invited into the traditional elites. So they have no problem
voting for Netanyahu or supporting Trump. However, the Israel of Netanyahu and his Deplorables
is much less attractive to US Jews than the old elitist Labour-ruled Ashkenazi Israel. They do
not admit it; certainly not in writing, but there is no social lift for a US Jew in going to
Israel or even in supporting Israel. Thus Zionism as a cause has lost its attraction for US
Jews. And probably this change is irreversible: the old Ashkenazi elite of Israel is gone, and
it won't come back. It has been supplanted by Oriental Jews, by religious folk, by the
Ashkenazi counter-elites of Likud. There is no profit in courting Israel as much as Trump
did.
If Trump does, despite enormous odds, gain his second term, perhaps he will learn the lesson
and treat Israel as Jewish Liberia. It would be a great relief for the US and for the people of
Israel. Being cut off from the US supply pipeline, Israel may yet make peace with Palestinians
and become a normal Middle Eastern state. The US won't be driven into far-away wars. It would
be better if Trump had understood earlier, but better late than never.
American support is as dangerous for Israel as Russian support is for Armenia. Armenians had
30 years to make peace with their neighbours but they didn't for they were sure of Russian
support. Israelis had 50 years, but they didn't because of the US support. Armenians already
came to grief, and for Israel it is coming, unless they will disengage from their protective
superpower. So the special relations between the US elites and Israel are fully exhausted for
both sides.
And meanwhile, Israel sits on the fence. "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose not to
refer to Joe Biden as president-elect during a press conference Monday, saying instead that
Biden was "supposed to be appointed the next president", reported Haaretz .
But one must remember: both parties are completely totally pro-Israel. Meaning the there
is no reward for a politician in supporting Israel, only punishment for those that don't.
And while this might or might not completely apply to Trump, most modern American
politicians don't care all that much about winning elections. They care about doing the
bidding of their wealthy patrons, and getting rewarded on the side. It's about putting on a
show for the masses, and as in professional wrestling, both the 'winners' and the 'losers'
get paid. Sitting on corporate boards, distinguished positions in academia, cushy book
contracts, the press treating them like senior statesmen, awards and accolades, that sort of
thing.
Consider also: Trump presumably will continue to run businesses and will need contacts and
support etc from other wealthy people, many of whom of course will be Jewish. Not pissing off
the Jews might still be critical to him in the days to come
Jews were the prime movers in the effort to impeach Clinton as told by David Brock in
'Blinded by the Right', and Jews were the prime movers in the effort to impeach Trump as was
widely publicized, and yet the response of Clinton and Trump was to redouble their efforts to
please the Jews . probably to 'follow the money'.
The author concedes that there is no "Jewish Side" and in fact details how there are
significant numbers of Jews on opposing sides.
However, in Israel, too, there is a sharp division between elites and Deplorable masses.
The Deplorables support Netanyahu and Trump, vote domestically for Likud or religious
parties.
The Israeli elites support Biden. For them Trump is a mirror image of their own PM
Netanyahu, the man they hate with gusto. The problem with Israeli elites is that they have
lost their ability to govern
The virulent Anti-Semitism of Islam is aggressively trying to contaminate certain western
parties such as Labour and the DNC. However, movements like Muslim BLM are generating so much
backlash that they are already losing traction. In the U.S.:
-- Conservatives are likely to join the Orthodox, majority voting for GOP Populism and
workers.
-- Reform and Reconstructionist are likely to stay aligned against workers with the Blue SJW
Elites of the Globalist DNC.
I find it baffling that Jews openly oppose Judeo-Christian values by staying with SJW
"woke" apostasy. However, it is a fact that huge numbers of Jews act against their own self
interest.
It is not unique to them. Huge numbers of Christians make the same mistake siding with SJW
deviancy.
You cannot be serious BuelahMan? Take your blinders off.
Those that you speak of are indeed many, but not so Mr. Shamir.
Great read Mr. Shamir. Thank you!
Republicans are not courting American Jews in order to win their votes. Republicans are
courting American Jews in order to win their wallets and positive press coverage. There are
not enough Rebublican Jews to sway an election, but there is enough Republican Jewish money
and Republican Jewish media for the Republican Party to pay attention to them.
@No Friend Of The
Devil Bingo. Plus, to fend of the inevitable, demagogic "anti-Semitism" accusations from
liberals, leftists and Democrats, and their stooges in MSM.
The "anti-Semitism" accusation has paid off well for Jews. It's kind of like the
"Holocaust" wail -- the gift that keeps on giving. Someday, all that Jewish dogma will be
recognized as the grift it's always been. Not today, but maybe tomorrow, or the day after
Then we can watch ALL the grifters scramble for cover. Maybe they'll hide in an attic.
Then they'll make up some story of epic persecution and start the cycle over again.
How many times will Charlie Brown fall for it? How many times will Charlie Chan fall for
it? We'll find out.
Jews dumped Trump for Biden because he didn't do enough. With Biden they get even more
support for Israel, including putting more troops in Syria to finally take out Assad, and
perhaps finally going to war with Iran, which Trump wouldn't do. Plus Biden will give them
billions of taxpayer money to run the Diversity Industrial Complex, with every government
agency now requiring diversity training, and lots more diversity and race initiatives
everywhere, all rackets run by Jews, with a few token blacks. And then there's media
censorship, which Trump won't give them but Biden/Harris are already putting on the
agenda.
"Biden bested Trump on every issue including strengthening U.S.-Israel relations,
54%-42%."
Biden puts a more "civilized" face on Israel's inhumane ethnic cleansing. Trump was so
obvious and garish about it. Trump ran the risk of calling too much attention to Israel's
crimes. But "both sides" were still willing to have Israel grab all that Trump was "giving"
(though illegal and not Trump's to give). As others have noted, Trump's payoff may come after
he is out of office. Much is theater.
Come to think about it Trump could make good money opening a TV station. all sane
Americans would watch it. The advertisement money would just be poring in. This would be
excellent thing.
Trump has many followers. Trump would give his followers some hope.
The purported failure of Jews to deliver presupposes Jews are under some sort of
obligation to deliver. Jews are in total control. They have the sworn, unsolicited and total
subservience of any American presidential candidate of substance. Quite the contrary, it is
the Jewish colony of America that must deliver to its colonial master.
A Jewish dialectic. By design and effort. That's what it always comes down to. That is the
vicious cycle that needs to broken. Jewish thesis, Jewish antithesis, Jewish synthesis, rinse
and repeat.
It is true that Democrats are bought and owned by Jews. But, I have to agree with Andre
Joyce. Jews are very unreliable people, possibly the most unreliable of backers. Trump
exhausted his usefulness to Jews and they threw him under the bus. Jews want someone as
racist Zionist as Biden.
In Biden Jews find a long time obedient Gentile servant. Biden will do what Obama and
Trump refused to do. He is a well-known war criminal and he will leash war on the Middle
East.
Great article. Did the Jews deliver ? The question should be did any one group deliver ?
Trump was way to erratic and made way to many enemies and always seemed to say the first
thing that popped into his head. A good example of one of the stranger incidents was in Oct.
2018 when Rap star and mental defective Kanye West sat in the Oval Office and went a
non-stop, rambling, incoherent tirade. The President of the United States sat there like a
moron nodding approvingly it made Trump look foolish and cheapened all Americans. He sunk
himself with his big mouth and his tantrums. As far as the voting went it brings to mind the
Joe Pesci character from Casino in the end they all had enough.
Yeah, liberal Jews profess universal values, they keep their fervent support for Israel
hidden, because that gives away the fact that they are hypocrits. It's like the whore that
they're banging at every opportunity. And now Trump comes out and admonishes them in the open
to vote for him because of the jewlery and boob job he's bought her – as much as they
like it, they are profoundly mortified by his crude appeal. . and of course they know that
she's being taken care through all the institutions they're supporting.
In some sense, Trump missing the boat on this issue is like Hillary selling herself as a
war hawk, when that didn't actually sell anymore; she had missed the boat by 40 years.
No, the Jews did not fail to deliver. Jews always support both sides in any conflict so
that whoever wins they can claim to have supported / made the winning side...
It would be nice if there were some positive differences between the Israeli Left and
Right on important issues. No such luck. There is practically no difference between Likud and
the liberal parties regarding the really important Palestinian question.
I don't find it all that different here.
Quite a few Jews on the American left expose their Zionist underbelly whenever the
question of Palestine arises...
American support is as dangerous for Israel as Russian support is for Armenia.
Armenians had 30 years to make peace with their neighbours but they didn't for they were
sure of Russian support. Israelis had 50 years, but they didn't because of the US support.
Armenians already came to grief, and for Israel it is coming, unless they will disengage
from their protective superpower. So the special relations between the US elites and Israel
are fully exhausted for both sides.
Excellent article, sticking more or less dispassionately to the facts. Also, it draws the
logical inference of these facts, as outlined above. The economic collapse of America is only
a matter of time, and with it the collapse of its subsidies to Israel. History is full of
instances of small states encouraged in their intransigence by their patrons, whether
intentionally or indirectly. With the loss of the patrons, their clients are then forced to
agree terms at very unfavourable conditions, compared to what they would have got, had they
negotiated previously.
Obama critical of Israel? Are you kidding or may be misleading? Ehud Barak is on record
(Charlie Rose Show now defunct) stating unequivocally that the other Barak had done more for
Israel than any other American president before him.
No matter how you cut it, Jews alone have a way too much power in the U. S Take for
example a mundane decision to cap number of people that should get together for the
Thanksgiving: not 9 or 11 but exactly 10, per Dr. Ranit Mishori (she is an Israeli woman) on
PBS Newshour last night. Her explanation was very disarming when asked about it. Oh, she
said, "they" decided that ten was the right number guess how many people does it take to form
a "community of Israel" or the so called Minyan?" TEN! It's all about Jews and Israel even at
the freaking NIH (the National Institute of Health).
Unquestioning and unequivocal support for Israel has become a part of the Republican
platform, mostly a result of Evangelical Christians, a large denomination of dupes who
believe that the modern state of Israel, established by European colonists in Palestine, is
somehow related to the biblical Israel and biblical prophecy.
Jews voted the same way the have for generations as they are assured that Biden is going
to provide unquestioning support to Israel too.
Their Jewish votes hardly matter as they are mostly concentrated in New York and
California, which are not swing states. It is Jewish power in media and campaign donations
that matter, which both candidates could not do without.
"If Trump does, despite enormous odds, gain his second term, perhaps he will learn the
lesson and treat Israel as Jewish Liberia. It would be a great relief for the US and for the
people of Israel. Being cut off from the US supply pipeline, Israel may yet make peace with
Palestinians and become a normal Middle Eastern state. The US won't be driven into far-away
wars. It would be better if Trump had understood earlier, but better late than never"
I doubt this. The irony is that the same deep state that pushed regime change hook or
crook in Bolivia, Iran, and Venezuela is the same deep state that pushed for regime change in
the USA against Trump in 2016 (Russia controls Trump bs) and again with the voting fraud of
2020. And yet Trump seems to like regime change when it benefits his Israeli and Saudi
patrons. You live by the sword; you die by the sword.
There is the well reasoned narrative that the last US president who took on the CIA with
vengeance had his head blown apart in Dallas. The real power in Washington is with the
merging of the military, intelligence, silicon valley tech community. The civilian leadership
from both parties in the US are mere order takers from this oligarchy.
Government is just a means for the elite to impoverish the public and strip every liberty
from them. They are not part of the answer. They are part of the problem.
Trump condemns globalism, touts nationalistic view of foreign affairs at U.N."The future
does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots," Trump said. "The future
belongs to sovereign and independent nations who protect their citizens, respect their
neighbors and honor the differences that make each country special and unique."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-touts-nationalistic-view-of-foreign-affairs-at-un/2019/09/24/e4a8486a-ded2-11e9-8fd3-d943b4ed57e0_story.html
This is why Jews and pro globalists want Biden and Harris. Barbra Lerner Spectre speaks about
multiculti and Israel expels black Jews giving them the one way tickets, because "they do not
mix well with other Israelis' ' . Hypocrisy in full spectrum. They just want other countries
( not Israel) to lose their traditions, customs and values. When the society is divided and
broken it is easier to rule throwing various groups against each other's throats. While
groups fight with each other, they pursue their agendas unnoticed. Today Trump's lawyers were
talking about lawyers who wanted to represent Trump getting threats, even death treats. How
did this happen in the US? Who's "accomplishment" this is?
Obama did a lot .He tolerated Israeli attacks on Gaza. He offered 40 billions worth of new
dole to israel in exchange for Israel delaying the commission of the illegal activity (
postponing of the settlement for 3-4 month ).
He made sure Sisi was not opposed and Morsi was deposed . He got USA involved in Syria and
tolerated open advocacy for war by AIPAC against Syria . He tolerated the opposition to Park
51 construction mounted by Neocons . In his time Islamophobia introduced by the neocons
skyrocketed .
He campaigned for anti-American charlatan like Joe Liberman . Israel got him do a lot of
damages to Iran economically and physically
In Washington foreign conflicts are to policymakers what lights are to moths. The desire
to take the U.S. into every political dispute, social collapse, civil war, foreign conflict,
and full-scale war seems to only get stronger as America's failures accumulate.
There may be no better example than the battle between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the
latter's claim to the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, contained within Azerbaijan but largely
populated by ethnic Armenians. Distant from the US and Europe, the struggle matters most to
nearby Georgia, Turkey, Iran, and Russia.
The impact on Americans is minor and indirect at best. Yet there is wailing and gnashing
of teeth in Washington that the US is "absent" from this fight. Send in the bombers! Or at
least the diplomats! Candidate Joe Biden predictably insisted that America should be leading
a peace effort "together with our European partners," without indicating what that would mean
in practice.
The roots of the conflict, like so many others, go back centuries. Control of largely
Muslim Azerbaijan and Christian Armenia passed among Persia, the Ottoman Empire, and Russian
Empire. After the Russian Revolution the two were independent and fought over N-K's status,
before both were absorbed by the Soviet Union. Nagorno-Karabakh's ethnic Armenian population
began pressing for transfer to Armenia during the U.S.S.R.'s waning days. After the latter
collapsed in 1992 the two newly independent nations again fought, resulting in tens of
thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of refugees, and Armenia grabbed the disputed
land as well as even larger adjacent territory filled with ethnic Azerbaijanis.
A ceasefire froze the bitter conflict, leaving the conquered territory under Armenian
control. Although Yerevan's gain was tenuous, unrecognized by the rest of the world and
dependent upon a geographic corridor between Armenia and N-K, the government, largely in
response to internal political pressures, grew steadily more aggressive and unwilling to
honor previous commitments. Violent clashes mixed with ineffective talks between the two
states.
With no prospect of resolution, despite long-standing diplomatic efforts through the
so-called Minsk Process, involving America and France, among others, Azerbaijani forces,
relying on Turkey, employing Syrian mercenaries, and utilizing Israeli-made drones, launched
an offensive in September. With Yerevan losing troops and territory, Moscow brokered a new
ceasefire, which required Armenia's withdrawal from areas conquered a quarter century ago.
The transportation corridor is to be policed by Russian peacekeeping forces; Turkish
officials will help monitor the ceasefire.
The result was jubilation in Baku and riots in Yerevan. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinyan, under political siege, declared: "This is not a victory, but there is no defeat
until you consider yourself defeated, we will never consider ourselves defeated and this
shall become a new start of an era of our national unity and rebirth." More accurate was
Azerbaijani President Ilham Alyev's assessment: "This [ceasefire] statement constitutes
Armenia's capitulation. This statement puts an end to the years-long occupation. This
statement is our Glorious Victory." With Pashinyan's authority in tatters and Alyev
triumphantly enjoying a surge in popular support, hostilities could easily explode again.
Why would any sane American want to get in the middle of this fight?
Demands that Washington "do something" ignore three important realities. The first is that
the conflict has nothing to do with the US and threatens no serious American interests. The
fighting is tragic, of course, as are similar battles around the world. However, this
volatile region is dominated by Iran, Russia, and Turkey. Iran previously supported Armenia,
Turkey strongly backed Azerbaijan, and Russia has good relations with both, including a
defense treaty with Yerevan which Moscow deemed not to cover contested territory, meaning
N-K.
