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
“As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government
at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying
the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of
maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on
the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind
eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined.”
New American militarism is connected with the desire to establish global neoliberal empire ruled by the USA (the dream of total world
dominance). It became official policy since the collapse of the USSR and involves "heliocentric" view on foreign policy,
when the USA is the center of the world order and other states just rotate around it on various orbits. The US population is by-and-large-completely
brainwashed into this vision.
Opposition to the US militarism is almost non-existent due contemporary US popular culture infused with the language of militarism
and American exceptionalism. As Bacevich noted:
In any Clancy novel, the international order is a dangerous and threatening place, awash with heavily armed and implacably determined
enemies who threaten the United States. That Americans have managed to avoid Armageddon is attributable to a single fact: the men
and women of America’s uniformed military and its intelligence services have thus far managed to avert those threats. The typical
Clancy novel is an unabashed tribute to the skill, honor, extraordinary technological aptitude and sheer decency of the nation’s
defenders. To read Red Storm Rising is to enter a world of ‘virtuous men and perfect weapons’, as one reviewer noted. ‘All the Americans
are paragons of courage, endurance and devotion to service and country. Their officers are uniformly competent and occasionally inspired.
Men of all ranks are faithful husbands and devoted fathers.’ Indeed, in the contract that he signed for the filming of Red October,
Clancy stipulated that nothing in the film show the navy in a bad light.
The "New American militarism" or as it called "Neocon mentality" is not that different
from the early Soviets militarism (of Trotskyite variety), eager to spread the blessings of Scientific Socialism toward other
countries on the tips of bayonets. Here the role of scientific socialism is played by neoliberal ideology. With the slogan
"Transnational elite unite" and Davos style Congresses of the new "Neoliberal International" of comprador elites. While
converting other countries into neoliberal model using color revolution of direct military invasion or combination of both) are disguised
as spread of "democracy".
In this new Crusade for world hegemony the key ideas of Trotsky Permanent Revolution remains intact -- a crusade for establishing
new social system on all counties on the Earth. This is just Great Neoliberal Crusade, instead of Communist Crusade. This new
justification for Crusades has the same problems as two previous. But it does not matter as the key role of democracy here is the same
as in quote "the goal justifies the means"
Professor Andrew Bacevich wrote several short books on the subject. he avoids the term neoliberalism and did not try to explain new
American militarism in terms of the quest for neoliberal empire expansion. But he is a very good observer and the books contain many
insights into US elite thinking and blunders. Among them we can note two:
While all three books are excellent and raise important issues, they overlap. Probably the most original and the most important
on them is Washington Rules, were Bacevich attempts to explain "Permanent War for Permanent Peace" that the USA practice since the end
of WWII. All three books have the same weaknesses: Bacevich does not see connection between Neoliberalism demand for economic expansion
and "New American Militarism" and regime of permanent wars that the USA pursue since WWII.
He provide sharp critique of neocons, but never ask the question: which political forces brought those pathetic second or third rate
thinkers to the forefront of formulation of the US foreign policy and maintain them for more then a decade after Iraq debacle.
He also mistakenly believe that American people (who were completely estranged from any influence on nation's policies) bear some
guilt for the policy which was formulated to benefit the first hundred of the largest US corporations. In other words he does not understand
that the USA is yet another occupied country.
[Neocons] advocate permanent war for permanent peace
Professor Basevich
The foreign policy of the USA since 1945, but especially, after the dissolution of the USSR was and is "open militarism". Recently
John Quiggin tried to define militarism is came to the following definition (crookedtimber.org):
100 years after the Battle of the Somme, it's hard to see that much has been learned from the catastrophe of the Great War and
the decades of slaughter that followed it. Rather than get bogged down (yet again) in specifics that invariably decline into arguments
about who know more of the historical detail, I'm going to try a different approach, looking at the militarist ideology that gave
us the War, and trying to articulate an anti-militarist alternative.
Wikipedia offers a definition of militarism which, with the
deletion of a single weasel word, seems to be entirely satisfactory and also seems to describe the dominant view of the political
class, and much of the population in nearly every country in the world.
Militarism is the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and
be prepared to use it aggressively[^1] to defend or promote national interests
This new epidemic of the US militarism started after the dissolution of the USSR was called by Professor Bacevich (who is former
colonel of the US army) it New American Militarism.
global interventionism is used to achieve those ends.
Professor Bacevich had shown that the main driver of the US militarism is neocons domination of the US foreign policy, and, especially,
neocons domination in State Department regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats are in power. They profess that the US that is
uniquely qualified to take on the worldwide foes of peace and democracy, forgetting, revising, or ignoring the painful lessons of World
War II, Vietnam, and Iraq. And that establishing and maintaining the neoliberal empire is worth the price we pay as it will take the
USA into the period of unprecedented peace.
Bacevich scored a direct hit on the foundations of the American national security state with this scathing critique, and demolishes
the unspoken assumptions that he believes have led the United States into a senseless, wasteful, and counter-productive "perpetual
war for perpetual peace".
Bacevich scores a direct hit on the foundations of the American national security state with this scathing critique, and demolishes
the unspoken assumptions that he believes have led the United States into a senseless, wasteful, and counter-productive posture of
nearly perpetual war. These assumptions take the form of the "credo" -- which holds that the United States has the unique responsibility
to intervene wherever it wants, for whatever purpose it wants, by whatever means it wants -- and the supporting "trinity" of
requirements for the U.S. to maintain a global military presence, to configure its military forces for global power projection, and
to counter threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism.
Lessons that President Obama is clearly never able to learn. In this sense his book
Washington Rules: America's
Path to Permanent War is an excellent peace of research with sections that some may find very troubling as it suggest that the USA
elite is suicidal and is ready to sacrifice the county for achieving its delusional goal of world domination.
UFPPC (www.ufppc.org) Digging Deeper CXXXVII: September 27, 2010, 7:00 p.m.
Andrew J. Bacevich, Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, August
2010).
Thesis
The Washington consensus on national security policy that constitutes convention wisdom in American foreign policy began with
the Cold War and survived, remarkably, the Vietnam War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, no longer serves American interests,
but the failure of the Obama administration to alter it shows that change can only come from the American people.
Introduction: Slow Learner
The author's faith in orthodoxy began to crumble when visiting the BrandenburgGate in Berlin in the winter of 1990-1991(1-4).
In October 1990 a visit to Jenarevealed the backwardness of EastGermany (4-6). During his years in the Army, Bacevich had kept down
doubts; after the end of the Cold War he retired, and his loss of status freed him to educate himself (6-10).
"George W.Bush's decision to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 pushed me fully into opposition" (10). "This book aims to
take stock of conventional wisdom" (11). The past 60 years of American history shows continuity: a symbiotic "credo" (formulated
by Henry Luce in 1941 as the "American Century") and a "sacred trinity" ("the minimum essentials of international peace and order
require the United States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter
existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism") together define "the rules to which Washington
adheres" (11-15).
In this book, "Washington" refers to the upper echelons of the three branches of government, the main agencies of the national
security state, select think tanks and interest groups, "big banks and other financial institutions, defense contractors and major
corporations, television networks and elite publications like the New York Times, even quasi-academic entities like the Council on
Foreign Relations and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government" (15).
This book aspires to
(1) trace the history of the Washington rules;
(2) show who wins, who loses, and who pays under them;
(3) explain how itis perpetuated;
(4) show that the rules have lost what utility they might once have had;
and (5) re-legitimate "disreputable (or 'radical') views to our national security debates" (16).
The American Century is ending, and it "has become essential" to devise an "alternative to the reining national security paradigm"
(16-18).
Ch. 1: The Advent of Semiwar.
As president, Barack Obama's efforts to change the U.S.'s exercise of power "have seldom risen above the cosmetic"(20). He made
clear he subscribes to the "catechism of American statecraft," viz. that 1) the world must be organized, 2)only the U.S. can do it,
3) this includes dictating principles, and 4) not to accept this is to be a rogue or a recalcitrant (20-21).
It follows that the U.S. need not conform to the norms it sets for others and that it should maintain a worldwide network of bases
(22-23).
Imagine if China acted in a comparable manner (23-25). The extraordinary American military posture in the world (25-27). To call
this into question puts one beyond the pale(27). James Forrestal called this a permanent condition of semiwar, requiring high levels
of military spending(27-28).
American citizens are not supposed to concern themselves with it (29-30). As to how this came about, the "standard story line"
presents as the result of the decisions of a "succession of presidential administrations," though this conceals as much as it reveals
(30-32).
Eisenhower's 1961 Farewell Address on the "military-industrial complex" was a rare exception (32-34). More important than presidents
were Allen Dulles [1893-1969] and Curtis Lemay [1906-1990] (34-36).
Bacevich attributes the vision for an American-dominated post-World War II world with the CIA playing an active role to the patrician
Dulles (36-43). The development of the U.S. military into a force capable of dominating the world, especially in the area of strategic
weapons, he attributes to the hard-bitten Curtis LeMay, organizer of the StrategicAir Command (SAC) (43-52). Dulles and LeMay shared
devotion to country, ruthlessness, a certain recklessness (52-55). They exploited American anxieties and insecurities in yin (Dulles's
CIA) yang(LeMay's SAC) fashion, leaving the mainstay of American military power, the U.S. Army, in a relatively weak position(55-58).
Ch. 2: Illusions of Flexibility and Control
Kennedy kept Dulles and LeMay to signal continuity, but there was a behind-the-scenes struggle led by Gen. Maxwell Taylor to reassert
the role of the U.S. Army by expanding and modernizing conventional forces that was "simultaneously masked by, and captured in, the
phrase flexible response " (60; 59-63).
This agenda purported to aim at "resisting aggression" but really created new options for limited aggressive warfare by the U.S.
(63-66).
McNamara engaged in a struggle with LeMay to control U.S. policy on nuclear weapons, but he embraced the need for redundancy based
on a land-sea-air attack "triad" and LeMay et al. "got most of what they wanted" (66-72).
In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy instituted the morally and legally "indefensible" Operation Mongoose," in effect,
a program of state-sponsored terrorism" against Cuba (80; 72-82 [but Bacevich is silent on its wilder elements, like Operation Northwoods]).
U.S. recklessness caused the Cuban Missile Crisis, and to his credit Kennedy acknowledged this (albeit privately) and "suspended
the tradition" in defusing the crisis (82-87).
Bacevich rejects as a romantic delusion the view that in the aftermath of this crisis Kennedy turned against the military-industrial
complex and the incipient Vietnam war and shows no interest in Kennedy's assassination itself (87-92).
He sees a parallel between escalation in Vietnam and post-9/11 aggression as "fought to sustain the Washington consensus" (107;
92-107).
Ch. 3: The Credo Restored.
William Fulbright's The Arrogance of Power (1966) urged a rethinking of the Washington rules (109-15). A radicalized David Shoup,
a Medal of Honor winner and former commandant of the MarineCorps, argued in "The New American Militarism" (Atlantic, April 1969)
that the U.S. had become "a militaristic and aggressive nation" (120; 115-21). The 1960s Zeitgeist shift made LeMay "an
embarrassment, mocked and vilified rather than venerated," which showed that the Washington rules had incurred serious damage in
Vietnam; the Army was in dire shape (122; 121-27).
Yet astonishingly, in the subsequent decade the "sacred trinity" (cf. 11-15) was "fully restored" (127). As in post-1918 Germany,
élites looked for scapegoats and worked to reverse "the war's apparent verdict" (128). The Council on Foreign Relations 1976 volume
entitled The Vietnam Legacy: The War, American Society, and the Future of American Foreign Policy is an expression of élite
consensus that the Vietnam war was insignificant, an anomaly (129-34).
By 1980, Democrats and Republicans were again on the same page (134-36).Reagan's election "sealed the triumph of Vietnam revisionism"
(136; 136-38). And the end of the Cold War posed no challenge to the Washington rules, as Madeleine Albright's pretentious arrogance
exemplifies (138-45).
Ch. 4: Reconstituting the Trinity
The period from 1980 to 2000 saw "notretrenchment but reconfiguration" (147). The new mission was not American defense but
facilitation of a new world order (148-50). After 9/11 this pretense was dropped and "[a]ctivism became the watchword" (150,
emphasis in original;150-52). Resorting to war became "notably more frequent and less controversial" in 1980-2000, finding "its ultimate
expression in the Bush Doctrine of preventive war" (152-53). Americans "passively assented" (154).
Behind the scenes, the shape this took was struggled over by the officer corps and civilian semi-warriors pushing RMA(Revolution
in Military Affairs) (154-64).Initially, U.S. élites held that victory in Iraq demonstrated that speed could be substituted for mass
in military campaigns (165-75). But the experience of the occupation revealed this to be a fantasy (175-81).
Ch. 5: Counterfeit COIN.
Counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, replacing "shock and awe" as "the Long War" replaced the "global war on terror," is the latest
doctrinal effort to preserve the Washington rules (182-86). The so-called "surge" implicitly marked a quest for conditions allowing
the U.S. to leave Iraq without admitting defeat (186-91).Gen. David Petraeus emerged as an advocate (and as salesman, through FM3-24,
the manual he revised and which Bacevich insists is in its emphasis on narrative replete with postmodernism) of counterinsurgency
doctrine as "a substitute [for warfare] suited to the exercise of great power politics in the twilight of modernity" (197; 191-97).
Implicitly, the manual argues that "war as such . . . no longer worked" (198; 198-202). Petraeus took credit for progress in Iraq
that he did not achieve (202-04).
The general with a Princeton Ph.D. was lionized with a view to normalizing war and lowering expectations, a view now embraced
by the Obama administration(205-11). Proponents of global counterinsurgency (GCOIN) emerged, like John Nagl and Gen. Benet Sacolick
(211-13). Obama embraced the GCOIN version of the Long War with Gen.Stanley McChrystal to carry it out in Afghanistan, forfeiting
the opportunity to reassess American policy (213-21).
Ch. 6: Cultivating Our Own Garden.
Time-honored no-nonsense American pragmatism has turned into an absurdity-swallowing herd mentality (222-23). The problem set the
U.S. faces has radically changed from the time of the early Cold War, but the "sacred trinity" (cf. 11-15) that proposes to address
them remains essentially the same (224-25).Eisenhower would have been appalled(225-26). The size of the Pentagon budget, the
size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and the extent of overseas military presence cannot be justified(226-27).
These persist because of the interests they serve, not the mission the fulfill, and are likely to do so for sometime (228-30).
Bacevich invokes George Kennan, William Fulbright, and Martin Luther King Jr. in urging that the U.S. needs a new approach, to model
freedom rather than impose it (231-37). First and foremost, America should save not the world but itself (237).
Bacevich proposes a new trinity:
the purpose of the military is to defend the U.S. and its vital interests;
soldiers' primary duty stations are on American soil;
force should be used only as a last resort and in self-defense, in accord with the Just War tradition (238-41).
The American public must shoulder its complicity in what has happened, fostered by an all-volunteer force and debt-financed budgets
(241-47). It is tragic that Barack Obama, elected to institute change, has lacked the courage to alter the Washington rules,
instead "choosing to conform" (247-49). "If change is to come, it must come from the people"(249). The need for education "has
become especially acute" (249; 249-50).
Except from Macmillan
Introduction: Slow Learner Worldly ambition inhibits true learning. Ask me. I know. A young man in a hurry is nearly uneducable:
He knows what he wants and where he's headed; when it comes to looking back or entertaining heretical thoughts, he has neither the
time nor the inclination. All that counts is that he is going somewhere. Only as ambition wanes does education become a possibility.
My own education did not commence until I had reached middle age. I can fix its start date with precision: For me, education began
in Berlin, on a winter's evening, at the Brandenburg Gate, not long after the Berlin Wall had fallen. As an officer in the U.S. Army
I had spent considerable time in Germany. Until that moment, however, my family and I had never had occasion to visit this most famous
of German cities, still littered with artifacts of a deeply repellent history. At the end of a long day of exploration, we found
ourselves in what had, until just months before, been the communist East. It was late and we were hungry, but I insisted on walking
the length of the Unter den Linden, from the River Spree to the gate itself. A cold rain was falling and the pavement glistened.
The buildings lining the avenue, dating from the era of Prussian kings, were dark, dirty, and pitted. Few people were about. It was
hardly a night for sightseeing. For as long as I could remember, the Brandenburg Gate had been the preeminent symbol of the age and
Berlin the epicenter of contemporary history.
Yet by the time I made it to the once and future German capital, history was already moving on. The Cold War had abruptly ended.
A divided city and a divided nation had re united. For Americans who had known Berlin only from a distance, the city existed primarily
as a metaphor. Pick a date— 1933, 1942, 1945, 1948, 1961, 1989—and Berlin becomes an instructive symbol of power, depravity, tragedy,
defiance, endurance, or vindication. For those inclined to view the past as a chronicle of parables, the modern history of Berlin
offered an abundance of material. The greatest of those parables emerged from the events of 1933 to 1945, an epic tale of evil ascendant,
belatedly confronted, then heroically overthrown.
A second narrative, woven from events during the intense period immediately following World War II, saw hopes for peace dashed,
yielding bitter antagonism but also great resolve. The ensuing stand-off—the "long twilight struggle," in John Kennedy's memorable
phrase— formed the centerpiece of the third parable, its central theme stubborn courage in the face of looming peril. Finally came
the exhilarating events of 1989, with freedom ultimately prevailing, not only in Berlin, but throughout Eastern Europe.
.... ... ...
Although commonly depicted as the most advanced and successful component of the Soviet Empire, East Germany more closely resembled
part of the undeveloped world.
... ... ...
Briquettes of soft coal used for home heating made the air all but unbreathable and coated everything with soot. In the German
cities we knew, pastels predominated—houses and apartment blocks painted pale green, muted salmon, and soft yellow. Here everything
was brown and gray
... ... ...
Bit by bit, my worldview started to crumble. That worldview had derived from this conviction: that American power manifested a
commitment to global leadership, and that both together expressed and affirmed the nation's enduring devotion to its founding ideals.
That American power, policies, and purpose were bound together in a neat, internally consistent package, each element drawing strength
from and reinforcing the others, was something I took as a given. That, during my adult life, a penchant for interventionism had
become a signature of U.S. policy did not—to me, at least—in any way contradict America's aspirations for peace. Instead, a willingness
to expend lives and treasure in distant places testified to the seriousness of those aspirations. That, during this same period,
the United States had amassed an arsenal of over thirty-one thousand nuclear weapons, some small number of them assigned to units
in which I had served, was not at odds with our belief in the inalienable right to life and liberty; rather, threats to life and
liberty had compelled the United States to acquire such an arsenal and maintain it in readiness for instant use.2 I was not so naíve
as to believe that the American record had been without flaws. Yet I assured myself that any errors or misjudgments had been committed
in good faith. Furthermore, circumstances permitted little real choice. In Southeast Asia as in Western Europe, in the Persian Gulf
as in the Western Hemisphere, the United States had simply done what needed doing. Viable alternatives did not exist. To consent
to any dilution of American power would be to forfeit global leadership, thereby putting at risk safety, prosperity, and freedom,
not only our own but also that of our friends and allies.
The choices seemed clear enough. On one side was the status quo: the commitments, customs, and habits that defined American globalism,
implemented by the national security apparatus within which I functioned as a small cog. On the other side was the prospect of appeasement,
isolationism, and catastrophe. The only responsible course was the one to which every president since Harry Truman had adhered. For
me, the Cold War had played a crucial role in sustaining that worldview.
Given my age, upbringing, and professional background, it could hardly have been otherwise. Although the great rivalry between
the United States and the Soviet Union had contained moments of considerable anxiety — I remember my father, during the Cuban Missile
Crisis, stocking our basement with water and canned goods — it served primarily to clarify, not to frighten.
The Cold War provided a framework that organized and made sense of contemporary history. It offered a lineup and a scorecard.
That there existed bad Germans and good Germans, their Germans and our Germans, totalitarian Germans and Germans who, like Americans,
passionately loved freedom was, for example, a proposition I accepted as dogma. Seeing the Cold War as a struggle between good and
evil answered many questions, consigned others to the periphery, and rendered still others irrelevant.
Back in the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, more than a few members of my generation had rejected the conception of the Cold War
as a Manichean struggle. Here too, I was admittedly a slow learner. Yet having kept the faith long after others had lost theirs,
the doubts that eventually assailed me were all the more disorienting. Granted, occasional suspicions had appeared long before Jena
and Berlin
My own Vietnam experience had generated its share, which I had done my best to suppress. I was, after all, a serving soldier.
Except in the narrowest of terms, the military profession, in those days at least, did not look kindly on nonconformity. Climbing
the ladder of career success required curbing maverick tendencies. To get ahead, you needed to be a team player. Later, when studying
the history of U.S. foreign relations in graduate school, I was pelted with challenges to orthodoxy, which I vigorously deflected.
When it came to education, graduate school proved a complete waste of time — a period of intense study devoted to the further accumulation
of facts, while I exerted myself to ensuring that they remained inert.
Now, however, my personal circumstances were changing. Shortly after the passing of the Cold War, my military career ended. Education
thereby became not only a possibility, but also a necessity. In measured doses, mortification cleanses the soul. It's the perfect
antidote for excessive self-regard. After twenty-three years spent inside the U.S. Army seemingly going somewhere, I now found myself
on the outside going nowhere in particular. In the self-contained and cloistered universe of regimental life, I had briefly risen
to the status of minor spear carrier. The instant I took off my uniform, that status vanished. I soon came to a proper appreciation
of my own insignificance, a salutary lesson that I ought to have absorbed many years earlier. As I set out on what eventually became
a crablike journey toward a new calling as a teacher and writer—a pilgrimage of sorts—ambition in the commonly accepted meaning of
the term ebbed. This did not happen all at once. Yet gradually, trying to grab one of life's shiny brass rings ceased being a major
preoccupation.
Wealth, power, and celebrity became not aspirations but subjects for critical analysis.
History—especially the familiar narrative of the Cold War—no longer offered answers; instead, it posed perplexing riddles. Easily
the most nagging was this one: How could I have so profoundly misjudged the reality of what lay on the far side of the Iron Curtain?
Had I been insufficiently attentive? Or was it possible that I had been snookered all along? Contemplating such questions, while
simultaneously witnessing the unfolding of the "long 1990s"— the period bookended by two wars with Iraq when American vainglory reached
impressive new heights—prompted the realization that I had grossly misinterpreted the threat posed by America's adversaries. Yet
that was the lesser half of the problem. Far worse than misperceiving "them" was the fact that I had misperceived "us." What I thought
I knew best I actually understood least. Here, the need for education appeared especially acute.
George W. Bush's decision to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 pushed me fully into opposition. Claims that once seemed elementary—above
all, claims relating to the essentially benign purposes of American power— now appeared preposterous. The contradictions that found
an ostensibly peace-loving nation committing itself to a doctrine of preventive war became too great to ignore. The folly and hubris
of the policy makers who heedlessly thrust the nation into an ill-defined and open-ended "global war on terror" without the foggiest
notion of what victory would look like, how it would be won, and what it might cost approached standards hitherto achieved only by
slightly mad German warlords. During the era of containment, the United States had at least maintained the pretense of a principled
strategy; now, the last vestiges of principle gave way to fantasy and opportunism. With that, the worldview to which I had adhered
as a young adult and carried into middle age dissolved completely. *
What should stand in the place of such discarded convictions? Simply inverting the conventional wisdom, substituting a new Manichean
paradigm for the old discredited version—the United States taking the place of the Soviet Union as the source of the world's evil—would
not suffice. Yet arriving at even an approximation of truth would entail subjecting conventional wisdom, both present and past, to
sustained and searching scrutiny. Cautiously at first but with growing confidence, this I vowed to do. Doing so meant shedding habits
of conformity acquired over decades. All of my adult life I had been a company man, only dimly aware of the extent to which institutional
loyalties induce myopia. Asserting independence required first recognizing the extent to which I had been socialized to accept certain
things as unimpeachable. Here then were the preliminary steps essential to making education accessible. Over a period of years, a
considerable store of debris had piled up. Now, it all had to go. Belatedly, I learned that more often than not what passes for conventional
wisdom is simply wrong. Adopting fashionable attitudes to demonstrate one's trustworthiness—the world of politics is flush with such
people hoping thereby to qualify for inclusion in some inner circle—is akin to engaging in prostitution in exchange for promissory
notes. It's not only demeaning but downright foolhardy. This book aims to take stock of conventional wisdom in its most influential
and enduring form, namely the package of assumptions, habits, and precepts that have defined the tradition of statecraft to which
the United States has adhered since the end of World War II— the era of global dominance now drawing to a close. This postwar tradition
combines two components, each one so deeply embedded in the American collective consciousness as to have all but disappeared from
view.
The first component specifies norms according to which the international order ought to work and charges the United States with
responsibility for enforcing those norms. Call this the American credo. In the simplest terms, the credo summons the United States—and
the United States alone—to lead, save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world. In a celebrated manifesto issued at the dawn
of what he termed "The American Century," Henry R. Luce made the case for this spacious conception of global leadership. Writing
in Life magazine in early 1941, the influential publisher exhorted his fellow citizens to "accept wholeheartedly our duty to exert
upon the world the full impact of our influence for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit." Luce thereby captured
what remains even today the credo's essence.3 Luce's concept of an American Century, an age of unquestioned American global primacy,
resonated, especially in Washington. His evocative phrase found a permanent place in the lexicon of national politics. (Recall that
the neoconservatives who, in the 1990s, lobbied for more militant U.S. policies named their enterprise the Project for a New American
Century.) So, too, did Luce's expansive claim of prerogatives to be exercised by the United States.
Even today, whenever public figures allude to America's responsibility to lead, they signal their fidelity to this creed.
Along with respectful allusions to God and "the troops," adherence to Luce's credo has become a de facto prerequisite for high office.
Question its claims and your prospects of being heard in the hubbub of national politics become nil. Note, however, that the duty
Luce ascribed to Americans has two components. It is not only up to Americans, he wrote, to choose the purposes for which they would
bring their influence to bear, but to choose the means as well. Here we confront the second component of the postwar tradition of
American statecraft. With regard to means, that tradition has emphasized activism over example, hard power over soft, and coercion
(often styled "negotiating from a position of strength") over suasion. Above all, the exercise of global leadership as prescribed
by the credo obliges the United States to maintain military capabilities staggeringly in excess of those required for self-defense.
Prior to World War II, Americans by and large viewed military power and institutions with skepticism, if not outright hostility.
In the wake of World War II, that changed. An affinity for military might emerged as central to the American identity. By the midpoint
of the twentieth century, "the Pentagon" had ceased to be merely a gigantic five-sided building.
Like "Wall Street" at the end of the nineteenth century, it had become Leviathan, its actions veiled in secrecy, its reach extending
around the world. Yet while the concentration of power in Wall Street had once evoked deep fear and suspicion, Americans by and large
saw the concentration of power in the Pentagon as benign. Most found it reassuring. A people who had long seen standing armies as
a threat to liberty now came to believe that the preservation of liberty required them to lavish resources on the armed forces. During
the Cold War, Americans worried ceaselessly about falling behind the Russians, even though the Pentagon consistently maintained a
position of overall primacy. Once the Soviet threat disappeared, mere primacy no longer sufficed. With barely a whisper of national
debate, unambiguous and perpetual global military supremacy emerged as an essential predicate to global leadership. Every great military
power has its distinctive signature. For Napoleonic France, it was the levée en masse— the people in arms animated by the ideals
of the Revolution. For Great Britain in the heyday of empire, it was command of the seas, sustained by a dominant fleet and a network
of far-flung outposts from Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope to Singapore and Hong Kong. Germany from the 1860s to the 1940s (and
Israel from 1948 to 1973) took another approach, relying on a potent blend of tactical flexibility and operational audacity to achieve
battlefield superiority.
The abiding signature of American military power since World War II has been of a different order altogether. The United States
has not specialized in any particular type of war. It has not adhered to a fixed tactical style. No single service or weapon has
enjoyed consistent favor. At times, the armed forces have relied on citizen-soldiers to fill their ranks; at other times, long-service
professionals. Yet an examination of the past sixty years of U.S. military policy and practice does reveal important elements of
continuity. Call them the sacred trinity: an abiding conviction that the minimum essentials of international peace and order require
the United States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter existing
or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism. Together, credo and trinity—the one defining purpose, the
other practice—constitute the essence of the way that Washington has attempted to govern and police the American Century. The relationship
between the two is symbiotic. The trinity lends plausibility to the credo's vast claims. For its part, the credo justifies the trinity's
vast requirements and exertions.
Together they provide the basis for an enduring consensus that imparts a consistency to U.S. policy regardless of which political
party may hold the upper hand or who may be occupying the White House. From the era of Harry Truman to the age of Barack Obama, that
consensus has remained intact. It defines the rules to which Washington adheres; it determines the precepts by which Washington rules.
As used here, Washington is less a geographic expression than a set of interlocking institutions headed by people who, whether acting
officially or unofficially, are able to put a thumb on the helm of state. Washington, in this sense, includes the upper echelons
of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government. It encompasses the principal components of the national
security state— the departments of Defense, State, and, more recently, Homeland Security, along with various agencies comprising
the intelligence and federal law enforcement communities. Its ranks extend to select think tanks and interest groups. Lawyers, lobbyists,
fixers, former officials, and retired military officers who still enjoy access are members in good standing. Yet Washington also
reaches beyond the Beltway to include big banks and other financial institutions, defense contractors and major corporations, television
networks and elite publications like the New York Times, even quasi-academic entities like the Council on Foreign Relations and Harvard's
Kennedy School of Government.
With rare exceptions, acceptance of the Washington rules forms a prerequisite for entry into this world. My purpose in writing
this book is fivefold: first, to trace the origins and evolution of the Washington rules—both the credo that inspires consensus and
the trinity in which it finds expression; second, to subject the resulting consensus to critical inspection, showing who wins and
who loses and also who foots the bill; third, to explain how the Washington rules are perpetuated, with certain views privileged
while others are declared disreputable; fourth, to demonstrate that the rules themselves have lost whatever utility they may once
have possessed, with their implications increasingly pernicious and their costs increasingly unaffordable; and finally, to argue
for readmitting disreputable (or "radical") views to our national security debate, in effect legitimating alternatives to the status
quo. In effect, my aim is to invite readers to share in the process of education on which I embarked two decades ago in Berlin. The
Washington rules were forged at a moment when American influence and power were approaching their acme. That moment has now passed.
The United States has drawn down the stores of authority and goodwill it had acquired by 1945. Words uttered in Washington command
less respect than once was the case. Americans can ill afford to indulge any longer in dreams of saving the world, much less remaking
it in our own image. The curtain is now falling on the American Century. Similarly, the United States no longer possesses sufficient
wherewithal to sustain a national security strategy that relies on global military presence and global power projection to underwrite
a policy of global interventionism. Touted as essential to peace, adherence to that strategy has propelled the United States into
a condition approximating perpetual war, as the military misadventures of the past decade have demonstrated.
To anyone with eyes to see, the shortcomings inherent in the Washington rules have become plainly evident. Although those most
deeply invested in perpetuating its conventions will insist otherwise, the tradition to which Washington remains devoted has begun
to unravel. Attempting to prolong its existence might serve Washington's interests, but it will not serve the interests of the
American people.
Devising an alternative to the reigning national security paradigm will pose a daunting challenge—especially if Americans look
to "Washington" for fresh thinking. Yet doing so has become essential. In one sense, the national security policies to which Washington
so insistently adheres express what has long been the preferred American approach to engaging the world beyond our borders. That
approach plays to America's presumed strong suit—since World War II, and especially since the end of the Cold War, thought to be
military power. In another sense, this reliance on military might creates excuses for the United States to avoid serious engagement:
Confidence in American arms has made it unnecessary to attend to what others might think or to consider how their aspirations might
differ from our own.
In this way, the Washington rules reinforce American provincialism—a national trait for which the United States continues
to pay dearly. The persistence of these rules has also provided an excuse to avoid serious self-engagement. From this perspective,
confidence that the credo and the trinity will oblige others to accommodate themselves to America's needs or desires — whether for
cheap oil, cheap credit, or cheap consumer goods—has allowed Washington to postpone or ignore problems demanding attention here at
home.
Fixing Iraq or Afghanistan ends up taking precedence over fixing Cleveland and Detroit. Purporting to support the troops in their
crusade to free the world obviates any obligation to assess the implications of how Americans themselves choose to exercise freedom.
When Americans demonstrate a willingness to engage seriously with others, combined with the courage to engage seriously with themselves,
then real education just might begin.
In their article ‘The American Century’ Has Plunged the World Into Crisis. What Happens Now?"
Conn Hallinan and
Leon Wofsy outlined important reasons of the inevitability
of the dominance of chicken hawks and jingoistic foreign policy in the USA political establishment:
U.S. foreign policy is dangerous, undemocratic, and deeply out of sync with real global challenges. Is continuous war inevitable,
or can we change course?
There’s something fundamentally wrong with U.S. foreign policy.
Despite glimmers of hope — a tentative nuclear agreement with Iran,
for one, and a long-overdue thaw with Cuba — we’re locked into seemingly irresolvable conflicts in most regions of the world. They
range from tensions with nuclear-armed powers like Russia and China to actual combat operations in the Middle East, South Asia, and
Africa.
Why? Has a state of perpetual warfare and conflict become inescapable? Or are we in a self-replicating cycle that reflects an
inability — or unwillingness — to see the world as it actually is?
The United States is undergoing a historic transition in our relationship to the rest of the world, but this is neither acknowledged
nor reflected in U.S. foreign policy. We still act as if our enormous military power, imperial alliances, and self-perceived moral
superiority empower us to set the terms of “world order.”
While this illusion goes back to the end of World War II, it was the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union that
signaled the beginning of a self-proclaimed “American Century.” The idea that the United States had “won” the Cold War and now —
as the world’s lone superpower — had the right or responsibility to order the world’s affairs led to a series of military adventures.