Which of these powers, all essentially American adversaries – despite Ankara's
continued membership in the transatlantic alliance – dominates which neighbor is a
matter of indifference to Washington. It simply doesn't matter, and certainly isn't worth
fighting over. Once US officials would have preferred Turkey over Iran and Russia, but
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken his nation in an Islamist and authoritarian
direction, warmed relations with Russia, the only serious target of NATO, and begun
aggressively expanding Turkish influence and control in Syria, Libya, and the eastern
Mediterranean. Ankara encouraged the current military round by enhancing Azerbaijani
capabilities.
Georgia also shares a border with both combatants but is only a bit player in the ongoing
drama. However, it has lobbyists in Washington whose mission is to get Tbilisi into NATO and
thus turn Georgia into another US defense dependent. Doing so would create a direct border
conflict with Russia, made much more dangerous by the volatility of Georgian politics. The
irresponsible and reckless President Mikheil Saakashvili triggered the brief yet disastrous
2008 war with Russia and remains active politically. Tbilisi's dubious role is another reason
for the US to avoid deeper involvement in the region's disputatious politics.
The second point is that there is nothing sensible America for do, despite cacophonous
demands otherwise. In October Washington Post columnist David Ignatius complained:
"The global power vacuum invites mischief. The war between Armenia and Azerbaijan has
escalated over 10 days of fighting. Armenian leaders initially hoped that US diplomacy could
produce a ceasefire; now they look to Moscow."
Translated, Yerevan wanted Washington to save Armenia from both its original aggression
and later intransigence. Like many other governments have desired in other conflicts. But how
was the US to restrain Azerbaijan, which was able to recover long-lost territory only by
resorting to force? America's regional policy has been a disaster. Washington already
demonstrated its impotence in Ankara as Erdogan charted an independent course. The US turned
a difficult relationship with Moscow into a mini-Cold War. The Trump administration foolishly
declared economic war on Iran, creating regional instability and precluding negotiation.
As for Azerbaijan, military intervention would risk war for no good reason. Economic
sanctions would punish Baku, but to what end? So far, the president's constant resort to
"maximum pressure" has failed to induce political surrender in Havana, Caracas, Damascus,
Pyongyang, or Moscow. Whatever the economic price, Aliyeh could ill afford to retreat and
anger an entire population currently celebrating his triumph. Anyway, the issue is not worth
another failed American attempt at global social engineering. Which means Washington had
nothing to offer but words.
Certainly the US should encourage a peaceful settlement and negotiation, but this is a
conflict for which there is no obvious diplomatic answer. It is easy to insist that Baku
should not have restarted hostilities, but the Alyev government struck because diplomacy had
frozen along with the dispute. And Baku's success dramatically reshaped the balance of power,
leaving Armenia in a far worse position than before. Creative mediation might help, but
Azerbaijan, on offense, showed no interest in such an effort. Nor has Washington demonstrated
the ability to reign in Baku's main backer, Turkey, anywhere else. Washington is filled with
magical thinking, the belief that the president merely need whisper his command and the
entire world will snap to attention. Alas, America long ago lost that ability, if it ever had
it.
Moreover, US officials share some blame: On the presumption that Azerbaijan was committed
to a peaceful settlement, Washington provided it with arms and aid to combat terrorism.
Unfortunately, weaponry, like money, is fungible. And that mistake cannot be unmade.
An equally mistaken belief in the Trump administration's commitment also might have helped
lead Armenia astray. Since taking power in the Velvet Revolution two years ago, Pashinyan
sought to move westward. However, in the present crisis neither America nor Europe did
anything to assist Yerevan – whose occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh remains illegal under
international law. Some US interest groups attempted to turn Armenia into a cause celebre of
religious persecution, but the Muslim-Christian clash is incidental to broader geopolitics
which little concerned the West.
The horrid genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire against ethnic Armenians a century ago
is constantly cited but remains irrelevant to today's conflict. Around three decades ago
Armenia invaded Azerbaijan to seize incontestably Azerbaijani land. Baku struck back for
reasons of nationalism, not religion. The essential irrelevance of religion is reflected in
Christian Russia's good relations with Muslim Azerbaijan, Jewish Israel arming Muslim
Azerbaijan, and Muslim Iran's long backing for Christian Armenia, though these ties ebbed in
the last couple years. The US should no more be a crusading Christian republic than a
crusading republic.
Finally, Russia demonstrated that other powers have an interest in peace and stability and
are able to act. That is a tough lesson for the denizens of Washington to learn, given their
irrational hatred of Russia. Vladimir Putin is no cuddly liberal but most American
policymakers make hypocrisy and sanctimony the foundations of their approach to Moscow. After
all, Putin has killed fewer innocent people than Trump administration's favorite dictator,
Mohammed bin Salman, whose aggression against Yemen has resulted in more than five years of
murder and mayhem and created the worst humanitarian disaster on the planet. Yet Washington
continues to sell Saudi Arabia more weapons and munitions with which to kill more Yemeni
civilians.
Moreover, though Moscow has behaved badly, in Georgia and Ukraine in particular, so has
the US in Russia's eyes. Washington misled Moscow over NATO expansion, dismantled longtime
Russian friend Serbia, pushed NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, embraced Tbilisi,
which fired on Russian troops guaranteeing security in neighboring secessionist territory,
encouraged a street putsch against an elected, Russophile government in Kiev, and sought to
push Moscow out of Syria, an ally of nearly 70 years. The expectation of American
policymakers that they can use military force to push the Monroe Doctrine up to Russia's
border without triggering a sharp response is unrealistic at best, deadly at worst.
Of course, the Russia-brokered accord was a clear diplomatic triumph and likely will
solidify Moscow's influence. However, with success has come responsibility, which could prove
costly to Moscow. The accord remains fragile and unstable, and might collapse.
By its nature the agreement is short-term and does not address the fundamental issue, the
status of N-K. Indeed, on its own terms either party, which would most likely be Azerbaijan
in this case, can order the withdrawal of Russian monitors in five years. However, the modus
vivendi might not last even that long. Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev posited: "I hope
that today's ceasefire and our further plans to normalize relations with Armenia, if
perceived positively by the Armenian side, can create a new situation in the region, a
situation of cooperation, a situation of strengthening stability and security." With Yerevan
aflame after angry mobs took over the National Assembly building, severely beat that body's
speaker, trashed the prime minister's home, and forced him into hiding, "positive" probably
is not the right word to describe Armenians' perception of the settlement. In fact, those who
abandoned their homes in territory turned over to Azerbaijan adopted a scorched earth policy,
destroying everything.
Both sides probably view the latest agreement a bit like French Gen. Ferdinand Foch
presciently saw the Versailles Treaty: "This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years."
Only the N-K time frame might be much shorter. Nevertheless, no one else has offered any
better alternative. Unfortunately, zero-sum disputes over territory are among the most
difficult disputes to resolve. Either Armenia or Azerbaijan will control N-K. Either ethnic
Armenians or Azerbaijanis will live in N-K. Yes, the ideal would be people from both lands to
live together in a democratic state, joining hands around a bonfire to sing Kumbaya every
night. However, no one believes that is even a remote possibility.
With nothing meaningful to offer to solve the current firefight, it was best for
Washington to stay out. In fact, Armenia's old guard, pushed out of power by Pashinyan two
years ago in the Velvet Revolution, blame their nation's defeat on his government's
subsequent turn West, from which it received little support. Brokering the current defeat
would merely have reinforced anger against America.
Russia acted because it has far more at stake. Let it undertake the burden of seeking a
settlement. Let it accept the cost of enforcing a settlement. Let it bear the blame if the
system again crashes.
US policymakers have trouble imagining a world in which a sparrow falls to earth, to
borrow Biblical imagery, without the US responding. If the bird falls in Nagorno-Karabakh, at
least, Americans should allow someone else to pick it up. It is not Washington's purpose to
make every conflict on earth America's own.
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to
President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire
.
Predictions are tricky matters in world affairs – and as it turns out, prescience
produces little in the way of public or personal vindication. There's scant satisfaction when
one's subjects tend towards the tragic. Take the (for now) paused 44-day war in the South
Caucasus. Back in an October
interview , I offered this (then) seemingly provocative prognosis:
"If this thing gets solved, or put back in the freezer, which is about the best we can
hope for right now, it will be Putin playing King Solomon and cutting the Nagorno-Karabakh
baby in half."
Think Moscow will merit plaudits from mainstream media? After all, four weeks ago, a
U.S.-brokered truce held a whole
few hours !
Snark aside, intellectual merriment loses luster when it amounts to dancing on thousands
of fresh graves filled with family members of the tens of thousands more newly
displaced . Only the implications of the ceasefire's terms – under which Armenian
troops withdraw from Nagorno-Karabakh after a 26 years occupation and replaced by Russian
peacekeepers – are also disturbing. The outcome also set potentially long-lasting
precedents.
Make no mistake this was no small victory for the initiator – if not aggressor
– nation of Azerbaijan. That under the agreement , Azeri troops stay
in place within areas of Nagorno-Karabakh they seized in battle, has profound ramifications.
War worked. Furthermore, seven odd weeks of combat proved – once again – that it
often does, at least in certain contexts.
What are those (not-so) special situations, you ask? Easy: be in the esteemed and wealthy
Western camp. Kow-tow diplomatically and play ball economically – especially in energy
sales – with multinational corporations headquartered in North American and European
capitals. Thus, win powerful friends and influence prominent people and nearly anything is
permissible.
Anyway, both people and leaders in Baku – especially the mini-Stalinist Aliyev dynasty running the
family fiefdom – are thrilled with the outcome. Same goes for folks in Ankara, and
madcap Erdogan – the man who would be sultan – himself. Instructively, there's no
less enthusiasm in Tel Aviv – not just by Bibi Netanyahu's dominant rightist ethnocrats .
Because this much you can't make up: pro-Baku rallies and the
waving of Azeri flags in Israel!
Look, Ankara hates their Armenian late genocide victims for surviving to tell the
Turk-indicting tale. Besides, Erdogan is pursuing neo-Ottoman
adventurism region-wide, and more than happy to tap in into ethno-Turkic and co-religionist
solidarity to grease those grandiose wheels. Israel's self-styled Jewish and Democratic
hybrid state support for Shia Islamic majority Azerbaijan seems stranger – unless one's
in the know on the lengthy and sordid ties
between Bibi and Baku.
Not so among Armenians in Yerevan – where protesters stormed the parliament, physically
accosted the speaker and reportedly looted the prime minister's own office. Something tells
me we haven't heard the last of Armenia's army in Nagorno-Karabakh – given the soreness
and inherent instability of losing sides in long-standing and externally-escalated
ethno-religious conflicts.
And here's the troubling rub: if not quite smoking guns there's plenty of smoke
indicating that Turkey – and to a lesser but
significant extent, Israel – conspired with Azerbaijan's petty autocrats to conquer
(or reconquer) Nagorno-Karabakh. The preparatory collusion was years in the making, ramped up
mightily in the months before D-Day – yet unfolded largely under the U.S. and broader
international radar. Consider a cursory recitation of the salient sequence.
Ankara's support for its Azeri Turkic-brethren has grown gradually more overt for years.
So have its long-standing arms-sales to Baku. Then came a decisive pivot – according to
one report , a six-fold jump in weapon's transfers to Azerbaijan over the last year.
Then, this past summer, Turkish troops trained and did joint exercises with Azeri forces.
Consider it a pre-invasion capstone.
Finally – now here's a cute catalyst – Ankara
reportedly moved those implausibly-deniable Syrian mercenaries into Azerbaijan two weeks
before Baku's attack. Don't take my radical word for it, though. Consider the
conclusions of the decidedly establishment-friendly Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace's resident Caucasus expert. Fellow longtime NK-watcher Tom de Waal was as clear as he
was concise:
"It's pretty obvious that Azerbaijan has been preparing for this. Azerbaijan decided it
wanted to change the status quo and that the Armenian side had no interest in a war " and
"Clearly, the decisive factor in this conflict is Turkey's intervention on Azerbaijan's
side. They seem to be heavily coordinating the war effort."
All told, that indirect intervention, coordination, and the combat-
proven capabilities of allied arms sales bonanzas – especially Turkish Bayraktar
TB2 and Israeli kamikaze drones – were decisive. Thousands of Yerevan's troops were
killed, about a third of its tanks were destroyed, and at least 50,000 Armenians have fled in
the face of Azeri gains.
Then, in the eleventh hour breach – as if to force friendly peace terms from Russia
– Turkey
threatened to intervene outright. Just how did big, bad, unhinged and the 10-foot-tall
Putin of Democrat-delusions respond to Erdogan's provocation? Well, he essentially folded
– or settled – in the interest of temporary tranquility in Russia's restive
near-abroad. Recall that Moscow eschewed even much menacing – let alone actual
intervention – on behalf of its official Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)
Armenian ally.
That this was all so represents nothing less than a paradigm-shifting precedent-setter. Or
at least a reminder of force's forever utility for some. Boost your batch of backers, gather
the tech-savvy arsenal that's thus available, and ready your patron-trained troops for war.
Invade only once the green-light comes from on-external-high, and the "rules-based"
international order that isn't – but is dominated (for now) by Washington
– will avert eyes long enough to enable Nuremberg's "
supreme crime " of armed aggression to work its magic.
So force pays if your government has coveted energy resources, the cash they produce, the
weapons they buy – plus powerful patrons willing to sell you the cutting edge stuff.
Just ask sundry Gulf Arab autocrats! (Though it rarely turns out as well for internal –
especially Shia dissidents or, you know, Yemeni kids).
To take it a step further, maybe your benefactor even tosses in some third-party
mercenaries, trains and advises your army just before game-time, and threatens outright
intervention if your little-bro-government doesn't get it's way. It also helps if your
patron's patron is still a hyper-hegemon that bullies – I mean, "leads" by principled
example – much of the wealthy world into silence or complicity, and looks the other way
long enough for facts on the ground to turn your way. Now there's a formula for force as
solution to frozen conflicts!
No doubt other parties paid attention. Heck, they want in on the violent game-changing
game! Believe you me, there are plenty of neo-fascists, adventurist American "allies," and
frenemies – all in need of a little citizen-distraction from Covid, corruption, and
economic collapse – who are all in for applying the new NK-formula. Ukrainian fascists,
Georgian Euro-aspirants, frightened and ever-opportunist Baltic bros or Taiwanese troops,
Egypt's military coup-artists, Arabian princely theocrats, and no doubt Israel's Bibi bunch
– yea, they all took careful Caucasus-notes.
So where does America's president-elect, Joe Biden, stand on the Russian-brokered truce,
you ask? About as you'd suspect from a fella inside the beltway cult of "collusion." Biden
picked partisan point-scoring over principled consistency. He "
slammed " Trump's supposed slow response to the NK-fighting and accused him of
"delegating the diplomacy to Moscow." In fact, his campaign's initial
statement singled out Moscow's ostensibly "cynical" arms sales to both conflict parties
and failed to name even once the war's Beetlejuice of bellicosity – Turkey.
Never known for nuance, the gut-player-elect failed to couch his rather bold critique with
admissions of US security assistance to both sides, acknowledge the Tel Aviv and Ankara
accelerants, nor the circumscribed options for any administration in an unfrozen conflict in
which Washington has no real "
dog in the fight ." Well, that's strange – seeing as the Russian-led settlement
pushed past achieving one of Biden's publicly
stated goals: to "make clear to Armenia that regions surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh cannot
be occupied indefinitely."
Well, so it goes with Russia-obsessed Democratic administrations beset with the
clinical -narcissism of American exceptionalism. No matter how distant the conflict, no
matter how far off the citizenry's obscurity-radar: the maelstrom must be about us .
See everything, everywhere , is apparently about US interests, anxieties, and
obsessions. Today's obsessive flavor of the moment – and for most of the century since
Bolshevik Red October – is Moscow.
Therein lies the problem, and what I've been boy-who-cried-wolfing about regarding the
real
risk regarding the coming Democratic administration. That is, after making everything
about Trump and Russia for four years, they might begin believing their own exaggerated
alarmism and follow through with legit escalation and acceleration of theater numero uno of a
dual-front, Eurasia-spanning Cold War encore. If Moscow and Beijing are forever branded bad
boys – in motive and machinations – then on shall continually churn the war
state, with all the pecuniary and professional benefits to both the outgoing Trump team and
incoming
Biden bunch alike.