It started with President Bill Clinton’s intervention in the Yugoslav civil war, continued on with George W. Bush’s disastrous invasions
of Afghanistan and Iraq, and can still be seen in the Obama administration’s own misadventures in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and
beyond.
In each case, Washington chose war as the answer to enormously complex issues, ignoring the profound consequences for both foreign
and domestic policy. Yet the world is very different from the assumptions that drive this impulsive interventionism.
It’s this disconnect that defines the current crisis.
Acknowledging New Realities
So what is it about the world that requires a change in our outlook? A few observations come to mind.
First, our preoccupation with conflicts in the Middle East — and to a significant extent, our tensions with Russia in Eastern
Europe and with China in East Asia — distract us from the most compelling crises that threaten the future of humanity. Climate change
and environmental perils have to be dealt with now and demand an unprecedented level of international collective action. That also
holds for the resurgent danger of nuclear war.
Second, superpower military interventionism and far-flung acts of war have only intensified conflict, terror, and human suffering.
There’s no short-term solution — especially by force — to the deep-seated problems that cause chaos, violence, and misery through
much of the world.
Third, while any hope of curbing violence and mitigating the most urgent problems depends on international cooperation, old and
disastrous intrigues over spheres of influence dominate the behavior of the major powers. Our own relentless pursuit of military
advantage on every continent, including through alliances and proxies like NATO, divides the world into “friend” and “foe” according
to our perceived interests. That inevitably inflames aggressive imperial rivalries and overrides common interests in the 21st century.
Fourth, while the United States remains a great economic power, economic and political influence is shifting and giving rise to
national and regional centers no longer controlled by U.S.-dominated global financial structures. Away from Washington, London, and
Berlin, alternative centers of economic power are taking
hold in Beijing, New Delhi, Cape Town, and Brasilia. Independent formations and alliances are springing up: organizations like the
BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa); the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (representing 2.8 billion people);
the Union of South American Nations; the Latin American trade bloc, Mercosur; and others.
Beyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous domestic consequences of prolonged
war and interventionism. We shell out
over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and our
infrastructure crumbles. Democracy itself has become virtually
dysfunctional.
Short Memories and Persistent Delusions
But instead of letting these changing circumstances and our repeated military failures give us pause, our government continues
to act as if the United States has the power to dominate and dictate to the rest of the world.
The responsibility of those who set us on this course fades into background. Indeed, in light of the ongoing meltdown in the Middle
East, leading presidential candidates are
tapping neoconservatives like John Bolton
and Paul Wolfowitz — who still think the
answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power — for advice. Our leaders seem to forget that following this lot’s advice
was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first place. War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned.
While the Obama administration has sought, with limited success, to end the major wars it inherited, our government makes wide
use of killer drones in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and has put troops
back into Iraq to confront the
religious fanaticism and brutality of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) — itself a direct consequence of the last U.S. invasion
of Iraq. Reluctant to find common ground in the fight against ISIS with designated “foes” like Iran and Syria, Washington clings
to allies like Saudi Arabia, whose leaders are fueling the crisis of religious fanaticism and internecine barbarity. Elsewhere, the
U.S. also continues to give massive support to the Israeli government, despite its expanding occupation of the West Bank and its
horrific recurring assaults on Gaza.
A “war first” policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives like former Vice President
Dick Cheney and Senate Armed Services Committee
Chairman John McCain. Though it’s attempted
to distance itself from the neocons, the Obama administration adds to tensions with planned military realignments like the “Asia
pivot” aimed at building up U.S. military forces in Asia to confront China. It’s also taken a more aggressive position than even
other NATO partners in fostering a new cold war with Russia.
We seem to have missed the point: There is no such thing as an “American Century.” International order cannot be enforced by a
superpower alone. But never mind centuries — if we don’t learn to take our common interests more seriously than those that divide
nations and breed the chronic danger of war, there may well be no tomorrows.
Unexceptionalism
There’s a powerful ideological delusion that any movement seeking to change U.S. foreign policy must confront: that U.S. culture
is superior to anything else on the planet. Generally going by the name of “American exceptionalism,” it’s the deeply held belief
that American politics (and medicine, technology, education, and so on) are better than those in other countries. Implicit in the
belief is an evangelical urge to impose American ways of doing things on the rest of the world.
Americans, for instance, believe they have the best education system in the world, when in fact they’ve dropped from 1st
place to 14th place in the number of college graduates. We’ve made students of higher education the most indebted section
of our population, while falling to 17th place in international education ratings. According to the Organization for Economic
Cooperation, the average American pays more than twice as much for his or her education than those in the rest of the world.
Health care is an equally compelling example. In the World Health Organization’s ranking of health care systems in 2000, the United
States was ranked 37th. In a more recent
Institute of Medicine report in 2013, the U.S. was ranked the lowest among 17 developed nations studied.
The old anti-war slogan, “It will be a good day when schools get all the money they need and the Navy has to hold a bake sale
to buy an aircraft carrier” is as appropriate today as it was in the 1960s. We prioritize corporate subsidies, tax cuts for the wealthy,
and massive military budgets over education. The result is that Americans are no longer among the most educated in the world.
But challenging the “exceptionalism” myth courts the danger of being labeled “unpatriotic” and “un-American,” two powerful ideological
sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning voices.
The fact that Americans consider their culture or ideology “superior” is hardly unique. But no other country in the world has
the same level of economic and military power to enforce its worldview on others.
The United States did not simply support Kosovo’s independence, for example. It bombed Serbia into de facto acceptance. When the
U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of
projecting that kind of force in regions thousands of miles from its borders.
The U.S. currently accounts for anywhere from 45 to 50 percent of the world’s military spending. It has hundreds of overseas bases,
ranging from huge sprawling affairs like Camp Bond Steel in Kosovo and unsinkable aircraft carriers around the islands of Okinawa,
Wake, Diego Garcia, and Guam to tiny bases called “lily
pads” of pre-positioned military supplies. The late political scientist Chalmers Johnson estimated that the U.S. has some
800 bases worldwide, about the same as the British Empire had at its height in 1895.
The United States has long relied on a military arrow in its diplomatic quiver, and Americans have been at war almost continuously
since the end of World War II. Some of these wars were major undertakings: Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Kuwait, Afghanistan,
Iraq (twice), Libya. Some were quick “smash and grabs” like Panama and Grenada. Others are “shadow wars” waged by Special Forces,
armed drones, and local proxies. If one defines the term “war” as the application of organized violence, the U.S. has engaged
in close to 80 wars since 1945.
The Home Front
The coin of empire comes dear, as the old expression goes.
According Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, the final butcher bill for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars — including
the long-term health problems of veterans — will cost U.S. taxpayers around
$6 trillion.
One can add to that the over $1 trillion the U.S. spends each year on defense-related items. The “official” defense budget of some
half a trillion dollars doesn’t include such items as nuclear weapons, veterans’ benefits or retirement, the CIA and Homeland Security,
nor the billions a year in interest we’ll be paying on the debt from the Afghan-Iraq wars. By 2013 the U.S. had already paid out
$316 billion in interest.
The domestic collateral damage from that set of priorities is numbing.
We spend more on our “official” military budget than we do on Medicare, Medicaid, Health and Human Services, Education, and Housing
and Urban Development combined. Since 9/11,
we’ve spent $70 million an hour
on “security” compared to $62 million an hour on all domestic programs.
As military expenditures dwarf funding for deteriorating social programs, they drive economic inequality. The poor and working
millions are left further and further behind. Meanwhile the chronic problems highlighted at Ferguson, and reflected nationwide, are
a horrific reminder of how deeply racism — the unequal economic and social divide and systemic abuse of black and Latino youth —
continues to plague our homeland.
The state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and security state to levels that many
dictators would envy. The Senate torture report, most of
it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus that runs
the most extensive Big Brother
spy system ever devised.
Bombs and Business
President Calvin Coolidge was said to have remarked that “the business of America is business.” Unsurprisingly, U.S. corporate
interests play a major role in American foreign policy.
Out of the top 10 international arms producers, eight are American. The arms industry spends millions lobbying Congress and state
legislatures, and it defends its turf with an efficiency and vigor that its products don’t always emulate on the battlefield. The
F-35 fighter-bomber, for example — the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history — will cost $1.5 trillion and doesn’t work.
It’s over budget, dangerous to fly, and riddled with defects. And yet few lawmakers dare challenge the powerful corporations who
have shoved this lemon down our throats.
Corporate interests are woven into the fabric of long-term U.S. strategic interests and goals. Both combine to try to control
energy supplies, command strategic choke points through which oil and gas supplies transit, and ensure access to markets.
Many of these goals can be achieved with standard diplomacy or economic pressure, but the U.S. always reserves the right to
use military force. The 1979 “Carter Doctrine” —
a document that mirrors the 1823 Monroe Doctrine about American interests in Latin America — put that strategy in blunt terms vis-à-vis
the Middle East:
“An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital
interests of the United States, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”
It’s no less true in East Asia. The U.S. will certainly engage in peaceful economic competition with China. But if push comes
to shove, the Third, Fifth, and Seventh fleets will back up the interests of Washington and its allies — Japan, the Philippines,
South Korea, and Australia.
Trying to change the course of American foreign policy is not only essential for reducing international tensions. It’s critically
important to shift the enormous wealth we expend in war and weapons toward alleviating growing inequality and social crises at home.
As long as competition for markets and accumulation of capital characterize modern society, nations will vie for spheres of influence,
and antagonistic interests will be a fundamental feature of international relations. Chauvinist reaction to incursions real or imagined
— and the impulse to respond by military means — is characteristic to some degree of every significant nation-state. Yet the more
that some governments, including our own, become subordinate to oligarchic control, the greater is the peril.
Finding the Common Interest
These, however, are not the only factors that will shape the future.
There is nothing inevitable that rules out a significant change of direction, even if the demise or transformation of a capitalistic
system of greed and exploitation is not at hand. The potential for change, especially in U.S. foreign policy, resides in how social
movements here and abroad respond to the undeniable reality of: 1) the chronic failure, massive costs, and danger inherent in “American
Century” exceptionalism; and 2) the urgency of international efforts to respond to climate change.
There is, as well, the necessity to respond to health and natural disasters aggravated by poverty, to rising messianic violence,
and above all, to prevent a descent into war. This includes not only the danger of a clash between the major nuclear powers, but
between regional powers. A nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India, for example, would affect the whole world.
Without underestimating the self-interest of forces that thrive on gambling with the future of humanity, historic experience and
current reality elevate a powerful common interest in peace and survival. The need to change course is not something that can be
recognized on only one side of an ideological divide. Nor does that recognition depend on national, ethnic, or religious identity.
Rather, it demands acknowledging the enormous cost of plunging ahead as everything falls apart around us.
After the latest U.S. midterm elections, the political outlook is certainly bleak. But experience shows that elections, important
as they are, are not necessarily indicators of when and how significant change can come about in matters of policy. On issues of
civil rights and social equality, advances have occurred because a dedicated and persistent minority movement helped change public
opinion in a way the political establishment could not defy.
The Vietnam War, for example, came to an end, despite the stubbornness of Democratic and Republican administrations, when a stalemate
on the battlefield and growing international and domestic opposition could no longer be denied. Significant changes can come about
even as the basic character of society is retained. Massive resistance and rejection of colonialism caused the British Empire and
other colonial powers to adjust to a new reality after World War II. McCarthyism was eventually defeated in the United States. President
Nixon was forced to resign. The use of landmines and cluster bombs has been greatly restricted because of the opposition of a small
band of activists whose initial efforts were labeled “quixotic.”
There are diverse and growing political currents in our country that see the folly and danger of the course we’re on. Many Republicans,
Democrats, independents, and libertarians — and much of the public — are beginning to say “enough” to war and military intervention
all over the globe, and the folly of basing foreign policy on dividing countries into “friend or foe.”
This is not to be Pollyannaish about anti-war sentiment, or how quickly people can be stampeded into supporting the use of force.
In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans
agreed that “over-reliance on military
force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism.” Only 37 percent believed military force was the way to go. But once the
hysteria around the Islamic State began, those
numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force, 46 percent opposed it.
It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public into acceptance of another
military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS, disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater
now among Americans and worldwide than it has ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual
war, a shift toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy.
Making Space for the Unexpected
Given that there is a need for a new approach, how can American foreign policy be changed?
Foremost, there is the need for a real debate on the thrust of a U.S. foreign policy that chooses negotiation, diplomacy, and
international cooperation over the use of force.
However, as we approach another presidential election, there is as yet no strong voice among the candidates to challenge U.S.
foreign policy. Fear and questionable political calculation keep even most progressive politicians from daring to dissent as the
crisis of foreign policy lurches further into perpetual militarism and war. That silence of political acquiescence has to be broken.
Nor is it a matter of concern only on the left. There are many Americans — right, left, or neither — who sense the futility of
the course we’re on. These voices have to be represented or the election process will be even more of a sham than we’ve recently
experienced.
One can’t predict just what initiatives may take hold, but the recent U.S.-China climate agreement suggests that necessity can
override significant obstacles. That accord is an important step forward, although a limited bilateral pact
cannot substitute for an essential
international climate treaty. There is a glimmer of hope also in the U.S.-Russian joint action that
removed chemical weapons from Syria,
and in negotiations with Iran, which continue despite
fierce opposition from U.S. hawks and the Israeli
government. More recently, there is Obama’s bold move — long overdue — to
restore diplomatic relations with Cuba. Despite
shifts in political fortunes, the unexpected can happen if there is a need and strong enough pressure to create an opportunity.
We do not claim to have ready-made solutions to the worsening crisis in international relations. We are certain that there is
much we’ve missed or underestimated. But if readers agree that U.S. foreign policy has a national and global impact, and that it
is not carried out in the interests of the majority of the world’s people, including our own, then we ask you to join this conversation.
If we are to expand the ability of the people to influence foreign policy, we need to defend democracy, and encourage dissent
and alternative ideas. The threats to the world and to ourselves are so great that finding common ground trumps any particular interest.
We also know that we won’t all agree with each other, and we believe that is as it should be. There are multiple paths to the future.
No coalition around changing foreign policy will be successful if it tells people to conform to any one pattern of political action.
So how does the call for changing course translate to something politically viable, and how do we consider the problem of power?
The power to make significant changes in policy ranges from the persistence of peace activists to the potential influence of the
general public. In some circumstances, it becomes possible — as well as necessary — to make significant changes in the power structure
itself.
Greece comes to mind. Greek left organizations came together to form Syriza, the political party that was
successfully elected to power on a platform of ending austerity.
Spain’s anti-austerity Podemos Party — now the number-two party in the country — came out of massive demonstrations in 2011 and was
organized from the grassroots up. We do not argue one approach over the over, but the experiences in both countries demonstrate that
there are multiple paths to generating change.
Certainly progressives and leftists grapple with the problems of power. But progress on issues, particularly in matters like war
and peace and climate change, shouldn’t be conceived of as dependent on first achieving general solutions to the problems of society,
however desirable.
... ... ...
Conn Hallinan is a journalist and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus. His writings appear online at
Dispatches From the Edge. Leon Wofsy is a retired
biology professor and long-time political activist. His comments on current affairs appear online at
Leon’s OpEd.
"...These rules have pushed the United States to a state of perpetual war. With enemies supposedly everywhere, the pursuit of
security has become open-ended. "
"...One is reminded of John Winthrop,
who, in 1630, told the future residents of Massachusetts Bay Colony: "We shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are
upon us." Over subsequent decades, Winthrop's sermon became the American mission, fired by self-righteousness and fueled by self-confidence.
From that mission emerged the idea of Manifest Destiny -- American ideals should spread across the continent and around the globe. Along
the way, Americans lost sight of what Winthrop actually meant. His words were both inspiration and warning: Aspire to greatness, but
remain honorable. Power lies in virtue. Winthrop envisaged a shining beacon, worthy of emulation. He saw no need to come down from the
hill and ram ideals down the throats of the recalcitrant. "
"...Back in 1963, the Kennedy administration was faced with a steadily disintegrating situation in Vietnam. At a turbulent cabinet
meeting, Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked: If the situation is so dire, why not withdraw? Arthur Schlesinger, present at the meeting,
noted how "the question hovered for a moment, then died away." It was "a hopelessly alien thought in a field of unexplored assumptions
and entrenched convictions." The Washington rules kept the United States on a steady course toward disaster. "
"...Barack Obama once promised that change was coming, but then quickly adhered to the old rules by escalating an unwinnable and
certainly unaffordable war in Afghanistan. Failures, as Steffens hoped, have been illuminating, but after each flash of light, darkness
has prevailed. "
"We need some great failures," the muckraking journalist
Lincoln Steffens wrote in his autobiography. "Especially
we ever-successful Americans -- conscious, intelligent, illuminating failures." What Steffens meant was that a people confident in
righteousness need occasionally to be reminded of their fallibility. The past 50 years have produced failures aplenty -- the Bay
of Pigs, Vietnam and Iraq among them. Unfortunately, as Andrew Bacevich and John Dower demonstrate, the light of failure has not
penetrated the darkness of delusion. As a result, wars provide a repeating rhythm of folly.
"Washington
Rules" and "Cultures
of War" are two excellent books made better by the coincidence of their publication. In complementary fashion, they provide a
convincing critique of America's conduct of war since 1941. Steffens would have liked these books, specifically for the way they
use past failures to explain the provenance of our current predicament.
Read "Cultures of War" first. It's not an easy book, but it is consistently perceptive. Dower examines Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima,
Sept. 11 and the second Iraq War, drawing disconcerting linkages. Pearl Harbor and Iraq, he feels, demonstrate how otherwise
intelligent leaders are drawn toward strategic imbecility. Both attacks were brilliantly executed in the short term, but neither
paid sufficient attention to the long-term problem of winning a war. More controversially, Dower pairs Hiroshima with Sept. 11, both
acts of terror born of moral certitude. Osama bin Laden and Harry Truman justified wanton killing with essentially the same Manichean
rhetoric. Motives, context and scale might have been different; methods were not. For both leaders, the ability to separate good
from evil made killing easy.
In 1941, Americans drew comfort from the stereotype of the irrational Oriental. They assumed that the Japanese would be easily
defeated because they were illogical -- as their attack upon Pearl Harbor proved. That attack was indeed illogical (given the impossibility
of defeating the United States in a protracted war), but it was not peculiarly Japanese. As Dower reveals, the wishful thinking,
delusion and herd behavior within the court of Emperor Hirohito was a symptom of war, not ethnicity. The same deficiencies,
in 2003, convinced those in the Oval Office that invading Iraq was a good idea.
Since the culture of war encourages patterned behavior, folly proliferates. This is the essence of the Washington rules that Bacevich
elucidates. The rules dictate that protection of the American way of life necessitates a global military presence and a willingness
to intervene anywhere. Power and violence are cleansed by virtue: Because America is "good," her actions are always benign. These
rules have pushed the United States to a state of perpetual war. With enemies supposedly everywhere, the pursuit of security has
become open-ended.
The alternative, according to Bacevich, is not isolationism or appeasement, two politically loaded words frequently used to pummel
those who object to Washington's behavior. He advocates, instead, a more level-headed assessment of danger, advice all the more cogent
since it comes from a former soldier. Iraq and Afghanistan did not threaten America; in fact, those countries and the world have
become more dangerous because of heavy-handed American intervention. Nor does North Korea pose a threat. Nor did Vietnam.
One is reminded of John Winthrop,
who, in 1630, told the future residents of Massachusetts Bay Colony: "We shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are
upon us." Over subsequent decades, Winthrop's sermon became the American mission, fired by self-righteousness and fueled by self-confidence.
From that mission emerged the idea of Manifest Destiny -- American ideals should spread across the continent and around the globe.
Along the way, Americans lost sight of what Winthrop actually meant. His words were both inspiration and warning: Aspire to greatness,
but remain honorable. Power lies in virtue. Winthrop envisaged a shining beacon, worthy of emulation. He saw no need to come down
from the hill and ram ideals down the throats of the recalcitrant.
The power of virtue is Bacevich's most profound message. Instead of trying to fix Afghanistan's
Helmand Province, he insists, Americans should fix Detroit
and Cleveland. Instead of attempting to export notions of freedom and democracy to nations that lack experience of either, America
should demonstrate, by her actions, that she is still a free, democratic and humane nation. Her real strength lies in her liberal
tradition, not in her ability to kill.
Back in 1963, the Kennedy administration was faced with a steadily disintegrating situation in Vietnam. At a turbulent cabinet
meeting, Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked: If the situation is so dire, why not withdraw? Arthur Schlesinger, present at the
meeting, noted how "the question hovered for a moment, then died away." It was "a hopelessly alien thought in a field of unexplored
assumptions and entrenched convictions." The Washington rules kept the United States on a steady course toward disaster.
Those unexplored assumptions and entrenched convictions have now pushed the United States into a new quagmire. Despite that
predicament, both Dower and Bacevich try to end positively. "If change is to come, it must come from the people," argues Bacevich.
Dower agrees. But these feeble attempts at optimism are the least convincing parts of two otherwise brilliant books. Barack Obama
once promised that change was coming, but then quickly adhered to the old rules by escalating an unwinnable and certainly unaffordable
war in Afghanistan. Failures, as Steffens hoped, have been illuminating, but after each flash of light, darkness has prevailed.
Gerard De Groot is a professor of history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and author of "The Bomb: A Life."
For his first 40 years, Andrew Bacevich lived the conventional life of an army officer. In the military world where success depended
on conformity, he followed the rules and “took comfort in orthodoxy…[finding] assurance in conventional wisdom.” Comfort, that is,
until he had a chance to peer behind the Iron Curtain, and was shocked to find East Germany more third-world shambles than first-rate
threat.
That experience, combined with the introspection that followed his subsequent retirement from the army, led Bacevich to reevaluate
the relationship between truth and power. After having taken his superiors at their word for decades, he slowly came to understand
“that authentic truth is never simple and that any version of truth handed down from on high…is inherently suspect. The exercise
of power necessarily involves manipulation and is antithetical to candor.”
Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War
is Bacevich’s fourth book on the subject of American exercise of power. This time, he takes up the question of the political calculations
that have produced the basic tenets of American foreign policy since the beginning of the Cold War, examining how and why they came
to exist and to survive all challenges to their supremacy.
Bacevich describes two components that define U.S. foreign policy.
The first is what he dubs the “American credo,” which calls on “the United States — and the United States alone — to lead
save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world.”
Second is what he calls the “sacred trinity,” which requires that the United States “maintain a global military presence,
to configure its forces for global power projections, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a
policy of global interventionism.”
These rules, Bacevich argues, are no longer vital to the existence of the United States, and have led to actions that threaten
to break the army and bankrupt the treasury. Rather, they are kept in place by individuals who derive personal benefit from their
continuance. Bacevich does not hesitate to blame a Washington class that “clings to its credo and trinity not out of necessity, but
out of parochial self-interest laced with inertia.”
This is a theme that runs throughout the book: that those who make the rules also benefit from them, and thus their demands should
always be regarded skeptically.
While abstaining from questioning the patriotism of past leaders, Bacevich is not reluctant to point out how many policies that
were later widely embraced were originally trumpeted by ambitious men who had as much to gain personally by their acceptance as did
the country:
General Curtis LeMay, who built a massive nuclear arsenal as head of Strategic Air Command;
Allen Dulles, who backed coups across the globe as CIA director;
General Maxwell Taylor, who rode the idea of “flexible response” from retirement to the position of chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The story of foreign policy, then, is not so much different than any government bureaucracy through which vast sums of money
flow, and is driven as much by officials jockeying for status than by genuine concern for policy outcomes. Whether in disputes
between the Army and the Air Force or the Pentagon and the White House, and whether over money or over purpose, different sectors
of the national security establishment propose and promote new doctrines that necessitate increasing their budgets and enhancing
their importance.
But Bacevich is not content to only blame leaders. In contrast to George Washington’s ideal of the citizen who would consider
it his duty to actively serve his country, Bacevich finds today’s Americans “greedy and gullible,” pursuing personal gain in the
stead of collective benefit. Any solution, he argues, must come from an awakened people who demand change from the people they put
in office.
As for what that change should look like, Bacevich proposes a new credo and trinity. As a new mission statement, he offers: “America’s
purpose is to be America, striving to fulfill the aspirations expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as
reinterpreted with the passage of time and in light of hard-earned experience.”
As a new trinity, he suggests that “the purpose of the U.S, military is not to combat evil or remake the world but to defend the
United States and its most vital interests…the primary duty station of the American soldier is in America…consistent with the Just
War tradition, the United States should employ force only as a last resort and only in self defense.”
Bacevich writes in the short, clipped style with which he also speaks, presumably a legacy of his West Point education and decades
in the military. His style allows for easy comprehension and neat packaging of his ideas, and readers will not get bogged down in
flowery language.
Parts of Bacevich’s thinking require further scrutiny and remind readers of his self-identification as a conservative (lowercase
“c”). Economically, he is no fan of stimulus spending, and socially he places blame on individual failings and personal flaws, choosing
not to mention an unequal economic system that leaves tens of millions of Americans with barely the resources to take care of their
families, much less have time to be informed and active citizens.
In fact, the emphasis throughout the book is on the fact that expansionism, at this particular moment, is not wrong but impossible.
Bacevich is, after all, a realist when it comes to international relations theory, and though he happens to agree with liberal anti-imperials
on many issues, it is often for different reasons.
However, debates over theory can wait for when the republic is in less immediate peril. This is the second work Bacevich has published
under the auspices of the American Empire Project, a book series documenting America’s imperial adventures and their disastrous consequences.
The contribution of conservative authors to this task is vital. They remind us that opposition to imperialism is hardly just a liberal
cause, and in fact for much of American history was actually a rallying point for conservatives across the country.
Washington Rules is valuable for putting in print what those inside the military establishment don’t dare admit: that,
even aside from moral concerns, U.S. international strategy is neither successful nor sustainable and maintained more by lies than
by actual results. Bacevich can truly be said to be a realist in that he understand that leaders, when faced with the choice of admitting
failure or lying, will almost always choose the latter.
Andrew Feldman is an intern with Foreign Policy In Focus.
This is the bluntest, toughest, most scathing critique of American imperialism as it has become totally unmoored after the demise
of the Soviet Communist empire and taken to a new level by the Bush administration. Even the brevity of this book - 182 pages - gives
it a particular wallop since every page "concentrates the mind".
In the event a reader knows of the prophetic work of the American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, you will further appreciate this
book. Bacevich is a Niebuhr scholar and this book essentially channels Niebuhr's prophetic warnings from his 1952 book, "The Irony
of American History". The latter has just been reissued by University of Chicago Press thanks to Andrew Bacevich who also contributed
an introduction.
In essence, American idealism as particularly reflected in Bush's illusory goal to "rid the world of evil" and to bring freedom
and democracy to the Middle East or wherever people are being tyrannized, is doomed to failure by the tides of history. Niebuhr warned
against this and Bacevich updates the history from the Cold War to the present. Now our problems have reached crisis proportions
and Bacevich focuses on the three essential elements of the crisis: American profligacy; the political debasing of government; and
the crisis in the military.
What renders Bacevich's critique particularly stinging, aside from the historical context he gives it (Bush has simply taken an
enduring American exceptionalism to a new level), is that he lays these problems on the doorstep of American citizens. It is we who
have elected the governments that have driven us toward near collapse. It is we who have participated willingly in the consumption
frenzy in which both individual citizens and the government live beyond their means. Credit card debt is undermining both government
and citizenry.
This pathway is unsustainable and this book serves up a direct and meaningful warning to this effect. Niebuhrian "realism" sees
through the illusions that fuel our own individual behavior and that of our government. There are limits to American power and limits
to our own individual living standards and, of course, there are limits to what the globe can sustain as is becoming evident from
climate changes.
American exceptionalism is coming to an end and it will be painful for both individual citizens and our democracy and government
to get beyond it. But we have no choice. Things will get worse before they get better. Bacevich suggests some of the basic ways that
we need to go to reverse the path to folly. He holds out no illusions that one political party or the other, one presidential candidate
or the other, has the will or the leadership qualities to change directions. It is up to American citizens to demand different policies
as well as to govern our own appetites.
While this is a sobering book, it is not warning of doomsday. Our worst problems are essentially of our own making and we can
begin to unmake them. But we first have to come to terms with our own exceptionalism. We cannot manage history and there are no real
global problems that can be solved by military means, or certainly not by military means alone.
Without Exception
By Edwin C. Pauzer VINE VOICE on September 24, 2008
This is one of those books you might find yourself sitting down to read chapter and verse over and over again, only because the
writing is so intelligent and so profound. "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism," by Andrew Bacevich, is one
of those works that will enthrall the reader with its insight and analysis.
According to the author, the US has reached its limit to project its power in the world. His rationale for this conclusion are
three central crises we now face: economic and cultural, political, and military, all of which are our own making.
The first crisis is one of profligacy. Americans want more, whether it is wealth, credit, markets, or oil, without consideration
for cost or how these things are acquired. There is complete apathy in what policies are being produced as long as they provide plenty.
The political crisis was born of our mobilization in World War II to meet the threat of tyranny, and from the Cold War to meet
the challenge of the Soviet Union. Both gave rise to unprecedented presidential power, an ineffectual Congress, and a disastrous
foreign policy. Bacevich contends that our legislature no longer serves their constituents or the common good "but themselves
through gerrymandering, doling out prodigious amounts of political pork, seeing to the protection of certain vested interests" with
the paramount concern of being re-elected. Our presidents have been willing accomplices in keeping the American dream or greed alive
by using our military as part of a coercive diplomatic tool to feed and fuel the first crisis.
Bacevich traces the end of the republic to the start of both wars, which gave rise to the "ideology of national security." The
mission of the new Department of Defense is not defense, but to project power globally where we will view any nation as a threat
that tries to match us in military might. At the same time, the largest intelligence agencies in the world are created to afford
us more security, but after seventy years are unable to defend our cities and buildings in the US while it worries about intrigues
worldwide. Competition and rivalry lead to a lack of cooperation, intelligence, and security when it was needed most.
The third crisis is our military which has been employed to satisfy the neuroses of the first and second crises. The author puts
much of the blame squarely at the feet of inept military leadership, which he believes has confused strategy with operations. Content
with the resilience of the American fighting man or woman, he is scathing in his critique of their leadership finding them "guilty
of flagrant professional malpractice, if not outright fraud." He illustrates how improvised explosive devices that cost no more than
a pizza have checked a military that is designed for speed and maneuver--that was considered invincible.
Andrew Bacevich contends that nothing will change as long as Americans are told to go to Disney World instead of making sacrifices,
as long as the same one half percent of our population continue to populate the military that the president sees as his personal
army, as long as an apathetic public and an ineffectual Congress continue to make periodic, grand gestures of curbing presidential
power, the United States will have reached the limits of its power and exceptionalism.
This book profoundly moved me, and I was impressed by the insight that Professor Bacevich could bring in such few pages. Passages
of this book should be plastered in the halls and offices of Congress, as well as the West Wing.
This book really stands out as a jewel in a sea of mediocre publications by radio and TV personalities who think they know what
they are talking about when it comes to economics or geopolitics. The difference is that Andrew Bacevich does
--without exception.
Also Recommended:
Mayer, Jane, "The Dark Side, The Inside Story How The War on Terror Turned into a War on America's Ideals."
Schlesinger, Arthur, "War and the American Presidency."
Mann, Thomas & Ornstein, Norman, "The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track."
Zinni, Tony (Gen. Ret.), "The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose."
Niebuhr, Reinhold, "The Irony of American History."
For your convenience some of them which I judge to be the most insightful are reproduced below:
Andrew J. Bacevich's The New American Militarism: How Americans Are seduced By War, Oxford University Press, New
York, 2005, ISBN 0-19-517338-4, is the most coherent analysis of how America has come to its present situation in the world that
I have ever read. Bacevich, Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center for International Relations at Boston
University, is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and holds a Ph.D. in history from Princeton. And he is retired
military officer. This background makes him almost uniquely qualified to comment on the subject.
Bacevich admits to an outlook of moderate conservatism. But in ascribing fault for our plight to virtually every administration
since W.W. II, he is even handed and clear eyed. Since he served in the military, he understands the natural bureaucratic instincts
of the best of the officer corps and is not blinded by the almost messianic status that they have achieved in the recent past.
His broad brush includes the classic period, the American Revolution - especially the impact of George Washington, but he moves
quickly to the influence of Woodrow Wilson and his direct descendants of our time, the Neoconservatives. The narrative accelerates
and becomes relevant for us in the depths of the despair of Vietnam. At that juncture, neocon intellectuals awakened to the horror
that without a new day for our military and foreign policy, the future of America would be at stake. At almost the same time, Evangelical
Christians abandoned their traditional role in society and came to views not dissimilar to the neocons. America had to get back on
track to both power and goodness. The results of Vietnam on American culture, society, and - especially - values were abhorrent to
both these groups.
The perfect man to idealize and mythologize America's road back was Ronald Reagan. Again, Bacevich does not shrink from seeing
through the surreal qualities brought to the Oval Office by Reagan to the realities beneath them. The Great Communicator transformed
the Vietnam experience into an abandonment of American ideals and reacquainted America with those who fought that horrible war. Pop
culture of the period, including motion pictures such as Top Gun and best selling novels by many, including Tom Clancy completely
rehabilitated the image of the military.
The author describes how Evangelical leaders came to find common cause with the neocons and provided the political muscle for
Reagan and his successors of both parties to discover that the projection of military might become a reason for being for America
as the last century closed.
One of his major points is that the all volunteer force that resulted from the Vietnam experience has been divorced from American
life and that sending this force of ghosts into battle has little impact on our collective psyche. This, too, fit in with the intellectual
throw weight of the neocons and the political power of the Evangelicals.