Few Americans will notice, or bother to bother themselves about it – pandemic
preoccupied and social media distracted as they be – until the fruits of folly flash in
front of their eyes (pun intended).
Forget Condi Rice's farcical foreboding of a mushroom cloud as smoking gun . Even the Bushies'
bald-faced lies rarely reached past Saddam's singular nuclear blasts – Washington and
Moscow might end the world in an afternoon.
So permit me one final prediction: if they do, some staunch US"ally" learned-of the latest
Caucasus-conclusions will be the one to drag us down to oblivion.
Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. Army officer, senior fellow at theCenter for
International Policy(CIP), contributing editor atAntiwar.com, and director of the new Eisenhower Media
Network (EMN). His work has appeared in the NY Times, LA Times, The Nation, Huff Post,
The Hill, Salon, The American Conservative, Mother Jones, Scheer Post and Tom Dispatch,
among other publications. He served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught
history at West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq
War,Ghostriders of
Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the SurgeandPatriotic Dissent: America in
the Age of Endless War. Along with fellow vet Chris "Henri" Henriksen, he co-hosts
the podcast "Fortress on a
Hill." Follow him on Twitter@SkepticalVetand on hiswebsitefor media requests
and past publications.
Hawlwy
wrote to the acting Defense secretary, Christopher C. Miller. "The costs of the war in Afghanistan continue to mount, and they are
borne disproportionately by working Americans. For these reasons, majorities of Americans, including veterans of the war itself, have
long called for an end to the war in Afghanistan. Yet most of our nation's policymakers have ignored them."
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., allied himself with the White House and those calling for a swift exit from Afghanistan on Tuesday.
"I write to express my support for President Trump's plan for the prompt withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan," Hawley
wrote to the acting Defense secretary, Christopher C. Miller. "The costs of the war in Afghanistan continue to mount, and they
are borne disproportionately by working Americans. For these reasons, majorities of Americans, including veterans of the war itself,
have long called for an end to the war in Afghanistan. Yet most of our nation's policymakers have ignored them."
Hawley's signaling is significant because it runs counter to the political assault on the Hill by Republicans to stop President
Trump's plot to exit from the troubled theater in his administration's closing days. On Monday, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed,
in no uncertain terms, his vociferous opposition to a further drawdown: "A rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan now would
hurt our allies and delight the people who wish us harm."
McConnell was joined by Michael McCaul, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, among others, in expressing
his displeasure with recent developments in President Trump's national security team. An embattled Trump has suddenly cleaned house
at the Pentagon , in a maneuver widely described as essentially outlaw.
Trump's moves at DoD are seen as part score-settling -- and part delivering on a major campaign promise. If he sticks the landing,
Trump's acolytes insist drawing down further in Afghanistan cracks the door open still wider for a potential 2024 repeat run.
"You wrote recently, 'All wars must end,'" Hawley wrote to Miller. "The time has come to end the war in Afghanistan. I urge you
to stand with President Trump and bring our troops home as expeditiously as possible."
Hawley has now staked out new territory, putting finishing touches on a Afghanistan policy he has been developing for some time.
In September, he
told
this magazine : "It's time for a strategic refocus. We have spent too much time on adventures in the Middle East and elsewhere
that do not serve our strategic aims and place enormous burdens on the class of working men and women who fight our wars."
Notably, Hawley's statements stand apart from other Republican senators, who are keen to enhance their bona fides to become the
leader of a future, "realigned" Republican Party.
Echoing McConnell, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida
told Politico
: "The concern would be it would turn into a Saigon-type of situation where it would fall very quickly and then our ability to conduct
operations against terrorist elements in the region could be compromised. That's my primary concern right now."
But the leadership class in Republican Washington continues to mostly diverge from those reading the tea leaves on the future
of the party. Rubio was not joined by Sen. Tom Cotton, who is traditionally seen as the most hawkish of the trio. Cotton has previously
noted that he
shares Trump's frustration with the war. And Ted Cruz, another 2024 contender, has so far been silent.
In any case, Hawley is the only GOP hopeful on the scene right now I could remotely contemplate voting for in 2024. Will continue
watching him with interest.
That's good to see. I like Hawley a lot on domestic policy, but he's stuck to a more or less pre-Trump GOP foreign policy up
till now. He needs to drop the deranged hostility to Iran to really win my support, but supporting a drawdown of our Middle Eastern
wars is better than the neocons banging the drums for indefinite occupations.
That's good to see. I like Hawley a lot on domestic policy, but he's stuck to a more or less pre-Trump GOP foreign policy up
till now. He needs to drop the deranged hostility to Iran to really win my support, but supporting a drawdown of our Middle Eastern
wars is better than the neocons banging the drums for indefinite occupations.
According to Reuters, citing Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan will be reduced,
but not a full withdrawal.
Once again, a failed Trump pullout. Such a pathetic little cuck.
Removal of troops from Syria should be the first step, since the illegality of that occupation is the most obvious, and then
Iraq. Afghanistan is somewhat prioritize because it is less important strategically right now and more cumbersome to deal with...
But the US would rather have its diplomatic missions in every country replaced with military bases...Superpowers!
Israel needs the US troops there to facilitate the genocide of Syria's Christians, which General Soleimani and Hezbollah, along
with the Syrian Arab Army, were protecting.
The saddest thing about this whole affair is that it is a sham to make it look as if Trump has kept his promise to bring US
troops home and then blame Biden for supporting endless wars if he has to send US troops back in to protect the troops that were
left behind. As the graduate of an elite law school Hawley is bright enough to know that terrorism is not going to abate in Afghanistan
or the Middle East or in parts of Africa but he also realizes that the great grandparents of the people who voted for him were
skeptical about the US entering WWI, had grandparents who did not see any reason to enter WWII until Pearl Harbor, and parents
who did not think invading Afghanistan made sense until 9/11. If you are thinking of running for president in 2024 this may seem
like a reasonable political move but ultimately really shows how facile Hawley's understanding of international affairs really
is and a basic dishonesty about what is really involved in maintaining US global power.
"... There is some pushback in Washington to Israeli dominance, but not much. Recent senior Pentagon appointee Colonel Douglas Macgregor famously has pointed out that many American politicians get "very, very rich" through their support of Israel even though it means the United States being dragged into new wars. ..."
That Israel would blatantly and openly interfere in the deliberations of Congress raises
some serious questions which the mainstream media predictably is not addressing. Jewish power
in America is for real and it is something that some Jews
are not shy about discussing among themselves. Jewish power is unique in terms of how it
functions. If you're an American (
or British ) politician, you very quickly are made to appreciate that Israel owns you and
nearly all of your colleagues. Indeed, the process begins in the U.S. even before your election
when the little man from AIPAC shows up with the check list that he wants you to sign off on.
If you behave per instructions your career path will be smooth, and you will benefit from your
understanding that everything happening in Washington that is remotely connected to the
interests of the state of Israel is to be determined by the Jewish state alone, not by the U.S.
Congress or White House.
And, here is the tricky part, even while you are energetically kowtowing to Netanyahu, you
must strenuously deny that there is Jewish power at work if anyone ever asks you about it. You
behave in that fashion because you know that your pleasant life will be destroyed, painfully,
if you fail to deny the existence of an Israel Lobby or the Jewish power that supports it.
It is a bold assertion, but there is plenty of evidence to support how that power is exerted
and what the consequences are. Senators William Fulbright and Chuck Percy and Congressmen Paul
Findlay, Pete McCloskey and Cynthia McKinney have all experienced the wrath of the Lobby and
voted out of office. Currently Reverend Raphael Warnock, who is running against Georgia
Loeffler for a senate seat in Georgia demonstrates exactly how candidates are convinced to
stand on their heads by the Israel Lobby. Warnock was a strong supporter of Palestinian rights
and a critic of Israeli brutality.
He said as recently as 2018 that the Israelis were shooting civilians and condemned the
military occupation and settlement construction on the Palestinian West Bank, which he compared
to apartheid South Africa. Now that he is running for the Senate, he is saying that he is
opposed to the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement due to what he calls the
movement's "anti-Semitic overtones." He also supports continued military assistance for Israel
and believes that Iran is in pursuit of a nuclear weapon, both of which are critical issues
being promoted by the Zionist lobby.
There is some pushback in Washington to Israeli dominance, but not much. Recent senior
Pentagon appointee Colonel Douglas Macgregor
famously has pointed out that many American politicians get "very, very rich" through their
support of Israel even though it means the United States being dragged into new wars. Just
how Israel gains control of the U.S. political process is illustrated by the devastating
insider tale of how the Obama Administration's feeble attempts to do the right thing in the
Middle East were derailed by American Jews in Congress, the media, party donors and from inside
the White House itself. The story is of particularly interest as the Biden Administration will
no doubt suffer the same fate if it seeks to reject or challenge Israel's ability to manipulate
and virtually control key aspects of U.S. foreign policy.
The account of Barack Obama's struggle with Israel and the Israeli Lobby comes from a
recently published memoir written by a former foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes. It is
entitled
The World As It Is , and it is extremely candid about how Jewish power was able to
limit the foreign policy options of a popular sitting president. Rhodes recounts, for example,
how Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel once nicknamed him "Hamas" after he dared to speak up for
Palestinian human rights, angrily shouting at him "Hamas over here is going to make it
impossible for my kid to have his fucking bar mitzvah in Israel."
Rhodes cites numerous instances where Obama was forced to back down when confronted by
Israel and its supporters in the U.S. as well as within the Democratic Party. On several
occasions, Netanyahu lecture the U.S. president as if he were an errant schoolboy. And Obama
just had to take it. Rhodes sums up the situation as follows: "In Washington, where support for
Israel is an imperative for members of Congress, there was a natural deference to the views of
the Israeli government on issues related to Iran, and Netanyahu was unfailingly
confrontational, casting himself as an Israeli Churchill . AIPAC and other organizations exist
to make sure that the views of the Israeli government are effectively disseminated and opposing
views discredited in Washington, and this dynamic was a permanent part of the landscape of the
Obama presidency."
And, returning to the persistent denial of Jewish power even existing when it is running
full speed and relentlessly, Rhodes notes the essential dishonesty of the Israel Lobby as it
operates in Washington: "Even to acknowledge the fact that AIPAC was spending tens of millions
to defeat the Iran deal [JCPOA] was anti-Semitic. To observe that the same people who supported
the war in Iraq also opposed the Iran deal was similarly off limits. It was an offensive way
for people to avoid accountability for their own positions."
Many Americans long to live in a country that is at peace with the world and respectful of
the sovereignty of foreign nations. Alas, as long as Israeli interests driven by overwhelming
Jewish power in the United States continue to corrupt our institutions that just will not be
possible. It is time for all Americans, including Jews, to accept that Israel is a foreign
country that must make its own decisions and thereby suffer the consequences. The United States
does not exist to bail Israel out or to provide cover for its bad behavior. The so-called
"special relationship" must end and the U.S. must deal with the Israelis as they would with any
other country based on America's own self-interests. Those interests definitely do not include
funding the Israeli war machine, assassinating foreign leaders, or attacking a non-threatening
Iran while continuing an illegal occupation of Syria.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest,
a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a
more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email isinform@cnionline.org .
Here's China's unofficial response via this Global Times editorial . I
wish I could reproduce the art at the editorial's header as it's very spot-on:
"There is no new wording in the report, which can be seen as a collection of malicious
remarks from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other anti-China US politicians and senators.
Right now, only a little more than 60 days are left for the current US administration. An
official from the State Department explained that the report is not meant to constrain the
next US administration. But the fact is the Department of State fears that the Biden
administration will adjust US-China relations, and the release of the report is part of their
efforts to consolidate the current extreme anti-China path.
"But most Chinese scholars who have read the report believe it is an insult to Kennan by
labeling the report as Kennan-style. Kennan, then US charge d'affaires in Moscow, sent an
8,000-word telegram to the Department of State detailing his views on the Soviet Union. At
least, there was no special political motive in Kennan's report. But the latest report is
trying to leave a legacy for the extreme anti-China policy adopted by the Trump
administration and fawning on Pompeo, which is evil in essence .
"The impulsive and capricious governing style of Donald Trump leaves sufficient room for
politicians like Pompeo to give free play to their ambitions. The Department of State has
become the governmental organ that has the most serious clashes with China, outperforming the
CIA and the Department of Defense.
"Diplomats are supposed to be communicators, but Pompeo and his team have chilled the
communication atmosphere with China. In the China direction, today's US Department of State
can close its door.
"Surrounded by such deep hostility and prejudice toward China and the wild ambition of the
secretary of state, how could the Department of State's Office of Policy Planning make out
anything objective about China? Their observation ability, cautious attitude toward research,
and sense of responsibility for history have been severely squeezed. They are just currying
favor from their seniors and manipulating extreme paths, pretending to be
'thoughtful....'
"Chinese diplomatic and academic circles look down upon the Pompeo team, which lacks
professionalism, and acts like a group of gangsters suddenly taking official positions.
They not only have messed things up, but also hope to build their nonsense as legacy.
Pompeo's choice of opportunists like Miles Yu as advisor in particular has increased Chinese
people's doubts over the 'amateurism' and 'immorality' of the Pompeo team's China
policy....
"The US' China policy is very much like 'drunk driving' internally while on the
international stage it's like sailing against the current." [My Emphasis]
There's not much more to add aside for asking barflies to read the entire editorial.
"Although it is hardly atypical of the President Trump administration, the document is
significant because it represents yet another attempt by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to
immortalize his Cold War confrontation between the US and China, bind the succeeding
administration to it and most strikingly, institutionalize anti-Beijing ideas into American
bureaucracy.
"The push against China by the Trump White House is not designed to be a passing phase,
but a permanent and defining change of direction, for which this entire term in office has
sought to prepare. This document aims to be a blueprint for long-term ideological struggle
and a series of aspirations for maintaining hegemony, an affirmation of priority and a
statement that things cannot " go back to normal ". But it makes no guarantee that the
US can ever adequately understand China, or that it will succeed in its aims.
"The reference to George F. Kennan in pitching this document is appealing given the
historical parallels, but it is not an exact fit and this, in turn, helps shine a light on
Pompeo's own ignorance of China. It might be described in one simple sentence: China is not
the Soviet Union and the ideological stakes are not quite the same." [Emphasis Original]
While I'd agree that differences in ideology exist between China and the Outlaw US Empire,
it is the Empire that's constructed upon and is living the Big Lie inherent within
Neoliberalism, while China continues to perfect its already very efficient system of
Collective Libertarianism through its revamped Democratic Centralism. The really big
fundamental difference is that China has absolutely no need to lie to its people, whereas the
exact opposite's true within the Neoliberal West. After a lengthy period of public input, the
government meets and eventually publishes its 5-year plan of development, which is contained
within an even larger plan that's also been devised with public input and once put together
is also published for public consumption. And since 2010, all plans have existed within
China's UN 2030 Development plan, which is also available to the public. In a great many
respects. China is a more open society than the Outlaw US Empire. Why? Because it doesn't
need to lie to its citizens because it fights against the corruption that provides the reason
for such lies--China has no Financial Parasitism it must mask from its citizens whereas the
Outlaw US Empire is drowning in a massive sea of corruption that is killing it. Clearly,
Pompeo wants that to continue.
It has been fascinating to see both Republicans and Democrats denounce Trump on this. NPR
yesterday was in full-on war propagation mode, all of it's "experts" warning how dangerous a
withdrawal would be. Nary a mention anywhere that we have been there for 19 years, more
mocking Trump for "what he calls never-ending wars."
Like I told a liberal I know, recently. when he was complaining how Republicans were
destroying Democracy - why so sour? You won, remember? Now take heart, the Democratic Party,
major media and the Intelligence Community will be in sync restoring Democracy.
I wonder if we made it illegal for weapons/security contractors to trade their stock in
the markets, if most of this full throated support for war amongst our elite would
evaporate?
The interesting part is that the condemnation of Trump is coupled with "we're on the cusp
of victory" talk. America has been on the cusp of victory in Afghanistan multiple times, it
seems.
The Obama surge was prompted by General McChrystal's representations back in 2009 that the
war was winnable with more troops. In excess of 100,000 troops by 2011 was not sufficient to
achieve victory. The war then became an exercise in Afghan self-determination and honorable
withdrawal, reminiscent of "Vietnamization." This has been going on for nine years with, by
all accounts, the Taliban increasing its control of the country. There is no doubt that a
final withdrawal of U.S. troops would be a repeat of Saigon 1975.
Interestingly, the war morphed from removing Al Qaeda, propping up the Kabul government,
and defeating the Taliban, to being a protracted counter-narcotic operation. Given the
feudalistic realities of Afghan society, creating a Taliban-free, central government
controlled Afghanistan based upon western concepts is not a reality.
There is no doubt as to Afghanistan's strategic importance based upon its location and
resources. At the very least, those who condemn Trump for wanting to withdraw U.S. troops
from Afghanistan can be honest about why we are still there, although it's not a mystery in
geopolitical terms.
So, in Rubio's worldview Saigon would be better today if it were still occupied by
American soldiers. This imperialistic gene has to be eradicated from within these
Establishment armchair warriors. Our election of Donald Trump was a first raising of the hand
to say..stop. Stop it. Your time is through.
And now, since Democrats have flipped from freedom-loving liberals to authoritarian
leftists, they are united with the neo-con Republicans to keep imperialism alive and
prospering. America will soon come to understand that they've made a huge blunder in
replacing the one that has both the power and the will to turn us around. Only by electing
more Donald J. Trumps will the fever finally be broken.
"... His farewell address was just flapdoodle; it wasn't really dredged up till the 70s. Eisenhower spent eight years spreading tripwires and mines and then said "Watch out." Thanks buddy. ..."
Eisenhower is always lauded for his MIC warning. Frankly he ticks me off.
Thanks for the warning AFTER you were in some position to mitigate.
Ike's a mystery. Why did he NOT question Harry Truman's commitments to NATO, the UN,
and all that rubbish? Ike was a WWII guy. He knew Americans hated the UN in 1953 as much as
they hated the League of Nations after WWI. But he let it all slide and get
bigger.
His farewell address was just flapdoodle; it wasn't really dredged up till the
70s. Eisenhower spent eight years spreading tripwires and mines and then said "Watch out."
Thanks buddy.
Well, agree on your points however, on the other side of the ledger, he never understood
the stupidity of the Korean war (that he could have ended) and majorly up-ramped CIA
activities in all manner of regime change (bay of pigs anyone?). Almost a direct path to our
foreign policy now (and now domestic policy)
"... There is some pushback in Washington to Israeli dominance, but not much. Recent senior Pentagon appointee Colonel Douglas Macgregor famously has pointed out that many American politicians get "very, very rich" through their support of Israel even though it means the United States being dragged into new wars. ..."
Even though there was virtually no debate on foreign policy during the recent presidential
campaign, there has been considerable discussion of what President Joe Biden's national
security team might look like. The general consensus is that the top levels of the government
will be largely drawn from officials who previously served in the Obama administration and who
are likely to be hawkish. There has also been, inevitably, some discussion of how the new
administration, if it is confirmed, will deal with Israel and the Middle East in general.
Israelis would have preferred a victory by Donald Trump as they clearly understand that he
was and still is willing to defer to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on nearly all issues.
Indeed, that process is ongoing even though Trump might only have about nine more weeks
remaining in office. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is reportedly
preparing to sanction several international human rights organizations as anti-Semitic due
to the fact that they criticize Israel's brutality on the West Bank and its illegal settlement
policies. The White House is also prepared to free convicted but paroled Israeli spy Jonathan
Pollard from travel restrictions so he can move to Israel, where he is regarded as a hero.
Pollard was the most damaging spy in U.S. history and any mitigation of his sentence has been
opposed by both the Pentagon, where he worked, and also by the intelligence community.
Finally, it is widely believed that before the end of the year Trump
will declare that the United States accepts the legitimacy of Israeli intentions to
declare annexation of nearly all the Palestinian West Bank. The White House will actually
encourage such an initiative reportedly "to sow hostility between Israel and the Biden
administration." One should note that none of the pro-Israeli measures that are likely to come
out of the White House enhance U.S. security in any way and they also do nothing particularly
to benefit Trump's campaign to be re-elected through legal challenges.
If Biden does succeed in becoming president, the special place that Israel occupies in the
centers of American power are
unlikely to be disturbed , which is why Netanyahu was quick off the mark in congratulating
the possible new chief executive. Biden has proudly declared himself
to be a "Zionist" and his running mate Kamala Harris has been a featured speaker at the
annual gatherings of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington. Both
are strongly supportive of the "special relationship" with the Israel and will make no effort
to compromise America's apparent commitment to protect and nourish the Jewish state.
Though Israel is central to how the United States conducts its foreign policy, the country
was invisible in the debates and other discussions that took place among candidates during the
recent campaign. American voters were therefore given the choice of one government that panders
to Israel at the expense of U.S. security or another party that does exactly the same thing. To
be sure, Biden did state that he would work to reinstate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA) relating to Iran's nuclear program, which was canceled by Trump. But he also indicated
that it would require some amendment, meaning that the Iranians would have to include their
missile program in the monitoring while also abandoning their alleged propensity to "interfere"
in the Middle East region. The Iranian government has already indicated that additional
conditions are unacceptable, so the deal is dead in the water. Israel has also privately and
publicly
objected to any new arrangement and has already declared that it would "save the option" of
working through the Republican Senate to thwart any attempts by the Biden Administration to
change things.
That Israel would blatantly and openly interfere in the deliberations of Congress raises
some serious questions which the mainstream media predictably is not addressing. Jewish power
in America is for real and it is something that some Jews
are not shy about discussing among themselves. Jewish power is unique in terms of how it
functions. If you're an American (
or British ) politician, you very quickly are made to appreciate that Israel owns you and
nearly all of your colleagues. Indeed, the process begins in the U.S. even before your election
when the little man from AIPAC shows up with the check list that he wants you to sign off on.
If you behave per instructions your career path will be smooth, and you will benefit from your
understanding that everything happening in Washington that is remotely connected to the
interests of the state of Israel is to be determined by the Jewish state alone, not by the U.S.
Congress or White House.
And, here is the tricky part, even while you are energetically kowtowing to Netanyahu, you
must strenuously deny that there is Jewish power at work if anyone ever asks you about it. You
behave in that fashion because you know that your pleasant life will be destroyed, painfully,
if you fail to deny the existence of an Israel Lobby or the Jewish power that supports it.
It is a bold assertion, but there is plenty of evidence to support how that power is exerted
and what the consequences are. Senators William Fulbright and Chuck Percy and Congressmen Paul
Findlay, Pete McCloskey and Cynthia McKinney have all experienced the wrath of the Lobby and
voted out of office. Currently Reverend Raphael Warnock, who is running against Georgia
Loeffler for a senate seat in Georgia demonstrates exactly how candidates are convinced to
stand on their heads by the Israel Lobby. Warnock was a strong supporter of Palestinian rights
and a critic of Israeli brutality.
He said as recently as 2018 that the Israelis were shooting civilians and condemned the
military occupation and settlement construction on the Palestinian West Bank, which he compared
to apartheid South Africa. Now that he is running for the Senate, he is saying that he is
opposed to the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement due to what he calls the
movement's "anti-Semitic overtones." He also supports continued military assistance for Israel
and believes that Iran is in pursuit of a nuclear weapon, both of which are critical issues
being promoted by the Zionist lobby.
There is some pushback in Washington to Israeli dominance, but not much. Recent senior
Pentagon appointee Colonel Douglas Macgregor
famously has pointed out that many American politicians get "very, very rich" through their
support of Israel even though it means the United States being dragged into new wars. Just how
Israel gains control of the U.S. political process is illustrated by the devastating insider
tale of how the Obama Administration's feeble attempts to do the right thing in the Middle East
were derailed by American Jews in Congress, the media, party donors and from inside the White
House itself. The story is of particularly interest as the Biden Administration will no doubt
suffer the same fate if it seeks to reject or challenge Israel's ability to manipulate and
virtually control key aspects of U.S. foreign policy.
The account of Barack Obama's struggle with Israel and the Israeli Lobby comes from a
recently published memoir written by a former foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes. It is
entitled
The World As It Is , and it is extremely candid about how Jewish power was able to
limit the foreign policy options of a popular sitting president. Rhodes recounts, for example,
how Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel once nicknamed him "Hamas" after he dared to speak up for
Palestinian human rights, angrily shouting at him "Hamas over here is going to make it
impossible for my kid to have his fucking bar mitzvah in Israel."
Rhodes cites numerous instances where Obama was forced to back down when confronted by
Israel and its supporters in the U.S. as well as within the Democratic Party. On several
occasions, Netanyahu lecture the U.S. president as if he were an errant schoolboy. And Obama
just had to take it. Rhodes sums up the situation as follows: "In Washington, where support for
Israel is an imperative for members of Congress, there was a natural deference to the views of
the Israeli government on issues related to Iran, and Netanyahu was unfailingly
confrontational, casting himself as an Israeli Churchill . AIPAC and other organizations exist
to make sure that the views of the Israeli government are effectively disseminated and opposing
views discredited in Washington, and this dynamic was a permanent part of the landscape of the
Obama presidency."
And, returning to the persistent denial of Jewish power even existing when it is running
full speed and relentlessly, Rhodes notes the essential dishonesty of the Israel Lobby as it
operates in Washington: "Even to acknowledge the fact that AIPAC was spending tens of millions
to defeat the Iran deal [JCPOA] was anti-Semitic. To observe that the same people who supported
the war in Iraq also opposed the Iran deal was similarly off limits. It was an offensive way
for people to avoid accountability for their own positions."
Many Americans long to live in a country that is at peace with the world and respectful of
the sovereignty of foreign nations. Alas, as long as Israeli interests driven by overwhelming
Jewish power in the United States continue to corrupt our institutions that just will not be
possible. It is time for all Americans, including Jews, to accept that Israel is a foreign
country that must make its own decisions and thereby suffer the consequences. The United States
does not exist to bail Israel out or to provide cover for its bad behavior. The so-called
"special relationship" must end and the U.S. must deal with the Israelis as they would with any
other country based on America's own self-interests. Those interests definitely do not include
funding the Israeli war machine, assassinating foreign leaders, or attacking a non-threatening
Iran while continuing an illegal occupation of Syria.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest,
a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a
more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email isinform@cnionline.org .
USA is dead, long live USA. We now officially live in JUSA, the New Weimar Republic.
Actually we have been for almost 70 years, since the Cultural Revolution. America is no
longer a Christian nation but a Jew nation, with all that that entails – greed,
unscrupulousness, end justifies means, intolerance for dissent, mass deception, hypocrisy,
over sensitivity, pleasure seeking, sexual deviance, narcissism, vengeful and punitive.
Jews now basically control all institutions of import in this country, from Wall Street to
Hollywood, DC to Silicon Valley, and everywhere in between, the media, academia, judiciary,
deep state including all of DOJ and the State department. Using their control of Big Tech,
they can censor and suppress all dissent. Websites that try to go their own way like Alex
Jones or Gab.com have trouble monetizing
themselves and face constant media and left wing harrassment.
They control both msm and the
"conservative" media like WSJ, FoxNews, Breitbart, Zerohedge, National Review all are just
controlled opposition. No matter who is in the white house, we get the same things: Zionism,
globalism, corporatism, endless wars, endless immigration.
How did they do it? Not just by controlling banks and profiting off wars that they
instigated, but by selling sin. Jews own the entire sin industry. From the opium trade to the
slave trade, tobacco trade, Bootlegging, JUUL, Opiod, marijuana, alcohol, Victoria's Secret,
casinos and brothels in Vegas, HBO soft porn to hardcore porn, all are owned by Jews. Sin is
an industry where supply creates demand, not the other way around. Using their lawyers, they
first make it all legal, then make it fashionable. As Andrew Joyce so aptly put, "sordid
commercial exploitation of vice", that is what Jews excel in.
The sin industry is a trillion dollar industry, and many of those trillions have been
siphoned off to Israel, along with all the money from Wall Street swindling and the weapons
industry. We are witnessing the greatest transfer of wealth from the rest of the world to
Israel.
China-Russia-Iran may provide the world with an alternative for the future, if they can
hold off this Jewish scorch, but the West is done for. We have nothing but decline, which
will be hastened by Biden/Harris. Someone needs to keep reminding the Chinese it was a Jew
David Sassoon who ran the opium trade and forced the two opium wars on them. Never forget,
never surrender!
It's a sort of sexual charisma: all three of Joe's kids are married into the tribe, as is
the VP. Though the crackhead kid's tatted up wife Melissa Cohen definitely isn't orthodox,
though she's hot enough I'd forgive her!
"to accept that Israel is a foreign country"
Nah, it's like Canada, an America Jr. If the people disagreed, they'd have elected Ron
Paul, Cynthia McKinney, etc.
Aspies aren't good with contradictions and ambiguity. Israel is both ours and sovereign,
foreign and domestic. Most people get it though.
Yo, the Great US of A, how about just do this one thing – fixed your problem of
Israeli infestation in your institutions of power, instead of running around with a dynamite
up you behind looking to fix other people's hemorrhoids all over the world
Based on what you write, it seems that only a smart, independent minded black politician
as president would have any chance to stand up a bit to the Israeli lobby. The black
politician does not have white guilt and is less self conscious of accusations of
antisemitism. Obama was one of the few people who could fit the bill. Corey Booker is a
potential black president meeting the description who could give it the college try and 25%
stand up to the Israel lobby once in office. You should write more appreciatively of Barack
Obama. Yeah, more BLM is a bad trade off that comes with a black president but life is always
a package deal.
"Bibi the Backstabber" – Gee, I thought he and Trump were pals but he seemed pretty
quick to acknowledge a Biden win BEFORE it has even been officially on the record. Regardless
of who you want as figurehead of the USA, that seemed like a pretty crappy move but then
again, we're talking about a snake. If Trump did end up "winning" after all the recounts and
possible court rulings, do you think Trump would welcome "Bibi the Backstabber" back? "Fool
me once " What a total farce this election and our Jew infested country is. Sad.
OK move along nothing to see here, just another description of Jewish subversion 101 which
has been going on for time immemorial. I think by now we should all know who's been behind
every war, famine, economic collapse etc. The occidental countries have the remaining 11.5%
of Whites left on the planet, it appears we are going to lose, so please try and enjoy what
little time is left just don't forget to put your mask on.
Joe Biden, a mediocre intellect and a corrupt long time D.C. insider as president of the
U.S., running with a shrill shrew as vice president is supposed to be a positive development
for the citizens of the U.S.? It's too funny. She was the first democrat to pull out of the
running in the primaries and I believe Biden was second. Harris also suggested Biden is a
racist, lol. It's too surreal to believe that this has happened. Thinking of Biden in charge,
is like the feeling that the cave is going to collapse with you in it, vs. seeing the light
at the end of the tunnel with President Trump. Oh well, ces't la vie
Well said Anon. There is a lesson here. It is one which any dog or cat knows but Jewish
social science has denied us: Do not let the parasite into the nest. A couple of million
Ashkenazim were admitted to this country between 1880 and 1920. The rest is history – a
history increasingly determined by THEM.
How this happened is a story I wish our white internet historians would tell us before the
lights are shut off
Israel is a leech. Liberalism in all its aspects, including racial egalitarianism,
feminism, homosexualism, and democracy is a cancer that has spread from head to toe in the
body of the nation. A leech won't kill you, but widespread cancer certainly will. What folly
it is to focus so much attention on the little parasite outside while ignoring the massive
malignancy inside.
Regarding the photo accompanying this article: it is always beyond disconcerting to see
Israel's satanic pentagram parked next to the American flag, it evinces the kind of sickening
aplomb you would find in the image of a gorilla sodomizing a doe.
I appreciate Giraldi's incisive analysis. No one writes better about Israel's parasitic
destruction of the US.
Someone needs to keep reminding the Chinese it was a Jew David Sassoon who ran the opium
trade and forced the two opium wars on them
This, of course, is in the Chinese ledger, but offsetting it is the more recent massive
transfer of manufacturing jobs, technology, engineering services and other indirect benefits
that derived from the "great offshoring" that first occurred in the late 70s. The
apparatchiks of the CCP know who was responsible for arranging this unprecedented largesse
and will consequently be reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them.
One can only conclude that American Christians relish being Jews' bitch. And here's the
dumbest thing that the otherwise astute P. Giraldi has said: "Many Americans long to live in
a country that is at peace with the world and respectful of the sovereignty of foreign
nations." LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!