Separate from but related to the neocons, Bacevich describes the loss of strategic input by the military in favor of a new priesthood
of intellectual elites from institutions such as the RAND Corporation, The University of Chicago and many others. It was these high
priests who saw the potential that technology provided for changing the nature of war itself and how American power might be projected
with `smart weapons' that could be the equivalent of the nuclear force that could never be used.
So it was that when the war we are now embroiled in across the globe - which has its antecedents back more than twenty years -
all of these forces weighed heavily on the military leaders to start using the force we'd bought them. The famed question by Secretary
of State Madeline Albright to General Colin Powell: "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about
if we can't use it?" had to have an answer and the skirmishes and wars since tended to provide it.
Bacevich clearly links our present predicaments both at home and abroad to the ever greater need for natural resources, especially
oil from the Persian Gulf. He demolishes all of the reasons for our bellicosity based on ideals and links it directly to our insatiable
appetite for oil and economic expansion. Naturally, like thousands of writers before him, he points out the need for a national energy
policy based on more effective use of resources and alternative means of production.
It is in his prescriptions that the book tends to drift. The Congress must do its constitutionally mandated jobs or be thrown
out by the people. Some of his ideas on military education are creative and might well close the gap between the officer corps and
civilians that he points to as a great problem.
But it is the clearly written analysis that makes this book shine. It should be a must read for those who wonder how we got to
Iraq and where we might be heading as a society. The nation is in grave danger, and this is a book that that shows how we got to
this juncture. Where we go from here is up to us. If we continue as we are, our options may narrow and be provided by others.
READ THIS BOOK
===This review is from: The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (Hardcover)
In his book The New American Militarism (2005), Andrew Bacevich desacralizes our idolatrous infatuation with military might, but
in a way that avoids the partisan cant of both the left and the right that belies so much discourse today. Bacevich's personal experiences
and professional expertise lend his book an air of authenticity that I found compelling. A veteran of Vietnam and subsequently a
career officer, a graduate of West Point and later Princeton where he earned a PhD in history, director of Boston University's Center
for International Relations, he describes himself as a cultural conservative who views mainstream liberalism with skepticism, but
who also is a person whose "disenchantment with what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in the present Bush administration
and its groupies, is just about absolute." Finally, he identifies himself as a "conservative Catholic." Idolizing militarism,
Bacevich insists, is far more complex, broader and deeper than scape-goating either political party, accusing people of malicious
intent or dishonorable motives, demonizing ideological fanatics as conspirators, or replacing a given administration. Not merely
the state or the government, but society at large, is enthralled with all things military.
Our military idolatry, Bacevich believes, is now so comprehensive and beguiling that it "pervades our national consciousness
and perverts our national policies." We have normalized war, romanticized military life that formally was deemed degrading and
inhuman, measured our national greatness in terms of military superiority, and harbor naive, unlimited expectations about how waging
war, long considered a tragic last resort that signaled failure, can further our national self-interests. Utilizing a "military metaphysic"
to justify our misguided ambitions to recreate the world in our own image, with ideals that we imagine are universal, has taken about
thirty years to emerge in its present form. It is this marriage between utopians ends and military means that Bacevich wants to annul.
How have we come to idolize military might with such uncritical devotion? He likens it to pollution: "the perhaps unintended,
but foreseeable by-product of prior choices and decisions made without taking fully into account the full range of costs likely to
be incurred" (p. 206). In successive chapters he analyzes six elements of this toxic condition that combined in an incremental and
cumulative fashion.
After the humiliation of Vietnam, an "unmitigated disaster" in his view, the military set about to rehabilitate and reinvent
itself, both in image and substance. With the All Volunteer Force, we moved from a military comprised of citizen-soldiers
that were broadly representative of all society to a professional warrior caste that by design isolated itself from broader society
and that by default employed a disproportionate percentage of enlistees from the lowest socio-economic class. War-making
was thus done for us, by a few of us, not by all of us.
Second, the rise of the neo-conservative movement embraced American Exceptionalism as our national end and superior coercive
force as the means to franchise it around the world.
Myth-making about warfare sentimentalized, sanitized and fictionalized war. The film Top Gun is only one example of "a glittering
new image of warfare."
Fourth, without the wholehearted complicity of conservative evangelicalism, militarism would have been "inconceivable," a
tragic irony when you consider that the most "Christian" nation on earth did far less to question this trend than many ostensibly
"secular" nations.
Fifth, during the years of nuclear proliferation and the fears of mutually assured destruction, a "priesthood" of elite defense
analysts pushed for what became known as the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). RMA pushed the idea of "limited" and more humane
war using game theory models and technological advances with euphemisms like "clean" and "smart" bombs. But here too our "exuberance
created expectations that became increasingly uncoupled from reality," as the current Iraq debacle demonstrates.
Finally, despite knowing full well that dependence upon Arab oil made us vulnerable to the geo-political maelstroms of that
region, we have continued to treat the Persian Gulf as a cheap gas station. How to insure our Arab oil supply, protect Saudi Arabia,
and serve as Israel's most important protector has always constituted a squaring of the circle. Sordid and expedient self interest,
our "pursuit of happiness ever more expansively defined," was only later joined by more lofty rhetoric about exporting universal
ideals like democracy and free markets, or, rather, the latter have only been a (misguided) means to secure the former.
Bacevich opens and closes with quotes from our Founding Fathers. In 1795, James Madison warned that "of all the enemies of public
liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other." Similarly, late in his
life George Washington warned the country of "those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious
to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hotile to republican liberty."
K. Johnson:
Relevant and Objective, January 3, 2007
Author Andrew Bacevich has superb credentials on military, diplomatic, and historical issues. A Vietnam Veteran, 25+ year career
in the Army and now professor of International Relations, Bacevich is one of the few that has the experience *and* knowledge to
dissect what has been occurring in American socio-political culture and society for the last several decades. Bacevich notes the
current focus on the military to solve the world's problems and to promote America's interests is not the sole work of a President
and Congress, but the combination of culture, mentality, political, and now primarily economic, interests. This book has tons
of footnoting, which allows you to delve further into these issues on your own.
The author astutely reinforces the fact that the Militarist Mentality won't change, regardless of which political party is
in control of the Executive and Houses of Congress in the United States. Here only some examples out of many:
Entry of the U.S. military into the Middle East:
THE CARTER DOCTRINE:
The Carter Doctrine was prescribed at the State of the Union Address in 1980. Another civilian prescription utilizing
the military as medicine to alleviate and even cure, political symptoms. This Doctrine began a new era of U.S. involvement in
the Middle East, specifically using the American military to enforce its economic interests and lifestyle dependence on oil.
The Carter Doctrine was a major shift in American foreign policy in the Middle East. It specifically stated that use of
the military can and will be used to enforce U.S. economic interests.
At his State of the Union Address, Carter stated:
"Any attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be declared as an assault on the vital
interest of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force"
(p. 181).
Worth noting is that the Carter Doctrine was declared during the Cold War, when there was a adversary to check U.S interests.
Today, that rival is gone.
Some argue the so-called 'War on Terror' is merely a historical continuation of American foreign policy interests in
using its military to promote its geo-political and economic interests.
WAR AS SPECTATOR SPORT:
War has been, and now is presented as a spectacle. No different than a spectator sport. Live reports, video display, and
laymen presentations of new technology, usually via video, to the civilian public at press conferences.
One example of many are current U.S. newspaper reports: they don't use the term "wounded" when reporting about American soldiers
in Iraq. They use the euphemistic term, "injured." "17 Iraqis 'wounded' and 3 American soldiers 'injured.'" Similar to a football
game. Slogans such as "Shock and Awe, Support the Troops," and deck of cards identifying the most wanted Baath party members.
"Freedom is not Free." Many American military personel (and civilians) have internalized this propaganda.
Using Hollywood To Enhance "Honor" and perpetuate myths:
Bacevich carefully details the planned and choreographed footage of George W. Bush dressed as a fighter pilot on the USS Abraham
Lincoln. This was intentionally and specifically lifted from the movie "Top Gun." Immediately after this planned footage, an action
figure doll was created and sold for $39.99. It was called the "Elite Force Aviator: George W. Bush: U.S. President and Naval
Aviator" (p. 31).
Well-dressed, handsome, and beautiful anchors report about the war in such series as "The Week in War." More simulation of
the spectator sport of war in our pop culture. One segment in the "Week in War program" is called "The Fallen," where the photo
of a soldier, his name, age, and hometown are presented, and the date of his death. Then the cameramen go to his family's home.
Often a family picture of the "fallen soldier" is shown. Then, an interview with the somber, and at times tearful family in their
living room, sitting on their couch: "He was a good kid. He always wanted to help people."
The "Fallen" is related to a concept that the Germans began about 300 years ago. This concept is called the "Cult of the Fallen
Soldier." When a soldier is killed in war he is elevated to a higher status because of his death. He is placed on a pedestal,
because somehow, and in some enigmatic way, he "sacrificed" for a noble cause that is often abstract or confusing to the public.
To further simplify the confusion and sullenness resulting from the soldier's death, religion is often injected into the deceased
soldiers elevation on a pedestal. You can see this Cult of the Fallen Soldier in Arlington, Virgina today, and in many military
cemeteries around the world.
GLORIFICATION OF THE MILITARY THROUGH MOVIES:
Bacevich notes moves and their role. "Top Gun" had a tremendous impact in many ways. Pop culture, and Navy recruiting sky-rocketing.
As for the flurry of "Vietnam war movies," again the noble concepts of "courage, honor, fear, triumph" are latently and explicitly
reinforced to the public of all ages and socio-economic levels.
It took me a chapter or two to get used to Bacevich's writing style, but I grew to like it.
Chapters: 1) Wilsonians Under Arms 2) The Military Professions at Bay 3) Left, Right, Center 4) California Dreaming 5) Onward
6) War Club 7) Blood for Oil 8) Common Defense
"Support" for the military is often incorrectly linked with one's "patriotism." This faulty thinking is perpetuated by the
electronic and print media in often subtle forms but extremely effective forms, and at times very explicit and in aggressive manners.
The government intentionally steers the publics' focus to the 'Military aspects of war' to avoid attention to the more realistic
and vital 'political aspects.' The latter being at the real heart of the motivation, manner, and outcome of most *political* conflicts.
Bacevich notes journalists: journalist Thomas Friedman complained that a Super Bowl half-time show did not honor the "troops."
He then drove to the Command Center to visit and speak with the "troops." Soon after, he carried on with his own self-centered
interests, like everyone else.
The military in and of itself is not dangerous nor pernicious. The military doesn't formulate foreign policy. The military
just implements it, carrying out the orders and instructions of elitist civilians who have never served in the armed forces. It's
not the military nor the men and women serving in it, we must be wary of. It's the civilians masters with vested interests in
the governmental and corporate world who must be held accountable.
General Creighton Abrams wanted to diminish the influence of civilian control over the military after Vietnam. Civilians and
politicians were making military decisions. It seems the situation is similar in 2007. Chairman of the JCS Peter Pace sounds political.
History will be the judge.
This is a very insightful book for those interested in recent history as well as the current situation the United States is
in. The troops should be supported for what they do. Because unfortunately they are the ones that pay the price for elitist decisions
made by upper-class civilians from the Ivy League cliques that run the U.S. politically and economically.
Highly recommended and relevant to our contemporary times and our future.
Andrew Bacevich did excellent research and writing in this book. I'll think we'll be hearing a lot more of him. Hopefully He'll
get more access to the public. If - the mainstream media allows it.
Robert S. Frey
An Informed, Insightful, and Highly Readable Account of American Foreign Policy Today, December 23, 2006
Andrew J. Bacevich's "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War," should be read and considered carefully
by every member of the national political leadership in the United States as well as by adult Americans in general. Bacevich brings
impeccable credentials to his work in this book--professor of history and international relations at Boston University, West Point
graduate, and veteran of the Vietnam conflict. His writing is engaging, insightful, and historically well anchored. Importantly,
this work is highly accessible and eminently readable. The level of documentation is very valuable as well. Finally, the book
is not about fault-finding and finger-pointing toward any one national figure or group.
What I found most beneficial was that the book presented well-argued alternative historical "meta-narratives" that are much
more closely aligned with post-World War II historical events and processes than the ones currently accepted as "conventional
wisdom." A case in point is the periodization of World War IV beginning with President Carter's pronouncements regarding the Persian
Gulf area in 1980 rather than with the terrorist attacks on America on 9/11. "The New American Militarism" carefully and credibly
brings together the many seemingly disparate actions, decisions, and events of the past 60+ years (e.g., the atomic bombing of
Japan, Vietnam, oil shortages of the 1970s and 80s, the end of the Cold War, the First Gulf War, etc.) and illustrates important
patterns and trends that help to explain why United States' foreign policy is what it is today. Dr. Bacevich's book helps us understand
and appreciate that the global projection of American military power today has deep roots in the national decisions and behaviors
of the second half of the twentieth century.
Robert S. Frey, M.A., MBA, MSM
Adjunct Professor, History
Brenau University
Dr. Lee D. Carlson
Interesting, insightful, and motivating, October 21, 2006
Why is it that some people, including this reviewer, are reluctant to criticize the writings or verbalizations of those Americans
that have been or are currently in the military? This is particularly true for those officers and soldiers who have served in
combat. To be critical of someone is who has faced such horror would be a sacrilege. Their opinions on subjects, especially those
related to war and the military, are given much higher weight than those that have never been in the military. What is the origin
of this extreme bias and does it not thwart attempts to get at the truth in matters of war and politics? If a war is illegal or
immoral, are not the soldiers who participate in it themselves war criminals, deserving the severest condemnation?
The author of this book sheds light on these questions and gives many more interesting opinions on what he has called the 'new
American militarism.' If one examines carefully American history, it is fair to say that Americans have been reluctant to go to
war, preferring instead to settle conflicts via negotiation and trade agreements. Americans have been led to the horrors of war
kicking and screaming, and breath a sigh of relief when they are over. Historically, Americans have applied extreme skepticism
to those politicians, like Woodrow Wilson, who wanted to participate in World War I to make the world "safe for democracy." So
if Americans are "seduced by war", as the author contends they have been in recent decades, an explanation must be found. It is tempting to say that they have been merely "brainwashed", and contemporary neuroscience lends some credence to this claim,
but one must still be open to alternative explanations, and let the evidence determine the proper interpretation. Once
the causes have been identified, it becomes necessary to find methodologies and strategies to counter these causes, lest we find
ourselves in another unnecessary and brutal conflict, initiated by some who do not directly participate in it, and have no intention
ever to do so.
This book is not a scientific study, but instead is a collection of opinions, mostly supported by anecdotal evidence, to support
the author's thesis. On the surface his opinions do seem plausible, but one must still apply to his writings the same level of
skepticism applied to other studies of the same kind. It does seem reasonable to believe for example that current attitudes about
war are governed by the American failure in Vietnam, Carter's supposed ineptitude in dealing with the resulting loss in "self-esteem"
of the American populace, and Reagan's exploitation or correction of this loss. But more evidence is needed to set such a conclusion
in stone.
The author though is intellectually honest enough to admit that he has not obtained the "definitive version of the truth" on
the new American militarism within the pages of his book. His words are more "suggestive than conclusive" he writes, and he welcomes
criticism and alternative interpretations. Vietnam, oil and energy considerations, 9-11, and the media all have a role to play
in the current American attitudes about war he argues. Further analysis though is needed, and cognizance must be made that all
readers, including this reviewer, are embedded in the same culture as the author, and subjected to the same ideological, historical,
and media pressures. We must be extremely cautious in our acceptance of what we find in print and indeed in all information outlets.
And we must learn that soldiers, active duty or otherwise, are not infallible and must be subjected to the same criticism as any
other citizen. This is again, very difficult to do, and this difficulty is perhaps the best evidence for the author's thesis.
R. Albin:
Exceptional Polemic; 4.5 Stars, October 19, 2006
This concise and well written book is the best kind of polemic; clear, well argued, and designed to provoke debate.
Bacevich is definitely interested in persuading readers of the truth of his views but his calm and invective free prose, insistence
on careful documentation, and logical presentation indicate that his primary concern is promote a high level of discussion of
this important issue. Bacevich argues well that a form of militarism based on an exaggerated sense of both American mission and
American power, specifically military power, has infected public life. He views this militarism as both leading to unecessary
and dangerous adventures abroad, epitomized by the Iraq fiasco, and corrupting the quality of domestic debate and policy making.
Beyond documenting the existence of this phenomenon, Bacevich is concerned with explicating how this form of militarism, which
he views as contrary to American traditions, came to be so popular.
Bacevich argues well that the new militarism came about because of a convergence of actions by a number of different
actors including our professional military, neoconservative intellectuals and publicists, evangelical Christians, resurgent Republican
party activists, and so-called defense intellectuals. For a variety of reasons, these sometimes overlapping groups converged
on ideas of the primacy of American military power and the need to use it aggressively abroad. Bacevich devotes a series of chapters
to examining each of these actors, discussing their motivations and actions, often exposing shabby and inconsistent thinking.
Some of these, like the role of neoconservative intellectuals and the Religous Right, are fairly well known.
Others, like the behavior of professional military over the last generation, will be novel to many readers. Bacevich's chapters
have underlying themes. One is the persisent occurrence of ironic events as the actions of many of these groups produced events
counter to their goals. The post-Vietnam professional military attempted to produce a large, vigorous military poised to
fight conventional, WWII-like, combats. This force was intended to be difficult for politicians to use. But as these often
highly competent professionals succeeded to restoring the quality of the American military, the temptation to use it became stronger
and stronger, and control escaped the professionals back into the hands of politicians as varied as Bush II and Clinton.
Another theme is that politicians seized on use military force as an alternative to more difficult and politically unpalatable
alternatives. Jimmy Carter is described correctly as initiating the American preoccupation with control of the Persian Gulf oil
supplies, which has generated a great deal of conflict over the past generation. Bacevich presents Carter as having to act
this way because his efforts to persuade Americans to pursue sacrifice and a rational energy policy were political losers. Ronald
Reagan is presented as the epitome of this unfortunate trend.
Bacevich is generally convincing though, perhaps because this is a short book, there are some issues which are presented onesidely.
For example, its true that Carter began the military preoccupation with the Persian Gulf. But, its true as well that his administration
established the Dept. of Energy, began a significant program of energy related research, moved towards fuel standards for vehicles
and began the regulatory policies that would successfully improve energy efficiency for many household items. No subsequent administration
had done more to lessen dependence on foreign oil.
Bacevich also omits an important point. As he points out, the different actors that sponsored the new militarism tended to
converge in the Republican Party. But, as has been pointed out by a number of analysts, the Republican Party is a highly disparate
and relatively unstable coalition. The existence of some form of powerful enemy, perceived or real, is necessary to maintain
Republican solidarity. The new militarism is an important component of maintaining the internal integrity of the Republican party
and at unconciously appreciated as such by many important Republicans.
An interesting aspect of this book is that Bacevich, a West point grad, former career Army officer, and self-described cultural
conservative, has reproduced many of the criticisms put forward by Leftist critics.
Bacevich concludes with a series of interesting recommendations that are generally rational but bound to be controversial and
probably politically impossible. Again, this is an effort to change the nature of the discussion about these issues.
Adam Bahner
How Permanent Military Deployment Became Congruent With World Peace, June 29, 2006
In The New American Militarism, Andrew J. Bacevich contends that American culture and policy since the end of the Cold War
has merged a militaristic ethos with a utopian global imaginary. He notes that American militarism is a "bipartisan project" with
"deep roots" that even garner support on the political margins, with some leftist activists seeing a humanitarian mission for
U.S. global military hegemony. He traces these roots to the worldview of Woodrow Wilson, who envisioned a globe "remade in America's
image and therefore permanently at peace." Yet Wilson's view was moderated by a public and policy perception of war as an ugly,
costly, brutal, traumatic and unpredictable last resort. This is corroborated by the massive military demobilizations that followed
U.S. involvement in both world wars. Bacevich also points to works of popular culture, from Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On
The Western Front to Oliver Stone's Platoon, that reflect on the inhumanity of war from World War I through Vietnam.
Bacevich sees a massive deviation from these historical trends after the end of the Cold War. While conceding that a permanent
military mobilization was expected during the Cold War (from roughly NSC-68 to the fall of the Berlin Wall)--no significant demobilization
followed. Forces slated for deactivation were quickly mobilized for Operation Desert Storm. No successful popular culture critiques
of that war's brutality would emerge. The author sees the end of the cold war and Desert Storm as framing a period of "new American
militarism" that breaks from historical precedent in several regards. He claims that since the 1988 presidential campaign, the
character of the presidency has emphasized military more than civilian leadership. This contradicts previous presidents of military
stature (e.g. Grant, Eisenhower) who obsessively positioned themselves as civilians. Post-Cold War military budgets have been
dramatically larger despite no global adversary. The public has uncritically accepted a permanent military stance. The perception
of war as ghastly and treacherous has been replaced with war as a clinical and technologically managed spectacle. The link between
the covenant of citizenship and military service has been replaced by a specialized force of volunteers. The numbers of veterans
serving in congress has steadily decreased since World War II. Bacevich correlates this with the shunning of military service
by elites as the military has increasingly drawn from areas of the population that are poor and brown. Because of this, force
is "outsourced" and in turn the stature of soldiers has dramatically increased through an infrastructure of praise by the majority
who are not involved in military operations. Senior military officers have tremendous clout in politics, policy, and spending.
To understand this new militarism, Bacevich notes that it is point-for-point an inversion of Vietnam's military milieu. There,
politicians up through the president framed themselves as civilians, officers felt out of touch with bureaucratic decisions, and
war was perceived as carnal and bumbling. The book traces cultural responses to Vietnam that reformed the American relationship
to militarism. As military leaders like Creighton Abrams sought to mandate broad political investment for military action by creating
interdependence with reserves and to limit the criteria for deployment with the Weinberger doctrine, politicians like Ronald Reagan
rehabilitated an American demoralization that peaked with Carter's failed Operation Eagle Claw by invoking popular culture mythologies
like Rambo.
Bacevich is unabashedly religious. He ultimately couches America's outsourced and technocratic militarism as a departure from
natural Gods in the pursuit of a scientistic idol that more perfectly regulates human affairs. He openly sees in this scientism
the same flaw and outcome as Communism or Fascism. He suggests that affirmation of military service across economic privilege
would raise the stakes of military engagements and help to contradict the cultural illusions that form the basis of American militarism.
(That war is technical, distant, clinical, predictable, outsourced, humane, and everything contrary to what writers like Remarque
tell us.) He meticulously synthesizes a new paradigm that relates the difficult subjects of military policy and popular sanction.
In this regard, The New American Militarism is an exciting contribution to historical scholarship.
M. Ward:
The New American Militarism - A Bipolar Look at Todays State of Affairs, February 4, 2006
Andrew J. Bacevichs', The New American Militarism, gives the reader an important glimpse of his background when he wrote that,
as a Vietnam veteran, the experience baffled him and he wrote this book in an effort to "sift through the wreckage left by the
war." After the Vietnam War, the author stayed in the military because he believed being an American soldier was a "true and honorable"
calling. Bacevich states he is a devoted Catholic and a conservative who became disillusioned with mainstream conservatism. He
also states that he believes the current political system is corrupt and functions in ways inconsistent with genuine democracy.
Bacevich states that he tried to write this book using facts in an unbiased way. However, he cautions the reader that his experiences
have shaped his views and that his views are part of this book. This is a way to tell the reader that although he tried to remain
unbiased, his background and biases find voice in this book. I believe the authors warning are valid; he draws heavily upon his
background and biases to support his thesis.
The book is about American militarism, which Bacevich describes as the "misleading and dangerous conceptions of war, soldiers,
and military institutions" that have become part of the American conscience and have `perverted' US national security policy.
According to Bacevich, American militarism has subordinated the search for the common good to the permanent value of military
effectiveness that will bankrupt the US economically and morally. Bacevich supports this thesis by discussing issues that have
contributed to this state of affairs.
Bacevich believes the current state of American militarism has roots dating back to the Wilson administration. Wilson's vision
was to remake the world in America's image. God Himself willed the universal embrace of liberal democracies and Wilson saw the
US as a `divine agent' to make the world a safe and democratic place. Today, with no serious threat to keep our military forces
in check, we are now, more than ever, free to spread liberal democracy using military force, if necessary.
Considering the military, Bacevich makes the point that the militarism of America is also due, in part, to the officer corps of
the US military trying to rehabilitate the image and profession of the soldier after the Vietnam War. Officers attempted to do
this by reversing the roles of the soldiers and the politicians that was problematic during the Vietnam War. They tried to establish
the primacy of the military over the civilians in decisions as to how to use the military. The Weinberger and Powell doctrines
were the manifestation of this idea by spelling out conditions for the use of the US military in combat.
Neo-conservatives further enhanced the trend of militarism. They see US power as an instrument for good and the time was right
to use the military to achieve the final triumph of Wilson's idea of spreading American liberal democracy around the globe.
Religion also played a role. According to Bacevich, evangelical Protestants see the US as a Christian nation singled out by
God and Americans are His chosen people. These evangelicals believed the Vietnam War was not only a military crisis, but also
a cultural and moral crisis threatening our status. Evangelicals looked to the military to play a pivotal role in saving the US
from internal collapse due to the higher expression of morals and values found in the military. The military would become the
role model to reverse the trend of godlessness and social decay.
Another set of actors that contributed to American militarism were the defense intellectuals whose main contribution was to
bring the military back under civilian control. According to Bacevich, they laid the groundwork of our current policy of `preventative
war' and reinforced American militarism.
Finally, Bacevich accuses politicians of deceiving the American public as to the true nature of American militarism by wrapping
militarism in the comfortable trappings of nationalism. By using labels such as the Global War on Terrorism, politicians are using
a political sleight-of-hand trick to hide our true militaristic nature in patriotic terms. Bacevich concludes his book with a
list of recommendations to mitigate the current trend of American militarism.
Bacevich seems to create a mosaic of conspiracy perpetrated by sinister actors aimed at deceiving an unsuspecting public as
to the true nature of American militarism. Until the last chapter where Bacevich tells the reader that there is no conspiracy,
it is very easy to believe there might be one lurking in the shadows. I was shocked when I reached Bacevich's recommendations.
The contrast between his recommendations and the rest of the book is astounding. I was expecting highly provocative recommendations
that would match the tone of the rest of the book. However, his recommendations were solid and well thought out...delivered in
the calm manner one would expect from a political scientist. Nevertheless, in the end, Bacevich's message leading up to his recommendations
were hard to swallow. I believe he wrote this book not to enlighten but to be provocative in order to sell books and build his
status in academic circles. If Bacevich's aim was to build a convincing argument on a serious subject, he needed to be less provocative
and more clinical.
David Friedman:
What is militarism? What is it, particularly as applied to today's America? West Point educated Andrew Bacevich opens his book
with a concise statement: "Today as never before in their history Amercans are enthralled with military power. The global military
supremacy that the United States presently enjoys . . . has become central to our national identity." This is the basic premise
of The New American Militarism. Anyone who does not accept the accuracy of this statement, or is unconcerned about its implications
should probably not read this book--it will only annoy them. For those, however, who are concerned about how militarism is increasingly
seeping into our core values and sense of national destiny, or who are disturbed by the current glaring disconnect between what
our soldiers endure "over there", and the lack of any sacrifice or inconvenience for the rest of us "over here", this book is
a must-read.
Refreshingly, Bacevich approaches the new American militarism as neither a Democrat nor Republican, from neither the left nor
the right. No doubt, those with a stake in defending the policy of the present Administration no matter how foolish, or in castigating
it as the main source of our current militarism, will see "bias" in this book. The truth though is that Bacevich makes a genuine
effort to approach his subject in a spirit of open and disinterested inquiry. He has earned the right to say, near the end of
his book, that "this account has not sought to assign or impute blame." As a result, he is not stymied by the possibility of embarrassing
one political side or the other by his arguments or conclusions. This leads to a nuanced and highly independent and original treatment
of the subject.
In chronicling the rise of American militarism, Bacevich rightly starts with Wilson's vision of American exceptionalism: an
America leading the world beyond the slaughterhouse of European battlefields to an international order of peaceful democratic
states. But where President Wilson wanted to create such a world for the express purpose of rendering war obsolete, Bacevich notes
that today's "Wilsonians" want to export American democracy through the use of force. He follows this overview with an insider's
thumbnail history of American military thinking from Vietnam to the first Gulf war. He explains how the military in effect re-invented
itself after Vietnam so as to make it far more difficult "to send the Army off to fight while leaving the country behind." Today's
highly professionalized and elite force is largely the result of this thinking. In turn this professional military presented to
the country and its civilian leaders a re-invented model of war: war waged with surgical precision and offering "the prospect
of decision rather than pointing ineluctably toward stalemate and quagmire." Gulf War I was the triumphant culmination of this
model. The unintended and ironic consequence, of course, was that war and the aggressive projection of American military power
throughout the world came to be viewed by some in our nation's leadership as an increasingly attractive policy option.
The body of the book analyzes how the legitimate attempt to recover from the national trauma of Vietnam led ultimately to a
militarism increasingly reflected in crucial aspects of American life. In religion he traces how a "crusade" theory of warfare
has supplanted the more mainstream "just war" theory. In popular culture he discusses the rise of a genre of pop fiction and movies
reflecting a glamorized and uncritical idealization of war (he examines "An Officer and A Gentleman", "Rambo: First Blood Part
II", and "Top Gun" as examples). In politics he identifies the neo-conservative movement as bringing into the mainstream ideas
that "a decade earlier might have seemed reckless or preposterous"; for example the idea that the United States is "the most revolutionary
force on earth" with an "inescapable mission" to spread democracy -- by the sword if necessary. Bacevich calls these ideas "inverted
Trotskyism", and notes that the neo-conservative movement shares with Mao the assumption that revolution springs "from the barrel
of a gun".
Bacevich concludes his book with a pithy ten-point critique offered as a starting point for "a change in consciousness, seeing
war and America's relationship to war in a fundamentally different way." Among his points are greater fidelity to the letter and
the spirit of the Constituional provisions regarding war and the military, and increased strategic self-sufficiency for America.
Perhaps the most important points of his critique are those about ending or at least reducing the current disconnect between er
how we might reduce
Patrick Connor
Careful observers will note the abolute claims that lie under the surface of these criticisms. If you criticize anything about
the United States, you're automatically anti-Bush. If you question the wisdom of viewing the military as a first-option in handling
international problems, you're even worse: a liberal anti-Bush peacenick. History supposedly demonstrates that diplomacy never
works with any "tyrant" (whatever that is), while war allegedly always work. It's just one stark claim after another, with never
any gray area in the middle.
If you read the book, this "you're either with us or with the terrorists, either dream war or hate President Bush" mentality
should remind you of something. It very closely resembles the description Bacevich gives of neoconservatism, which he says engenders
a worldview that is constantly in crisis mode. Things are always so dire for neocons, Bacevich explains, that only two feasible
options present themselves at any given time: doing what the neocons want (usually deploying military force in pursuit of some
lofty but unrealistic goal), or suffering irreversible and potentially fatal setbacks to our national cause.
Is it really surprising that the reviews of this book from a neocon mindset are also the reviews giving one star to a book
that sytematically critiques and upends neoconservatism?
In actuality, as many have pointed out already, Bacevich is "anti-Bush" only insomuch as he is anti-neoconservative. Bacevich
openly states that he throws his full weight behind traditionally conservative issues, like small government and lower taxes.
Indeed, he is a devoutly religious social conservative who himself severed twenty years in the Army officer corps. This is why
his exposee on America's new militarism has so much credibility.
Since he was in the military, he knows that sometimes the military is necessary to handle situations that develop in the world.
However he also understands that the military is often grossly unfit to handle certain situations. This is the main theme of his
book. At its core, the story is about how, in response to Vietnam, military leaders worked frightfully hard to rebuild the military
and to limit the freedom of starry-eyed civilians to use the armed forces inappropriately.
Their most important objective was to ensure that no more Wilsonian misadventures (like Vietnam) would happen. The officer
corps did this by carving out a space of authority for the top brass, from which they could have unprecedented input in policy
decisions, and be able to guide strategy and tactics once the military deployed into action. After ascending to a position of
greater prominence, they implemented the "Weinberger Doctrine," followed by the "Powell Doctrine," both specifically tailored
to avoid Vietnam-style quagmires. The Gulf War, claims Bacevich, saw the fruition of fifteen years of hard work to accomplish
these reforms. And they worked beautifully.
However, the end of the last decade saw the Neo-conservatives challenge the status quo. And with the election of W. Bush, they
were finally in a position where their ideas could again have a disproportionate influence on foreign policy. What we now have
in Iraq is another military quagmire, where the solution must be political, but where military occupation renders political solutions
impossible.
This story is about how the military profession emerged from the post-Vietnam wilderness, dazzled the world during the first
Gulf War, then once again lost its independent ability to craft related policies with the arrival of Rummie and the neocons.
It's a fascinating story, and Bacevich relates it skillfully.
Andrew S. Rogers:
Baedecker on the road to perdition, December 5, 2005
I was sorry to see Andrew J. Bacevich dismiss Chalmers Johnson's 2004
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy,
and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project) quite as quickly as he did (on page 3 of the introduction, in fact),
because I think these two books, taken together, provide probably the best -- and certainly the most historically-informed --
look at the rise and consequences of American empire. I endorse "The New American Militarism" as heartily as I did "The Sorrows
of Empire."
Bacevich's capsule summary of Johnson's work notwithstanding, both these books take the long view of America's international
military presence and are quick to grasp one key point. As Bacevich notes on page 205, "American militarism is not the invention
of a cabal nursing fantasies of global empire and manipulating an unsuspecting people frightened by the events of 9/11. Further,
it is counterproductive to think in these terms -- to assign culpability to a particular president or administration and to imagine
that throwing the bums out will put things right."