PS: Phil, it's over for American. All hail, China!
All foreign aid should be turned off. Disaster relief should be looked at on a case by
case basis, but that just allows the most corrupt countries to rely on it to come to the
rescue when disaster strikes. I'd even prevent that.
Is there a single member of Congress with the intestinal fortitude to propose this? I
doubt it. The selctions process has installed people so beholden to the current power
structure that no one would dare put up a bill to stop foreign aid.
Doesn't that show that the US doesn't have a Federal Government, but does have a Federal
Mafia?
The so-called "special relationship" must end and the U.S. must deal with the Israelis
as they would with any other country based on America's own self-interests.
But, falling back on realism, what is second best for Americans,and *much* more likely to
be achieved?
As a preliminary sketch it is probably wrong to blame much of the disapointments and
tribulations of the least prosperous 80 per cent of Americans on Israel, even if the cost of
the Iraq war is included. Such a small country can eat only so much of America's breakfast.
It is big business's complicity in the rise of China's economy at the expense of American
workers and the open borders to cheap labour that counts for much more damage (I believe,
though open to refutation).
So, what is a more likely acceptable outcome than your ideal prescription? I suggest that
more Balkanising of the ME to eliminate threats to Israel would be part of it.That is
happening already with the Saudis and Gulf States falling i to line. It seems hard to see why
Israel should be unhappy about Russia remaining in Syria giving security to the Assad
régime. How Iran can be dealt with isn't clear but it seems unlikely that Russia or
China would be interested in an expensive effort to prevent the overthrow of the Iranian
theocrats. It would suit both well enough that the ME was made up mostly of small countries
mostly with oil or gas to sell and without much of a US connection. China would I guess be
happy to regard Pakistan as the one Muslim country that deserved special attention.
What about the Palestinians? Oh yes, easily forgotten. Well, surely it isn't too difficult
to think up several ways of giving them a much better deal than they have now with the one
condition satisfied that Israeli Jews will not find themselves outbred and outvoted by Arab
Muslims within the state of Israel. Secular outbred by Haredim? Oh well.
"Even to acknowledge the fact that AIPAC was spending tens of millions to defeat the
Iran deal [JCPOA] was anti-Semitic. To observe that the same people who supported the war in
Iraq also opposed the Iran deal was similarly off limits. It was an offensive way for people
to avoid accountability for their own positions."
And this , ladies and gentlemen, is why we come here and speak often of Jews:
because they make it so difficult to discuss their reality anywhere else.
This fact has to change in America and Europe as well.
Well, the verified Twitter account of BLM UK put out the above tweet, after that happened
we saw an ebbing away of support for it and footballers no longer kneeled before a game.
Really tells you a lot about the totem poll and which groups are placed where.
Before she met Biden, she was supportive of the Obama presidency, and critical of
President Trump.
After the white supremacist march at Charlottesville she wrote of the president: "To
those of you who voted for this POS [piece of s ** t] you should be ashamed. That's
all."
According to the New Yorker, Cohen has a tattoo of the word "Shalom," or "peace," in
Hebrew on her bicep.
While you might not have written the headline it's an accurate synopsis of your
argument.
I shouldn't give you a hard time for it because it's accepted across the geopolitical
universe on Israel. Including, as you have long detailed, by Israel itself.
Amusingly, if you compare the mirror position along this spectrum, for example,
elimination/"It's the 51st state!," they complete each other.
It just simply isn't true. Israel isn't sui genesis. It isn't a planet that doesn't have
to, or refuses to, obey the laws of geopolitical physics.
Think of it this way. There's a disingenuous disconnect between the public discussion and
that which takes place behind the curtain. As with seemingly everything else, it's just more
so when it comes to Israel.
All of that was the shortest predicate for suggesting you notice the slim to none argument
from this author in defense of the JCPOA, much less what the Obama administration sold as a
rapprochement with Iran.
Did it have any coherence in that regard? No, indeed the Iranians stupidly insisted on
rubbing it in our faces as an abandonment of not just Israel but all other states in the
region.
It's impossible to overstate how thoroughly this has discredited the proponents of a deal
with Iran.
Whatever you think are Israel's malefactions, they are no legitimate basis for the USG to
gift a trouble-making Iran anything. Least of all, regional hegemony at the expense of
everyone else.
The Anti-Defamation League is a front for Jewish organized crime that launders their money
and defames anyone who says anything about it. The ADL openly supports apartheid in
occupied Palestine. All Silicon Valley companies, including Wikipedia, count them as an
"expert" on "hate" – despite the ADL being openly pro-apartheid. All the major news
media corporations quote them as "experts" despite them being nothing more than a partisan
political lobby.
How is the world is such an organization considered "mainstream" as opposed to a fringe
hate group?
When it comes to Israel, it is obvious that President Trump has pretty much given the jews
everything they wanted.
From the annexation of Jerusalem proper to the Golan Heights, Israel has gained approval
for its questionable, illegal actions from President Trump and others in the U S government.
His encouragement of recognition of Israel by other middle eastern countries is telling.
President Trump has been dealing with jews all of his life, being in the New York City
real estate market. He KNOWS how jews act and what they are capable of, along with their
foibles and weaknesses.
Since Trump gave the jews just about everything they wanted, he is finally going to exact
his "price" for acquiescing to Israeli demands and is going to demand something in
return.
President Trump is about to reduce, if not withdraw the entire American troop presence in
the middle east. American troops can be replaced with Israeli troops.
Of course the jews will cry foul and scream that they need an American troop presence, but
if President Trump does anything right , the reduction or withdrawal of American troops in
the middle east would be a good first step.
President Trump has already replace the Secretary of Defense with someone more amenable to
him. The American military-industrial complex will not like the changes, but they can go
"pound sand".
Well they are the chosen ones, and the rest of us are just beasts of burden. Just ask
them. They wrote it in their book. The real travesty was putting the Torah in the Bible. Or
maybe the penultimate travesty was being forcibly converted to Christianity by the Roman
Catholic Church?
Here is another good source about the Sassoon's destruction of China in the 19th century.
The Chinese remember it well especially for what was done to their summer palace, Yuan ming
yuan. It held 5000 years of Chinese history.
Deference of Washington's elected politicians to Israel is repeatedly discussed in these
columns. Courts traditionally hesitate to adjudicate issues of Uncle Sam's wars and other
"foreign policy," and even related questions ( FEC v. Akins ). Americans tend to
assume and accept that the judicial "branch" of the USG has nothing to do with these
matters.
However, with another Presidential election possibly headed to the SCOTUS, there's an
intriguing adjective in this sentence:
One should note that none of the pro-Israeli measures that are likely to come out of the
White House enhance U.S. security in any way and they also do nothing particularly
to benefit Trump's campaign to be re-elected through legal challenges.
Does Dr. Giraldi believe that the measures may generally benefit the legal
challenges?
Without a doubt, her "tat" notwithstanding, she meant "piece." As in a piece for her and
hers sufficient to allow nothing left for the deplorable goyim.
After reading that I thought that Americans are really admirable. Kamala's both parents
came recently from foreign countries which have no close relation with the US. They were
recent immigrants, refugees from poverty and other inconveniences. A few years later the
daughter becomes vice president of the country, the controler of the president (one of them)
and possibly the next president and at the same time begins to tell Americans what they have
to think and to want. It's not even merely her opinion. She is telling Americans what they
have to think and to accept. You don't have any choice. Kamala has decided.
"It is time for all Americans, including Jews, to accept that Israel is a foreign country
that must make its own decisions and thereby suffer the consequences."
You're still walking on eggshells, Giraldi. You're either having problem understanding or
are in deliberate need to evade the issue of a Jew not needing to practice Jewism (my
definition of a complete Jew), that is to say, separate himself from Israel no Jew can nor
will do so. Hence, America is either stuck with them or will have to declare that Jews, and
only Jews, aren't part of this great experiment called United States of America. It'll hurt
like hell to be divorced from present reality but at least this nation, without any natural
enemies, will have a fighting chance of being a truly great country within the commity of
nations. So long as a single Jew remains in America, there isn't any chance of having
daylight between two separate nations. So, what's going to be, slavery with comfort or
freedom with sacrifices?
@BuelahMan con
black and 99% NWO white Zionist on the inside. 2005 Senator Obama heads to Donetsk, Ukraine
with 40 million dollars to De arm the Ukrainian military – he was successful and I can
more that prove it since I lived there shortly after and knew some Ukraine military guys.
This was part/ start of the Maidan plan. Move along to 2013 " We now have the right to use
propaganda against our own citizens" Prez. Obama. Veterans Today – Obama WAS born in
Africa , but we support him 100% . And this is is also true which means we have a psyops
webpage there. Nam Vet here – and I don't like seeing Veterans screwed over by other "
Veterans".
The key to zionist ie Israels power comes from the zionist owning the FED and from this
came the zionist owning the government of the ZUS and from this came the trillions in debt
and the unending wars for the zionists and for Israel.
Also from this control of the ZUS came the assassination of JFK and RFK and JFKjr. and the
attack on the USS Liberty and the attack on the WTC on 911, which was used to plunge America
into the unending wars against the Arabs, all for the benefit of Israel and the zionist dual
citizen traitors in the ZUS.
Zionists are destroyers of nations and humanity and they are behind the covid-19 scam and
psyop which is being used to destroy America and they are doing this via the World Economic
Forum and the Rockefeller Foundation and UN Agenda 2030 which are the tips of the zionist
spears aimed at the heart of America.
@anarchyst be
illegal to print what Giraldi penned herein, as well as to discuss it over the internet, even
via 'private' e-mails. Anti-semitism was quickly made a capital offense when the mostly
jewish Bolshevik leaders enslaved Russia over a century ago. Expect similar here shortly, as
many of us on Unz are somewhat elderly, and so a long prison term for 'inappropriate
political speech' is basically a death sentence, which will be gleefully enforced by Tribal
minions, of which there is never a dearth.
So we should enjoy our liberty to speak our minds freely here at Unz while we still have
it, as it won't last long, I can assure you .
also do nothing particularly to benefit Trump's campaign to be re-elected
through legal challenges.
Does Dr. Giraldi believe that the measures may generally benefit the legal
challenges?
wasn't your entire shtick that it doesn't matter in the least which whore of Zion sits in
the White House, and that we're all chumps for caring or voting, because it doesn't matter
one whit?
And now somehow that the voting is over, you still seem keen on obsessing over the
outcome.
To answer your question, (if I may Mr. G)..
'Pro-Israeli measures' (presidential slavish and abased fealty to Bibi/Israel) does
nothing to particularly *or* generally benefit Trump, vs. the other whore of Zion. As 'Bibi'
was one of the very first heads of state to congratulate Biden and toss his former supplicant
and courtesan out the door – with less grace or gratitude than I've seen sailors toss
two-bit hookers out the door once the service was performed.
I'm sure in both cases they feel particularly sullied. Considering how eagerly and
enthusiastically they swallowed their um.. duties.
I must say, I felt more pity for the whore in some Caribbean port, who sold herself for a
few pesos, than I do for the political whore who sold out my nation.
That said, Trump has done more to keep whatever shred of dignity a whore has, than all his
recent predecessors.. (how do you quantify the incomprehensible evil of 9/11, Shock and Awe,
Patriot Act, Gitmo, Obama's destruction of Libya and Syria, etc , using the English
language?)
The bar has been so low for so long, that simply not having destroyed several nations and
mass-murdered untold hundreds of thousands- in slavish fealty to Israel- is reason enough for
some of us to consider your presidency a measured success.
Our free-fall into the abyss hit a snag on the way down with the Trump administration.
But not to worry, under Biden/Harris, we'll get to those 'seven nations'. It's just going
to take a little longer than 'five years', is all.
Nor is it really about Jews as such, it is about a Jewish financial elite that took
control with the signing of the Federal Reserve act in 1913.
Face facts Americans, your 'deep state' is mostly controlled by Jewish bankers. If white
gentiles were really in charge of America would they be demonising themselves with anti-white
racism? Have you not noticed that your own political elites are marrying into the tribe?
Remember those royal weddings that European monarchies arranged to seal alliances with other
nations? Your political elites are cementing alliances with the bankers by marriage.
If you're serious about this, you will acknowledge that your bosses at NHB get away with
murder, torture, assassination of heads of state including your own, coercive interference,
aggression, and use of banned weapons. Now is the time to drop your Boy Scout act.
You won't have to lean on your vegetable Biden too hard to make him faithfully execute the
Symington-Glenn Amendment and the Leahy Law. That cuts off Mossad's bribe spigot. Maybe there
will be a little dustup on your own turf, but who's going to win that? When it comes down to
it, Israel is a one-nuke laydown.
The Israeli command structure are deep-dyed cowards. Whack a few in spectacular ways and
the grabass will stop. Start with Bibi.
And Phil is right, that we are very disgusted (understatement of the century) with
the Eternal Wars for Israel.
But like the French, (who bombed Libya into the stone age in fealty to Zion), and the
Brits who go along with it all, and the Germans who piss their lederhosen at the mention of
Israel, and all the other countries that are vassals of the Federal Reserve and their Satanic
minions, our institutions also have been utterly corrupted by this (((fiat paper))).
many American politicians get "very, very rich" through their support
That's one of the major features of American politics. American politicians are mostly
whores for sale so naturally various interests will buy them. It's not what's good for the
country but what's good for their bank account. Greed and corruption are what'll be the
undoing of the US.
It's only logical that Iran would want to build nuclear weapons since the US and Israel have
them and war has been threatened against Iran almost continuously. Being threatened has a way
of spurring on the acquisition of nuclear weapons. The US was the first to develop them and
then actually used them, setting off a chain reaction of other countries developing their
own. It seems to only be a matter of time before Iran actually has it. Then what?
Are we talking about the same Obama? The Obama who invaded Syria and Libya when they did
absolutely nothing to threaten the security of the US? The JCPOA was credit to John Kerry,
who was then slaughtered by msm on his way out for calling for a two-state solution that
includes Israel leaving the occupied West Bank.
Osama was spot on when he called Obama a "house nigger". That was all he was, nothing
more. We don't need another. We already had one.
They had a revolution to get rid of western influenced degeneracy. They support Palestine
unwaveringly. They support Lebanon unwaveringly. They defended Syria along with Russia. They
are Russia's closest ally in the world. They stand up to Israel. They fight Israel. They
attack the social and political theory of Zionism as well it's existence.
God bless them and protect them because often it seems like they are the only ones at a
state level doing anything about the evil in our world.
Those are things happening IN Canada due to its insane decision to import Muslims and
Haitians.
You're right that Israel at times can be brutal. Muslim barbarism coarsens those around
them. Not just Israel: Thailand, Philippines, Burma, India, Ethiopia, Greece, Armenia.
The worldwide Jihad Colin and Phil support creates bloody borders with Islam always
seeking to conquer and enslave.
Israel says NO! And that's why they are full of obsessive hate for it.
@anon ormer
number two at the State Department) and his son Douglas published 'The Passionate
Attachment," explaining how it had evolved over the years. In 2007 came the Mearsheimer/Walt
book on AIPAC. For a critical history of Israel wince Biblical times, see Laurent Guyenot's
book From Yahweh to Zion, published in 2018. The last-named says that Israel is responsible
for JFK's death. He had tried to stop Israel's nuclear weapons program and thus was killed.
The Warren Report covered up that particular crime. Jews are a tremendously talented tribe,
but they have no right to dominate the world, which is what Israel is now determined to do.
@Realist eing
but another hazard that the left takes advantage of, in order to silence the opposition, with
good effect, so far
All one has to do is look at the Memphis couple who was arrested for defending themselves as
well as James Fields who has been wrongly convicted of murder while attempting to escape
while being attacked.
At the present time, discretion is advised.
The only effective way to "nip this in the bud" would be to confront the police, city
officials, judges and prosecutors directly
As they are well-protected, that is not a viable option at this time presently, but in the
future who knows??
There are some very good books on the subject. See The Passionate Attachment by George and
Douglas Ball, published in 1992. (George Ball was the number two man at State under jFK and
LBJ.)
See the book on AIPAC by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, published in 2007. See Laurent
Guyenot's From Yahweh to Zion, published in 2018.
@BL Did Jews
learn nothing by wandering the desert for 40 years? Do they forget that they were
frog-marched for defying their own god, Yahweh, yet again? Yet they seem to think their
slow-motion shoahing of Palestinians will go unpunished.
How many future small-but-hugely-powerful guided missiles hitting Haifa, Tel Aviv, etc.
will Israelis be able to take? What their power-hungry pride protect them then?
Do Jews really think they will not be held responsible/targeted around the world for the
crimes of their state?
What other state, what other people, think only THEY matter?
The Jewish State has become a blight unto the nations.
Whilst human beings conspiring is as old nevertheless the Biden family is an example of
something way, way beyond human artifice. You do not have to be a Christian to recognize that
what Jesus said of the Jews was right on the mark – their father is a devil. The New
Testament says explicitly that the ruler of this world is the Satanic Majesties the Rolling
Stones celebrated in 1967.
Jesus was offered the entire world if he would take the knee not to Saint George of this
sick era but to satan. He replied that this was the epitome of shortermism.
People are no more than puppets on a string without divine protection and that is why I do
not hate Jews but only the vile evil in which they excel through the "gifts" of their
spiritual father.
@Rurik ion
sits in the White House, and that we're all chumps for caring or voting, because it doesn't
matter one whit?
And now somehow that the voting is over, you still seem keen on obsessing over the
outcome.
There's nothing inconsistent in (i) my position about the futility of Red/Blue politics to
effect any change in what matters to the Establishment and (ii) the question I've posed to the
author. In fact, how and why "the outcome" is arrived at may enlighten some gullible
voters.
Of course, you neither needed nor wanted to hear that. Which is why you didn't reply to me
directly, right?
Your observation is confirmed by Lord Beaverbrook explaining to the young Robert Kennedy at
the end of WW2 that the USA was a subjugated country run by Jews.
The Talmudic Zionist jew vampire pirates, in their arrogance, believe themselves to be
beyond accountability for their many misdeeds.
Speed The Day when their filthy little illegitimate enclave on the Easterrn shores of The Med
gets glassed over in a thermonuclear kind of way.
The remedy for the ills of Wall Street and The Bank of England will only be a tad less
harsh.
A bounty on all Rothschilds and Warburgs and their servile rats and snakes would also be
nice.
And then there's also the 'Atlas Shrugged' strategy- wherein all honest and productive
people of good will, eventually refuse to be willing lapdogs to this Satanic cabal.
As long as you'll lose your job, by mentioning the truth, don't do so. But more and more, as
the 'hundredth monkey' come around to the Great Awakening', like the Soviet Union, this devil'$
charade must certainly die its ignoble death.
and beauty, truth and peace, will once again rise like a phoenix from the ashes of Zion
The bolsheviks goal was a %90 reduction in population, the Talmud states that the "goy" were
to be their servants, the beasts are not worthy. 10% of the Russian goys would be enough.
After their reign of terror from 1917 to 1989, they sucked the rest of Russia dry and moved
to their next target, the USA. They are almost done here, they will poison us with the covid
vaccination and as a final F you leave us as a minority among the hoards of subhumans.
Their next target is Uzbekistan, this is why no one ever hears about the country or can
point it out on a map.
Ben Franklin, in his prescient wisdom, wanted a Constitutional inclusion that would have
barred (((them))) from even setting foot upon The New Republic.
Too bad that (((The Worms))) were already here perpetrating their financial scumbaggery.
@Anonymous e in
terms of any real concern for the national interest of the United States vis-à-vis Iran.
Also, did you intentionally omit the USA removing Iran's democratically-elected leader in
1953? Or America giving poison gas to Iraq to use against Iranians?
A word to the wise, sovereigns aren't cute and cuddly. The effect their interests with
little regard for humans in their way.
It's downright embarrassing that Iran and its acolytes are still belly-aching about
Mosaddegh. It's going to continue to be a hard road with the US if they don't learn to shake it
off.
dig a bit deeper on the interwebz and you will see that there are many wypipo historians
that have screamed this message the last 100 years+.
They get shunned, memoryholed or worse.
I will not link on purpose because the search is important for learning, but i will give you a
hint
archiveDOTorg have many off their books available.
Type "political zionism" into their searchbar and learn about the enemy of humanity and their
origins first.
Pharisees is their true name btw, b4 the 2 world wars this was common knowledge among us
Christian goyims
This is from wikipedia for whatever it's worth -- Centuries later, the Jews were
expelled from China proper during the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution (845–46), where
they lived in the region of Ningxia.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaifeng_Jews
@Greta Handel
p> The fact that I quoted you, on the same thread you're reading and writing on, means to a
certainty that I was responding to your post with the intent that you'd see it. (duh)
There's nothing inconsistent in (i) my position about the futility of Red/Blue politics to
effect any change in what matters to the Establishment and (ii) the question I've posed to
the author. In fact, how and why "the outcome" is arrived at may enlighten some gullible
voters.
Yea, that was your only interest, in your priggish, pedantic parsing of Philip's prose.
Canada has been kiked for 50 years. The Canada I grew up in had no problem pointing out
tribal influence, and no one called it Auntie Shem-itism.
We have gone from the 1930s when "one would be too many" was the attitude to Jewish "refugees"
asking for admission to openly admitting we are Israel's bitch. At the same time, making it
clear non-whites were not welcome to let's flood the country, already suffering from high
unemployment, with more than 1% of our population annually from the 3rd world.
"t's downright embarrassing that Iran and its acolytes are still belly-aching about
Mosaddegh."
It's downright embarrassing that Israel and its acolytes are still belly-aching about
Holocaust to steal few more pennies and dimes .
t's downright embarrassing that west and its acolytes are still belly-aching about 911 ,and
knife attacks and Chinese something to wage wars for Israel.
Good points all.
My suggestion?
Establish Greater Israel from Nile to Euphrates. Give Jews full hegemony in their new
country.
Then, deport 3/4 of American Jews. Make laws to prevent, here, Jewish control of finance,
education, or media. And above all, keep America's nuclear deterrent razor sharp.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
'Israel says NO! And that's why they are full of obsessive hate for it.'
No -- I'm full of hate for Israel because it's an evil, duplicitous, corrosive, criminal,
indefensible, and unnecessary state that generates a great deal of misery that wouldn't
otherwise happen and that has corrupted my own country and implicated us in its crimes.
You see, it is the Banana States of America which is the most indebted beggar nation on
earth. It survives because foreign nations perform trade using the dollar. Without that trade,
the Banana States would be on its knees, literally begging.
@frankie p
mplex–and often ruthless–political struggle.
In fact, 'anti-Semitism' is a legitimate and appropriate self-defense mechanism.
'Anti-Semitism' needn't produce violence, injustice, or bloodshed. It is fundamentally about
awareness and self-preservation. It is a discredited virtue, born from necessity.
Invasive, devious, and destruction species must be resisted. 'Anti-Semitic' theory suggests
that one party–often the dominant, duplicitous, and aggressive one– is endowed with
moral superiority in the struggle for political power and self-determination. This inculcated
myth is an oversized kosher lie.
@Cauchemar du
Singe . So do not knowingly set up equals to Allah ˹in worship˺ .
And if you are in doubt about what We have revealed to Our servant, then produce a
sûrah like it and call your helpers other than Allah, if what you say is true.
But if you are unable to do so -- and you will never be able to do so -- then fear the
Fire fuelled with people and stones, which is prepared for the disbelievers .
May your hate consume you in this world, while the fire of Hell awaits your kind with much
anticipation.
On the Day We will say to Hell, "Have you been filled?" and it will say, "Are there some
more?"
Just like any cancer, it finally kills it's host, and it goes down with it.
Some day , the cure will come , and the world will be rid of it's foremost problem
This narrative of the poor enslaved USA, beholden to Isreal is openly contradictory to our
manifest galactic power -- something, something middle-east energy and minerals, geopolitics
Whatever Boring!
As to heartache of Obama: While Isreal working him over through the derp state double agent
Rahm, U.S. Republicans shit on the President's head continuously, en masse for his entire
tenure and thwarted with open bigotry and contempt his every attempt to execute thoroughly
Republican policy!
So yes, Zion, and Republicans. Both a great threat to USA and democracy.
Old Joe's most humiliating (& revealing) experience
was immediately consigned to the Memory Hole:
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"I HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER YOU BUT BROKEN GLASS," Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed
US Vice President Biden during an after-dinner ceremony in Jerusalem on March 9, 2010.
Netanyahu had prepared a symbolic gift for visiting Vice President JoeBiden: a framed
document announcing that several trees were planted in Jerusalem in memory of Biden's mother, a
loyal supporter of Israel.
But with Biden's mission to persuade the Israeli government to begin shrinking Greater
Israel back to its pre-1967 borders, Netanyahu leaned on thepresent (NOT "accidentally" as
reported by the Jew-owned press) and shattered the glass frame.
Then came Netanyahu's cyptic warning and by way of indirection, a threat to Obama: "I have
one thing to offer you right now, and it's broken glass." [ViewFull Photo Here.]
It got worse. At a later tour of Israel's Holocaust memorial museum, Yad Vashem, the lights
in the Hall of Remembrance "unexpectedly" went out as a prayer for the dead was chanted.
Catching Biden's security detail by surprise as they anxiously stood forover 60 seconds in
utter darkness, only the "eternal fire" that honored the Jewish dead spread its ominous light
upon the Biden contingent.
By the time the lights flickered back on, Biden's Middle East fortunes were sealed with an
Israeli announcement that it would build 1,600 new homes for Jewish settlers, ignoring US and
Palestinian objections. On Biden's departure for Jordan, Ha'aretz reported that Israel plans to
build 50,000 new homes in East Jerusalem over the next three years.
The "broken glass" and the "moments of darkness" that Biden experienced were not chance
events. Nothing happens at official Israeli gatherings that is not carefully planned and
orchestrated in advance. And in spite of Biden's groveling before Netanyahu and Peres, with
vows of Israel being the "centerpiece of US policy," the Vice President's cowering was met with
glassy eyes by the leaders of the "master race."
Symbolic acts, such as the breaking of a glass by a Jewish groom beforemaking vows of
faithfulness to his bride at every Jewish wedding, are part of Jewish tradition. When the
Jewish groom crushes the glass beneath his rightfoot, he silently pledges to avenge the
destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and wage war on all those who would perpetuate
that destruction .
Trump hasn't just been dealing with Jews his whole life. The Trumps are Jews, as Trump's
elder brother told his frat brothers at his Jewish fraternity at college. What Trump did for
Israel was done because of what he considers himself to be. But that doesn't mean he doesn't
recognize something higher. He does. Himself. If he can't be a winner affirming Israel, then
the hell with Israel. That's really ultimate Jewish values, right? Some have spoken of it as
having no soul.
@anonymous e to
nothing to do with the US's foreign aid scam.
Foreign aid supports dictators around the world to see things the US's way.
It provides the money to, for example, Israel, to turn that money around to purchase weapons
and to bribe Congress with our own currency. In effect, the US uses foreign aid as a straw man
to simply funnel money from the US gov't to the US corporate elite and Congress.
Some of the money that went to Ukraine eventually found its way back to the US in Biden's
pocket along with a whole host of DNC operatives. That revelation should come out if the
Justice Dept weren't part of the scam.
Must be, look at what theyve gotten away with. COVID race specific biowar. 9/11. Theres no
terrorism, only Israel going for world domination. USS Liberty. Murder of Patton. On and
on.
@Rurik " into
pseudonymity by Mr. Unz's recent limit of three anonymous comments per day, tends to decay the
quality of discussion in comment threads. People think that they have to mark every hydrant,
and wait on each other to settle scores, rather than comment on the column. (I'm not immune!)
This is what happened at Taki's, ZeroHedge, and most recently Kunstler, where the same people
trudge into their pews every Monday and Friday, hear one of the same few sermons, and then
start snipping.
If we didn't have a history, "Rurik," I doubt that you would have taken much interest in my
#35, which you apparently still misunderstand.
Exactly a week after Esper was unceremoniously dismissed, the Pentagon
issued a notice to commanders to prepare to reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan to
2,500, and to reduce the number of troops in Iraq to 2,500 by January 15.
Despite the dark rumors, Esper and his associates weren't fired because they failed to
assist Trump in a domestic military takeover, or because they were insufficiently loyal and
didn't grovel enough before the person of Donald Trump. The real reason for their dismissal is
simple: Esper didn't think U.S. troops should be removed from Afghanistan by Christmas. Trump
disagreed.
The commander in chief has "the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views" are
aligned with his own, as former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said. This hardly represents a
coup.
"The commander in chief has "the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views" are
aligned with his own, as former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said. This hardly represents a
coup."
It's a "coup", alright. A coup against the deep state. Long overdue, but better late than
never. President Trump giving The Swamp the middle finger one last time. And flushing out
warmonger Biden, daring him to show his true colors & re-escalate again. Checkmate.
It used to be that "it took a village to raise a child", and where I'm from at least this
was meant in a very literal sense: it took not only parents but other elders in the community
to impart the accumulated wisdom that instills pro-social, community-building values into
children, ensuring that it wasn't the sins, but rather the virtues of the elders that were
visited upon the children, even unto the seventh generation. The "village" has now largely
replaced parents and community elders with a dizzying, eclectic mix of social media
influencers, tv personalities, pseudo-thought leaders and an education system that's been
captured by our elites to instill their own preferred version of values into our
children.
The analogue with the "horizon of understanding" is that for most individuals, defining
what it represents has been outsourced to a dizzying mix of experts who are tasked with
creating and maintaining a national value system. In a world paralyzed by partisanship, each
side of the ideological divide has its own (bought and paid for) triangulated opinion of
experts to shape what people on each side come to believe is real. As the chances of creating
a harmonious, pro-social horizon of understanding are sacrificed at the altar of partisanship
and polarization, the disorientation and discomfort felt by most people as we navigate the
unfolding crises of our times is only going to increase.
It seems these days that we are simultaneously bombarded with information and opinions,
while also being herded into our ideological corners by unseen algorithms. I honestly don't
know what the long term consequences of this will be, but its hard to see good
outcomes.
Going forward, I suspect the unseen algorithms are going to be the most malign influence
in widening the divide, a sort of social herding at scale. On the subject of opinions, most
people, for better or worse, still defer to the opinions of experts on important matters, so
you can imagine what happens when expert opinion is drawn not from "mere" PMC hired guns but
from the upper, upper crust of the oligarchy, even the most independent thinkers are bound to
subject their deeply held perceptions/beliefs to a review, if for nothing else but to get in
early on a nascent bull market and profit from it.
To take an example, the early adopter set for bitcoin was for a long time made up of
hackers, criminals and other fringe players who dabbled out of curiosity. The professional
money management industry on the other hand took a dim view of the whole crypto thing,
disparaging it at every opportunity and making sure portfolio allocations to it were
extremely scarce at the best of times to non-existent every other time. Then came covid, and
along with that activist central banks printing unprecedented amounts of money to shore up
collapsing economies. With fiat currencies being devalued as a result, the previously
skeptical titans of fund management started talking up bitcoin as a store of value comparable
to gold, first Paul Tudor Jones, then Stan Druckenmiller, followed most recently by Bill
Miller. Granted there are still holdouts like Ray Dalio and Peter Schiff who haven't hopped
on to the bitcoin bandwagon but, along with the guys at Microstrategy also becoming fervent
evangelists, I suspect the pronouncements of these titans alone are enough to take bitcoin
mainstream as an asset class, volatility be damned. I'm not a crypto bull by any stretch but
the power of expert opinion raining down from the very top of the class hierarchy to move the
herd further down will remain undiminished for a while still, and if said opinion is
programmed into an algorithm, heaven help us all.
Reminds me of the old proverb " If it ain't broke don't fix it " while I believe that at
some point in time someone decided to come up with a money making child rearing manual which
started a flood of variations on that theme resulting in constant tinkering, which in my job
would be the equivalent of overworking clay.
Consider the structure of the term "common sense", which is just shared opinion. If there
is no common sense, there will be no common action.
The problem with coming together is that the ruling class divides and rules us as a normal
procedure of creating a class system. Nobody in the ruling class has a problem with this.
Their purpose in life is to reproduce the system of mass slavery and adapt it to present
conditions and they, being among the elect, are fine with this.
Glenn Greenwald
@ggreenwald 'This is endlessly amazing: Brazil, a huge country, has nationwide municipal elections
today. Voting is mandatory. *All* votes will be counted & released by tonight.'