In several insightful chapters, Bacevich traces the rise of militarism over the course of several administrations and many
decades. A former Army officer himself, the author is particularly insightful in charting the efforts of the military's officer
corps to recover from the stigma of Vietnam and reshape the *ethos* of the armed services as an elite intentionally separate from,
and morally superior to, the society it exists to defend. But the officers are only one of the strands Bacevich weaves together.
He also looks at the influence of the "defense intellectuals;" the importance of evangelical Christians and how their view of
Biblical prophecy shapes their understanding of politics; the rise of (yes) the neo-conservatives; and even the role of Hollywood
in changing America's understandings of the "lessons of Vietnam" and the re-glamorization of the military in films like "Top Gun."
The author is a sharp-eyed analyst, but also an engaging writer, and he gives the reader a lot to think about. I was intrigued,
for example, by his discussion of how "supporting the troops" has become the *sine qua non* of modern politics and how doing so
has replaced actual military service as an indicator of one's love of country. More fundamentally, his identification and analysis
of "World War III" (already over) and "World War IV" (currently underway, and declared [surprisingly] by Jimmy Carter) struck
me as a remarkably useful lens for interpreting current events.
In tying his threads together, Bacevich is not afraid to make arguments and draw conclusions that may make the reader uncomfortable.
As the passage I quoted above makes clear, for example, someone looking for a straightforward declaration that "It's all Bush's
fault!" will have to go someplace else. As a further implication of the above passage, Bacevich argues that the "defense intellectuals,"
the evangelicals, and even the neocons were and are doing what they believe are most likely to promote peace, freedom, and the
security of the American people. "To the extent that we may find fault with the results of their efforts, that fault is more appropriately
attributable to human fallibility than to malicious intent" (p. 207). Additionally, Bacevich is unashamed of his military service,
holds up several military leaders as heroes, has some choice words for the self-delusions of leftist "peace activists," and even
argues that federal education loans should be made conditional on military service.
This doesn't mean the president and his fellow conservatives get off much easier, though. Bacevich is roundly critical of Bush
and his administration, including Colin Powell; dismisses the Iraq invasion ("this preposterous enterprise" [p. 202]); and in
a move that will probably get him crossed off the Thayer Award nominations list, suggests officer candidates be required to graduate
from civilian universities instead of West Point (his alma mater) or Annapolis -- intellectually-isolated institutions that reinforce
the officer caste's separation from civil society.
So this book isn't one that will blindly reinforce anyone's prejudices. In part for that reason -- but mostly for its trenchant
analysis, readable prose, and broad historical view -- I'm happy to list "The New American Militarism" as one of the best and
most important books I've read in some time. Perhaps even since "The Sorrows of Empire."
Izaak VanGaalen:
Militarism and Public Opinion, August 12, 2005
According to many of the custodians of public opinion, Andrew Bacevich has earned his right to a fair hearing. Not only is
he a graduate of West Point, a Vietnam veteran, and a conservative Catholic, he is a professor of international relations and
a contributor to "The Weekly Standard" and "The National Review." Obviously, if he were a left-leaning anti-war Democrat and a
contributor to, say, "The Nation," he wouldn't be taken seriously as a critic of American militarism - he would be merely another
"blame-America-first" defeatist.
Bacevich sees militarism manifesting itself in some disquieting ways. Traditionally America has always gauged the size of its
military with the magnitude of impending threats. After the Civil War, World War I and II, the military was downsized as threats
receded. Not so after the fall of the Soviet Union. The military budget has continued to grow and the expenditures are greater
- by some measures - than all other countries combined. American military forces are now scaling the globe and the American public
seems quiet comfortable with it. And everyone else is growing uneasy.
The mindset of the current officer corps is dominant control in all areas "whether sea, undersea, land, air, space or cyberspace."
In other words, supremacy in all theaters. Self-restraint has given way to the normalization of using military force as a foreign
policy tool. From 1989 (Operation Just Cause) to 2002 (Operation Iraqi Freedom) there have been nine major military operations
and a number of smaller ones. The end of the Cold War has given the US a preponderance of military strength (the proverbial unipolar
moment) that has enamoured successive administrations with the idea of using military force to solve international problems. In
earlier times, war was always an option of the last resort, now it is a preventative measure.
War, according to Bacevich, has taken on a new aesthetic. During World War I and II, and also Vietnam and Korea the battlefield
was a slaughterhouse of barbarism and brutality. Now, with the advent of the new Wilsonianism in Washington, wars are seen as
moments of national unity to carry out a positive agenda, almost as if it were international social work.
The modern soldier is no longer looked upon as a deadbeat or a grunt, but rather as a skilled professional who is undertaking
socially beneficial work. In fact, in a poll taken in 2003, military personnel consider themselves as being of higher moral standards
than the nation they serve.
In the political classes, the Republicans have traditionallly been staunchly pro-military, but now even Democrats have thrown
off their ant-military inclinations. When Kerry was running for president he did not question Bush's security policies, he was
actually arguing that Bush had not gone far enough. Kerry wanted to invest more in military hardware and training. Even liberal
Michael Ignatieff argues that US military intervention should be used to lessen the plight of the oppressed and that we should
be assisting them in establishing more representative government.
But superpowers are not altruistic; they are only altruistic to the extent that it serves their self-interest. That's probably
why Ignatieff will not get much of a hearing and Bacevich will. This book should give us pause as to why the range of opinion
in the America on the use of military force is so narrow. If there is one voice that stands a chance of being heeded, it is from
this conservative ex-soldier. \
Douglas Doepke:
The US may have been an expansionist and aggressive power as history shows. But unlike European peers, the American public
never really took to the seductions of militarism. That is, until now. This is an important and occasionally brilliant book that
tells a forty-year tale of creeping over-reliance on the military. And a heck-of an important story it is. I like the way Bacevich
refuses to blame the Bush administration, even though they're the ones who've hit the accelerator. Actually the trend has been
in motion for some time, especially since 1980 and Reagan's revival of military glory, contrived though it was.
Each chapter deals with an aspect of this growing militariism movement. How intellectual guru Norman Podhoretz and other elites
got the big engine together, how twenty million evangelical passengers abandoned tradition and got on board, and how a crew of
enthusiastic neo-cons charted a destination -- nothing less than world democracy guaranteed by American military might. All in
all, the ride passes for a brilliant post-cold war move. Who's going to argue with freeing up the Will of the People, except for
maybe a few hundred million Sharia fanatics. Yet, it appears none of the distinguished crew sees any contradiction between dubious
means and noble end, nor do they seem particularly concerned with what anybody else thinks. (Sort of like the old Soviets, eager
to spread the blessings of Scientific Socialism.) However, as Bacevich pounts out, there's a practical problem here the crew is
very alert to. Policing the world means building up the institutions of the military and providing a covering mystique to keep
John Q. Public supportive, especially with tax dollars and blood supply. In short, the mission requires sanitizing the cops on
the beat and all that goes into keeping them there. It also means overcoming a long American tradition of minding-one's-own-business
and letting the virtues of democratic self-governance speak for themselves. But then, that was an older, less "responsible" America.
Bacevich's remedies harken back to those older, quieter traditions -- citizen soldiers, a real Department of Defense, a revived
Department of State, and a much more modest role in international affairs.With this book, Bacevich proves to be one of the few
genuine conservatives around, (a breed disappearing even faster than the ranks of genuine liberals). Much as I like the book,
especially the thoughtful Preface, I wish the author had dealt more with the economic aspects of build-up and conquest. But then
that might require a whole other volume, as globalization and the number of billion-dollar servicing industries expands daily.
At day's end, however, someone needs to inform a CNN- enthralled public that the military express lacks one essential feature.
With all its hypnotizing bells and whistles, history shows the momentum has no brakes. Lessons from the past indicate that, despite
the many seductions, aggressive empires make for some very unexpected and fast-moving train wrecks. Somebody needs to raise the
alarm. Thanks Mr. Bacevich for doing your part.
Still his critique of neocons is a class of its own has value in itself as it comes from professional military officer. Professor
Bacevich argues that the US new militarism which emerged after the dissolution of the USSR is the result of a convergence of actions
by a number of different groups including our professional military, neoconservative intellectuals and publicists, evangelical Christians,
resurgent Republican party activists, and so-called defense intellectuals (see New American
Militarism).
Andrew Bacevich has a wonderful essay, in the form of an open letter to Paul Wolfowitz,
in the current Harper's. You
have to subscribe to read it -- but, hey, you should be
subscribing to any publication whose work
you value. This essay isolates the particular role Wolfowitz had in the cast of characters that led us to war. As a reminder, they
included:
Dick Cheney, who was becoming a comic-book churl by this stage of his public life;
Colin Powell, the loyal soldier, staffer, and diplomat whose "Powell Doctrine" and entire life's work stood in opposition
to the kind of war that he, with misguided loyalty, was to play so central a role in selling;
Tony Blair, the crucial ally who added rhetorical polish and international resolve to the case for war;
Donald Rumsfeld, with his breezy contempt for those who said the effort would be difficult or long;
Paul Bremer, whose sudden, thoughtless dismantling of the Iraqi army proved so disastrous;
Condoleezza Rice, miscast in her role as White House national-security advisor;
George Tenet, the long-time staffer who cooperated with the "slam-dunk!" intelligence assessment despite serious disagreement
within the CIA;
and of course George W. Bush himself, whose combination of limited knowledge and strong desire to be "decisive" made
him so vulnerable to the argument that the "real" response to the 9/11 attacks should be invading a country that had nothing to
do with them.
But Paul Wolfowitz was in a category of his own because he was the one who provided the highest-concept rationale for the
war. As James Galbraith of the University of Texas has put it, "Wolfowitz is the real-life version of Halberstam's caricature of
McNamara" [in The Best and the Brightest].
Bacevich's version of this assessment is to lay out as respectfully as possible the strategic duty that Wolfowitz thought the U.S.
would fulfill by invading Iraq. Back before the war began, I did a much more limited version of this assessment
as an Atlantic article.
As Bacevich puts it now, Wolfowitz was extending precepts from his one-time mentor,
Albert Wohlstetter, toward a model of how the United
States could maximize stability for itself and others.
As with the best argumentative essays, Bacevich takes on Wolfowitz in a strong rather than an oversimplified version of his world-view.
You have to read the whole thing to get the effect, but here is a brief sample (within fair-use limits):
With the passing of the Cold War, global hegemony seemed America's for the taking. What others saw as an option you, Paul, saw
as something much more: an obligation that the nation needed to seize, for its own good as well as for the world's....
Although none of the hijackers were Iraqi, within days of 9/11 you were promoting military action against Iraq. Critics have
chalked this up to your supposed obsession with Saddam. The criticism is misplaced. The scale of your ambitions was vastly greater.
In an instant, you grasped that the attacks provided a fresh opportunity to implement Wohlstetter's Precepts, and Iraq offered
a made-to-order venue....In Iraq the United States would demonstrate the efficacy of preventive war.... The urgency of invading
Iraq stemmed from the need to validate that doctrine before the window of opportunity closed.
Bacevich explains much more about the Wohlstetter / Wolfowitz grand view. And then he poses the challenge that he says Wolfowitz
should now meet:
One of the questions emerging from the Iraq debacle must be this one: Why did liberation at gunpoint yield results that differed
so radically from what the war's advocates had expected? Or, to sharpen the point, How did preventive war undertaken by ostensibly
the strongest military in history produce a cataclysm?
Not one of your colleagues from the Bush Administration possesses the necessary combination of honesty, courage, and wit to
answer these questions. If you don't believe me, please sample the tediously self-exculpatory memoirs penned by (or on behalf
of) Bush himself, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Tenet, Bremer, Feith, and a small squad of eminently forgettable generals...
What would Albert [Wohlstetter] do? I never met the man (he died in 1997), but my guess is that he wouldn't flinch from taking
on these questions, even if the answers threatened to contradict his own long-held beliefs. Neither should you, Paul. To be sure,
whatever you might choose to say, you'll be vilified, as Robert McNamara was vilified when he broke his long silence and admitted
that he'd been "wrong, terribly wrong" about Vietnam. But help us learn the lessons of Iraq so that we might extract from it something
of value in return for all the sacrifices made there. Forgive me for saying so, but you owe it to your country.
Anyone who knows Andrew Bacevich's story will understand the edge behind his final sentence. But you don't have to know that to
respect the challenge he lays down. I hope Paul Wolfowitz will at some point rise to it.
For another very valuable assessment of who was right and wrong, when, please see
John
Judis's piece in The New Republic.
By
Jeff Horwitz
and
Keach Hagey
Updated April 11, 2021 11:41 am ET
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Google for years operated a secret program that used data from past bids in the company's digital advertising exchange to
allegedly give its own ad-buying system an advantage over competitors, according to court documents filed in a Texas antitrust
lawsuit.
The program, known as "Project Bernanke," wasn't disclosed to publishers who sold ads through Google's ad-buying systems. It
generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the company annually, the documents show. In its lawsuit, Texas alleges
that the project gave Google, a unit of
Alphabet
Inc.,
GOOG
0.90%
an
unfair competitive advantage over rivals.
Google's Ad Machine
Online ads are typically sold in auctions that happen in an instant, when a user's webpage is loading. Google
dominates at virtually every step of the process. In an antitrust lawsuit, Texas alleges that Google's secret
"Project Bernanke" allowed the company to use knowledge it gained running its ad exchange to unfairly compete against
rivals. Here's how the digital advertising machine works:
THE SELL SIDE: PUBLISHERS
AD SPACE
FOR SALE
When a
user
visits
a large online
publisher's
website
or app, the publisher uses an
ad
server
to sell ad space on its pages.
The publisher also gives the exchange information about the reader -- their age, income, browsing history and
interests, for example.
In this example, the publisher uses Google's DoubleClick for Publishers, the leading ad-serving tool.
The tool puts the publisher's ad space up for sale on
exchanges
,
marketplaces where transactions happen in real-time between sellers (
publishers
)
and buyers (
advertisers
).
REAL-TIME
AUCTION HOUSES
Google has the largest such marketplace, the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, or AdX.
THE BUY SIDE: ADVERTISERS
An advertiser, representing its clients' products, uses sophisticated buying tools to purchase ads.
In this example, an advertiser uses Google's buying tool, DV360, the industry leader.
The advertiser can specify the types of audiences it wants to target -- such as location, gender or age of
user -- and the price of their offer.
To get its ad in front of the user, the advertiser places bids in the auction marketplace -- the highest bidder
wins.
Once a match is made on the exchange, an ad pops up on users' screens.
The documents filed this week were part of Google's initial response to
the
Texas-led antitrust lawsuit
, which was filed in December and accused the search company of running a digital-ad monopoly
that harmed both ad-industry competitors and publishers. This week's filing, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, wasn't
properly redacted when uploaded to the court's public docket. A federal judge let Google refile it under seal.
Some of the unredacted contents of the document were earlier disclosed by MLex, an antitrust-focused news outlet.
The document sheds further light on the state's case against Google, along with the search company's defense.
Much of the lawsuit involves the interplay of Google's roles as both the operator of a major ad exchange -- which Google likens
to the New York Stock Exchange in marketing documents -- and a representative of buyers and sellers on the exchange. Google also
acts as an ad buyer in its own right, selling ads on its own properties such as search and YouTube through these same systems.
Texas alleges that Google used its access to data from publishers' ad servers -- where more than 90% of large publishers use
Google to sell their digital ad space -- to guide advertisers toward the price they would have to bid to secure an ad placement.
Google's use of bidding information, Texas alleges, amounted to insider trading in digital-ad markets. Because Google had
exclusive information about what other ad buyers were willing to pay, the state says, it could unfairly compete against rival
ad-buying tools and pay publishers less on
its
winning bids for ad inventory
.
The unredacted documents show that Texas claims Project Bernanke is a critical part of that effort.
How tech giants are both cooperating while competing in hardware, software and technology services
Google acknowledged the existence of Project Bernanke in its response and said in the filing that "the details of Project
Bernanke's operations are not disclosed to publishers."
Google denied in the documents that there was anything inappropriate about using the exclusive information it possessed to
inform bids, calling it "comparable to data maintained by other buying tools."
Peter Schottenfels, a Google spokesman, said the complaint "misrepresents many aspects of our ad tech business. We look
forward to making our case in court." He referred the Journal to an analysis conducted by a U.K. regulator that concluded that
Google didn't appear to have had an advantage.
The Texas attorney general's office didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
Google's outsize role in the digital-ad market is both controversial and at times murky.
In some instances, "we're on both the buy side and the sell side," Google Chief Economist Hal Varian said at a 2019 antitrust
conference held by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Asked how the company managed those roles, Mr. Varian
said the topic was "too detailed for the audience, and me."
The globalists are behaving just like the Bolsheviks of old. It is down right scary to see
this happen in America. We lost the major cities 40 or 50 years ago and now the entire
country (except that 1 percent stealing all the money) is on the verge of going 3rd world
banana republic.
drjd 6 hours ago
If this was truly "communism", would 1% be stealing all the money? Why don't we just call
it what it really is: "globalist crony capitalism."
YuriTheClown 2 hours ago
The internationalists are behaving just like the Bolsheviks of old.
You must not know your history. High powered US bankers prop up the big Bolshevik names in
New York until it was time to loose them on Russia. Then they financed the whole
operation.
And who is financing the Bolsheviks in the USA now???
artless 1 hour ago remove link
The word you are looking for is fascism. This use of "crony this" and "crony that" along
with ANY use of the word capitalism-because their is nothing capitalist about any of this-
needs to stop. It is fascism. Not communism, not socialism...
Even before the targets in Yemen had been "legally" designated as
a Foreign Terrorist Organization Obama used cluster bombs to shred
dozens of women and children in a failed attempt to hit members of
"al Qaida in Yemen (AQY)".
.
The war crime immediately became a dirty Obama secret, covered up
with the help of the MSM, in particular ABC.
.
An enthusiastic White House had leaked to their contacts at ABC that
Obama had escalated the War on Terror, taking it to another country,
Yemen. This was December 17, 2009 only days after Obama had returned
from his ceremony in Oslo where he proudly accepted the Nobel Peace
Prize.
.
ABC was thrilled with their scoop and in manly voices announced
the escalation in the War on Terror.
.
The very next day ABC went silent forever about it, joining the cover up
of a war crime.
.
Hillary Clinton, by the way, committed her own act of cover up.
Covering her butt by backdating a memo.
.
The designation of a organization as a FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organization)
is not official nor legal until it is published in the Federal Register.
An oversight? Obama attacked Yemen before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
had done the paperwork to make the killing legal?
.
The designation was not published until a month later, January 19, 2010.
Hillary Clinton back dated the memo she published in the Register with the date of
December 14, 2009, to somewhat cover her butt.
.
Obama's acceptance speech in Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize was December 10th.
.
Yemen leaders agreed to participate in Obama's coverup saying it was their
own Yemen forces that had accidentally shredded dozens of women and children.
.
Obama was grateful to the Yemen leaders. The Yemen leaders were not
honored in Oslo. But, ironically, Obama ended his speech honoring women
and children, days before he ordered their slaughter.
.
Obama in Oslo, December 10, 2009:
.
"Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty
still takes the time to teach her child, scrapes together what
few coins she has to send that child to school -- because she
believes that a cruel world still has a place for that child's
dreams.
.
Let us live by their example. We can acknowledge that oppression will
always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the
intractability of deprivation, and still strive for dignity. Clear-eyed,
we can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace.
We can do that -- for that is the story of human progress; that's the
.
hope
.
of all the world; and at this moment of challenge,
that must be our work here on Earth.
.
Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
.
One week later Obama shredded dozens of women and children in Yemen
and covered it up.
.
Here is ABC's Brian Ross using his most masculine voice to boast about Obama's attack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHcg3TNSRPs
.
Wikileaks cable corroborates evidence of US airstrikes in Yemen (Amnesty Intl)
https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2010/12/wikileaks-cable-corroborates-evidence-us-airstrikes-yemen/
.
Actual cable at Wikileaks: https://search.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/10SANAA4_a.html
.
More at ABC [12/18/2009]: https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cruise-missiles-strike-yemen/story?id=9375236 https://web.archive.org/web/20190624203826/https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cruise-missiles-strike-yemen/story?id=9375236
">https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cruise-missiles-strike-yemen/story?id=9375236">https://web.archive.org/web/20190624203826/https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cruise-missiles-strike-yemen/story?id=9375236 https://web.archive.org/web/20190725171012/https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cr
">https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cr">https://web.archive.org/web/20190725171012/https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cr
@Anonymous that a strong American military and national security posture is the best
guarantor of peace and the survival of our values and civilization.
Stavridis has been at the forefront of the mass slaughter known as the implementation of the
Oded Yinon Plan for Eretz Israel:
From 2002 to 2004, Stavridis commanded Enterprise Carrier Strike Group, conducting combat
operations in the Persian Gulf in support of both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation
Enduring Freedom.
Stavridis "oversaw operations in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria." In short, this prominent
racketeer is dripping with the blood of hundreds of thousands of the victims.
One of the favourite tropes of the transparent cabal who have seized power in the US and
other captive nations is that the solution to the Palestine/Israel problem is "the path to
peace is through direct negotiations.'
This proposition requires the occupied bartering away their land and amending their
borders, always for the benefit of the illegal occupier. These 'negotiations' are expressly
forbidden by the Geneva Conventions. Every functioning government in the world knows
this.
The alien invaders are under an obligation to simply get out. Every 'agreement' is null
and void.
The New Zealand government and the NZ superannuation fund has recently decided to divest
their investments in Israeli banks citing international law, the Geneva Conventions and
reputation damage as key factors.
It is sheer hypocrisy for the usual suspects to talk about human rights, rules based
international law, democracy and our values, while advocating the opposite policies in the
middle east.
Is it possible they actually believe their own propaganda and their own lies through
Bernays like repartition?
This does not comport with Article II(Section 2) of the USA constitution.. which says
"The President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the usa, and of the
Militia of the serveral states, when into the actual service of the USA,
but no where do I find a private corporation may exercise the power of the Office of the
President ...? What did I mis?
The important fact that emerges is that Antifa is state sponsored group (or at least some
government agencies sponsored group) not unlike NSDAP was in Germany.
Andy Ngo's new book Unmasked: Inside Antifa's
Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy is as important to understanding where we are today
as Ann Coulter's
Adios America! was before Donald Trump election. Ngo
shows that far from being just an "idea," as President Joe Biden
would have us believe , Antifa comprises highly organized groups of dedicated activists
with an extreme political agenda and a commitment to violence. But Ngo also shows, perhaps less
consciously, that Antifa operates with de-facto backing from the Ruling Class, including
Main Stream Media journalists, the principal enforcers of the current order. Ngo suggests
Antifa are a revolutionary threat to the power structure and could overthrow it. But the truth
is much worse -- Antifa are simply the System's militant wing.
What makes Unmasked so remarkable is that Ngo doesn't limit himself to anecdotal
reporting, nor does he retreat to abstract theorizing. Instead, like a great historian, he
seamlessly integrates his experiences and other primary sources with political theory. He
shows, often literally with chapter and verse, what motivates Antifa, how they are organized,
how they are trained, and how this is turned into concrete action:
Where there is no single capital A 'Antifa' organization with one leader, there are indeed
localized cells and groups with formalized structures and memberships. Though officially
leaderless, these are organizations by every definition.
The [
Rose City Antifa ] curriculum is modeled on a university course. Yet it includes training
on how to use guns and do reconnaissance against enemies.
Ngo also helpfully reports on the history the Antifa brand, especially its origins in the
Red Front
Fighters' League of the pre-Hitler German Communist Party. He's especially astute to note
that "the German Communist Party [KPD] and its various offshoots viewed social democrats and
liberals as 'social fascists' no different from Nazis." Needless to say, KPD leader Ernst Thälman 's
strategy of fighting the more moderate Social Democrats ahead of the Nazis was glossed over by
Communist propaganda after World War II.
East German hagiographies of Thälman, like Sohn Seiner Klasse and
Führer Sonne Klasse ("Son of His Class," "Leader of His Class") portray him as
fighting the Nazis above all else.
When Ngo describes the Communist takeovers of East Germany and Vietnam, the latter of which
his family fled, he's warning Americans that we face a
Communist coup . Historically, "anti-fascism" was created by, and has always been a front
for, Communist or Communist-adjacent groups.
(I don't dispute Ngo's characterization of the movement as "anarchist-communist." It sounds
clumsy, but anarcho-communism is a venerable Leftist tradition that goes back to Marx's great
rival Mikhail Bakunin. I was surprised, though, that Ngo didn't mention that the three-arrow "Iron Front" symbol
widely used by Antifa today actually came from the German Social Democratic Party (SPD.) The
SPD opposed the Communists just as much as they did monarchists and the National
Socialists.
He's right, but when looking at what Antifa
prioritize today, it does seem preoccupied with boutique progressive causes like
transgenderism and policing speech. While physical attacks are common, doxing and
complaining to
capitalist employers are what Antifa do best of all.
Indeed, it's hard to imagine East Germany or the USSR tolerating the cultural degeneracy
championed by today's Antifa. The Soviet Bloc was positively social-conservative compared to
2021 post-America.
Ngo's reporting on the specific individuals, curriculum, tactics, and operational plans of
Antifa are a testament to his skill as a researcher (not mention his guts.) However, one thing
jumps out of the book repeatedly. Despite all their emphasis on "OpSec" and paranoia about law
enforcement, Antifa aren't actually especially secret. Like illegal aliens who lecture us on
television about their lives "
in the shadows ," it's not a huge mystery who is in Antifa. We know what groups exist,
where they operate and what they are doing. They openly operate on Twitter, Facebook etc.
In contrast to the Proud Boys or bewildered Boomers who wandered into the Capitol last
month, Antifa can operate openly because it has the tacit approval of law enforcement and
Main Stream Media outlets . Thus Ngo describes in shocking detail Antifa groups' training
workshops, including combat training. Right-wing
activity even at this level would be
shut down by the
government instantly.
It's an obvious point but bears repeating -- how radical are your
opinions when you have police, the military, corporate America, and the media all supporting
you? Antifa violence exists because it is permitted, arguably encouraged, to exist. Despite
President Trump's blustering promises, these Antifa groups were never labeled "terrorists" nor,
inexplicably, was systematic federal law enforcement action ever taken against them.
During
the CHAZ insurrection , Antifa was allowed to more or less claim sovereignty in a major
American city for a period of weeks. If nationalists had tried that, it would have ended in
drone strikes. The glee with which progressives hailed the execution
of Ashli Barrett tells us what they're willing to do. The "Capitol Insurrection" would have
been heralded as another Bastille Day
had it come from the other side .
Ngo points out repeatedly that Antifa conduct themselves to present a certain media image.
Yet this is a two-way relationship. While Antifa are eager to make sure only their narrative
gets out, Regime journalists willingly collaborate. It's a mistake to even speak of journalists
or Antifa as being separate categories of people.
Perhaps she was told such tweets would be career-ending or maybe she figured that out on her
own. She deleted them and joined the winning team.
The rest is history. Lorenz has made a career doxing
random people, notably Pamela Geller's daughters.
This also explains why Regime "journalists" -- make that
Journofa -- seem to
hate Ngo so much. Ngo provides many examples of independent journalists like himself
recording and livestreaming footage that provide "the up-close, raw, and uncensored look into
Antifa's extremism." Such raw footage strips Regime Media reporters of the ability to craft the
Narrative.
Ngo writes that Antifa "have made it a priority to keep out journalists like myself, even
releasing manuals on how to obstruct to the work of unapproved press." However, the critical
point is what he says next:
"[T]hey've [Antifa] made key allies in the media to counter negative coverage,
amplify their propaganda messaging, and discredit their shared opponents. The American public
has been inundated with n onstop propaganda that obfuscates and lies about Antifa ,
simultaneously presenting them as anti-fascists righting racism, and a figment of the
right's imagination ." [Emphases added]
Thus Ngo accuses corporate journalists, quite rightly, of knowingly spreading propaganda or
being "actually members of the militant Antifa movement."
Ngo's guide on how to "identify Antifa press" is important. If you see a reporter freely
videoing protests without being attacked, "that is a good sign the journalist produces
Antifa-approved content."
But I must take issue with Ngo's conclusion that the "movement is made of organized networks
of anarchist-communists who have the goal, training, and determination to overthrow the US
government." Is that what Antifa actually fights for in the real world?
For example, CHAZ didn't end with a heroic last stand. It ended after bored city workers
scattered some riffraff without much effort. It existed as long as Left-wing city politicians
defended it against then-President Donald Trump. It vanished the moment that city authorities
decided to regain control.
Insofar as Antifa have a real impact, it's not in organizing rent strikes or fighting banks.
Instead, they are most effective when calling up oligarchs to get working-class people fired.
Is such a group really a threat to the US government or something of a partner?
As Ngo himself points out early in his book, the United States government is tremendously
powerful. Anarcho-communists hardly seem a credible threat to its legitimacy. Rather than
wanting to crush them, at least some Democrats favor what Antifa are doing -- and certainly
want to downplay it.
Thus the presumptive next Attorney General, Merrick Garland, blithely dismissed an
attack on a
federal courthouse because it happened at
night. If anything, the new administration seems determined to put the power of the state
behind these "anarcho-communists."
And rather than trying to create a Workers' Paradise, what Antifa actually do is make the
world safe for
Woke Capital .
While Antifa violence is real, the danger to ordinary people is not so much that some
rampaging mob will come into their house at four in the morning. The danger is that Antifa will
see a Politically Incorrect tweet and render a person unemployable, with an assist from
"journalist" allies.
Ngo's book is essential reading. However, he may not fully understand the threat. The
problem isn't that Antifa is trying to overthrow the state. The problem is that the state and
Antifa are working together against ordinary Americans.
What we're living under is something far worse than Antifa's imagined "
anarcho-communism ." It's what the late Sam Francis presciently called anarcho-tyranny ,
with the worst features of lawlessness and autocracy combined.
This is why our situation is not as bad as Ngo suggests. It's far, far worse.
Brave buys a search engine, promises no tracking, no profiling – and may even offer
a paid-for, no-ad versionPitches pro-privacy platform with customizable results filter
dubbed GogglesThomas Claburn in San Francisco Wed 3
Mar 2021 // 14:00 UTC SHARE
Brave, maker of the identically named privacy-focused web browser, has acquired its own
search engine to offer as an alternative to Google Search and competing search engines that
exist but aren't all that visible in Google's shadow.
On Wednesday, the company plans to announce that it's taking over Tailcat, a search engine
developed by Cliqz, another privacy-focused browser biz that aspired to compete with Google and
shut down last year . The
deal, terms undisclosed, makes Cliqz owner Hubert Burda Media a Brave shareholder.
Brave intends to make Tailcat the foundation of its own search service, Brave Search . The company hopes that its more than 25
million monthly active Brave customers will, after an initial period of testing and courtship,
choose to make Brave Search their default search engine and will use it alongside other parts
of its privacy-oriented portfolio, which also includes Brave Ads, news reader Brave Today,
Brave Firewall+VPN, and video conferencing system Brave Together.
Brave Search, the company insists, will respect people's privacy by not tracking or
profiling those using the service. And it may even offer a way to end the debate about search
engine bias by turning search result output over to a community-run filtering system called
Goggles.
The service will, eventually, be available as a paid option – for those who want to
pay for search results without ads – though its more common incarnation is likely to be
ad-supported, in conjunction with Brave Ads. The latter offers participants the option to
receive 70 per cent of the payment made by the advertiser in a cryptocurrency called BAT (Brave
Attention Token).
Eich lays out his vision
In an interview with The Register , Brendan Eich, CEO of Brave, argued that the
demand for privacy is real and cannot be ignored. "I think the genie doesn't go back in the
bottle," he said. "Consciousness doesn't revert."
People used to hear about credit card breaches at large retailers like Target, Eich said,
and think that privacy is hopeless but not something that necessarily affects them directly.
But then it became more personal as technologies like ad retargeting did things like spoiling
surprise gifts by showing the ad for the purchased item again to the intended recipient.
I think privacy is here to stay and now the question is how people do it and market it
effectively
Eich sees the dominance of US tech companies contributing to the interest in privacy and
making it a matter of concern for regulators around the world.
"It's not political in the broken US sense – which is kind of a Punch and Judy show
– it's more like there are people of various commitments on all sides of politics who are
aware not only of privacy being violated over time by the big tech players but of the big tech
players being abusive monopolies," he said.
Pointing to how many companies now make privacy claims, Eich said, "I think privacy is here
to stay and now the question is how people do it and market it effectively. If you don't market
it, you can lose to somebody who just puts privacy perfume on a pig and tells you it smells
great and tastes delicious."
Eich's pitch is not that Brave Search aims to take on Google Search directly. He
acknowledges that there's no way to match Google's vast index and ability to return relevant
results for obscure (long tail) search terms. Rather, he sees an opportunity to improve
specific types of search queries, referred to as vertical markets.
"Part of what we're trying to do here is innovate in the area where there's now monopoly,"
he said in reference to Google Search, which has a market share of something like 92 per cent ."...The
innovation through verticals is possible because it avoids having to take on Google's supreme
competence, which is the rare or unique queries the long tail."
"What we're trying to do is different, it's not based on crawling the web," Eich explained.
"...Trying to crawl the whole web, it's not going to work. What Cliqz worked on..that's an
anonymous query log aggregator, and a partial click log aggregator, to see when you don't
convert on the search ad you leave the results page and you find the better results through
some number of clicks."
Gathering that sort of query and click data requires consent, said Eich, and Brave isn't
going to force Brave users to participate. But Cliqz started working on this and has a data set
they called "the Human Web," and that's now the basis of Brave Search.
"The queries and the clicks matter but they are unlinkable," he said. "There has to be a
property called record unlinkability. There's no IP address that gets dropped at the edge.
Timing channels are blinded by adding some delays. And there's no way to say this query was
from the same user as that query."
Brave Search's index there will be informed the activities of participating Brave users, in
terms of the URLs they search for or click on, and adjacent web resources that don't require
extensive crawling.
There's a theoretical risk users could poison the index through repeated visits to
irrelevant or harmful web pages, knowing their activities would inform the index, but Eich
suggests Brave is big and savvy enough to avoid being trolled in this way.
Brave also envisions users taking a more active role in their search results through a
filtering mechanism.
"It allows different groups to run their own sort of Turing incomplete filter rules, sort of
like ad blocking rules in the search service and not in the browser, to have a community
moderated view of the global index," he explained. "It's called 'Goggles.'"
Eich observed with a chuckle that it isn't related to Google Goggles, an image recognition
app that Google maintained from 2009 through 2018 until the arrival of Google
Lens.
Shared search
The Brave Search team has written a paper [ PDF ] explaining its use of the
term, titled "GOGGLES: Democracy dies in darkness, and so does the Web." The browser upstart
aims to replace the tyranny of Google's inscrutable, authoritative index with a multiverse of
indices defined by anyone with the inclination to do so.
Brave's vision of search is based on "an open and collaborative system by which a community,
or a single user, can create sets of rules and filters, called Goggles, to define the space
which a search engine can pull results from," the paper explains.
"Instead of a single ranking algorithm, we could have as many as needed, overcoming the
biases that a single actor (the search engine) embeds into the results."
Goggles has its own Domain Specific Language (DSL) for writing search result filters. Brave
hopes that Goggles will be adopted not only internally but among others search engines,
too.
Brave Search users will be able to, for better or worse, see the world through filters they
agree with or filters they detest. The point is it will be up to them rather than a large ad
company located in Silicon Valley.
The Brave Search team acknowledges that not all filters will show results that are agreeable
to everyone. "There will be Goggles created by creationists, anti-vaccination supporters or
flat-earthers," the paper says. "However, the biases will be explicit, and therefore, the
choice is a conscious one."
The paper contends that censorship will be unnecessary since illegal content should be
caught by the host search engine and removed from the search index so no Goggle can see it in
the first place.
"Brave is bringing back the idea of a user-first thick client, or a muscular client," said
Eich, differentiating his browser from just being "a blind servant of ad tech that runs all the
JavaScript Google throws at it." ®
A classic villain of 1970s and 80s was the evil tycoon. James Bond took on some of them.
Meet Hugo Drax of the Moonraker , or Karl Stromberg of The Spy Who Loved Me ;
these guys were willing to destroy mankind to replace it with a better version. Stromberg
planned to trigger a global nuclear war and survive it underwater. Drax intended to poison
mankind with his deadly gas and repopulate the world with his new chosen ones. Another one was
de Wynter, the super-villain of The Avengers, played by Sean Connery. He controlled the world
weather, and could kill us all off by hurricanes and tsunamis.
Before the tycoons, when the Cold war raged, a villain was a KGB agent or a Chinese
operative. As détente calmed relations between the blocks, the agents went out of
fashion; later, the fantastic villains of Marvel came into a vogue. The evil tycoons were
uncomfortably close to the real thing; and they moved from the cinematic world into our
reality.
The world we live in is the world formed by evil tycoons. They are the modern Demiurges, the
evil creators of the Gnostics, an early sect that confronted the Church. Like the Demiurges,
they are practically omnipotent; stronger than the State. The government needs lot of
permissions and authorisations to spend a penny. If a penny had been misspent, the dark word
'corruption' will sound. 'Corruption' is a silly concept; by applying it, the oligarchs
eliminated state competition, for they can pay whatever they want to whomever they wish. The
State must observe intricate arcane rules, while the tycoons have no such limits. As a result,
they shape our minds and lives, making the State a poor legitimate king among powerful and
wealthy barons.
The Corona crisis is a result of their activity. Now, a group of WHO scientists completed
its four weeks inspection tour of Wuhan trying to find out how the virus found its way to
humans; some of them think (as President Trump did) the virus escaped the Wuhan Lab. Matt
Ridley of The Daily Telegraph concluded
his piece analysing their findings: "A growing number of top experts [he provides the list] say
that a lab leak remains a plausible scientific hypothesis to be investigated". It is rather
unlikely, said the WHO , but other
explanations (pangolins etc) also
border on the improbable . The Chinese are understandably upset. Hua Chunying, the
spokeswoman for the Foreign Affairs ministry (the Chinese counterpart for the State
Department's Ned Price)
rejected the idea saying, "The United States should open the biological lab at Fort
Detrick, and invite WHO experts to conduct origin-tracing in the United States". The Guardian
report said she promoted "a conspiracy theory that it came from a US army lab"; while Ms Hua
accused the US of spreading "conspiracy theories and lies" tracing the source to Wuhan.
Whatever we say is a fact-based result of diligent research; whatever you say is a conspiracy
theory – both the US and China representatives subscribe to this mantra.
Our own Ron Unz made an excellent analysis of these accusations and counter-accusations in
his April 2020 piece
. He noted that the virus attack in Wuhan took place at the worst possible time and place for
the Chinese; therefore, an incidental release (or intentional release by the Chinese) is
extremely unlikely. Ron Unz suggested that it was an American biowarfare attack upon China.
Didn't American people suffer from the disease? Yes, the US government is "grotesquely and
manifestly incompetent " and they were likely to expect "a massive coronavirus outbreak
in China would never spread back to America".
Perhaps, but a better explanation is that some evil tycoon(s) played the part of Karl
Stromberg who intended to nuke both Moscow and New York causing war and world-wide devastation,
as in the James Bond movie. It could be somebody like Bill Gates, who is a major investor in
Wuhan Lab. A fact-checking site with its
weasel language admitted that the Lab "has received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, but Bill Gates can hardly be called a "partner" in the laboratory." Sure, not a
partner. Just an investor, and that is more important than a partner. And he is not the only
one; other multi-billionaires also are involved in bioresearch, in vaccine manufacturing, in
Big Pharma. "Glaxo, BlackRock, and Bill Gates are all partners, but not owners of Pfizer", says
another
fact-checker . "In 2015, Anthony Fauci did issue a USD 3.7 million grant to the Wuhan
Institute of Virology, but not to "create the coronavirus" – the
fact-checking site adds. Well, you could not possibly expect Fauci to word the grant in
such a straightforward way, could you?
Perhaps it is too formidable a job even for an evil tycoon like Gates. A plot of several
evil tycoons is more likely. Together, they could try to change the world and mankind to suit
them.
The evil tycoons could poison China on their New Year holiday and take this uppity state
down a ring or two. They could import the virus into the US to undermine and remove Trump whom
they hated. (He was certain to win the elections but for Corona.) They could poison Europe to
weaken it and make it more docile and obedient to their demands – and to buy their assets
on the cheap. Corona and lockdown did not harm them for they are normally withdrawn from the
bustle of the common man's life.
The billionaires control the media; that much we know, and the part media has played in the
Corona crisis was enormous. The media coverage of the crisis has a huge hidden cost. Try to
publish information you consider important on the front page of a newspaper. It will cost you a
lot. Still, all newspapers belonging to the Billionaires' Media block beginning with the New
York Times and ending with Haaretz gave at least a third of its front page to Corona news each
day. The sheer cost of this advertising runs into billions. Will we ever know who paid for
it?
Steven Soderbergh's (2011) film Contagion predicted many features of the Covid-19, notably
the origin of the virus. In the film, the disease originates from bats in China and is spread
through markets where contaminated pork meat is sold. How could Soderbergh (or his script
writer Scott Z. Burns) possibly know eight years before the event that the contagion should
originate in the Chinese bats? Who told him? Wouldn't you expect he knew something? Burns was
instructed by WHO experts, the CNN
site explains. Isn't it interesting that the same Bill Gates is a major donor of WHO? Is it
entirely impossible that already in 2011 Gates' people began to leak some details of the future
virus through their own WHO to Hollywood?
The tycoons could force a weak state to follow their instructions. Scientists do obey
orders: otherwise, no grants, no positions. In April 2020, the German
scientists were ordered , "to instill the fear of Corona". And they did it, as we learned
this week, producing numbers of dead on demand.
It seems that tycoons gained most from the Corona Crisis. Their assets grew by trillions,
while the assets of the middle classes decreased by the same amount. More importantly, all
states suffered from the crisis; they took loans and credit, they were responsible for their
citizens' health, while billionaires just had fun and enjoyed it. For this reason, I tend to
dismiss the case against states, be it the US or China, while (some) billionaires appear the
only possible villains.
These billionaires are able to influence people much better that the state. Consider Pierre
Omidyar. Besides being the owner of eBay, he is the force behind hundreds of NGOs. His
organisations form the 'progressive' agenda and train the foot soldiers of the Green Deal.
Roslyn
Fuller of Spiked-online checked the plethora of NGOs he employs.
She says his NGOs and charities are "engaged in 'social engineering' – that is, using
their resources to artificially change the structure of society to how they think it should be.
If successful this would amount to an extreme circumvention of democracy, utilising money not
just to win elections, but to substitute paid or subsidised content for actual support, and
thereby flip an entire political culture on to a different track by amplifying some voices and
drowning out others."
He is just one of the Masters of Discourse, next to the infamous George Soros. Facebook,
Google, Twitter and Amazon are even more powerful. The billionaires have immense clout and they
decide what we can and can't say and write. Just last week Amazon banned my Cabbala of
Power , a book that was sold by them for some ten years. The estimable The Unz
Review is banned on Facebook and shadow-banned on Google. Twitter switched-off President
Trump, showing who is the real boss of the United States. Probably almost all movements
described as 'leftists' nowadays are engineered by the tycoons like Omidyar or Soros. True left
had been left for dead on the battlefield of ideas.
The tycoons are directly involved in the Corona Crisis, because its results are good for
them. And it means they have us where they want to have us, and they won't let us out. We are
cancelled until we regain the government and cancel them.
SAGE, as British Corona management team rather presumptuously named itself (it included the
ridiculous figure of Neil Ferguson, he of the millions of predicted deaths), already declared that
lockdowns will be a part of British life for years to come, vaccine or no vaccine. The
Guardian , the Voice of the Oligarchs, gently pooh-poohed them, for it is not good to
declare what must happen right away. Let people have some hope, so they run to vaccinate
themselves, and then only afterwards can we reveal that, sorry, it does not help, you still
have to don a mask and observe social distance and, yes, suffer lockdowns. "It's much easier to
follow the rules if we think of them as temporary."
The plotters' plans aren't secret; they were described by Klaus Schwab in his book
The Great Reset .
Schwab is not a great thinker, being merely a weak scientist with just a few publications, and
not a good or even decent writer. He had to collaborate with a journalist Thierry Malleret to
produce the book. He is just a voice for the tycoons. But the question is, will he/they get
what they want?
The Afghans (including the Taliban) do not want the US to leave their country. The flow of
US$ into the country (including the flow of heroin$) is what the Afghans have lived on for
many decades. Its not like the Afghans don't have control of their own country. They have
complete control of all the parts of the country that they want to control. They are
perfectly happy to allow Americans to control small parts of the country as long as the $$$
keep flowing into the whole country.
The US power elite may have figured out that just like every other power that has ever
tried to occupy Afghanistan that it is a black hole that sucks the life out of the power
trying to conq
@76 Tom
Interesting! Been too busy for reviewing the new military appointees until I read your post.
It looks like this is a last ditch attempt by Trump to get troops out of Afghanistan and
Syria...
"withdrawing troops from Afghanistan may well be exactly what TPTB want."
Posted by: jinn | Nov 12 2020 23:34 utc | 81
Well, they have had, what 19 years years to do that and now that President Trump makes
another push for it, all hell breaks loose from the forever war team, you know that team of
Democrats and RINO's who are now vying for a spot on Biden's team of psychopaths for war. The
we came, we saw and aren't leaving team.
"withdrawing troops from Afghanistan may well be exactly what TPTB want."
Anything is possible, but given the pushback that is taking place (quietly of course, lest
the masses get awoken) that is seriously doubtful.
Afghanistan can be likened to one of the central squares on a chessboard...control of
central squares is vital as it reduces the mobility of your opponent and lays ground for
offensive action.
China has a border with Afghanistan, as does Iran...were Afghanistan to free itself from
USA occupation, it would make a great conduit for the BRI.
That is without getting into Afghanistan's role in opium trade and the related black
budget, nor its wealth in rare minerals. One might say for the Hegemon to remain the Hegemon
it needs to control Afghanistan.
The problem for the hegemon is Afghanistan is expensive to hold on to...and this is
without Russia, Iran or China putting any effort in to chase US troops out via arming and
training proxies...that could be done quickly, and I am guessing the groundwork is already in
place.
Well, they have had, what 19 years years to do that
_________________________________________
Well sure but you need to remember the story of why we were there in the first place.
They can't just dump all the BS that they have been feeding us for nineteen years and say
"never mind" like Roseanne Roseannadanna.
As for the warmongers who support attacking Libya, Iraq, Syria, etc that was done to send
a message to any country that does not want to knuckle under to the $$$ hegemony and thinks
about trying to escape it.
That messaging does not apply to the Afghan war. That war sends the exact opposite
message.
There is no such thing as "liberal-fascist." "Liberal" has never meant any sort of
quasi-anarchist commitment to untrammeled individual rights. It has always meant the freedom
of the press. The thing is, the real meaning of freedom of the press for the liberal is the
freedom of the owners of the press to do what they want. The fact that customarily a
free-for-the-owners'-press happen to produce the right kind of news suitable for owners and
the advertisers is seen as the benefit of a free press. As for "fascist," no concept of
fascism that doesn't include legal and illegal restrictions on freedom and government
propaganda mobilizing the citizens to sacrifice for recovery from defeat/further conquest is
not a serious concept of fascism at all. Both liberalism and fascism revere property but will
compromise for necessity, liberalism for a certain degree of class peace, fascism for war,
but if anybody is determined to indoctrinate the masses it is fascism. The implicit notion
here that people daring to think or worse, live, differently than tradition may inspire rage
in mad dog reactionaries. But this is at bottom the same rage that led Catholics and
Protestants to murder each other or for witches to be killed by the thousands (yes, they
were,) or for monarchists to kill republicans or for one ethnic/religious/national group to
murder another. Modern society is not a genuine offense, no matter how bigoted you are. The
keyboard has a hyphen but hitting it between "liberal" and "fascist" is just more
crypto-fascist BS. It doesn't matter how many times you type it, it's not a thing.
It seems to me, they make it sound more difficult than it really is.
Think of thepiratebay. It gets banned, blocked, raided, sued - from 2006 at least - and
yet it lives. It changes from .org to .whatever, it finds registrars and infrastructure
somehow.
And you don't really need google/apple store all that much: a browser will suffice.
And search? paypal, bank - what is this all about? I'm sure thepiratebay works with
advertisers somehow (definitely with VPN companies), and somehow it gets paid. And that's all
there is to it. Imo.
The term liberal-fascist refers to people who consider themselves liberals, but in
reality are not; in fact, these people resemble fascists more and more with each passing day.
A more precise term would be "liberal"-fascist (with the quotes). It's not so much
about SJW witchhunts as about absolute faith in everything the state says and hysterical
demands to censor any dissenting opinion.
...In short, anywhere it deems convenient, liberals support fascists, cannibals and other
charming characters. As it goes for a while, liberals acquire fascistic values and try them
in their home countries. Show trials and corporate censorship for now.
Undermining faith in the North American Terrorist Organization (NATO) is a Thought Crime
of the highest order!
The punishment for this crime is being forced to watch a conga line of Anglo-American
media mouthpieces blather about whatever is their Moral Outrage of the Month--Clockwork
Orange style.
..I suspect that the term "liberal-fascist" derives partly from the term Islamofascist,
meaning a Muslim who does not bow to Washington six times a day, and partly from the term
"social-fascist", a Stalinist term for a socialist who did not bow to Moscow six times a
day.
The liberalism which is referred to here is the economic liberalism which was adopted in
the United Kingdom in the 1840s after the "reform" of the Corn Laws, which permitted free
trade in grain and therefore brought down both the price of wheat and the small farming
community in the UK, as it was intended to do. Later these liberal policies (largely modelled
on the "comparative advantage" economic theory, which had already been refuted by the time it
was developed by David Ricardo) were used to justify the Irish genocide of 1847-9.
This policy was eventually abandoned later in the nineteenth century, except for places
like India, of course. It was restored in the West in the 1970s, under the name of "free
trade", and therefore is called neoliberalism, or new liberalism in the economic sense.
The term is not a compliment.
I suspect that the term "liberal-fascist" derives partly from the term Islamofascist,
meaning a Muslim who does not bow to Washington six times a day, and partly from the term
"social-fascist", a Stalinist term for a socialist who did not bow to Moscow six times a
day.
"... Slobodan's "The Globalists" is a great look at Von Mises and Hayek peddling NeoLiberalism to the last hereditary aristocracy standing in Europe in the interwar years. ..."
"... To my mind, this set up a deracinated pseudo-nazism ..."
The thing is, the UK has long been captured by neoliberalism (arguably, they invented it).
The UK was the Trojan horse for the worst forms of neoliberalism in the EU. Which is why I
thought it was ideal for neoliberals wherever they were based for the UK to be in the EU. I
think one problem is that the UK somehow regressed from neoliberalism to a dream of some form
of old style 19th Century liberalism.
My reading attributes the term (aside from an obscure French usage) and the ideology to
Friedman and Austrian ex-pats Hayek and von MIses. When I think UK in the context of
neoliberalsim, naturally I think Thatcher. So yes, at least since Thatcher neoliberalism has
been the prevailing wind in the UK for which – imho – Brexit is both a symptom
and a solidifier.
Slobodan's "The Globalists" is a great look at Von Mises and Hayek peddling NeoLiberalism
to to the last hereditary aristocracy standing in Europe in the interwar years.
The Charlatan and Saint of NeoLiberalism didn't really get traction until the US set up
the BIS to help the Germans keep the debt cycle of dependence from the Versailles treaty
liquid, with German payments through France and the UK back to the US.
To my mind, this set up a deracinated pseudo-nazism, a comfortableness with exterminatory
exploitation so long as it's exercised though debt contracts, that has persisted to this day
in Western finance, where debt is absolute but lives are fungible.
Slobodan's "The Globalists" is a great look at Von Mises and Hayek peddling
NeoLiberalism to the last hereditary aristocracy standing in Europe in the interwar
years.
It's Slobodian, Quinn.
To my mind, this set up a deracinated pseudo-nazism
So you're on to something.
Hayek is the Grandfather of neoliberalism and the primary influence on Hayek's thought was
the Vienna of his youth: the go-go years after Franz Josef surrendered to the Hungarians,
created the dual monarchy, and there was the great cultural efflorescence of Vienna that
preceded the Austro-Hungarian empire's collapse.
Two ideologies emerged after WWI from Austria in reaction to the traumatic experience of
that collapse -- ideologies formulated by Austrians that then deeply damaged the rest of the
world.
Neoliberalism was one, of course. The other? Well, someone once asked Ernst Hanfstaengl
aka Putzi, Hitler's confidant, what caused Hitler's antiSemitism.
Hanfstaengl replied: 'Anyone who did not know Vienna before 1914 cannot understand.'
Hanfstaengl then explained that before WWI Vienna was full of beautiful people, the soldiers
in their uniforms, the Hapsburg Empire's citizens in their local traditional clothes etc and
'then these strange people came from the East all dressed in black and speaking a strange
kind of German'. These were the Orthodox Jews who came from Silesia, a part of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kaiser Franz Josef had done much to emancipate and help the Jews, so
many crossed over to Vienna to start a new life.
Now, to further put Hitler and Nazism's policies in their historical context, it's
necessary to understand the situation in Germany prior to their appearance.
In 1871, Bismarck had nationalized healthcare, making it available to all Germans, then
provided old-age pensions as public social security. Child labor was abolished and public
schools were provided for all children. The Kaiser implemented worker protection laws in
1890. After WW I, the Social Democrats' influence had remained strong. Germany had an active
union membership. An official "Decree on Collective Agreements, Worker and Employees
Committees and the Settlement of Labor disputes" enabled collective bargaining, legal
enforcement of labor contracts as well as social security for disabled veterans, widows, and
dependents. In 1918, unemployment benefits were given to all German workers.
In the 1932 elections, the Nazi Party didn't have an outright majority. According to the
Nuremberg Trial transcripts, on January 4, 1933, German bankers and industrialists had a
secret backroom deal with then-Chancellor Von Papen to make Hitler the Chancellor of Germany
in a coalition.
"In February 1933, as Chancellor, Hitler met with the leading German industrialists at the
home of Hermann Goring. There were representatives from IG Farben, AG Siemens, BMW, coal
mining magnates, Theissen Corp, AG Krupp, and others bankers, investors, and other Germans
belonging to the top 1%. In this meeting, Hitler said, "Private enterprise cannot be
maintained in the age of democracy.'"
In 1934 the Nazis outlined their plan to revitalize the German economy with the
reprivatization of significant industries: railways, public works project, construction,
steel, and banking. Hitler guaranteed profits for the private sector; many American
industrialists and bankers flocked to Germany to invest.
The Nazis had a thorough plan for deregulation. The Nazi's chief economist stated," The
first thing German business needs is peace and quiet. It must have a feeling of absolute
legal security and must know that work and its return are guaranteed." Likewise, businesses
weren't to be hampered by too much "regulation." On May 2, 1933, Hitler sent his Brown Shirts
to all union headquarters. Union leaders were beaten, and sent to prison or concentration
camps. The Nazi party expropriated union funds -- money workers paid for union membership --
for itself.
On January 20, 1934, the Nazis passed the Law Regulating National Labor, abrogating the
power of the government to set minimum wages and working conditions. Employers lowered wages
and benefits. Workers were banned from striking or engaging in other collective bargaining
rights, and worked longer hours for lower wages. Their conditions so deteriorated that when
the head of the AFL visited Nazi Germany in 1938, he compared an average worker's life to
that of a slave. .
The Nazis also privatized medicine. One of Hitler's economists was the head of a private
insurance company. These private for-profit health insurance companies immediately started to
profit from Anti-Semitism. In 1934, they eliminated reimbursements for Jewish physicians,
which allowed them to profit further.
And so on.
Philip K. Dick once wrote a novel whose particular ontological riff was that the Roman
empire never really ended and in the 20th century people lived in an imposed illusion under
the same elite, or their heirs, that had headed the Roman empire.
That sort of science-fictional novel could be written based on our own reality, riffing on
the theme: The Nazis won.
If you enjoyed the Global War on Terror, you're going to love the new War on Domestic
Terror! It's just like the original Global War on Terror, except that this time the
"Terrorists" are all "Domestic Violent Extremists" ("DVEs"), "Homegrown Violent Extremists"
("HVEs"), "Violent Conspiracy-Theorist Extremists" ("VCTEs"), "Violent Reality Denialist
Extremists" (VRDEs"), "Insurrectionary Micro-Aggressionist Extremists" ("IMAEs"), "People Who
Make Liberals Feel Uncomfortable" ("PWMLFUs"), and anyone else the Department of Homeland
Security wants to label an "extremist" and slap a ridiculous acronym on.
According to a "
National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin " issued by the DHS on January 27, these DCEs,
HVEs, VCTEs, VRDEs, IMAEs, and PWMLFUs are "ideologically-motivated violent extremists with
objections to the exercise of governmental authority" and other "perceived grievances fueled by
false narratives." They are believed to be "motivated by a range of issues, including anger
over Covid-19 restrictions, the 2020 election results, police use of force," and other
dangerous "false narratives" (e.g., the existence of the "deep state," "herd immunity,"
"biological sex," "God," and so on).
"Inspired by foreign terrorist groups" and "emboldened by the breach of the US Capitol
Building," this diabolical network of "domestic terrorists" is "plotting attacks against
government facilities," "threatening violence against critical infrastructure" and actively
"citing misinformation and conspiracy theories about Covid-19." For all we know, they might be
huddled in the "Wolf's Lair" at Mar-a-Lago right now, plotting a devastating terrorist attack
with those WMDs we never found in Iraq, or generating population-adjusted death-rate
charts going back 20 years , or posting pictures of " extremist frogs " on
the Internet.
The Department of Homeland Security is "concerned," as are its counterparts throughout the
global capitalist empire. The (New Normal) War on Domestic Terror isn't just a war on American
"domestic terror." The "domestic terror" threat is international. France has just passed a "
Global Security Law " banning citizens from filming the police beating the living snot out
of people (among other "anti-terrorist" provisions). In Germany, the government is preparing to
install an
anti-terror moat around the Reichstag . In the Netherlands, the police are cracking down on
the VCTEs, VRDEs, and other "
angry citizens who hate the system ," who have been protesting over nightly curfews.
Suddenly, everywhere you look (or at least if you are looking in the corporate media), "
global extremism networks are growing ." It's time for Globocap to take the gloves off
again, root the "terrorists" out of their hidey holes, and roll out a new official
narrative.
Actually, there's not much new about it. When you strip away all the silly new acronyms, the
(New Normal) War on Domestic Terror is basically just a combination of the "War on Terror"
narrative and the "New Normal" narrative, i.e., a militarization of the so-called "New Normal"
and a pathologization of the "War on Terror." Why would GloboCap want to do that, you ask?
I think you know, but I'll go ahead and tell you.
See, the problem with the original "Global War on Terror" was that it wasn't actually all
that global. It was basically just a war on Islamic "terrorism" (i.e., resistance to global
capitalism and its post-ideological ideology), which was fine as long as GloboCap was just
destabilizing and restructuring the Greater Middle East. It was put on hold in 2016 , so that
GloboCap could focus on defeating "populism" (i.e., resistance to global capitalism and its
post-ideological ideology), make an example of Donald Trump, and demonize everyone who voted
for him (or just refused to take part in their free and fair elections ), which
they have just finished doing, in spectacular fashion. So, now it's back to "War on Terror"
business, except with a whole new cast of "terrorists," or, technically, an expanded cast of
"terrorists." (I rattled off a list in my previous column .)
In short, GloboCap has simply expanded, recontextualized, and pathologized the "War on
Terror" (i.e., the war on resistance to global capitalism and its post-ideological ideology).
This was always inevitable, of course. A globally-hegemonic system (e.g., global capitalism)
has no external enemies, as there is no territory "outside" the system. Its only enemies are
within the system, and thus, by definition, are insurgents, also known as "terrorists" and
"extremists." These terms are utterly meaningless, obviously. They are purely strategic,
deployed against anyone who deviates from GloboCap's official ideology which, in case you were
wondering, is called "normality" (or, in our case, currently, "New Normality").
In earlier times, these "terrorists" and "extremists" were known as "heretics," "apostates,"
and "blasphemers." Today, they are also known as "deniers," e.g., "science deniers," "Covid
deniers," and recently, more disturbingly, "reality deniers." This is an essential part of the
pathologization of the "War on Terror" narrative. The new breed of "terrorists" do not just
hate us for our freedom they hate us because they hate "reality." They are no longer our
political or ideological opponents they are suffering from a psychiatric disorder. They no
longer need to be argued with or listened to they need to be "treated," "reeducated," and
"deprogrammed," until they accept "Reality." If you think I'm exaggerating the totalitarian
nature of the "New Normal/War on Terror" narrative, read this op-ed in The New York
Timesexploring
the concept of a "Reality Czar" to deal with our "Reality Crisis."
And this is just the beginning, of course. The consensus (at least in GloboCap circles) is,
the (New Normal) War on Domestic Terror will probably continue for the next 10 to 20 years
, which should provide the global capitalist ruling classes with more than enough time to carry
out the "
Great Reset ," destroy what's left of human society, and condition the public to get used
to living like cringing, neo-feudal peasants who have to ask permission to leave their houses.
We're still in the initial " shock and awe
" phase (which they will have to scale back a bit eventually), but just look at how much
they've already accomplished.
The economic damage is literally incalculable millions have been plunged into desperate
poverty, countless independent businesses crushed, whole industries crippled, developing
countries rendered economically dependent (i.e., compliant) for the foreseeable future, as
billionaires amassed over $1 trillion in wealth and supranational corporate behemoths
consolidated their dominance across the planet.
And that's just the economic damage. The attack on society has been even more dramatic.
GloboCap, in the space of a year, has transformed the majority of the global masses into an
enormous,
paranoid totalitarian cult that is no longer capable of even rudimentary reasoning. (I'm
not going to go on about it here at this point, you either recognize it or you're in it.)
They're actually lining up in parking lots, the double-masked members of this Covidian cult, to
be injected with an experimental "vaccine" that they believe will save the human species from
a virus that causes mild to moderate
symptoms in roughly 95% of those "infected," and that over 99% of the "infected" survive
.
So, it is no big surprise that these same mindless cultists are gung-ho for the (New Normal)
War on Domestic Terror, and the upcoming globally-televised show trial of Donald Trump for
"inciting insurrection," and the ongoing corporate censorship of the Internet, and can't wait
to be issued their " Freedom
Passports ," which will allow them to take part in "New Normal" life -- double-masked and
socially-distanced, naturally -- while having their every movement and transaction, and every
word they write on Facebook, or in an email, or say to someone on their smartphones, or in the
vicinity of their 5G toasters, recorded by GloboCap's Intelligence Services and their corporate
partners, subsidiaries, and assigns. These people have nothing at all to worry about, as they
would never dream of disobeying orders, and could not produce an original thought, much less
one displeasing to GloboCap, if you held a fake apocalyptic plague to their heads.
As for the rest of us "extremists," "domestic terrorists," "heretics," and "reality
deniers," (i.e., anyone criticizing global capitalism, or challenging its official narratives,
and its increasingly totalitarian ideology, regardless of our specific DHS acronyms), I wish I
had something hopeful to tell you, but, the truth is, things aren't looking so good. I guess
I'll see you in a quarantine camp , or in
the psych ward, or an offshore detention facility or, I don't know, maybe I'll see you in the
streets.
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist
based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing and Broadway Play Publishing,
Inc. His dystopian novel, Zone 23 , is
published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. Volumes I and II of his Consent
Factory Essays are published by Consent Factory Publishing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of
Amalgamated Content, Inc. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .
Reading Blacks biography of Roosevelt, Hudson's work, Talbot's "The Devil's Chessboard"
and Douglas's "JFK and the Unspeakable" one discerns a clear line between the UK interwar
Foreign Office, military intelligence and rentier class and the Dulles brother's post war
ascent to the pinnacles of back room power.
Before the war the brothers arranged IP shares between the soon to be contending German
and Anglo-sphere industries, during the war they tried to arrange a separate peace with post
Hitler Germany, after Roosevelt's death and particularly in their con job on Truman, they
made the CIA the collective tool of the transatlantic financial elite, David Rockefeller
explicitly included.
These books all rely extensively on previously lightly touched primary sources.
The former head of the CIA Counterterrorism Center has suggested that counterinsurgency
tactics used by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan should be applied to 'domestic extremists'
inside the US.
NPR reports that Robert Grenier, who directed the CIA's Counterterrorism program from 2004
to 2006, declared "We may be witnessing the dawn of a sustained wave of violent insurgency
within our own country, perpetrated by our own countrymen."
In an op-ed for
The New York Times last week, Grenier suggested that "extremists who seek a social
apocalypse are capable of producing endemic political violence of a sort not seen in this
country since Reconstruction."
Grenier, also a former CIA station chief in Pakistan and Afghanistan, grouped together "the
Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers, 'Christian' national chauvinists, white
supremacists and QAnon fantasists" and claimed they are all "committed to violent
extremism."
Grenier labeled dissenters an "insurgency" and called for them to be "defeated" like an
enemy army.
In further comments to NPR, Grenier stated that "as in any insurgency situation, you have
committed insurgents who are typically a relatively small proportion of the affected
population. But what enables them to carry forward their program is a large number of people
from whom they can draw tacit support."
Grenier also stated that insurgents may emerge from groups who "believe that the election
was stolen," or those "who don't trust NPR or The New York Times ."
"The most violent elements that we are concerned about right now see former President Trump
as a broadly popular and charismatic symbol," the CIA spook added, before comparing Trump to
Saddam Hussein.
"You know, just as I saw in the Middle East that the air went out of violent demonstrations
when [Iraqi leader] Saddam Hussein was defeated and seen to be defeated, I think the same
situation applies here," he proclaimed.
Grenier suggested that Trump should be convicted at the upcoming impeachment trial as a
'national security imperative' because "So long as he is there and leading the resistance, if
you will, which he shows every sign of intending to do, he is going to be an inspiration to
very violent people."
Grenier then compared Americans to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, noting that in Afghanistan "the
thrust of our campaign there was, yes, to hunt down al-Qaida, but primarily to remove the
supportive environment in which they were able to live and to flourish. And that meant fighting
the Taliban."
"I think that is the heart of what we need to deal with here," he added.
The call to treat Americans as terrorist insurgents comes on the heels of a
Department of Homeland Security warning that those dissatisfied with the election result
may rise up and commit acts of terrorism in the coming weeks.
"Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections
to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other
perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit
violence," stated the bulletin issued last week through the DHS National Terrorist Advisory
System -- or NTAS.
The bulletin added that 'extremists' may be "motivated by a range of issues, including anger
over COVID-19 restrictions, the 2020 election results, and police use of force."
Le Carré feuded with Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses , stating
that "nobody has a God-given right to insult a great religion and be published with impunity".
[35]
In January 2003, two months prior to the invasion, The Times published le Carré's essay
"The United States Has Gone Mad" criticising the buildup to the Iraq War and President George W. Bush 's
response to the 11
September 2001 terrorist attacks , calling it "worse than McCarthyism , worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term
potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War " and "beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have
hoped for in his nastiest dreams". [36][37] Le
Carré participated in the London protests against the Iraq War
. He said the war resulted from the "politicisation of intelligence to fit the political
intentions" of governments and "How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger
from bin Laden to Saddam
Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history". [38][39]
He was critical of Tony
Blair 's role in taking Britain into the Iraq War, saying "I can't understand that Blair
has an afterlife at all. It seems to me that any politician who takes his country to war under
false pretences has committed the ultimate sin. I think that a war in which we refuse to accept
the body count of those that we kill is also a war of which we should be ashamed".