Ah, I see the problem here. The difference is that Brazil is a Third World nation that is
kept that way by morons such as Bolsanaro. America, on the other hand, is being turned into a
Third World nation because the elite is seeing a profit in doing so.
Russia has consistently stressed its willingness to work with either candidate -- late last
month, the Kremlin's press secretary Dmitri Peskov rebuffed suggestions that Moscow prefers the
incumbent: "it would be wrong to say that Trump is more attractive to us."
But Russia's political commentary sphere has proven more polarized. Some cite
Biden's readiness to extend the New START treaty without additional conditions as evidence that
Biden is someone that the Kremlin can do business with; others have expressed concern over the
Democratic candidate's "Russophobic" cabinet picks and predict that, under a Biden presidency,
Washington's policy of rollback will escalate to an unprecedented level. But there is also an
overarching belief that Washington's Russia policy is so deeply embedded across U.S.
institutions that not much is likely to change in U.S.-Russian relations.
As Peskov put it, "there is a fixed place on the altar of US domestic policy for hatred of
Russia and a Russophobic approach to bilateral relations with Moscow." Still other commentators
are interested in the process as much as the outcome, drawing attention to ongoing mass unrest and
allegations of electoral misconduct in order to argue that Washington has forfeited its moral
authority to lecture others on proper democratic procedure and the orderly transition of
power.
The world recognizes what U.S. elites don't: the utter, total American failure to contain
Covid-19 has damaged U.S. standing and will do so until the virus is controlled. Meanwhile,
regional powers, China and Russia, cooperate and share resources, particularly vaccines. Cuba
provides treatments, but the U.S. turns up its nose at Cuban medicine, even if it means more
American covid patients die – this, though Cuba's pharmacopeia for this plague appears
superior. China sends doctors and medicines across the globe. Russia opts for sane herd
immunity – through vaccination. These countries act like adults. Not a good look for the
U.S.
The Obama regime's deplorable trade and military "pivot to China," along with its sanctions
against high-ranking Russians and Russian energy, financial and defense firms and the Trump
regime's provocations, sanctions and insults aimed at both countries have now born fruit: There
is talk of a military alliance between China and Russia. Both countries deny that such is in
the offing, but the fact that it is even discussed reveals how effectively U.S. foreign policy
has created enemies and united them. Even if they would have drawn closer anyway, China and
Russia cannot ignore the advantage of teaming up in the face of U.S. hostility. A more idiotic
approach than this hostility is scarcely imaginable. Remember, not too long ago the U.S. had
little problem with its chief trading partner, China, and there were even reports some years
back of actual military cooperation in Syria between the U.S. and Russia. All that is gone now,
dissolved in a fog of deliberate ill-will.
So what are some of the absurd U.S. policies that have reaped this potential whirlwind? An
utterly unnecessary trade war with China, with tariffs that were paid, not by China, but by
importers and then passed on to American consumers. There is the Trump regime's assault on
China's technology sector and its attempt to lockout Huawei from the 5G bonanza. Then there are
the attacks on Russian business, like its deal to sell natural gas to Germany, attacks in which
the U.S. insists Germany buy the much more expensive U.S. product to avoid becoming beholden to
Russia. And of course, there are the constant mega-deals involving sales of U.S. weapons to
anyone who might oppose China, Russia, North Korea or Iran.
Aggravating these economic assaults, the U.S. navy aggressively patrols the South China Sea,
the Black Sea and more and more the Arctic Ocean, where Russia has already been since forever.
Russia has a lengthy Siberian coast, making U.S. talk of Russia's so-called aggressive posture
there just plain ludicrous. And now a NATO ally, Turkey, stirs the pot by egging on Azerbaijan
in its war against Armenia, which has a defense treaty with Russia. Azerbaijan is famous for
the oil fields of Baku.
Never has it been clearer that the U.S. deploys its military might to advance its
corporations' interests, international law be damned. As General Smedley Butler wrote of his
military service way back in the early 20 th century, he was "a high-class muscle
man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster
for capitalism. I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make
Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank Boys to collect revenues in," and on
and on. Nothing has changed since them. It's only gotten worse. Indeed now we're in a position
where it is Russia that abides by international law, while the U.S. flouts it, instead
following something bogus it calls the "rules of the liberal international order."
The biggest and most consequential U.S. foreign policy failure involves nuclear weapons.
Here the Trump regime has outdone all its predecessors. It withdrew the U.S. from the
Intermediate Range Nuclear treaty, which banned land-based ballistic missiles, cruise missiles
and certain missile launchers and which it first signed in 1987. It withdrew from the Open
Skies Treaty, inked in 1992. That agreement allowed aircraft to fly over the signatories'
territory to monitor missile installations.
Trump has also made clear he intends to deep-six the 2010 New Start Treaty with Russia,
which limits nuclear warheads, nuclear armed bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and
missile launchers. The Trump regime has made the ridiculous, treaty-killing demand that China
participate in START talks. Why should it? China has 300 nuclear missiles, on a par with
countries like the U.K. The U. S. and Russian have 6000 apiece. China's response? Sure we'll
join START, as soon as the U.S. cuts its arsenal to 300. Naturally that went over like a lead
balloon in Washington.
And now, lastly, the white house has urged nations that signed the Treaty on the Prohibition
of Nuclear Weapons – which just recently received formal UN ratification – to
withdraw their approval. The U.S. spouted doubletalk about the TPNW's dangers, in order to head
off international law banning nuclear weapons, just as it has banned – and thus
stigmatized – chemical weapons, cluster bombs and germ warfare. Doubtless the Trump
regime's panic over the TPNW derives from its desire to "keep all options on the table"
militarily, including the nuclear one.
What is the point here? To make the unthinkable thinkable, to make nuclear war easier to
happen. The Pentagon appears delighted. Periodically military bigwigs are quoted praising new
smaller nuclear missiles, developed not for deterrence, but for use. Indeed, scrapping
deterrence policy – which has, insofar as it posits no first use, arguably been the only
thing keeping humanity alive and the planet habitable since the dangerous dawn of the atomic
era – has long been the dream of Pentagon promoters of "small, smart nuclear weapons" for
"limited" nuclear wars. How these geniuses would control such a move from escalating into a
wider nuclear war and planetary holocaust is never mentioned.
Before he assumed office, Trump reportedly shocked his advisors by asking, if we have
nuclear weapons, why can't we use them? Only someone dangerously ignorant or profoundly lacking
in basic human morality could ask such a question. Only someone eager to ditch the
human-species-saving policy of no-first-strike nuclear deterrence but willing to risk nuclear
extinction could flirt with such madness. Later in his presidency, Trump asserted that he could
end the war in Afghanistan easily if he wanted, hinting that he meant nukes, but that he did
not incline toward murdering 10 million people. Well, thank God for this shred of humanity.
Some assume a Biden presidency would chart a different course, but they may be counting
their chickens before they're hatched. Biden has made very hostile noises about Russia, China
and North Korea and has surrounded himself with neo-con hawks. He has so far made no promise to
return to the nuclear negotiating table for anything other than START. Would he try to
resuscitate the INF and Open Skies treaties? Would he end Trump regime blather aimed at
scotching TPNW? Maybe. Or he may have imbibed so much anti-Russia and anti-China poison that
he, like Trump, sees the absence of treaties as a green light for nuclear aggression.
Biden's official Foreign Policy Plan says that he regards the purpose of nuclear weapons as
deterrence, thus endorsing this at best very flawed compromise for survival. That he,
apparently unlike Trump, abjures a nuclear first strike is a huge relief, but how long will it
last? The Pentagon has been very persuasive over many decades of center-right rule and there is
no reason to assume that it will suddenly adopt a hands-off policy with Biden just because he
favors nuclear deterrence. Some military-industrial-complex sachems regard the no-first-use
principle as a mistake. Also, remember, Obama okayed a trillion-dollar nuclear arms upgrade.
Biden was his vp. What about that? This is no minor, petty concern. Russia is armed to the
teeth with supersonic nuclear weapons and China has concluded from U.S. belligerence that it
better arm up too. We are in dangerous waters here. Let's hope they don't become
radioactive.
The US is essentially another colony to the multinationals who can set up domiciles in tax
havens, bribe politicians to enact favorable laws, and lobby for spending to enrich
themselves. That's the reality, not the liberals versus conservatives. They also have the
benefit of an unelected body that can enrich them through printing money which gives them
more power to stop other fiscal stimulus. It's evident in much of the world where this is
going on in the West. It is a variation of the Economic Shock Therapy applied by the West,
except that the oligarchs are spared from the economic shock.
With his laughable attempts at diplomacy and general hawkishness, he's certainly in the
runnings for the honor. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at a press conference at the
State Department in Washington, DC, on October 21, 2020. (Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/POOL/AFP via
Getty Images) |
12:01 AM
Is Mike Pompeo the worst secretary of state ever? He's been awful, no doubt. However, there
are 69 other contenders for that title.
Among modern secretaries, Colin Powell was misused by George W. Bush, who defrauded the
country in selling the tragically misbegotten invasion of Iraq. Madeleine Albright, her mindset
permanently stuck in Adolf Hitler's world, stands out for her enthusiastic embrace of war for
others to fight. Alexander Haig achieved little beyond claiming to be in charge in the wake of
the assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan. William Rogers was overshadowed by National
Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, who eventually took the latter's position.
Going back a bit further, Robert Lansing helped maneuver the U.S. into World War I, one of
the dumbest, most counterproductive moves in American history. The earlier one looks, the more
circumstances diverge, making any comparative judgment more difficult.
Still, about the best that can be said of Pompeo is that he has not gotten America into any
new wars, despite his best efforts. Most often he has played the anti-diplomat, determined to
insult, hector, demand, insist, dictate, threaten, harangue, and impose. But never persuade.
The results speak for themselves: the administration's record lacks any notable successes that
benefit the U.S, the supposed purpose of an "America First" foreign policy. There was a bit of
good, a lot of bad, and some real ugly.
A solid good was President Donald Trump's most important diplomatic initiative: his opening
with North Korea. Pompeo took over in March 2018, with the first summit already planned. That
initiative faltered the following year at the second summit in Hanoi, which was Pompeo's
responsibility.
Alas, the secretary lost points by apparently doing nothing to disabuse the president of the
belief that Pyongyang was prepared to turn over its entire arsenal with the hope that
Washington would look favorably upon its future aspirations. That was never going to happen,
especially after the allied double-cross of Libya, which yielded its missiles and nascent
nuclear program, and after Trump dumped the nuclear accord with Iran, demanding that Tehran
abjectly surrender its independent foreign policy. The North can easily imagine similar
mistreatment, by this or a future administration.
Washington has also pursued better relations with India, which is a positive. As elsewhere,
however, concern about human rights violations is almost entirely absent from Pompeo's
portfolio unless it operates as a weapon against an adversary. The secretary cheerfully holds
the coat of allied dictators as they jail, torture, and murder. Such is the case with Prime
Minister Narendra Modi, who has abetted if not aided rising religious persecution.
The Abrahamic accords between Israel and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates were a tepid
good. Improved relations between Arabs and Israelis are useful, though strengthening two
authoritarian regimes is not. The Bahraini Sunni monarchy sits atop a Shia population with the
backing of the Saudi military, while the Emirates, nicknamed "Little Sparta," by the Pentagon
-- as if that's a compliment -- has used its military to commit murder and mayhem against Yemen
in a war of political aggression and economic exploitation. The related negotiations with Sudan
have been worse, using an unjust terrorist state designation to force recognition of Israel,
which will undermine the democracy that has yet to be fully born after last year's popular
revolution.
Examples of bad are far more common. For example, Pompeo has worked to thwart the
president's evident desire to exit "endless wars." Nineteen years of nation-building in
Afghanistan is enough. The U.S. does not belong in the Syrian civil war. Iraq and its neighbors
are capable of and should deal with whatever remains of the Islamic State.
The secretary has played an equally malign role in Europe, undercutting his boss -- and, not
incidentally, the American people -- by working to spend more on, and place more troops in, the
continent, even as Trump pushed the Europeans to do more on their own defense. This is an inane
strategy: Washington should cut defense welfare to states with the capability to protect
themselves and allow them to decide how to proceed.
Much the same policy has played out with America's relationship to South Korea. Japan has
escaped most of that pressure. Yet consider the defensive capabilities against China for Japan
and the region if Tokyo spent not 1 percent of GDP on its military, but 2 or 3 percent. And why
shouldn't it do so, instead of expecting Americans to do the job for it?
The secretary turned human rights into a political weapon, sacrificing any credibility on
the issue. He tears up while criticizing Iran but kowtows to the Saudi royals, who are far more
brutal killers. He is horrified by the crimes committed by Venezuela's Maduro regime, but
spreads love to Egypt's Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has punished the slightest criticism, and
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is turning Turkey into an autocracy. Pompeo actually introduced a new
initiative in support of unalienable rights with the support of countries like Saudi
Arabia and other assorted tyrannies.
Then there is the ugly. Using sanctions to try starve the people of Syria and Venezuela in
order to force their governments to yield to America is not just immoral but ineffective. Both
regimes have survived much and are not inclined to surrender.
At least Venezuela is a matter of geographic interest to Washington. Syria has never
mattered to U.S. security and Pompeo should have backed the president's effort to bring home
all American troops. Today, U.S. and Russian troops are clashing there over the
administration's bizarre and illegal seizure of Syrian oilfields. Also inexplicable is
reinforcing six decades of failure by tightening sanctions on Cuba; the private business
community there has suffered badly as a result, reducing what was becoming a sharp challenge to
the political authorities during the waning days of the Obama administration.
The fixation on Iran, which appears to come more from Pompeo than Trump, can best be
explained as turning Mideast policy over to Saudi Arabia and Israel. The result of abandoning
the nuclear accord has been nothing short of catastrophic. The Iranians have refused to
negotiate. Instead they ramped up nuclear reprocessing, interfered with Gulf tanker traffic,
attacked Saudi oil facilities, and attacked U.S. bases and the embassy in Iraq. Far from
reestablishing deterrence, as claimed, the secretary was left to whimper and whine that he
might have to close America's embassy in Baghdad.
Pompeo has taken the lead in the administration's shameful policy toward Saudi Arabia,
aiding it in its war of aggression against impoverished Yemen. That nation has been at war
within and without for most of its existence. Riyadh decided to invade to restore a puppet
regime to power, turning typical internal discord into a sectarian war in which Tehran was able
to bleed the ineffective Saudi armed forces, which were armed and aided by the Pentagon. In
this way, the secretary has made the American population into accomplices to war crimes.
Even more foolish geopolitically, Pompeo has matched Albright's retreat to World War II
clichés with a stroll back into the Cold War. Russia is an unpleasant actor but doesn't
threaten American security. Europe is capable of defending itself. Alas, constantly piling on
sanctions without providing an off-ramp ensures continued Russian hostility and a tilt toward
China in that burgeoning struggle. How does this make any sense for America?
Finally, Pompeo has been his blundering, maladroit, offensive self in seeking to launch an
American-led campaign against the People's Republic of China. Beijing poses a serious
challenge, but not primarily a security issue. No one believes that the PRC plans to launch an
armada across the Pacific to conquer Hawaii. The issue is Washington's willingness to pay the
cost to forever treat Asia-Pacific waters as an American lake.
As for other issues, the U.S. needs work in concert with friendly powers. Pompeo has done
his best to drive away potential partners: for instance, the G-7 refused his demand to call
COVID-19 the Wuhan Virus and even allies such as South Korea have remained far more measured in
their relations with China, determined not to turn their large neighbor into an enemy. In what
promises to be a long and complicated relationship, genuine and serious diplomacy, which
obviously lies beyond Pompeo's limited capabilities, is required.
On the personal side, he appears to have abused his position for both personal and
ideological advantage. For example, so committed to showing his fealty to Riyadh, he declared
an "emergency" to thwart congressional opposition and rush munitions to the Saudi military so
it could kill more Yemeni civilians. He then sought to impede a departmental investigation,
pressuring and firing the inspector general. What prompted his determination to so avidly
assist a ruler who is ostentatiously vile, reckless, and even criminal is one of the greatest
mysteries of his tenure.