[38]
Le Carré was critical of Western governments' policies towards Iran. He believed
Iran's actions are a response to being "encircled by nuclear powers" and by the way in which
"we ousted Mosaddeq through the CIA and the Secret
Service here across the way and installed the Shah and trained his ghastly secret
police force in all the black arts, the SAVAK ". [38]
In 2017, le Carré expressed concerns over the future of liberal democracy , saying "I think of
all things that were happening across Europe in the 1930s, in Spain, in Japan, obviously in
Germany. To me, these are absolutely comparable signs of the rise of fascism and it's contagious, it's infectious.
Fascism is up and running in Poland and Hungary. There's an encouragement about".
[40] He later wrote
that the end of the Cold War had left the West without a coherent ideology, in contrast to the
"notion of individual
freedom , of inclusiveness, of tolerance – all of that we called anti-communism " prevailing during that
time. [41]
... ... ...
Le Carré was an outspoken advocate of European integration and sharply
criticised Brexit .
[45] Le Carré
criticised Conservative politicians such as
Boris Johnson (whom
he referred to as a "mob orator"), Dominic Cummings , and Nigel Farage in interviews, claiming that
their "task is to fire up the people with nostalgia [and] with anger". He further opined in
interviews that "What really scares me about nostalgia is that it's become a political weapon.
Politicians are creating a nostalgia for an England that never existed, and selling it, really,
as something we could return to", noting that with "the demise of the working class we saw also the demise of an
established social order, based on the stability of ancient class structures". [44][46] On the other
hand, he said that in the Labour Party "they have this Leninist element and they have this
huge appetite to level society."
"... By 2013, the CIA's chief technology officer outlined the agency's mission "to collect everything and hang on to it forever," acknowledging the internet companies, including Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Fitbit and telecom companies, for making it possible. ..."
"... The revolutionary roots of surveillance capitalism are planted in this unwritten political doctrine of surveillance exceptionalism, bypassing democratic oversight, and essentially granting the new internet companies a license to steal human experience and render it as proprietary data. ..."
"... What's been reinvented is no less than the idea of people as property. ..."
"... As an internet executive who has been in the game from the very beginning (1995 and onward), I am still dumbfounded that the overwhelming majority of Google search users have no idea that when they search for a product or a store, for example, the results are not democratically revealed. Using fashion as an example, Google's business model has stores and brands bid on keyword search terms, like "fine lingerie," or "red pumps," or "blue silk robe," to name a few of the billions of search terms. ..."
"... surveillance economies of scale and AI insights of prediction that allow a herd animal, us, to be more profitably managed and the profit more efficiently extracted. ..."
"... Alexa, dim the lights! ... like the hundreds of millions of other herd animals living the same delusion. if we were paid for our data use, we would just become aware of its use. this is a defect in a system designed to make you feel unique and special. that's the kink: at bottom, you like being surveilled and controlled. ..."
We can have democracy, or we can have a surveillance society, but we cannot have both.
By Shoshana Zuboff
Dr. Zuboff, a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, is the author of "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism."
Two decades ago, the American government left democracy's front door open to California's fledgling internet companies, a cozy
fire lit in welcome. In the years that followed, a surveillance society flourished in those rooms, a social vision born in the distinct
but reciprocal needs of public intelligence agencies and private internet companies, both spellbound by a dream of total information
awareness. Twenty years later, the fire has jumped the screen, and on Jan. 6, it threatened to burn down democracy's house.
I have spent exactly 42 years studying the rise of the digital as an economic force driving our transformation into an information
civilization. Over the last two decades, I've observed the consequences of this surprising political-economic fraternity as those
young companies morphed into surveillance empires powered by global architectures of behavioral monitoring, analysis, targeting and
prediction that I have called surveillance capitalism. On the strength of their surveillance capabilities and for the sake of their
surveillance profits, the new empires engineered a fundamentally anti-democratic epistemic coup marked by unprecedented concentrations
of knowledge about us and the unaccountable power that accrues to such knowledge.
In an information civilization, societies are defined by questions of knowledge -- how it is distributed, the authority that governs
its distribution and the power that protects that authority. Who knows? Who decides who knows? Who decides who decides who knows?
Surveillance capitalists now hold the answers to each question, though we never elected them to govern. This is the essence of the
epistemic coup. They claim the authority to decide who knows by asserting ownership rights over our personal information and defend
that authority with
the power to control critical information systems and infrastructures.
... ... ...
The second stage is marked by a sharp rise in
epistemic inequality
, defined as the difference between what I can know and what can be known about me...
The Surveillance Exception
The public tragedy of Sept. 11 dramatically shifted the focus in Washington from debates over federal privacy legislation to a
mania for total information awareness, turning Silicon Valley's innovative surveillance practices into objects of intense interest.
As Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School, observed
, the intelligence community would have to "rely on private enterprise to collect and generate information for it," in order
to reach beyond constitutional, legal, or regulatory constraints, controversies that are central today.
By 2013, the
CIA's chief technology officer outlined the agency's mission
"to collect everything and hang on to it forever," acknowledging the internet companies, including Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter,
and Fitbit and telecom companies, for making it possible.
The revolutionary roots of surveillance capitalism are planted in this
unwritten political doctrine of surveillance exceptionalism, bypassing democratic oversight, and essentially granting the new internet
companies a license to steal human experience and render it as proprietary data.
Young entrepreneurs without any democratic mandate landed a windfall of infinite information and unaccountable power. Google's
founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, exercised absolute control over the production, organization and presentation of the world's
information. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has had absolute control over what would become a primary means of global communication and
news consumption, along with all the information concealed in its networks. The group's membership grew, and a swelling population
of global users proceeded unaware of what just happened.
The license to steal came with a price, binding the executives to the continued patronage of elected officials and regulators
as well as the sustained ignorance, or at least learned resignation, of users. The doctrine was, after all, a political doctrine,
and its defense would require a future of political maneuvering, appeasement, engagement and investment.
Google led the way with what would become one of the world's richest lobbying machines. In 2018 nearly half the Senate received
contributions from Facebook, Google and Amazon, and the companies
continue to set spending records .
Most significant, surveillance exceptionalism has meant that the United States and many other liberal democracies chose surveillance
over democracy as the guiding principle of social order. With this forfeit, democratic governments crippled their ability to sustain
the trust of their people, intensifying the rationale for surveillance.
The Economics and Politics of Epistemic Chaos
To understand the economics of epistemic chaos, it's important to know that surveillance capitalism's operations have no formal
interest in facts. All data is welcomed as equivalent, though not all of it is equal. Extraction operations proceed with the discipline
of the Cyclops, voraciously consuming everything it can see and radically indifferent to meaning, facts and truth.
In a
leaked memo , a Facebook executive, Andrew Bosworth, describes this willful disregard for truth and meaning:
"We connect people.
That can be good if they make it positive. Maybe someone finds love. That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe someone dies
in a terrorist attack. The ugly truth is anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good."
In other words, asking a surveillance extractor to reject content is like asking a coal-mining operation to discard containers
of coal because it's too dirty. This is why content moderation is a last resort, a public-relations operation in the spirit of ExxonMobil's
social responsibility messaging. In Facebook's case, data triage is undertaken either to minimize the risk of user withdrawal or
to avoid political sanctions. Both aim to increase rather than diminish data flows. The extraction imperative combined with radical
indifference to produce systems that ceaselessly escalate the scale of engagement but don't care what engages you.
I'm homing in now on Facebook not because it's the only perpetrator of epistemic chaos but because it's the largest social media
company and its consequences reach farthest.
The economics of surveillance capitalism begot the extractive Cyclops, turning Facebook into an advertising juggernaut and a killing
field for truth. Then an amoral Mr. Trump became president, demanding the right to lie at scale. Destructive economics merged with
political appeasement, and everything became infinitely worse.
Key to this story is that the politics of appeasement required little more than a refusal to mitigate, modify or eliminate the
ugly truth of surveillance economics. Surveillance capitalism's economic imperatives turned Facebook into a societal tinderbox. Mr.
Zuckerberg merely had to stand down and commit himself to the bystander role.
Internal research presented in 2016 and 2017 demonstrated causal links between Facebook's algorithmic targeting mechanisms and
epistemic chaos. One researcher concluded that the algorithms were responsible for the viral spread of divisive content that helped
fuel the growth of German extremist groups. Recommendation tools accounted for 64 percent of "extremist group joins," she found --
dynamics not unique to Germany .
The Cambridge Analytica scandal
in March 2018
riveted the world's attention on Facebook in a new way, offering a window for bold change. The public began to grasp that Facebook's
political advertising business is a way to rent the company's suite of capabilities to microtarget users, manipulate them and sow
epistemic chaos, pivoting the whole machine just a few degrees from commercial to political objectives.
Image
Credit... Pool photo by Graeme Jennings/EPA, via Shutterstock
The company launched some modest initiatives, promising more transparency, a more robust system of third-party fact checkers and
a policy to limit "coordinated inauthentic behavior," but through it all, Mr. Zuckerberg conceded the field to Mr. Trump's demands
for unfettered access to the global information bloodstream.
Mr. Zuckerberg
rejected internal proposals for operational changes that would reduce epistemic chaos. A
political whitelist identified over 100,000 officials and candidates whose accounts were exempted from fact-checking, despite
internal research showing that users tend to believe false information shared by politicians. In September 2019 the company
said that political advertising would
not be subject to fact-checking.
To placate his critics in 2018, Mr. Zuckerberg commissioned a civil rights audit led by Laura Murphy, a former director of the
ACLU's Washington legislative office. The
report published
in 2020 is a cri de coeur expressed in a river of words that bear witness to dashed hopes -- "disheartened," "frustrated," "angry,"
"dismayed," "fearful," "heartbreaking."
The report is consistent with a nearly complete rupture of the
American public's faith in Big Tech. When asked how Facebook would adjust to a political shift toward a possible Biden administration,
a company spokesman, Nick Clegg,
responded, "We'll adapt to the environment in which we're operating." And so it did. On Jan. 7, the day after it became clear
that Democrats would control the Senate,
Facebook announced that it would
indefinitely block Mr. Trump's account.
We are meant to believe that the destructive effects of epistemic chaos are the inevitable cost of cherished rights to freedom
of speech. No. Just as catastrophic levels of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere are the consequence of burning fossil fuels,
epistemic chaos is a consequence of surveillance capitalism's bedrock commercial operations, aggravated by political obligations
and set into motion by a 20-year-old dream of total information that slid into nightmare. Then a plague came to America, turning
the antisocial media conflagration into a wildfire.
... ... ...
The Washington Post reported in late March that with
nearly 50 percent
of the content on Facebook's news feed related to Covid-19, a very small number of "influential users" were driving the reading
habits and feeds of a vast number of users. A study released in April by the
Reuters Institute
confirmed that high-level politicians, celebrities and other prominent public figures produced 20 percent of the misinformation
in their sample, but attracted 69 percent of social media engagements in their sample.
... ... ...
In 1966, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann wrote a short book of seminal importance, "The Social Construction of Reality." Its
central observation is that the "everyday life" we experience as "reality" is actively and perpetually constructed by us. This ongoing
miracle of social order rests on "common sense knowledge," which is "the knowledge we share with others in the normal self-evident
routines of everyday life."
Think about traffic: There are not enough police officers in the world to ensure that every car stops at every red light, yet
not every intersection triggers a negotiation or a fight. That's because in orderly societies we all know that red lights have the
authority to make us stop and green lights are authorized to let us go. This common sense means that we each act on what we all know,
while trusting that others will too. We're not just obeying laws; we are creating order together. Our reward is to live in a world
where we mostly get where we are going and home again safely because we can trust one another's common sense. No society is viable
without it.
"All societies are constructions in the face of chaos," write Berger and Luckmann. Because norms are summaries of our
common sense, norm violation is the essence of terrorism -- terrifying because it repudiates the most taken-for-granted social certainties.
"Norm violation creates an attentive audience beyond the target of terror,"
write Alex P. Schmid and Albert J. Jongman in "Political Terrorism," a widely cited text on the subject. Everyone experiences
the shock, disorientation, and fear. The legitimacy and continuity of our institutions are essential because they buffer us from
chaos by formalizing our common sense.
... ... ...
For many who hold freedom of speech as a sacred right, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's 1919 dissenting opinion in
Abrams v. United States is
a touchstone. "The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas," he wrote. "The best test of truth is the power
of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." The corrupt information that dominates the private square
does not rise to the top of a free and fair competition of ideas. It wins in a rigged game. No democracy can survive this game.
Our susceptibility to the destruction of common sense reflects a young information civilization that has not yet found its footing
in democracy. Unless we interrupt surveillance economics and revoke the license to steal that legitimates its antisocial operations,
the other coup will continue to strengthen and produce fresh crises. What must be done now?
... ... ...
Shoshana Zuboff is a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School and the author of "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism."
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity
of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips
. And here's our email: letters@nytimes.com .
Jaron Lanier has made the same arguments in a more accessible style. "You Are Not A Gadget" and "Ten Arguments For Deleting Your
Social Media Accounts" are highly recommended!
Professor Zuboff is being polite and cautious. What's been reinvented is no less than the idea of people as property. Your data
is owned. Behavior is traded like a commodity. There is limited personal protection. Imagine you live completely off the grid.
One day you come into town to get coffee with an old friend. You don't bring any electronic device because you don't own any.
You pay in cash. You are 'not' surveilled. Your friend is surveilled. She has a phone and lives typically. The bill has two coffees.
A data point is created about you. Scale up to trillions data points and this reflective data gathering spreads like COVID. This
isn't benign information either such as your preferred coffee order. The difference between data 'person favours this political
party' and metadata 'person looked at a website for this many seconds, liked these posts, walks at this pace or was at such and
such location' is merely a mathematical function of utility. With enough data one can be translated to the other and monetized.
When placed into a market outcomes like 'engagement' are really euphemisms for inputs that you may consider private like your
sexual and reproductive history, your love and spiritual beliefs or who you voted for. Like Climate Change there's no individual
'opt out'. Unlike Climate Change, there are relatively near term solutions.
Had a nice dinner with my daughter and nephew. We used Siri to get to the restaurant. My iphone was on the table while we talked.
What came up in conversation was carpet cleaning; something I don't recall e-mailing or texting about. (My place then had hardwood
floors) Next day; boom, e-mails and ads from carpet cleaning places all over my e-mail, phone, texts. So does the internet just
snag the info you voluntarily give to them? Or connect to companies when you mention something in an a-mail or text? It's worse.
Siri actually listens to you while you're chatting over dinner. Try what I've described. Pick a topic you haven't communicated
about recently.
I've got to confess that I gave up on this about page three. It strikes me as paranoid; 2+2=6, maybe seven. These titians of the
internet need to get way better before they are as dangerous as portrayed. It causes me to think of 'how close we are to driverless
cars' - no we aren't.
If you don't care about privacy (which many don't) then the digital world is an Eden. People voluntarily post intimate details
of their lives willingly. You have to really work at it to have any privacy today. It can be done though. The US needs to take
a harder stance towards internet privacy like the EU. Any service that operates in the US needs an opt out clause in their user
agreements towards sharing any of their personal information. Most people would just click on the "I Agree to Share" but the people
who care about their privacy will opt out.
As an internet executive who has been in the game from the very beginning (1995 and onward), I am still dumbfounded that the overwhelming
majority of Google search users have no idea that when they search for a product or a store, for example, the results are not
democratically revealed. Using fashion as an example, Google's business model has stores and brands bid on keyword search terms,
like "fine lingerie," or "red pumps," or "blue silk robe," to name a few of the billions of search terms.
The stores or brands
that bid highest most often appear at the top of the list. As well, above those results sit paid ads, though again, most users
do not know those ads are actually ads, as they consider them to be legitimate results.
Over the years, I've read many a user
survey on Google search, and still--as savvy as we believe we have become in the online space--most users believe the results
at the top of the list must be the best results out there. Talk about a rigged system. Sadly and frighteningly, most of us do
not know, or probably even care, that it is.
i've been an admirer of dr. zuboff's take on technology for many years. but it's useful to reverse this analysis and consider
it from the corporate side: surveillance economies of scale and AI insights of prediction that allow a herd animal, us, to be
more profitably managed and the profit more efficiently extracted.
it's important to see that surveillance fundamentally benefits
command and control capabilities: china uses it to command obedience; corporations use it to control profit extraction, and to
guide your car GPS. we do not mind that we are being commanded and controlled because this brings us home delivery, voice control
systems, GPS navigation, targeted ads, on demand media, vast connectivity and personal media bubbles. these make us feel unique
and almost godlike ... Alexa, dim the lights! ... like the hundreds of millions of other herd animals living the same delusion.
if we were paid for our data use, we would just become aware of its use. this is a defect in a system designed to make you feel
unique and special. that's the kink: at bottom, you like being surveilled and controlled.
you like the commercial and recreational
benefits this brings. you don't care who uses what, provided you get all the consumer satisfaction and none of the dark web blowback. i'm not optimistic about "unprecedented solutions." there is no imminent stampede of the herd to get out of the corral. we like
it in here.
My life has gotten better since I deleted Facebook a few years ago. I get fewer updates from high school acquaintances, but my
real friendships have continued just the same, and my professional life has improved (since I have one fewer distraction). My
anxiety level is also lower. Of course the news over the past year has been a major source of anxiety, but it would have been
worse if I'd spent 2020 doom-scrolling on Facebook. I think a lot of people's lives would be better if a lot of people got off
social media...for these reasons as well as the important issues this essay addresses.
I'm 100% behind the "surveillance society" as long as corporations and lawmakers are surveilled. But when an Assange or a Snowden
proves that the NSA and CIA are criminal enterprises...the dishonest politicians hide behind the Espionage Act to quash the facts.
Right from the beginning I knew this Internet and social media revolution was dubious Right from the start, I tried never to use
my real name on SM or in email addresses...But they figured it out...It's been creepy from day one... Let's regain our old-fashioned
anonymity!
"... "It's so dangerous as you guys have been talking about, this is an issue that all Democrats, Republicans, independents, Libertarians should be extremely concerned about, especially because we don't have to guess about where this goes or how this ends," Gabbard said. ..."
"... She continued: "When you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking about how he's spoken with or heard from appointees and nominees in the Biden administration who are already starting to look across our country for these types of movements similar to the insurgencies they've seen overseas, that in his words, he says make up this unholy alliance of religious extremists, racists, bigots, he lists a few others and at the end, even libertarians." ..."
"... "What characteristics are we looking for as we are building this profile of a potential extremist, what are we talking about? Religious extremists, are we talking about Christians, evangelical Christians, what is a religious extremist? Is it somebody who is pro-life? Where do you take this" ..."
"... "You start looking at obviously, have to be a white person, obviously likely male, libertarians, anyone who loves freedom, liberty, maybe has an American flag outside their house, or people who, you know, attended a Trump rally, " Gabbard said. ..."
After 9/11, the entire country collectively lost its mind in the throes of fear. During that time, all civil and Constitutional
rights were shredded and replaced with the pages of The
USA PATRIOT Act .
Almost 20 years later, the U.S. has again lost its collective mind, this time in fear of a "virus" and it's
"super mutations" and a
"riot" at the capitol. A lot of people called this and
to the surprise of very few, much like after 9/11, Americans are watching what remains of their civil liberties be replaced with
a new bill.
The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021
The DTPA is essentially the criminalization of speech, expression, and thought . It takes cancel culture a step further and
all but outlaws unpopular opinions . This
act will empower intelligence, law enforcement, and even military wings of the American ruling class to crack down on individuals
adhering to certain belief systems and ideologies.
"The attack on the U.S. Capitol earlier this month was the latest example of domestic terrorism, but the threat of domestic
terrorism remains very real. We cannot turn a blind eye to it," Upton said. "The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act will equip
our law enforcement leaders with the tools needed to help keep our homes, families, and communities across the country safe.
Congressman Upton's
website gives the following information on DTPA:
The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021 would strengthen the federal government's efforts to prevent, report on, respond
to, and investigate acts of domestic terrorism by authorizing offices dedicated to combating this threat; requiring these offices
to regularly assess this threat; and providing training and resources to assist state, local, and tribal law enforcement in addressing
it.
DTPA would authorize three offices, one each within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ),
and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to monitor, investigate, and prosecute cases of domestic terrorism. The bill also
requires these offices to provide Congress with joint, biannual reports assessing the state of domestic terrorism threats, with
a specific focus on white supremacists. Based on the data collected, DTPA requires these offices to focus their resources on the
most significant threats.
DTPA also codifies the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee, which would coordinate with United States Attorneys and other
public safety officials to promote information sharing and ensure an effective, responsive, and organized joint effort to combat
domestic terrorism. The legislation requires DOJ, FBI, and DHS to provide training and resources to assist state, local, and tribal
law enforcement agencies in understanding, detecting, deterring, and investigating acts of domestic terrorism and white supremacy.
Finally, DTPA directs DHS, DOJ, FBI, and the Department of Defense to establish an interagency task force to combat white supremacist
infiltration of the uniformed services and federal law enforcement.
Those who read the bill aren't so gung ho to shred the Constitution
Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard
has some serious reservations.
In a recent interview
on Fox News Primetime, Gabbard stated that the bill effectively criminalizes half of the country. (Emphasis ours)
"It's so dangerous as you guys have been talking about, this is an issue that all Democrats, Republicans, independents,
Libertarians should be extremely concerned about, especially because we don't have to guess about where this goes or how this
ends," Gabbard said.
She continued: "When you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking about how he's spoken with or
heard from appointees and nominees in the Biden administration who are already starting to look across our country for these types
of movements similar to the insurgencies they've seen overseas, that in his words, he says make up this unholy alliance of religious
extremists, racists, bigots, he lists a few others and at the end, even libertarians."
Gabbard, stating her concern about how the government will define what qualities they are searching for in potential threats to
the country, went on to ask:
"What characteristics are we looking for as we are building this profile of a potential extremist, what are we talking
about? Religious extremists, are we talking about Christians, evangelical Christians, what is a religious extremist? Is it somebody
who is pro-life? Where do you take this"
Tulsi said the bill would create a dangerous undermining of our civil liberties and freedoms in our Constitution. She also stated
the DPTA essentially targets nearly half of the United States.
"You start looking at obviously, have to be a white person, obviously likely male, libertarians, anyone who loves freedom,
liberty, maybe has an American flag outside their house, or people who, you know, attended a Trump rally, " Gabbard said.
Tulsi Gabbard is not the only one to criticize the legislation
Even the ACLU , one of the weakest organizations on civil liberties in the United States, has spoken out. While the ACLU was
only concerned with how the bill would affect minorities or "brown people," the organization stated that the legislation, while set
forth under the guise of countering white supremacy, would eventually be used against non-white people.
The ACLU's statement is true.
As with similar bills submitted under the guise of "protecting" Americans against outside threats, this bill will inevitably expand
further. The stated goals of the DPTA are far-reaching and frightening enough. It would amount to an official declaration of the
end to Free Speech.
Soon there will be no rights left for Americans
In the last twenty years, Americans have lost their 4th Amendment rights, and now they are losing their 1st. All that remains
is the 2nd Amendment , and
both the ruling class and increasing numbers of the American people know it.
Due to the immense power of propaganda, normal people who should identify politically as the
"left" are actually supporting these dangerous policies and the erosions of liberty are
accelerating in direct proportion to the level of resistance, such as r/Wallstreetbets and the
immediate crackdown across several platforms to stop them.
I've seen an extraordinary erosion of rights and liberties over the past few years. It
really started with the cover up after the Trump election, which sought to steer the
narrative of public opinion away from the failure of the Clintons and the Democratic machine
with obvious fantastic lies about Russia.
For a myriad of reasons probably understood best by likes of Freud, Jüng, and others,
everyone on the left (who are supposed to be the smart and rational ones in society) bought
these lies and repeated them.
Once this was allowed to happen, once Maddow was allowed to lead the vanguard of libel
with no recourse, the snowball began to roll and now we are seeing the enforcement of that
thought-policing, which is as unconstitutional as the libel itself, especially considering it
is being perpetrated ubiquitously among media owners.
The phenomenon of Donald Trump the villain President has been used as an excuse to destroy
free speech and shoe horn in authoritarian policies. Due to the immense power of propaganda,
normal people who should identify politically as the "left" are actually supporting these
dangerous policies and the erosions of liberty are accelerating in direct proportion to the
level of resistance, such as r/Wallstreetbets and the immediate crackdown across several
platforms to stop them.
This Wall St. favoritism is obvious, but will likely end without bankers taking much
damage besides some short term outrage. They still control all the levers of currency and
trade no matter the President.
The real dangers of the day are the clamping down on speech. Starting with imprisoning
Julian Assange and then migrating to various corners of the Internet. I'll be very interested
to see how things shake out with the stock market, but I imagine it will go back to the firm
grip of those who control the money supply, which it was for a very long time.
In the meantime, shutting down the Reddit forums and Discord servers is a very serious
danger and I hope we can shine a light on it.
It's part & parcel here especially from DUP types who sometimes appear to be living in
a fantasy world – Shinners not so much but I imagine that SF dissidents have similar
extreme positions & all of this comes from some intelligent & professional people not
just the malleable mobs. Meanwhile there is a turf war for the gangster versions of both UVF
& UDA hitting the streets in Belfast.
I recall a few years back reading an account from a British Army general who was familiar
with both Northern Ireland & the former Yugoslavia before they blew up, who in both
instances was shocked by how people who had for the most part lived happily side by side
within a relatively short space of time became sworn enemies. All of that had a religious
background with the latter including ethnicity, but to him both sides in both cases spiraled
down through negative reactions into extremes, becoming in the end each others sworn
enemies.
Politics & Class have I believe caused the same fractures & after all the
successful & presumably intelligent PMC also have their deplorable others that are
largely a construction based on generalisations & stereotypes, while sadly peace &
reconciliation efforts as far as I can tell always appear to arrive as an epilogue to a very
bad book.
Yugoslavia definitely didn't live happily side by side. Its tensions were hidden under
Tito, but existed before (cf WW2 Croats vs Serbs, as most visible example), and blew up
after, to a great extent because they were so supressed before w/o any reasonable outlet. It
might have given a semblance of "happines", but it wasn't really there.
I was only in Yugoslavia once for about a week in 1982, and you could see what a mess it
was in the making. I'm used to Europeans drinking, but Belgrade made em' look like
teetotalers. Add in age old tensions and kaboom!
One of the biggest hyperinflationary episodes came out of their civil war, only to be
eclipsed in the numbers game by Zimbabwe after the turn of the century.
I was going through Yugoslavia by train in 1981 and the one thing that struck me looking
out the windows was flags. You had Yugoslavian flags everywhere you looked to the point that
it was almost a fetish. It was only years later that I wondered if the point of those flags
was to encourage the different groups to think of themselves as Yugoslavians first and
foremost.
> to a great extent because they were so supressed before w/o any reasonable
outlet.
But this seems to excuse the fighting? If everybody was "suppressed" then why did they
kick sideways, rather than up? As I think I said once before, my friend from Serbia would say
"I'd be on "my" side of the street and "they" would be shooting at me, and then I'd cross the
street and "my" people would be shooting at me".
He, like so many nowadays, came to the US not because this was some beacon of hope but
because where he lived, a place he loved for many reasons, was that messed up.
Reading Wikipedia I come across this tiresome sentence: "The Croat quest for independence
led to large Serb communities within Croatia rebelling and trying to secede from the Croat
republic. Serbs in Croatia would not accept a status of a national minority in a sovereign
Croatia, since they would be demoted from the status of a constituent nation of the entirety
of Yugoslavia."
Croats? Serbs? Like they are fundamentally different species? It's as bad as the
Reconstruction South, but per my example above people didn't even have different colored
skin, heck they were physically indistinguishable. They just wanted something they themselves
couldn't even describe without foaming at the mouth.
To be considered above somebody else by birth was what it really was.
Oh, and another head-banging quote: "the "Croatian Spring" protest in the 1970s was backed
by large numbers of Croats who claimed that Yugoslavia remained a Serb hegemony and demanded
that Serbia's powers be reduced .Tito, whose home republic was Croatia,"
An iron-fisted dictator runs the country, he is from Croatia, yet the country is
considered by Croatians to be "Serb hegemony". Ok whatever, hey it does make more sense than
following a normal-height dark-haired dark-eyed man because he says that tall blond-haired
blue eyed people are superior. And that was a short-by-American-standards drive away
We can give the globe a spin and find the same idiocy in Asia, where "they all look alike"
to western eyes but oh boy they slaughter each other just as regularly as we do.
Ok I'm done ranting. What a plague on the planet this species is.
Kicking sideways (or downwards) is always easier than kicking upwards, especially if
people were doing it for years.
Otherwise, you're just accentuating my point – and I agree with you. It was
incredible watching people in pub who were getting on very well until one of them asked where
the other was from, and that has changed the whole atmosphere.
My cousin from Prague came to America in the late 90's to live on a genuine ranch for a
spell and go on a long roadtrip in search of
So he gets pulled over for speeding in a red state and gives the officer his Czech drivers
license, and he told me the officer went into a harangue over all the ethnic cleansing that
was going on in his country, and how sorry he was about it, and let him off.
Cousin was torn between telling the copper, nah that's a few countries over, but went for
the victim card instead.
Hah, do you know the Western press brain-melt induced by having Slovakia and Slovenia
(which, moreover have very similar flags..) in the same World Cup (soccer) 2022 qualification
group?
Croats? Serbs? Like they are fundamentally different species?
Not different species, but different religions; Roman and Orthodox Catholicism,
respectively. Think German-speaking Europe during the Thirty Years War.
The irony of course is that, in 1992, Croats for the most part didn't go to mass, Serbs
did go to Liturgy, and Bosniak Muslims thought beer went well with their pork chops.
Think of it not as a religious war, but a re-hash of WWII.
Diana Johnstones "Fools Crusade" goes into the destabilization efforts made by various EU
and Nato entities to precipitate the break up. It's where the Clintons beta tested the nation
breaking tools Bush/Cheney began deploying around the world.
Karl Von Hapsburg and the Pope were both involved in prying the Catholic portions loose
from the Yugoslav federation and bringing them back into the Mont Pelerin orbit of the former
Habsburg empire.
The Orthodox regions have been left to the Russians with black markets to everyone's
benefit and the Bosnians given the standard settler/colonial treatment of designated
"races."
Vlade – perhaps I should not have used the word happily but basically neighbours
were not killing each other as was also mainly the case in NI, although there were tensions
gradually building up in tandem with the Civil Rights movement based on the MLK. model.
I don't know what the tipping point was in the Balkans, but in NI it was the treatment
received by the marchers & the likes of the Bogside at the hands of the B specials &
RUC in Derry which gradually spread elsewhere in mass battles between mobs from both sides
& the above armed cops. All of this capped off in 72 by the Provos most successful
recruiting campaign courtesy of the Parachute regiment on Bloody Sunday, while about that
time around 10,000 Catholic refugees crossed into the Republic.
If the General thought that people in NI lived happily side by side before the Troubles,
then he was sorely misinformed. Tensions were always very strong, although not just religious
ones. In Dublin growing up I had neighbours who were Belfast protestants but had been driving
out of Belfast because their grandfather was involved in a shipyard trade union and that was
sufficient for him to have been labeled as a communist and Taig lover.
Yes happily was the wrong word but in the North outside of the cities there was mixing
& occasionally mixed marriages.
You are very correct in relation to the troubles in the shipyards, which I read a few
books about in prep for a statue. Funny thing is that during my 2 stints at the Titanic
studios for GoT I was informed by the top man that many of the tradesmen were ex
paramilitaries from both sides who managed to work well together for a decade, but in
separate teams. That was also tjhe case during the yearly Wraps where they all took full
advantage of the free bars but besides a few scuffles, there was never any real trouble.
A lot of the work would have been carried out in the original paint hall.
You have lost me there Vlade ( If you were indeed commenting on my post ) as I don't know
the book, but you have reminded me of one very violent incident on location in Spain between
2 Catholics in a bar. It was due to one of them being a member of another group of savages
that plagued Belfast as the other 2 wound down.
They were called the Hoodies who were part of the huge crime wave that hit Belfast as a
consequence of the Troubles. It was cleaned up in Catholic areas over about 7 years under the
command of Bobby Storey.
quote from an article i am reading on alex ross interview...Alex Ross is the music critic
of The New Yorker, among other things.. its a bit of a controversial comment which i why i am
sharing it..
"America -- people have said this in so many ways -- is in need of the kind of
self-examination that has become widespread in Germany. For all of its problems, the culture
of working through the past is very strong in Germany. Susan Neiman recently wrote a
brilliant book, Learning from the Germans, drawing a line between the German examination of
the Nazi past and the Holocaust and America's, to put it mildly, very incomplete reckoning
with racism, slavery, the Native American genocide, and everything else. As I say in the
book, Germany becomes a sort of alibi for us -- no matter how bad things are here, we're not
that bad. We're not as bad as the Germans. That undertow exists whenever German history and
German culture are discussed in America. Consider the incredible profusion of books on the
Nazi period that you see in bookstores -- there's always an element of wanting to go back
this period when America seemed to be purely on the side of good and the Germans were
absolute evil. It makes us feel better about ourselves. And so we have these Nazi characters
in movies over and over -- good down-to-earth Americans out there battling evil Germans who
are playing Wagner on their Victrolas, which is literally something that happens in one of
the Captain America movies. It's a comforting myth, one that needs to be shaken up a
bit."
Globalists tell the people they are for mankind and Mother Earth, against corporate
exploitation. Once in control after a year of planpanic and the Great Reset, globalists will
operate for the benefit of those in control of the world's largest corporations.
In all three "different" systems, the people begin to wake up too late. The only way for
those who have seized control to stay in control is to suppress the "have nots." This leads
inevitably to totalitarian control and tyranny.
Thus, communism, fascism and globalism differ only in rhetoric. In all things that matter
they are identical. It's all totalitarianism.
A hallmark of totalitarian societies is that there's no escape from politics and the
dominant state ideology. Recent events demonstrate that we've now sadly reached that point in
Britain, the US and other Western countries.
...In the choice between the personal and the political, between listening to the
politician, or romancing (even if only in his imagination), the poet chooses the personal. He
is right to do so. Totalitarian societies come about when people do the opposite. They put
politics before the personal. They betray old friendships for 'the cause', or put 'following
the party line' before family and loved ones.
...Things that used to be apolitical have become completely politicised. There is no
'ring-fencing' any more. I have to say, even as someone who makes my living as a political
commentator, I'm absolutely sick of the way politics has infected every aspect of our lives
...While the US presidential inauguration was being televised, and viewers were no doubt
being told repeatedly what a 'great day for democracy' it was, I was doing a jigsaw puzzle.
Believe me, it was far more rewarding.
Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog
can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs
@NeilClark66
sarcastictruth 17 hours ago 24 Jan, 2021 06:38 AM
Political correctness is the means by which the powers that be/the elite/the globalists
control the masses. Why do people demonstrate political correctness? To show what a "good
person" they and how they are aware of "social issues". That's why people strive to be
politically correct. Its the reason we are in the lockdown situation, people accept the
lockdown because you are deemed politically incorrect (a bad person) if you don't. People
mistake that politically correctness is about fighting racism, whilst racism against black
people is condemned, racism against white people is actively encourage. This shows
political correctness has nothing to do with fighting racism, fighting gender inequality,
or about being a good person. It has everything to do with fostering division amongst
people and controlling the opinion of the masses.
Cl K-berg 13 hours ago 24 Jan, 2021 10:33 AM
100%. Here's a great extract for essay quotation: ''We should turn off television
programmes masquerading as 'drama' or 'comedy' that are really political sermons dolled up
in entertainment's clothing and provide no enjoyment whatsoever.'' Wow! how totally spot
on.
Journalist Andy Ngo, whose parents fled to the US from Vietnam in 1978, has become a
political refugee himself, fleeing to London, saying he received death threats from Antifa over
his coverage of the movement.
"For a number of months now, there's just been increasing threats of violence against me,
promises by Antifa extremists to kill me," the Portland native said Saturday night in a Sky
News interview. Local law enforcement authorities did nothing about the alleged threats, even
when Ngo provided names of the suspects, he said.
"It's pained me a lot, temporarily having to leave the country and home that settled my
parents who came there as political refugees," Ngo added.
Ngo came to increased prominence after he was attacked by a mob of Antifa protesters in
2019. There have been no arrests in connection with that attack – in which Ngo was
beaten, robbed and hospitalized with a brain injury – even though it was caught on camera
from various angles and the journalist's lawyer provided names of suspects to police.
Some Antifa members have condemned Ngo for "enabling fascism" and exposing them to
danger by reporting their names and posting their arrest photos. He was vilified by
Rolling Stone magazine, which branded him as a "right-wing troll" and said he tries
to "demonize" Antifa.
Hatred towards Ngo apparently escalated even further with the upcoming publication of his
book, 'Unmasked', which chronicles Antifa's history of violence and its "radical plan
to destroy democracy."
The protests, which some observers called "modern-day book burning," may have had an
unintended consequence by bringing more attention to 'Unmasked'. The book, which is
scheduled for release on February 2, is already the No. 1 seller in several political
categories on Amazon.com. At one point earlier this month, it was the
overall top seller by the online behemoth.
Ngo said the same Democrat politicians who have condemned and magnified the January 6 US
Capitol riot were silent "at best" when Antifa and Black Lives Matter plagued Portland
with 120 days of riots, including violent attacks on a federal courthouse, last year. He said
some even promoted crowdfunding efforts to get rioters out of jail, while others described
federal law enforcement officers as "Trump's Gestapo and secret police."
Rioting in Portland was so bad on President Joe Biden's Inauguration Day that 15 Antifa
activists were arrested, nearly half of whom had been busted and released for similar crimes
last year, Ngo said. "This is a nightmare version of Groundhog Day," he added.
Reminded that Biden had called Antifa "an idea, not an organization" during last year's
presidential campaign, Ngo pointed out that documents leaked to him show Antifa's
organizational setup, including processes for recruiting, radicalizing and vetting new
members.
"Very sad," author Julia Smith said of Ngo's fleeing to London. "This is not the
America his parents sought."
"... "You have such a fervent, passionate, evangelical faith in this country why in the name of God don't you have any faith in the system of government you're so hell-bent to protect? You want to defend the United States of America, then defend it with the tools it supplies you with -- its Constitution. You ask for a mandate, General, from a ballot box. You don't steal it after midnight, when the country has its back turned." -- Seven Days in May (1964) ..."
"... That January 6 attempt by so-called insurrectionists to overturn the election results was not the real coup, however. Those who answered President Trump's call to march on the Capitol were merely the fall guys, manipulated into creating the perfect crisis for the Deep State -- a.k.a. the Police State a.k.a. the Military Industrial Complex a.k.a. the Techno-Corporate State a.k.a. the Surveillance State -- to swoop in and take control. ..."
"... It took no time at all for the switch to be thrown and the nation's capital to be placed under a military lockdown, online speech forums restricted, and individuals with subversive or controversial viewpoints ferreted out, investigated, shamed and/or shunned . ..."
"... Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America ..."
"... Seven Days in May ..."
"... Seven Days in May ..."
"... domestic right-wing extremism ..."
"... Battlefield America: The War on the American People ..."
"... This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute . ..."
"You have such a fervent, passionate, evangelical faith in this country why in the name
of God don't you have any faith in the system of government you're so hell-bent to protect? You
want to defend the United States of America, then defend it with the tools it supplies you with
-- its Constitution. You ask for a mandate, General, from a ballot box. You don't steal it
after midnight, when the country has its back turned." -- Seven Days in May
(1964)
No doubt about it: the coup d'etat was successful.
That January 6
attempt by so-called insurrectionists to overturn the election results was not the real
coup, however. Those who answered
President Trump's call to march on the Capitol were merely the fall guys, manipulated into
creating the perfect crisis for the Deep State -- a.k.a. the Police State a.k.a. the Military
Industrial Complex a.k.a. the Techno-Corporate State a.k.a. the Surveillance State -- to swoop
in and take control.
It took no time at all for the switch to be thrown and the nation's capital to be placed
under a military lockdown, online speech forums restricted, and individuals with subversive or
controversial viewpoints
ferreted out, investigated, shamed and/or shunned .
This new order didn't emerge into being this week, or this month, or even this year,
however.
Indeed, the real coup happened when our government "of the people, by the people, for the
people" was overthrown by a profit-driven, militaristic, techno-corporate state that is in
cahoots with a government "of the rich, by the elite, for the corporations."
We've been mired in this swamp for decades now.
Every successive president starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt has been bought lock, stock
and barrel and made to dance to the Deep State's tune.
Writing in 1980, Gross predicted a future in which he saw:
a new despotism creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of
a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to
enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended
or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these
consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment,
the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our
constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread
intervention in international politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or
military invasion
This stealthy, creeping, silent coup that Gross prophesied is the same danger that writer
Rod Serling envisioned in the 1964 political thriller Seven Days in May ,
a clear warning to beware of martial law packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for
the nation's security.
Incredibly enough, almost 60 years later, we find ourselves hostages to a government run
more by military doctrine and corporate greed than by the rule of law established in the
Constitution. Indeed, proving once again that fact and fiction are not dissimilar, today's
current events could well have been lifted straight out of Seven Days in May , which
takes viewers into eerily familiar terrain.
With the Cold War at its height, an unpopular U.S. President signs a momentous nuclear
disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. Believing that the treaty constitutes an unacceptable
threat to the security of the United States and certain that he knows what is best for the
nation, General James Mattoon Scott (played by Burt Lancaster), the head of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff and presidential hopeful, plans a military takeover of the national government. When Gen.
Scott's aide, Col. Casey (Kirk Douglas), discovers the planned military coup, he goes to the
President with the information. The race for command of the U.S. government begins, with the
clock ticking off the hours until the military plotters plan to overthrow the President.
Needless to say, while on the big screen, the military coup is foiled and the republic is
saved in a matter of hours, in the real world, the plot thickens and spreads out over the past
half century.
We've been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long -- sold to us in the name of
national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and
order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined
to maintain their powers at all costs -- that it's hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started
going downhill, but we've been on that fast-moving, downward trajectory for some time now.
The question is no longer whether the U.S. government will be preyed upon and taken over by
the military industrial complex. That's a done deal, but martial law disguised as national
security is only one small part of the greater deception we've been fooled into believing is
for our own good.
How do you get a nation to docilely accept a police state? How do you persuade a populace to
accept metal detectors and pat downs in their schools, bag searches in their train stations,
tanks and military weaponry used by their small town police forces, surveillance cameras in
their traffic lights, police strip searches on their public roads, unwarranted blood draws at
drunk driving checkpoints, whole body scanners in their airports, and government agents
monitoring their communications?
Try to ram such a state of affairs down the throats of the populace, and you might find
yourself with a rebellion on your hands. Instead, you bombard them with constant color-coded
alerts, terrorize them with shootings and bomb threats in malls, schools, and sports arenas,
desensitize them with a steady diet of police violence, and sell the whole package to them as
being for their best interests.
This is not the language of a free people. This is the language of force.
Still, you can't say we weren't warned.
Back in 2008, an Army
War College report revealed that "widespread civil violence inside the United States would
force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic
order and human security." The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such
civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, "unforeseen economic collapse, loss of
functioning political and legal order , purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency,
pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters."
In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that labelled right-wing
and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) and called
on the government to subject such targeted individuals to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance.
Almost a decade later, after spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the
greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism .
Meanwhile, the police have been transformed into extensions of the military while the nation
itself has been transformed into a battlefield. This is what a state of undeclared martial law
looks like, when you can be arrested, tasered, shot, brutalized and in some cases killed merely
for not complying with a government agent's order or not complying fast enough. This hasn't
just been happening in crime-ridden inner cities. It's been happening all across the
country.
Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants
(and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the
government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing
and inescapable . It's not just the drones,
fusion centers , license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry
about. You're also being tracked by the black boxes in your
cars , your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media
accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader
accounts.
So you see, January 6 and its aftermath provided the government and its corporate
technocrats the perfect excuse to show off all of the powers they've been amassing so
assiduously over the years.
Mind you, by "government," I'm not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy
of the Republicans and Democrats.
I'm referring to "government" with a capital "G," the entrenched Deep State that is
unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach
of the law.
I'm referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully
operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and
calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.
This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its
citizenry.
Brace yourself.
There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it
doesn't bode well for the future of this country.
Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by the antics of the political ruling class
that they are oblivious to all else, you'd better beware.
Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force,
and rules by fiat, you'd better beware.
And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are
never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you'd better beware.
All of those dastardly seeds we have allowed the government to sow under the guise of
national security are bearing demon fruit.
The gravest threat facing us as a nation is not extremism but despotism, exercised by a
ruling class whose only allegiance is to power and money.
*
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It should be shocking to Republicans and Democrats alike that the Commander-in-Chief of the
United States is banished from all of the main social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook
and YouTube – denying him the ability to communicate with his 75 million constituents, or
one half of the electorate. This is real and unprecedented violence being committed against the
body politic and far more worrisome than any breach of federal property, as loathsome as such
an act may be.
The Capitol building is, after all, ultimately a mere symbol of our freedoms and liberties,
whereas the rights laid down in the U.S. Constitution –the First Amendment not least of
all – are fragile and coming under sustained assault every single day. Why does the left
refuse to show the same concern for an aging piece of parchment, arguably the greatest
political document ever written, as it does for a piece of architecture? The answer to that
riddle is becoming increasingly obvious.
Big Tech began its slide towards marked fascist tendencies thanks to one of the greatest
hoaxes ever foisted upon the American public, known as Russiagate. One after another, Silicon
Valley overlords were called before Congressional committees to
explain "how and why Russian operatives were given free rein to tamper with 2016 U.S.
election," in favor of the populist Donald Trump, no less.
After this made for television 'dressing down', the Big Tech executives at Google, Facebook,
Twitter and others got busy reconfiguring their software algorithms in such a way that
thousands of internet creators suddenly lost not only a lifetime of hard work and their
sustenance, but their voice as well. This is the moment that Big Tech and the Democrats began
to really march in lockstep. A new dark age of 'McCarthyism' had settled upon the nation,
which gave the left unlimited powers for blocking user accounts they deemed "suspicious," which
meant anyone on the right. Now, getting 'shadow banned,' demonetized and outright banned from
these platforms has become the new dystopian reality for those with a conservative message to
convey. And the fact that the story of 'Russian collusion' was finally exposed as a dirty
little lie did nothing to loosen the corporate screws.
Incidentally, as a very large footnote to this story, Big Tech and Big Business have not
dished out the same amount of medieval-style punishment to other violators of the public peace.
The most obvious example comes courtesy of Black Lives Matter, the Soros-funded social-justice
movement that has wreaked havoc across a broad swath of the heartland following the death of
George Floyd during an arrest by a white police officer.
Both BLM and Trump supporters believe they have a very large grudge to bear. The former
believes they are being unfairly targeted by police due to the color of their skin, while the
latter believes they are not getting fair treatment by the mainstream media due to 'Trump
Derangement Syndrome', and possibly also due in part to their skin color. But at this point the
similarities between BLM and Trump voters come to a screeching halt.
Taking it as gospel that America suffers from 'systemic racism' (it doesn't, although that
is not to say that pockets of racism against all colors and creeds doesn't exist), dozens of
corporations jumped on the woke bandwagon to express their support for Black Lives Matter at
the very same time the latter's members were looting and burning neighborhoods across the
nation. Strangely, violence has never shocked the progressive left, so long as the violence
supported its agenda.
Here are just some of the ways the corporate world responded to charges that America was a
racist cauldron ready to blow, as reported by The Washington Post: "Jamie Dimon, chief
executive of JPMorgan Chase, knelt
alongside employees during his visit to a Chase branch. Bank of America
pledged $1 billion to fight racial inequality in America. Tech companies have
invested big dollars in Black Lives Matter, the Center for Policing Equity, Colin
Kaepernick's Know Your Rights Camp and other entities engaged in racial justice efforts " And
the list goes on and on.
Of course, private corporations are free to express their solidarity with whatever group
they wish. The problem, however, is that these monopolistic monstrosities have an overwhelming
tendency to pledge allegiance to liberal, progressive values, as opposed to maybe steering
clear of politics altogether. Nowhere was Corporate America's political agenda more obvious
than in the aftermath of the siege of the Capitol building on January 6, which led to the death
of five people.
Corporate America missed a very good opportunity to keep quiet and remain neutral with
regards to an issue of incredible partisan significance. Instead, it unleashed a salvo of
attacks on Trump supporters, even denying them access to basic services.
Aside from the most obvious and alarming 'disappearing act,' that of POTUS being removed
from the major social media platforms, were countless lesser names caught up in the
'purge.'
One such person is conservative commentator and former baseball star Curt Schilling, who
says that AIG terminated his insurance policy over his "social media profile," which was
sympathetic to Donald Trump,
according to Summit News. "We will be just fine, but wanted to let Americans know that
@AIGinsurance canceled our insurance due to my "Social Media profile," tweeted Schilling.
"The agent told us it was a decision made by and with their PR department in conjunction
with management," he added.
While all forms of 'cancel culture' (which seems to be part of a move to build American
society along the lines of the Chinese 'social credit system,' which rewards those who toe the
party line, and punishes those who fall out of favor) are egregious and counterintuitive to
American values, perhaps the most astonishing was the cancellation of Republican Senator Josh
Hawley's book deal with Simon and Shuster.
"We did not come to this decision lightly," Simon & Schuster said in a statement over
Twitter. "As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and
viewpoints: At the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens,
and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat."
The so-called "threat" was a photograph of Hawley raising a fist to the crowd that had
assembled outside of the Capitol building before it had breached the security perimeter. It
seems that corporations may now serve as judge, jury and executioner when it comes to how
Americans behave in public. Is it a crime that Hawley acknowledged a crowd of supporters who
were at the time behind the gates of the Capitol building? Apparently it is.
By the way, the name of the Hawley's book? 'The Tyranny of Big Tech'. How's that for
irony?
In conclusion, it would be a huge mistake for the Democrats to believe that they are safe
from the same sort of corporate and government behavior that has now dramatically silenced the
conservative voice across the nation. The United States has entered dangerous unchartered
waters, and by all indications it would appear that the American people have inherited a 'soft'
form of fascism.
Although there may not be troops and tanks on the streets and a dictator inciting crowds
from his bully pulpit, the end result has been pretty much the same: the brutal elimination of
one half of the American population from all of the due protections provided by the U.S.
Constitution due to an unholy alliance between corporate and government power, which is the
very definition of fascism. Democrats, you may very well be next, so enjoy your victory while
you still can.
Fascism is opposed to usury and the power of the international banking cartel. Whether
Italy, Spain, or Portugal, the bankers were squeezed. The US "fascism" is a product of the
banks, not an opponent.
For many years, a handful of people have postulated that those who control industry, finance
and governments are essentially the same people – a cabal of sorts that have, over
generations, solidified their relationships in order to gain greater wealth and power, whilst
systematically making things ever more difficult for the free market to exist.
But why should this be? Surely, corporate leaders are more ardently capitalist than anyone
else?
Well, on the surface, that might appear to make sense, but once a significant position of
power has been achieved, those who have achieved it recognize that, since they've already
reached the top, the primary concern changes. From then on, the primary concern becomes the
assurance that no others are able to climb so high as they have.
At that point, they realise that their foremost effort needs to be a push toward corporatism
– the merger of power between government and business. This is a natural marriage. The
political world is a parasitic one. It relies on a continual flow of funding. The world of big
business is a study in exclusivity – the ability to make it impossible for pretenders to
the throne to arise. So, big business provides the cash; government provides protective
legislation that ensures preference for those at the top.
In most cases, this second half of the equation does not mean a monopoly for just one
corporation, but a monopoly for a cabal – an elite group of corporations.
This corporatist relationship has deep roots in the US, going back over one hundred years.
To this day, those elite families who took control of oil, steel, banking, motor vehicles and
other industries a century ago, soon created a takeover of higher learning (universities),
health (Big Pharma) and "Defense" (the military-industrial complex).
Through legislation, the US was then transformed to ensure that all these interests would be
catered to, creating generations of both control and profit.
Of course, "profit" should not be an evil word, but under crony capitalism, it becomes an
abomination – a distortion of the free market and the death of laissez faire
economics.
Certainly, this sort of collectivism is not what Karl Marx had in mind when he daydreamed
about a workers' paradise in which business leaders retained all the risk and responsibility of
creating and building businesses, whilst the workers had the final word as to how the revenue
would be distributed to the workers themselves.
Mister Marx failed in being objective enough to understand that if the business creator took
all the risk and responsibility but gave up the ability to decide what happened to the revenue,
he'd never bother to open a business. Even a shoeshine boy would reject such a notion and elect
to go on the dole, rather than work.
Mister Marx sought more to bring down those who were successful than to raise up those who
were not, yet he unwittingly created a new idea – corporate collectivism – in which
the very people he sought to debase used the appeal of collectivist rhetoric to diminish both
the freedoms and wealth of the average worker.
On the surface, this might appear to be a hard sell – to get the hoi polloi into the
net – but in fact, it's quite easy and has perennially been effective.
Hitler's New Order was such a construct – the promise to return Germany to greatness
and the German people to prosperity through increasingly draconian laws, warfare and an
economic revolving door between government and industry.
Of course, a major influx of capital was required – billions of dollars – and
this was eagerly provided by US industry and banks. Heads of New York banks not only funded
Nazi industry; families such as the Fords, Rockefellers, Morgans, etc., sat on the boards of
German corporations.
The Nazi effort failed, as they underestimated the Russian will to fight to the death.
(Eighty percent of all German Army deaths were due to the Russian campaign.)
But those in New York were able to regroup and be first in the queue for the restructuring
of German industry after the war and, ultimately, profited handsomely.
But most significantly, the idea of corporatist collectivism did not die. Even before the
war, the same group of families and corporations had drawn up the plan for Franklin Roosevelt's
New Deal.
Mister Roosevelt was a dyed-in-the-wool Wall Street man and a director of New York banks. In
the 1930s and early 1940s, he created, as president, a revolving door that favoured large
corporations, whilst the average American was consciously kept at the subsistence level through
government entitlements.
The scam worked. Shortsighted Americans not only were grateful; they deified him for it.
Likewise, John Kennedy's New Frontier sought to revitalize the concept, as did Lyndon
Johnson's Great Society: Give the little people entitlements that keep them little. Tax smaller
businesses and create a flow of tax dollars to the elite industries, who, in turn, provide
monetary favours to the political class.
The Green New Deal is merely the latest corporate collectivist scheme on the list.
Corporate collectivism can be defined as a system in which the few who hold the legal
monopolies of finance and industry gain an overriding control over all others, and in so doing,
systematically extract wealth from them.
Today, this system has become so refined that, although the average American has a flat
screen TV and an expensive smartphone, he cannot raise $400 to cover an emergency that occurs
in his life. He is, for all practical purposes, continually bankrupt, but still functioning in
a zombie-like existence of continual dependency.
This, on the surface, may not seem all that dangerous, but those who cannot buy their way
out of a small emergency are easily controlled. Just create an emergency such as an uber-virus
and that fact will be illuminated quickly.
In order to maximise compliance in a population, maximise their dependence.
As stated above, this effort has been in play for generations. But it is now reaching a
crescendo. It's now up to speed in most of the former Free World and those who hold the strings
are ready for a major step forward in corporate collectivism.
In the coming year, we shall see dramatic changes appearing at a dizzying rate. Capital
controls , migration controls, internal movement controls, tax increases, confiscation of
assets and the removal of "inalienable" rights will all be coming into effect – so
quickly that before the populace can even grasp the latest restrictions, new ones will be
heaped on.
As this unfolds, we shall witness the erosion of the nation-state. Controls will come from
global authorities, such as the UN, the IMF and the WEF. Organisations that have no formal
authority over nations will increasingly be calling the shots and people will wonder how this
is possible. Elected officials will increasingly become mere bagmen, doing the bidding of an
unelected ruling class.
The changes that take place will be not unlike a blanket that is thrown over humanity.
The question then will be whether to, a) give in to this force, b) to fight it and most
likely fall victim to it, or c) seek a means to fall outside the perimeter of the blanket.
* * *
Unfortunately most people have no idea what really happens when a government goes out of
control, let alone how to prepare The coming economic and political crisis is going to be much
worse, much longer, and very different than what we've seen in the past. That's exactly why New
York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent video.
Click
here to watch it now .
Caitlin Johnstone is wrong. It not about the danger of neofascism or "white supremasism" (BTW
can Zionism be classified as a brand of White Supremacism and suppressed ?) per se. And not even
about the new incarnation of the National Security State, which is definitely coming. Even in the
current form the National Security State is able to crush any some movement in no time as there
is not way one can organize such a movement without getting into crosshairs of FBI and other
agencies.
This is actually about the level of fear of neoliberal elite and financial oligarchy
instilled by Dec 6 events, which due to the collapse of neoliberal ideology in 2008 got into "
The king is
naked " situation in 2021. Neoliberal elite lost the legitimacy (aka "mandate from Heavens"
in Chinese terminology) much like Soviet nomenklatura before the dissolution of the USSR.
Neoliberal was unable to raise the standard of living of the population. Instead it provided the
redistribution of wealth up ("accumulation by dispossession") and the decline of the standard of
living for the majority of population (aka "deplorables"). That created the crisis of legitimacy
and Dec 6 events should probably be viewed mainly under this angle. It looks like the majority of
the crowd were from lower middle class (small business owners and such)
A new viral video calling on liberals to form "an army of citizen detectives" to gather
information on Trump supporters and report their activities to the authorities has racked up
thousands of shares and millions of views in just a few hours.
The hashtag #TrumpsNewArmy is trending on Twitter as of this
writing due to the release of a horrifying video with that
title from successful author and virulent Russiagater Don Winslow. As of this writing it has
some 20 thousand shares and 2.6 million views, and the comments and quote-retweets are
predominantly supportive.
"On or before January 20th, Donald Trump will no longer be the Commander-in-Chief: he will
lose control of the Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines, Special Forces and America's nuclear
arsenal," Winslow's voice begins ominously. "On January 20th Donald Trump will become
Commander-in-Chief of a different army: this army."
Viewers are then shown footage from Trump rallies while being told that they are looking at
"radical extreme conservatives, also known as domestic terrorists".
"They are hidden among us, disguised behind regular jobs," Winslow warns.
"They are your children's teachers. They work at supermarkets, malls, doctor's offices,
and many are police officers and soldiers."
Winslow talks about white supremacists and the Capitol riot, warning that Trump will
continue escalating violence and fomenting a civil war in America.
"We have to fight back," Winslow declares.
"In this new war, the battlefield has changes. Computers can be more valuable than guns.
And this is what we need now more than ever: an army of citizen detectives. I'm proposing we
form a citizen army. Our weapons will be computers and cellphones. We, who are monitoring
extremists on the internet and reporting our findings to authorities. Remember, before the
Navy Seals killed Osama Bin Laden, he had to be found. He was found by a CIA analyst working
on a computer thousands of miles away. It's up to you."
The viral video is being loudly amplified by popular #Resistance accounts like Majid M
Padellan (better known as Brooklyn Dad Defiant) with frighteningly paranoid and HUAC-like
rhetoric.
"#TrumpsNewArmy is VILE," one of Padellan's Twitter shares of the
video reads. "And we KNOW who they are. They are our teachers. They are our neighbors. They are
our police officers. They are EVERYWHERE. EXPOSE THEIR TREASON."
"Good riddance. But his 'army' is still here, hiding amongst us. They are traitors. They
are evil. And they MUST be rooted OUT."
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America," reads yet another . "But
SOME people they pledged their allegiance ONLY to trump. These are dangerous traitors."
"After 9/11, we were told: If you see something, say something," reads still another .
"We have TERRORISTS in our midst. Some of us KNOW these people. It is our patriotic DUTY
to expose them."
So if you were hoping that maybe liberals would chill out and get a little less crazy with
Trump out of the White House, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
This is as insane and scary as I have ever seen these people get, and I was in the thick of
peak Russiagate hysteria. An aggressively manufactured push to get an army of citizens spying
on each other calls to mind the
Stasi informants of East Germany , the patriotism-fueled digital "digging" of the QAnon
psyop, and the NatSec LARPing of Louise Mensch Twitter, all rolled into one great big ball of
crazy.
This comes out as we are being bombarded with mass media punditry from literal CIA veterans
like Sue
Gordon and Elissa Slotkin forcefully
hammering home the message that domestic terror is the new frontier for combating violent
extremism, meaning of course that new Patriot
Act-like solutions will be needed .
Winslow himself spent six years traveling and doing
research for a novel about a former CIA operative ,
and if some government agency didn't recruit him during that period they clearly should
have.
This will get frightening if it keeps up. Just as a relatively low-profile lefty blogger I
routinely get liberals online falsely claiming I'm a Russian agent and saying they'll report me
to the FBI, and that's without an aggressive campaign urging them to join a powerful digital
army. The fact that Winslow stays very vague about what he means by "Trump's new army" and
constantly conflates rank-and-file Trump supporters with white supremacist terrorists means
people are effectively being pointed at all Trump supporters, especially when normal Trump
rallies are what he points to in the video. If this takes off it can very quickly lead to a
volunteer army of power-worshipping snitches against literally anyone who is critical of US
foreign policy or the Democratic Party, whether they actually support Trump or not.
In fact just following the trending hashtag I'm noticing Twitter users saying this
means targeting all Trump supporters, so clearly that is the message that's being absorbed.
"Trumpers are pushing back so hard against this video because so many of them live in the
dark, cloaked behind normal jobs and seemingly normal lives," Winslow tweeted in
promotion of his project.
Well maybe that's because they are half the voting public, Don?
Winslow mixes in these generic comments about "Trumpers" with comments about "white
supremacists" , about whom he tweets "1. We expose
them. 2. We identify them. 3. We notify law enforcement. 4. We notify their employers."
Their employers.
This is just liberals being pushed toward targeting anyone who isn't ideologically aligned
with them for destruction. I really, really hope it doesn't take off, because it is profoundly
ugly. Please don't let the manipulators trick you into ripping each other to pieces, America.
They're only pointing you at each other so you don't look at them.
* * *
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Hopefully things will settle down after the inauguration. There are a lot of normal people
in the US who just want to get on with fixing their lives after all the economic damage done
by the lock downs. This extreme political crap is getting really exhausting for everyone in
the center. The number of people who are centrists well exceed the the polar extremes.
Unfortunately the extremists get the lion's share of news coverage, so it makes it appear the
country is filled with lunatics. If Biden is smart he won't alienate the center or he will
lose a lot of support going into the mid-terms. A quiet period where people can actually
start rebuilding their lives and the economy is desperately needed. I remain cautiously
hopeful that once the political circus dies down, that could actually happen.
cankles' server 35 minutes ago
As Greenwald said, it's easy for the neocons to switch because the D's are now the party
of "militarism, imperialism, and corporatism."
On the massive military buildup = another drift towards fascism under the democrats, they
have the media, military, police on top of congress, house and president. GOP will be so weak
coming years, and they have themselves to blame for being so passive past years, in fact any
dissent will not be heard coming years with Biden.
The first such hurdle was the longstanding American- exceptionalist conceit that, in the
ironic title of Sinclair Lewis's dystopian 1935 novel, "It Can't Happen Here." The "it" in
Lewis's title was authoritarian fascism, falsely deemed impossible in the United States during
and since Lewis' time because of the supposedly strong hold here of democratic and
constitutional principles and institutions. Such authoritarianism has long been falsely
portrayed as beyond the pale of possibility in a nation whose media and political authorities
regularly and absurdly call the "world's greatest democracy."
Apathy/Demobilization/"Inverted Totalitarianism"
A third barrier was a critical ingredient of what the late left political scientist Sheldon
Wolin considered to be America's distinctive authoritarian "inverted totalitarianism" –
the atomized demobilization of the populace. While what Wolin called the "classical
totalitarian regimes" of fascist German and Soviet Russia aimed at the constant political
mobilization of the populace, "inverted totalitarianism aims for the mass of the populace to be
in a persistent state of political apathy. The only type of political activity expected or
desired from the citizenry is voting. Low electoral turnouts are favorably received as an
indication that the bulk of the populace has given up hope that the government will ever
significantly help them." The second most common response to pleas to join popular movements
against Trumpism-fascism (after "I'll vote/I voted against him") in my experience was a
shrugging indifference to and/or disgust with any and all politics often combined with a sense
that American political life is too ugly, boring, and/or impenetrable to merit attention.
No Real Left
Eighth, the continuing and longtime absence of any sophisticated, powerful, and relevant,
many-sided Left of significance in late Neoliberal America is a significant part of the tragic
equation. No such movement would have met the rise of Trump and Trumpism-fascism with four
years of avoidance, denial, passivity, and diversion. There are many factors in play behind
this pathetic portside weakness but two that have struck this writer and activist as
particularly relevant alongside excessive localism and excessive identitarianism in the last
four years are (i) the crippling holds of sectarianism (an almost pathological refusal to reach
across tribal-ideological and organizational lines to form a united anti-fascist front) and
(ii) single-issue silo politics whereby group A cares about the climate, group B cares about
reproductive rights, group C cares about a higher minimum wages, group D cares about teachers'
working conditions and so on.
My title may appear to be over the top, but hear me out. There was a time when the CIA,
despite deep flaws and sloppy tradecraft, could be counted on to tell the President, regardless
of political party, the truth. No longer. It is corrupt to the very top and now should be
viewed as an enemy of the Republic.
The latest revelations from the
Intelligence Community's Analytic Ombudsman described in a memo from DNI John Ratcliffe is
beyond shocking. Rather than tell the truth about Chinese interference in the 2020 Presidential
election, the CIA opted to quash intelligence that would have proven Donald Trump's claim that
the Chinese not only interfered in the 2020 election, but played a hand in throwing the
election to Joe Biden.
Here are the salient points of the DNI's memo:
The IC's Analytic Ombudsman issued a report . . . that includes concerning revelations
about the politicization of China election influence reporting and of undue pressure being
brought to bear on analysts who offered an alternative view based on the intelligence. . .
.
Analytic Standard B requires the IC to maintain "independence of political
considerations." This is particularly important during times when the country is, as the
Ombudsman wrote, "in a hyper partisan state." However, the Ombudsman found that:
"China analysts were hesitant to assess Chinese actions as undue influence or
interference. These analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought
forward because they tend to disagree with the administration's policies, saying in effect, I
don't want our intelligence used to support those policies. This behavior would constitute a
violation of Analytic Standard B: Independence of Political Considerations (IRTPA Section
1019).". . . .
"There were strong efforts to suppress analysis of alternatives (AOA) in the August
[National intelligence Council Assessment on foreign election influence], and associated IC
products, which is a violation ofTradecraft Standard 4 and IRTPA Section 1017.
National Intelligence Council (NIC) officials reported that Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) officials rejected NIC coordination comments and tried to downplay alternative analyses
in their own production during the drafting of the NICA." . . . .
Additionally, the Ombudsman found that CIA Management took actions "pressuring [analysts]
to withdraw their support" from the alternative viewpoint on China "in an attempt to suppress
it. This was seen by National Intelligence Officers (NIO) as politicization,"
"There were strong efforts to suppress analysis of alternatives (AOA) in the August
[National intelligence Council Assessment on foreign election influence], and associated IC
products, which is a violation ofTradecraft Standard 4 and IRTPA Section 1017.