Tragically, Pompeo proved to be one of the greatest obstacles to the best of the president's
international agenda. In a speech delivered last year in which he claimed to be implementing
the Founders' foreign policy vision, he denigrated diplomacy and its successful fruits, such as
opening up both Cuba and Iran to potentially corrosive outside influences, which is the most
likely strategy to induce change over the long term. This approach would be more in sync with
Trump's desire to deal with countries such as North Korea and Iran.
Indeed, left to his own devices, Pompeo would likely have America at war with Iran and
perhaps beyond -- Venezuela, China, and/or Russia. His belligerence serves the American people
badly. As does his consistent campaign, conscious or not, to thwart the president's brave but
incompetent attempts to escape largely braindead practices enforced by what Ben Rhodes termed
"the Blob," the foreign policy establishment that dominates the field.
The secretary has forgotten that his job is not to push his personal ideological line.
Rather, it is to advance the interests of the American people, with a special emphasis on
defending their lives, territory, liberties, constitutional system, and prosperity. In this, he
has failed consistently. Maybe he isn't the worst secretary of state in history. But surely he
is one of the worst.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to
President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire
.
And this is also another opportunity of all the other stuff the US could have demanded
their allies should do as well as the USA that they haven't done because it would have caused
extreme autof/kery, sic banning the sale of airliners, engines, electronics etc. Russia could
simply have pulled its titanium supply. Guess who's share prices would tank first and all the
consequences?
As we have pointed out here before, while the US is exhorting u-Rope to 'take on for the
team,' mega-corps (though weakening) like GE has arrange full localization of its turbine
(power/mineral extraction) business with a local Russian partner. Yes. GE, Microsoft and
others told the White House to f/k off. Not in public.
What we see is salami slicing sanctions (SSS) where the west adds small slices here and
there that do add up, the latest being on suppling microelectronics to the Russian aviation
industry. This is to hobble Russia's investment in its current rebuilding of its civil
airliner industry or what's left of it. These sanction are a dick move precisely because they
are easy and get support from both american political parties.
We have also covered on this blog many times before, cutting Russia off from the Joy of
Sex West, they've cut their own markets off (retail/food produce etc.) which Russia
has in turn finally massively self-invested for domestic products and also up market
equivalents. That's cost u-Rope billions not only in lost sales, but in future sales share
that will not return to where it once was.
So, cutting off western microelectronics for aircraft looks even more weak p*ss
considering Russia's state strategic program of Russianizing its aircraft programs despite
the obvious up front cost. Russia was doing this anyway because it was obvious which way the
wind was blowing. Either they get on with it or they will be forced to do it.
The west is running out of any meaningful sanctions they can enact without causing futher
blowback. How stupid is that? It's the product of thirty years of 'Do Something'
policy however dumb or short sighted because the West has to be seen to do something. The
concept of Leave it Alone has never crossed their minds. It really is an ad dick tion!
😉 Just don't expect to finding them in a self-help group admitting to all the nasty
s/t they've done and as part of their step program, reaching out and apologizing for any of
it. Neither them nor their media supporting hamsters.
Western hypocrisy revealed 10 years after the event in today's Independent:
"Tony Blair and Iraq: The damning evidence" . And they go on and on about those wicked,
evil Russians and their tyrannical leader causing death and destruction Syria by their
"support" of the Assad government whilst the West arms the "freedom fighters" there.
Congress and White House work together to reward the Jewish state PHILIP GIRALDI NOVEMBER 3, 2020 1,300 WORDS
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COMMENTS REPLY
The U.S. election will end today, more or less, and we Americans will suffer another four
years of putting up with serial nonsense out of a White House and Congress that could care less
about us no matter who is elected. Whether the party where everything changes or the party
where everything remains the same wins the inevitable result will be further aggrandizement of
authoritarian power combined with increased distancing of government from the people who are
ruled.
Amidst all the gloom, however, there is one great success story. That is the tale of how
Israel and its friends in politics and financial circles have been able to screw every possible
advantage out of both major parties simultaneously and apparently effortlessly. Israel might be
the true undisputed winner in the 2020 election even though it was not on the ballot and was
hardly mentioned at all during the campaign.
Jewish billionaires with close ties to Israel have been courted by the two major parties,
both to come up with contributions and to urge their friends in the oligarch club and media to
also respond favorably. The Democrats'
largest single donor is entertainment mogul Haim Saban while the Republicans rely on casino
multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson. It is estimated that 60% of the political contributions for
the Democrats comes from Jewish sources and Saban is the single largest contributor. He is also
an Israeli holding dual citizenship. Adelson, who may also hold dual citizenship and is married
to an Israeli, is the major supporter of the Republicans, having coughed up more than $100
million in recent elections.
Both Saban and Adelson have not been shy about supporting Israel as their first priority.
Saban is on record as supporting Joe Biden "because of his track record on supporting Israel
and its alliance with the United States." Adelson, who was drafted into the U.S. Army in the
1950s, has said that he would much rather have served in the Israel Defense Force. Saban and
Adelson are joined in their love fest with Israel by a number of Israel-firsters in Congress
and the Administration, all eager to shower unlimited political support, money and weapons on
the Jewish state.
In the latest manifestation of noblesse oblige, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper
stopped off in Israel last week to present his counterparts with a significant bit of
assistance, all funded by the American taxpayer, of course. According to sources in Washington
and Jerusalem, the U.S. "will grant Israel direct access to highly classified satellites such
as the missile detection birds known as SBIRS and ensure Israel gets critical defense platforms
in a very short time by using production slots planned for the U.S armed forces." Israel will
also be given "deeper access to the core avionic systems" of the new F-35 fighter that it has
been obtaining from Washington.
The claimed rationale for the upgrade is the Congressionally mandated requirement for the
U.S. to maintain Israel's "qualitative military edge" in light of the impending sale of the
F-35 to Arab states that have recently established diplomatic relations with Israel. At the
time, Israeli sources were suggesting that the Jewish state
might need $8 billion in new military
hardware upgrades to maintain its advantage over its neighbors. It is presumed that the
American taxpayer will foot the bill, even though there is a serious financial crisis going on
in the U.S.
The satellite detection system operates from aerial platforms that are deployed on
helicopters. The astute reader will notice that no U.S. security interest is involved in the
latest giveaway to Israel. On the contrary, Israel will be receiving material from "production
slots planned for the U.S. armed forces," reducing America's own ability to detect incoming
missiles. And there will also be considerable damage to American defense interests in that
Israel will inevitably steal the advanced F-35 technology that they will be given access to,
re-engineer it for their own defense industries and sell it to clients in Asia, Africa, and
Latin America. They have
done so before , selling U.S. developed missile technology to China.
Congress is also doing its bit. A bill, the so-called "U.S.-Israel Common Defense
Authorization Act," is making its way through the House of Representatives and will authorize
the provision of U.S. manufactured
bunker buster bombs to Israel. As the bombs would only be useful in Israel's neighborhood
to bomb hardened sites in Iran, the message being sent is obvious. The Massive Ordnance
Penetrator weighs 30,000 pounds and is capable of destroying targets located deep underground.
Oddly, Israel doesn't have a plane capable of carrying that weight so the presumption is that
the White House will also have to provide the bomber. The bill is co-sponsored by two leading
Israel firsters in Congress Democrat Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Republican Brian Mast of
Florida.
Israel is also
seeking an upgrade of some of its other fighter aircraft. It reportedly has approached the
Pentagon seeking to buy the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, a single-seat, twin-engine,
all-weather stealth tactical fighter aircraft that was originally developed for the United
States Air Force (USAF). Its stealth capability, top speed, maneuverability combined with
advanced air-to-air and air-to-ground weapon systems, makes it the best air superiority fighter
in the world.
Unfortunately for Israel, the F-22 is not currently available and is only operated by the
USAF. Current U.S. federal law prohibits the export of the plane to anyone to protect its top
secret advanced stealth technology as well as a number of advances in weaponry and situational
awareness. But if deference to Israel's wishes is anything to go by, one might safely bet that
the Jewish state will have received approval to acquire the plane by inauguration day in
January. And it is a safe bet that Israeli defense contractors will have reverse engineered the
stealth and other features soon thereafter.
The U.S. government has been pandering to Israel in other ways,
to include labeling , and sanctioning, prominent human rights groups that have criticized
the Jewish state as anti-Semitic. It has also strengthened existing sanctions
against Iranian financial institutions , reportedly in an attempt to make it more difficult
for a President Biden to reinstate the suspended Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)
that sought to monitor the Iranian nuclear program. The sanctions come on top of other moves to
destroy the Iranian economy, to include " that the U.S., along with Israel, has in recent
months carried out sabotage attacks inside Iran, destroying power plants, aluminum and chemical
factories, a medical clinic and 7 ships at the port of Bushehr "
Other recent developments favoring Israel include Congress's legislating Israeli government
veto authority over U.S. sales of weapons to any other Middle Eastern nation. The bill is
called "Guaranteeing Israel's QME [Qualitative Military Edge] Act of 2020" (H.R. 8494). There
has also been the
expansion by Executive Order of U.S. funded illegal West Bank Jewish settlements' science
development projects that will eventually compete with American companies.
In truth, the United States has become Israel's bitch and there is hardly a politician or
journalist who has the courage to say so. Congress and the media have been so corrupted by
money emanating from the Israeli lobby that they cannot do enough to satisfy America's rulers
in Jerusalem. And for those who do not succumb to the money there is always intimidation,
career-ending weaponized accusations of holocaust-denial and anti-Semitism. It is all designed
to produce one result: whoever wins in American elections doesn't matter as long as Israel gets
what it wants. And it almost always gets what it wants.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest,
a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a
more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email isinform@cnionline.org .
' The sanctions come on top of other moves to destroy the Iranian economy, to include "
that the U.S., along with Israel, has in recent months carried out sabotage attacks inside
Iran, destroying power plants, aluminum and chemical factories, a medical clinic and 7 ships
at the port of Bushehr "
Good fucking question. I for one am sick of this shit ..claims made, no sources revealed
we are supposed to take these claims on "faith" ..akin to a religion.
I can tell you this. If I was Iran I'd be working day and fucking night to get a nuke the
neocon, liberalcon warmongers have made it clear as soon as it's convenient, invasion and
destroy Iran
Like Neo when he is first released from the matrix and in the construct "I want out, let
me out" .of this insanity, the mask shit included.
He also just assumes Jewish trickery, and not the obvious fact that Israel is like
Medicare and Social Security and NASA: popular with politicians because it is popular with
the public.
Israel, as Phil's commie friends put it, is our "settler-colonial" daughter state. And
nothing is too good for our girl!
I have been reading articles that go back as far as 1967 and the U.S.S. Liberty incident
in which it was implied by many writers that the U.S. was Israel's bitch. It's not as if this
thought is new, as even Admiral Thomas Moorer having stated he never knew a U.S. president
who could stand up to Israel. If all of this is true, it's pathetic as well.
Is it possible that the USA will curtail her defence power for the sake of Israel? What
will be the benefit of the USA if it amplifies Israeli Defence at the cost of US defence?
Dr. Phil, your article is truly very precise, penetrating and embarrassing to our
political class.
I can see that the American public is already all stirred up and will not take this
slouched in front of their TV sets watching the game any longer.
The MAGA's are sure to march on the White House and oust our leaders Kushner / Ivanka. The
BLM/ANTIFA's are sure to demonstrate again and ransack Congress and oust the Pelosi
Democrats.
Hilarious, LOL
I decided not to hold my breath waiting for any public reaction.
We Americans at the bottom of the money pyramid prefer to fight and name call each other
and not look upwards.
That's why America needs a revolution culminating in a complete regime change. Civil war
already appears to be on the horizon, ugly things will Bev happening, but it will
unfortunately be necessary to change the world for the better. And other countries, France,
Germany and Britain may follow.
A Democrat of New Jersey and a Republican of Florida sponsoring a bill to benefit Israel
let's just forget the Jewish angle in all these charades and call it bipartisan.
Do we need to have sources on these issues?
Haven't you learn by now, that any stone you pick, you will find a Jew hiding under?
Few days ago, with all this Bobulinski/Joe Biden/Hunter family crap I said to my wife.
Honey something is missing from the whole story.
She ask. What is missing?
I said. The Jew
And two days ago .voila!
The Yaacov(s) Apelbaum(s) have everything to see https://apelbaum.wordpress.com/
I always thought we were England's "bitch". Fought 2 world wars to stop them from having
to learn German and have continued to use our military to support their business interests
throughout the world. It can even be argued that our support for Israel is based on our
subservience to the British Crown since Israel itself is a British project. Anyway, there is
no major political leader in the US who hasn't said he is a staunch supporter of Israel. That
isn't going to change.
The way Trump has bent over and offered his rear to the Jewish lobby and Israel is
embarrassing. The USA should help and support Israel, but not at the blatant expense of
raping its own citizens.
However, one can't blame Israel for taking advantage of the corruption and weakness in the
USA, and also its amazingly dumb voting public. Who wouldn't want another country(USA) to pay
for their military(Israel) and also use the USA to fight, pay, and die for Israel?
White nationalists blame the Jewish lobby for much of the problems in America, but at the
same time they lovingly Asskiss Trump and his horrid son-in-law, who would sell out America
to Israel without any hesitation. This is first-class stupidity.
Biden may say he is a Zionist, but he has never shown the full-on, total sellout Trump has
done in putting Jewish interests always before American interests. Trump and his horrid
son-in-law have literally allowed Israel to rape America's ass everyday since he has been
POTUS.
A vote for Trump is a vote for the Jewish lobby to keep on raping America's ass thru
"bendover" Trump for the next 4 years.
Strangely here in Australia, chairman Morrison was going to put three and a half million
dollars to be matched by his hopefully newly elected Qld premier, into constructing a Jewish
holocaust museum. One can only wonder why in Qld, Australia of all places and in the 21st
century, we would need to have a Jewish propaganda business setup. Paid for by the poor old
taxpayer of course.
What follows? A museum dedicated to the twenty million dead Russians. Maybe one for the
hundreds of thousands of slaughtered Iraqi muslims. Or one in remembrance to the millions of
lives lost to the covid19 holocaust of 2020.
Sadly it seems like this Jewish rot is spreading quicker than the virus through our
societies.
The US and the Rothschild neocolony in Palestine are part of the same conglomerate. Simon
Bolivar was warning us that the US would enslave the Americas in the name of "freedom" a
years before the Monroe Doctrine became a thing, so it didn't exactly become what it is after
the Ziocorporate neocolony came to exist. How nice that the goals of the founding fathers and
the Ziocorporate world order came to intertwine so conveniently since so early on.
Have the Ziocorporate contractors and entities profited from selling tech and weapons to
the Ziosalafi former British colonies in the Middle East and from the petrodollar?
Transfering all that technology, spanning everything from nuclear weapons to cybersecurity
and AI, is the way to ensure that mafia conglomerate's primacy there and everywhere.
Jews of Europe and North Africa could've been Haavara'd to the US after WW2 but that would
have limited and complicated business opportunities for the American overclass to globalise
the Monroe Doctrine. Rome wasn't built in a day after all.
@Rich and while
we are about it you never broke the German enigma code, we did, whatever your lying Hollywood
garbage tells you. So maybe, if you end up in a war we will sell you stuff from the sidelines
until we get dragged into it ourselves and then we will see how grateful you are. As I said
earlier, save it for the French.
WW1, on the other hand was a stalemate until the Americans joined (late as always) and
after you had made huge profits, mainly at our expense. So we weren't exactly in danger then
either.
So no, you are not our bitches, both of our nations are bitches of the international
bankers.
Philip! You used the word bitch. For a faceless nobody like me that's fine but for you Mr.
Giraldi, the 'spears tip' and highly respected member of the 'beware of Zion' movement that's
even better. (Grin)
That kikenvermin Gottheimer unfortunately happens to be my congressman. He's in a close
election so lets hope he loses even though his opponent is all too aware of the power of the
CABAL. I pray for even worse endings for this slug, Jay -sus forgive me.
Outgoing US President Donald Trump has delivered his "parting gift" to the Moscow-led Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, with newly announced sanctions targeting a pipe-laying vessel and companies involved in the multinational project.
© Gazprom / Nord Stream 2 45 Follow RT on
Poland's antitrust watchdog UOKiK said on Wednesday it has imposed a 29 billion-zloty ($7.6 billion) fine on Russia's Gazprom over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, designed to boost gas supplies to the EU.
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