National Intelligence Council (NIC) officials reported that Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) officials rejected NIC coordination comments and tried to downplay alternative analyses
in their own production during the drafting of the NICA."
Let me make this very simple--the CIA cooked the books because they did not want to produce
the evidence that proved what the President has been saying since the election was true.
This is not a mistake. This is treason of the highest order.
"... Although there may not be tanks on the streets and a dictator inciting crowds from his bully pulpit, the end result has been pretty much the same. ..."
"... it is important to put aside the notion that fascism is a purely right-wing phenomenon, complete with a chauvinistic demagogue haranguing a frenzied crowd. The new dictator on the block is not some fanatical Fuhrer, but rather Silicon Valley, the fountainhead of technological advancement and the formidable fortress of liberal ideology. In other words, fascism is an ideology that moves fluidly along the political spectrum, although some say the ideology grew out of European progressivism. ..."
"... Liberal Fascism ..."
"... Many years earlier, the late political theorist Hannah Arendt described the Nazi Party (which stands for, lest we forget, the 'National SOCIALIST German Workers' Party') as nothing more than "the breakdown of all German and European traditions, the good as well as the bad basing itself on the intoxication of destruction as an actual experience." That sounds like a pretty accurate description of the cancel culture mentality that has now gripped the 'progressive' left with an almost demonic possession. ..."
"... We are living Orwell's 1984. Free-speech no longer exists in America. It died with big tech and what's left is only there for a chosen few. ..."
"... Big Tech began its slide towards marked fascist tendencies thanks to one of the greatest hoaxes ever foisted upon the American public, known as Russiagate. One after another, Silicon Valley overlords were called before Congressional committees to explain "how and why Russian operatives were given free rein to tamper with 2016 U.S. election," in favor of the populist Donald Trump, no less. ..."
"... Strangely, violence has never shocked the progressive left, so long as the violence supported its agenda. ..."
"... While all forms of 'cancel culture' (which seems to be part of a move to build American society along the lines of the Chinese 'social credit system,' which rewards those who toe the party line, and punishes those who fall out of favor) are egregious and counterintuitive to American values, perhaps the most astonishing was the cancellation of Republican Senator Josh Hawley's book deal with Simon and Shuster. ..."
"... In conclusion, it would be a huge mistake for the Democrats to believe that they are safe from the same sort of corporate and government behavior that has now dramatically silenced the conservative voice across the nation. The United States has entered dangerous unchartered waters, and by all indications it would appear that the American people have inherited a 'soft' form of fascism. ..."
Although there may not be tanks on the streets and a dictator inciting crowds from his
bully pulpit, the end result has been pretty much the same.
Most Americans can probably still remember a time when U.S. companies were in business with
one goal in mind – providing a product or service for profit. It was a noble idea, the
bedrock of capitalism, in which everyone stood to gain in the process.
Today, the monopolistic powers now enjoyed by a handful of mighty corporations, which are no
longer shy about declaring their political bent, have tempted them to wade into the deep end of
the political pool with deleterious effects on democracy. Indeed, corporate power wedded to
government is nothing less than fascism.
In presenting such a case, it is important to put aside the notion that fascism is a
purely right-wing phenomenon, complete with a chauvinistic demagogue haranguing a frenzied
crowd. The new dictator on the block is not some fanatical Fuhrer, but rather Silicon Valley,
the fountainhead of technological advancement and the formidable fortress of liberal ideology.
In other words, fascism is an ideology that moves fluidly along the political spectrum,
although some say the ideology grew out of European progressivism.
Jonah Goldberg argued in his 2008 book, Liberal Fascism , that even before World
War II "fascism was widely viewed as a progressive social movement with many liberal and
left-wing adherents in Europe and the United States." Many years earlier, the late
political theorist Hannah Arendt described the Nazi Party (which stands for, lest we forget,
the 'National SOCIALIST German Workers' Party') as nothing more than "the breakdown of all
German and European traditions, the good as well as the bad basing itself on the intoxication
of destruction as an actual experience." That sounds like a pretty accurate description of the
cancel culture mentality that has now gripped the 'progressive' left with an almost demonic
possession.
It should be shocking to Republicans and Democrats alike that the Commander-in-Chief of the
United States is banished from all of the main social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook
and YouTube – denying him the ability to communicate with his 75 million constituents, or
one half of the electorate. This is real and unprecedented violence being committed against the
body politic and far more worrisome than any breach of federal property, as loathsome as such
an act may be.
The Capitol building is, after all, ultimately a mere symbol of our freedoms and liberties,
whereas the rights laid down in the U.S. Constitution – the First Amendment not least of
all – are fragile and coming under sustained assault every single day. Why does the left
refuse to show the same concern for an aging piece of parchment, arguably the greatest
political document ever written, as it does for a piece of architecture? The answer to that
riddle is becoming increasingly obvious.
We are living Orwell's 1984. Free-speech no longer exists in America. It died with big
tech and what's left is only there for a chosen few.
Big Tech began its slide towards marked fascist tendencies thanks to one of the greatest
hoaxes ever foisted upon the American public, known as Russiagate. One after another, Silicon
Valley overlords were called before Congressional committees to
explain "how and why Russian operatives were given free rein to tamper with 2016 U.S.
election," in favor of the populist Donald Trump, no less.
After this made for television 'dressing down', the Big Tech executives at Google, Facebook,
Twitter and others got busy reconfiguring their software algorithms in such a way that
thousands of internet creators suddenly lost not only a lifetime of hard work and their
sustenance, but their voice as well. This is the moment that Big Tech and the Democrats began
to really march in lockstep. A new dark age of 'McCarthyism' had settled upon the nation, which
gave the left unlimited powers for blocking user accounts they deemed "suspicious," which meant
anyone on the right. Now, getting 'shadow banned,' demonetized and outright banned from these
platforms has become the new dystopian reality for those with a conservative message to convey.
And the fact that the story of 'Russian collusion' was finally exposed as a dirty little lie
did nothing to loosen the corporate screws.
Incidentally, as a very large footnote to this story, Big Tech and Big Business have not
dished out the same amount of medieval-style punishment to other violators of the public peace.
The most obvious example comes courtesy of Black Lives Matter, the Soros-funded social-justice
movement that has wreaked havoc across a broad swath of the heartland following the death of
George Floyd during an arrest by a white police officer.
Both BLM and Trump supporters believe they have a very large grudge to bear. The former
believes they are being unfairly targeted by police due to the color of their skin, while the
latter believes they are not getting fair treatment by the mainstream media due to 'Trump
Derangement Syndrome', and possibly also due in part to their skin color. But at this point the
similarities between BLM and Trump voters come to a screeching halt.
Taking it as gospel that America suffers from 'systemic racism' (it doesn't, although that
is not to say that pockets of racism against all colors and creeds doesn't exist), dozens of
corporations jumped on the woke bandwagon to express their support for Black Lives Matter at
the very same time the latter's members were looting and burning neighborhoods across the
nation. Strangely, violence has never shocked the progressive left, so long as the violence
supported its agenda.
Here are just some of the ways the corporate world responded to charges that America was a
racist cauldron ready to blow, as reported by The Washington Post: "Jamie Dimon, chief
executive of JPMorgan Chase, knelt
alongside employees during his visit to a Chase branch. Bank of America
pledged $1 billion to fight racial inequality in America. Tech companies have
invested big dollars in Black Lives Matter, the Center for Policing Equity, Colin
Kaepernick's Know Your Rights Camp and other entities engaged in racial justice efforts " And
the list goes on and on.
Of course, private corporations are free to express their solidarity with whatever group
they wish. The problem, however, is that these monopolistic monstrosities have an overwhelming
tendency to pledge allegiance to liberal, progressive values, as opposed to maybe steering
clear of politics altogether. Nowhere was Corporate America's political agenda more obvious
than in the aftermath of the siege of the Capitol building on January 6, which led to the death
of five people.
Corporate America missed a very good opportunity to keep quiet and remain neutral with
regards to an issue of incredible partisan significance. Instead, it unleashed a salvo of
attacks on Trump supporters, even denying them access to basic services.
Aside from the most obvious and alarming 'disappearing act,' that of POTUS being removed
from the major social media platforms, were countless lesser names caught up in the
'purge.'
One such person is conservative commentator and former baseball star Curt Schilling, who
says that AIG terminated his insurance policy over his "social media profile," which was
sympathetic to Donald Trump,
according to Summit News.
"We will be just fine, but wanted to let Americans know that @AIGinsurance canceled our
insurance due to my "Social Media profile," tweeted Schilling.
"The agent told us it was a decision made by and with their PR department in conjunction
with management," he added.
While all forms of 'cancel culture' (which seems to be part of a move to build American
society along the lines of the Chinese 'social credit system,' which rewards those who toe the
party line, and punishes those who fall out of favor) are egregious and counterintuitive to
American values, perhaps the most astonishing was the cancellation of Republican Senator Josh
Hawley's book deal with Simon and Shuster.
"We did not come to this decision lightly," Simon & Schuster said in a statement over
Twitter. "As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and
viewpoints: At the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens,
and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat."
The so-called "threat" was a photograph of Hawley raising a fist to the crowd that had
assembled outside of the Capitol building before it had breached the security perimeter. It
seems that corporations may now serve as judge, jury and executioner when it comes to how
Americans behave in public. Is it a crime that Hawley acknowledged a crowd of supporters who
were at the time behind the gates of the Capitol building? Apparently it is.
By the way, the name of the Hawley's book? 'The Tyranny of Big Tech'. How's that for
irony?
In conclusion, it would be a huge mistake for the Democrats to believe that they are
safe from the same sort of corporate and government behavior that has now dramatically silenced
the conservative voice across the nation. The United States has entered dangerous unchartered
waters, and by all indications it would appear that the American people have inherited a 'soft'
form of fascism.
Although there may not be troops and tanks on the streets and a dictator inciting crowds
from his bully pulpit, the end result has been pretty much the same: the brutal elimination of
one half of the American population from all of the due protections provided by the U.S.
Constitution due to an unholy alliance between corporate and government power, which is the
very definition of fascism. Democrats, you may very well be next, so enjoy your victory while
you still can.
"... Since you like Hitler analogies so much, dear Steven, why don't you contemplate the 'reactionary' aspect of those Germans who resisted, in the 1930s, the 'progress' of the National-Socialist movement. ..."
"... 'Reactionary' simply means 'opposing the change', and the changes instituted by global finance, aided by their faithful servants, your liberal comrades, -- those changes should be opposed by all decent citizens. ..."
Since you like Hitler analogies so much, dear Steven, why don't you contemplate the
'reactionary' aspect of those Germans who resisted, in the 1930s, the 'progress' of the
National-Socialist movement.
'Reactionary' simply means 'opposing the change', and the changes instituted by global
finance, aided by their faithful servants, your liberal comrades, -- those changes should be
opposed by all decent citizens.
And they are opposed by all decent citizens, and especially by the American working
class, which is why your liberal comrades have to resort to fascist methods: goebbelsian
propaganda, censorship, blacklisting, police repression.
"... In the case of this Ukrainian nazi – of course they knew. They just hoped no one would notice. The reason she was given this appointment was because she is who she is. Ukraine is to be the anti-Russian state with an indoctrinated population – people like this young woman are part of that policy. ..."
"Yale historian Timothy Snyder" In light of his opinions the appellation "historian" to this person can only be considered satire.
"The term 'fascist' is far too easily abused."
It is today used – like the term anti-semite, white supremacist, racist – to smear and or discredit anybody from the left or right
one disagrees with or tries to disempower.
Jonathan Cook lays out how this works with regards to the left:
I have no problem arguing conservatives, if they actually clearly define what they mean by this term and find some points I agree
with someone like Peter Hitchens:
"His view is that conservatism should embody a Burkean sense of public duty, conscience and the rule of law, which he sees as
the best guarantee of liberty. Furthermore, this view holds a general hostility to hasty reforms and adventurism .
Hitchens takes a critical stance on many wars. He was opposed to the Kosovo and 2003 Iraq War, on the grounds that neither was
in the interests of either Britain or the United States,[66] and opposes the war in Afghanistan.[67] He believes that the UK should
never have joined in World War I, and is very critical of the view that World War II was "The Good War".
Synchronization. Just beforehand, Rachel Maddow propped Snyder's book on fascism.
Dmitry Babich made an excellent point about how the Biden crowd cheered the storming of the Ukrainian parliament which include
some folks who qualify as fascists. In comparison, last week's DC protesting MAGA group didn't appear to be so fascist. I saw
an Israeli flag among these protestors as well as some African-Americans.
A related great shot at establishment politico Ian Bremmer:
Mark Sleboda @MarkSleboda1 ·
Jan 10 "Calling for an insurrection
to overthrow the legitimate outcome of a free and fair election is crime against the nation." - Unless the nation in question
is #Ukraine in 2014 or some other state
& govt not aligned with US hegemony. Then calling for an insurrection is kosher.
Quote Tweet ian bremmer @ianbremmer · Jan 10
Calling for an insurrection to overthrow the legitimate outcome of a free and fair election is crime against the nation.
Yes, Trump only has another week in office. But he should still be impeached and convicted.
There are plenty of poseurs, blow-hards about. To be dangerous, there must be a leadership, an apparatus, discipline, and a
substantial rank and file. And most importantly, all motivated by a creed, common beliefs that weld all into a force. Nothing
like that exists.
But the good news is that behind the shrill loud-mouths of the Woke censorship bullies, fake news media, liberals, Democrats,
burned out 'progressives – the On Duty paid for apparatchiks. Behind them is – nothing. No Party, no organizers, no apparatus
at all. No store fronts for meetings, no stand by printers, no trained marshals. No seething masses burning with righteous fury
ready to hit the streets. Nothing.
Sure, people are mad. But when you're mad at everything then that power is dissipated. And when you're not united by being
For something then you don't amount to a hill of beans. The liberals are afraid that when their 'lockdown pandemic racket' runs
out of gas, the public will turn on them with a vengeance. And they can expect no organized part of population to defend them.
For a while, folks will be united on venting their fury at those that ride high now. Wait till the wheel turns. Grigory MatyuninJANUARY 11, 2021 AT
9:51 PM
It's like the misuse of the term 'conspiracy theorist' by people like Snyder, Harding and Applebaum. Anyone who merely points
to the impropriety of Nuland/McCain's actions on the Maidan is pre-emptively dismissed by them as a conspiracy theorist. Yet the
notion that Russia controls Trump through a pee tape, bewitched the Brits into voting for Brexit and was the sole force behind
the Catalan independence movement is now axiomatic for worshippers of received wisdom. GuestJANUARY 12, 2021 AT
12:51 AM
In the case of this Ukrainian nazi – of course they knew. They just hoped no one would notice.
The reason she was given this appointment was because she is who she is.
Ukraine is to be the anti-Russian state with an indoctrinated population – people like this young woman are part of that policy.
Look around the world!
We have seen that the west has no problem funding and supporting all sorts of disgusting groups and individuals if it meets their
objectives.
Nice job, Professor! It's always good to see somebody point out these hacks egregious double standards.
I want people to start scientifically as possible defining their terms for political ideologies. Like, there is actually a
legitimate use for the word "fascist". From what I understand, fascism is an actual political ideology and movement and should
not be used simply as a derogatory. From what I understand, fascism does not necessarily include a racialist component, although
it usually does (being based on nationalism).
Mussolini was a fascist. Hitler was a fascist too. (Nazism being a subset of the broader movement fascism?)
Franco was a fascist.
That Ukrainian lady you mentioned is an ideological fascist, more specifically a fucking Nazi.
Donald Trump -- is NOT a fascist. He is just a right-wing conservative, Murican-style!
I have for years tried to find a concise definition of "Fascism", but only found a lot of disagreement.
Fascism is by some defined as a corporatism where the state and the industrial and financial capitalist elite have come to
a complete nexus where the state protects within a framework of "ultra" nationalism those elites who in return follow and as well
directly influence the policies. By this definition the USA could be called not a fascist state, but one with fascists tendencies
as the nexus has been established to a great extend.
Some conservatives and libertarians find intellectual solace in pointing out that especially in Germany fascism developed as
a "national socialism". A version that opposed the internationalism of the Marxist version espoused the German Communist party,
and propagated an economic based antisemitism.
They are not wrong there, as socialism is not just the socialism or communism as defined by Marx, but as Marx himself pointed
out in his critiques there are various kind of socialisms. (
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
)
What they however ignore is Hitlers move under the guise of "socialism" to establish close ties with the German financial and
Industrial leadership and the attempt of a "true" National Socialism came to an end with the Strasser Brothers breaking away and
one being murdered in the Night of the Long Knives when Hitler destroyed any leftwing faction within the NSDAP.
Fascism is not the only ideology which lacks clear definition. Try looking at the literature on liberalism – it's a mess (with
good reason – many modern day 'liberals' are entirely at odds with classical liberals, neoliberals, etc, but they're all called
liberal). The best recent scholarship can come up with is the idea that liberalism is a 'family of resemblances' or even that
it's just whatever people who call themselves liberal happen to say it is at any given time and place. Conservatism is similarly
poorly defined.
"I have for years tried to find a concise definition of "Fascism", but only found a lot of disagreement."
There's still definition provided by G. Dimitrov:
"Fascism is an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, most imperialist elements of the
finance capital
Fascism is not a supra-class power and not the power of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen proletariat over finance
capital. Fascism*is* the rule of finance capital itself .
This is the organization of terrorist reprisals against the working class and the revolutionary part of the peasantry
and intelligentsia. Fascism in foreign policy is chauvinism in its crudest form, cultivating zoological hatred of other peoples."
Defenders of Google, Twitter, Amazon et al saying "they CAN do that – they are PrIVaTe CoMpaNIeS!" – ha-ha!
Absolutely, Paul. Comparing the neoconservative and paleoconservative traditions, for instance, reveals extraordinary divergences
in conservative intellectual thought. Your recent book presents plenty of such contradictions.
Yet the lack of definitional clarity does not mean that any particular term can be thrown around as a polemical device or a
catch-all form of abuse. Fascist ideologies differ between themselves, but they do have a relatively ubiquitous common denominator
in being mass movements set upon utopian mass transformation relying upon extreme violence, as per the scholarship of Roger Griffin.
It's like right-of-centre political commentators who misuse the term 'Marxist' to describe modern identity politics, notwithstanding
how clearly inappropriate that label is when analyzing a movement which has little commitment to class struggle.
Equally, while we may lack a one-size-fits-all definition of any given ideology, we can usually say with some confidence what
it is not. In other words, while the fascism of OUN-B may differ remarkably from the fascism of Mussolini, it is sufficiently
clear that these movements lack any ideological likeness with modern Russia.
From what I understand, one common denominator of genuine fascist movements is a cult of a national leader (Hitler, Mussolini,
Franco, Bandera). However, I am not sure that this factor is REQUIRED in order to be fascist. I imagine it is theoretically possible
to have a fascist nation run by a committee or collegial leadership.
And the "Leader" factor is also not definitive in and of itself, because the Stalin period in the Soviet Union was also defined
by a cult of a leader; and yet the Soviet Union was definitely not fascist, it was socialist.
In this case, I would say, two different systems (capitalistic fascism and Soviet-style socialism) showed, what evolutionary
biologists call "convergent" traits.
For example, in the natural world, fishes and whales both have fins and live in the water; yet these two types of animals are
not related to each other genetically (except going way back). This is "convergent" evolution.
Which leads me to another thought: Perhaps ideological movements can be classified by their historical genetics rather than
a static "structuralist" definition. The difference between a Darwinian vs a Linnaeus approach? I think this method is also used
to categorize religions, so might be appropriate also for political ideologies.
"Outside of a particular time period (1920s to 1940s), I don't think that the term 'fascism' has a lot of meaning. "
What about:
– Spain under Franko.
– Greece under "black colonels"
– Genuine, NATO approved fascist parties working diligently and openly in the "Western democracies" throughout the period?
Remember VICE's breathless coverage of the "Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity" that propelled certain Ostrovsky to the upper
echelons of the journalism and punditry? From their linked article:
"She also addressed a photo that was circulated of her online, showing her as one of a group of four women holding a flag
emblazoned with a swastika while giving a Nazi salute. She claimed the image was an ironic Halloween photo, mocking the Kremlin
narrative that Ukrainian nationalists were neo-Nazis."
No surprise to see PC Bulgarian Ivan Kravtsev involved with that establishment org accepting her. At the Brit based openDemocracy
venue, Kravtsev felt compelled to write an article on why China (in his opinion) is freer than Russia. Tom de Waal is a Kravstev
fan.
There're better academics posting at this threads. By academic, I'm referring to those who intellectually and knowledge wise
aren't inferior to the aforementioned folks getting the accolades.
If she says it was just a Halloween costume, that means she is disowning or denying having Nazi views? That seems cowardly
to me. I personally have more respect for Nazis who just come out and admit, "Yeah, I'm a Nazi." Of course, in that case, they
would have to be willing to sacrifice the money and income from "respectable" bourgeois institutions.
Yale historian Timothy Snyder – more like Yale historian – propagandist Timothy Snyder.. i figured this out on my own without
having to be an academic to know this, but thank you paul for this article and confirming my viewpoint
Snyder is such a fraud. His book Bloodlands is utter drivel filled with complete falsities – none of which substantiated with
sources. "Yale historian" is clearly a meaningless title. But of course he gets called on for propaganda hit pieces like this or
that ridiculous Agents of Chaos series on HBO.
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.
@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.
Hi Ah,
That the US deep state has been terrorising parts of the world for many years my reaction
before the election was to hope that Biden would win as I believed that would be the quickest
destruction of the terrorist deep state rather than with Trump where I believed it would
survive some time longer. It is inconceivable that any political party can survive in the US
without the backing of the 'deep state'.
Of course this makes the nuclear option more likely yet democrats are more attached to
their lives than many others since the profit motive looms larger.
Secondly the US owes the pension and social security systems so much money they do not
have unless they print, print and more print and hope someone will buy their bonds (over 100
trillion for the next 'x' years). That is not going to happen. That is why both political
parties will not endorse medicare for all or any further social security programmes. Those
with money insurance industries et al will run away to Australia that has more gold than it
knows what to do with the Chinese are now trying to buy Aussie gold mines. Wonder why?
To sum up the US population will experience some of the same terrorism tacticts the deep
state exported to the rest of the world while the same population will wonder why it is
happening to them just like some of the middle east countries wondered the same for the last
20 years. That the deep state and the army offer pensions and heathcare will not matter if
the funds are not there.
What are the options for the citizens that always believed in capitalism and Jesus and were
the single moral compass for the rest of humanity? After living in a Buddist country for many
years I am not so certain.
"... The military would support whomever pays their salary and their pensions, i.e. the Establishment. However, as Iraq and Afghanistan has shown, the U.S. military, while possessing remarkable firepower when taken on directly and openly, is quite vulnerable. The U.S. military is essentially mercenaries. Mercenaries work for pay. Mercenaries are not willing to die for a cause. You can't spend money if you're dead. ..."
As a person who grew up in the glorious aftermath of World War II, it never occurred to me
that in my later years I would be pondering whether the United States would end in civil war or
a police state. In the aftermath of the stolen presidential election, it seems a 50-50 toss
up.
There is abundant evidence of a police state. One feature of a police state is controlled
explanations and the suppression of dissent. We certainly have that in abundance.
Experts are not permitted forums in which to challenge the official position on Covid.
Teachers are suspended for giving offense by using gender pronouns.
Recording stars are dropped by their recording studios for attending the Trump rally.
Parents ratted on by their own children are fired from their jobs for attending the Trump
rally. https://www.rt.com/usa/512048-capitol-riot-employees-fired/
Antifa is free to riot, loot, intimidate and hassle, but Trump supporters are
insurrectionists.
White people are racists who use hateful words and concepts, but those who demonize whites
are righting wrongs.
Suppression of dissent and controlling behavior are police state characteristics. It might
be less clear to some why dictating permissible use of language is police state control. Think
about it this way. If your use of pronouns can be controlled, so can your use of all other
words. As concepts involve words, they also can be controlled. In this way inconvenient
thoughts and expressions along with accurate descriptions find their way into the Memory
Hole.
With the First Amendment gone, or restricted to the demonization of targeted persons, such
as "the Trump Deplorables," "white supremacists," "Southern racists," the Second Amendment
can't have much life left. As guns are associated with red states, that is, with Trump
supporters, outlawing guns is a way to criminalize the red half of the American population that
the Establishment considers "deplorable." Those who stand on their Constitutional right will be
imprisoned and become cheap prison labor for America's global corporations.
Could all this lead to a civil war or are Americans too beat down to effectively resist?
That we won't know until it is put to the test.
Are there clear frontlines? Identity Politics has divided the people across the entire
country. The red states are only majority red. It is tempting to see the frontiers as the red
center against the blue Northeast and West coasts, but that is misleading. Georgia is a red
state with a red governor and legislature, but there were enough Democrats in power locally to
steal the presidential and US senate elections.
Another problem for reds is that large cities -- the distribution centers -- such as
Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los
Angeles -- are in blue hands as are ports and international airports. Effectively, this cuts
reds off from outside resources.
What would the US military do? Clearly, the Joint Chiefs and the military/security complex
are establishment and not anti-establishment Trumpers. With the soldiers themselves now a
racial and gender mix, the soldiers would be as divided as the country. Those not with the
Establishment would lack upper level support.
Where are the youth and younger adults? They are in both camps depending on their education.
Many of the whites who went to university have been brainwashed against themselves, and regard
white Americans as "systemic racists" or "white supremacists" and feel guilt. Those who did not
go to university for the most part have experienced to their disadvantage the favoritism given
to people of color and have resentment.
What about weapons? How can the reds lose when guns are a household item and blues would
never dirty themselves by owning one? The answer is that unlike the War of Northern Aggression
in the 1860s, today the weapons in the hands of the military are devastating compared to those
in the hands of the public. Unlike in the past, it is impossible for a citizens' militia to
stand against the weapons and body armor that the military has. So, unless the military splits,
the reds are outgunned. Never believe that the Establishment would not release chemical and
biological agents against red forces. Or for that matter nuclear weapons.
What about communications? We know for an absolute fact that the tech monopolies are aligned
with the Establishment against the people. So much so that President Trump, in the process of
being set-up for prosecution, has been cut off from communicating with his supporters both in
social media and email.
The American Establishment is doing to President Trump exactly what it did to Ukrainian
President Yanukovych in Washington's orchestrated "Maidan Revolution," called "the Revolution
of Dignity" by the liars at Wikipedia, and precisely what it did to Chavez, Maduro, and would
like to do to Putin.
Suppose an American civil war occurs. How is it likely to play out? Before investigating
this, first consider how the Establishment could prevent it by bringing the red states to its
defense. The Trump supporters are the only patriots in the American population. They tend to
wear the flag on their sleeve. In contrast, blue state denizens define patriotism as
acknowledging America's evils and taking retribution on those white racists/imperialists who
committed the evils. In blue states, riots against the "racist system" result in defunding the
police. If the Antifa and Black Lives Matter militias were sicced on the Biden regime, red
state patriots might see "their country" under attack. It is possible that the "Proud Boys"
would come to Biden's defense, not because they believe in Biden but because America is under
attack and he is "our president." Alternatively, an Antifa attack on the Biden regime could be
portrayed as an unpatriotic attack on America and be used to discourage red state opposition to
the police state, just as "Insurrection" has resulted in many Trump supporters declaring their
opposition to violence. In other words, it is entirely possible that the patriotism of the
"Trump Deplorables" would split the red state opposition and lead to defeat.
Assuming that the Establishment is too arrogant and sure of itself or too stupid to think of
this ploy, how would a civil war play out? The Establishment would do everything possible to
discredit the case of the "rebels." The true rebels, of course, would be the Establishment
which has overthrown the Constitutional order, but no media would make that point. Controlling
the media, the Establishment, knowing of the patriotism of its opponents, would portray the
"rebels" as foreign agents seeking to overthrow American Democracy.
The "foreign threat" always captures the patriot's attention. We see it right now with Trump
supporters falling for the disinformation that Switzerland and Italy are behind the stolen
election. Previously, it was Dominion servers in Germany and Serbia that did the deed.
On whose head will the Establishment place the blame for "the War Against America"? There
are three candidates: Iran, China, and Russia. Which will the Establishment choose?
To give Iran credit conveys too much power to a relatively small country over America. To
blame Iran for our civil war would be belittling.
To blame China won't work, because Trump blamed China for economically undermining America
and Trump supporters are generally anti-China. So accusing the red opposition with being China
agents would not work.
The blame will be placed on Russia.
This is the easy one. Russia has been the black hat ever since Churchill's Iron Curtain
speech in 1946. Americans are accustomed to this enemy. The Cold War reigned from the end of
World War II until the Soviet Collapse in 1991. Many, including retired American generals,
maintain that the Soviet collapse was faked to put us off guard for conquest.
When the Establishment decided to frame President Trump, the Establishment chose Russia as
Trump's co-conspirator against American Democracy. Russiagate, orchestrated by the CIA and FBI,
ensured for three years that Trump was accused in the Western media of being in cahoots with
Russia. Despite the lack of any evidence, a large percentage of the American and world
population was convinced that Trump was put into office by Putin somehow manipulating the
vote.
The brainwashing was so successful that three years of Trump sanctions against Russia could
not shake the Western peoples back into factual reality.
With Russia as the historic and orchestrated enemy, whatever happens in the United States
that can be blamed elsewhere will be blamed on Russia. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former US
Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, and former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes
have already associated "Trump's insurrection" with Russia. https://www.rt.com/russia/512071-capitol-violence-consequences-fear/
Suppose that an American civil war becomes intense. Suppose that the Establishment's
propaganda against Russia becomes the reigning belief as propaganda almost always becomes, how
can the Establishment not finish the insurrection threat by attacking the country responsible?
The Establishment would be trapped in its own propaganda. Emotions would run away. Russia would
hear threats that would have to be taken seriously.
You can bet that Biden's neocon government will be egging this on. American exceptionalism.
American hegemony. Russia's fifth column, the Atlanticist Integrationists, who wish absorption
into the degenerate and failing Western World, will echo the charges against Russia. This would
make the situation a serious international incident with Russia as the threatened villain.
What would the Kremlin do? Would Russia's leaders accept yet another humiliation and false
accusation? Or will the anger of the Russian people forever accused and never stood up for by
their own government force the Kremlin into awareness that Russia could be attacked at any
moment.
Even if the Kremlin is reluctant to acknowledge the threat of war, what if another of the
numerous false warnings of incoming ICBMs is received. Unlike the past, is it believed this
time?
The stolen election in America, the emerging American Police State, more vicious and better
armed than any in the past, could result in American chaos that could be a dire threat to the
Russian Federation.
What Trump and his supporters, and perhaps the Kremlin, do not understand is that real
evidence no longer counts . The Establishment makes up the evidence that it needs for its
agendas. Consider how easy it was for the Capitol Police to remove barriers and allow some
Antifa mixed in with Trump supporters into the Capitol. This was all that was required to
create a "Trump led insurrection" that terminated the presentation of evidence of electoral
fraud and turned the massive rally of support for Trump into a liability. Trump now leaves the
presidency as an "insurrectionist" and is set up for continued harassment and prosecution.
As I previously wrote, the stolen election and its acceptance abroad signifies the failure
of Western democracy. The collapse of the Western world and its values will affect the entire
world.
No member of the State wants to be picked off one by one, be it military, cops, leadership
or functionaries.
What has been overlooked in the debate over the combat potential of violent extremists
is the diffusion of something much more rudimentary and potentially more lethal: basic
infantry skills. These include coordinated small-team tactical maneuvers supported by
elementary marksmanship. The diffusion of such tactics seems to be underway, and it may
generate serious concerns for U.S. security policy in the future if ignored.
Imagine if fuel pipe lines to urban areas were hit, railroad tracks hit, water processing
facilities hit; the vision of an easy victory over Red America would quickly come home to the
city dwellers.
Elections in the US are not about picking winners. They are about making voters complicit
in governance by their having voted. The most recent election failed to make the Red voters
"complict" because there was no transparency and everyone believes there was fraud. No
election with mail in voting in the US will every work because everyone will assume
fraud.
In a nation as large as the US with as much concentrated city living, logistics are a
nightmare. The next time the lights go out, you may wonder. When your grocery chain runs out
of meat, you may wonder. When sewers in your city keep breaking, you may wonder. Thus truly
scares me.
today the weapons in the hands of the military are devastating compared to those in the
hands of the public
True enough. However, the weapons and the ammunition don't magically appear; they need to
be manufactured somewhere, and those places (and/or their suppliers) can be destroyed.
I must disagree. There will be no "civil war" in the United States. The establishment
controls the levers of power and all communications and all organized structures. There may
be a bunch of disaffected citizens, but they will remain a disorganized mob. Any apparent
emergent rival for power will be ruthlessly suppressed, deplatformed, villified, or co-opted.
The working class has been effectively divided and will waste its energy fighting itself over
crumbs ('diversity').
Disorganized mobs do not fight civil wars.
No, the fate of the United States will be the sort of chaotic autocracy we see in places
like Mexico and Brazil. Verging on being a failed state, the rich will nonetheless live lives
of great luxury secure in their walled estates. Meanwhile the average person will be crushed
into poverty, criminal gangs will flourish, and there will be a tension between the central
police and local gangs, but gangs are rarely organized enough to truly challenge centralized
states, and life will muddle on. There will be little social cohesion and no real trust of
central authorities, but that only matters if you want a strong and unified society. The rich
will do fine.
On the other hand, the overall national power will decline, and other powers like China
(which for all its flaws has not declared war on the working class, nor does it routinely
excuse or celebrate incompetence in leadership) will rise and take its place both on the
world stage and as the cutting edge of science and culture.
to me the biggest outcome of this faux coup/insurrection is the splintering of the
republican party. with this schism the trump "populists" have been cleanly pared off of the
party and thrown overboard and the remaining party will meekly do the bidding of the neocon
deep state that now totally controls both of these sock puppet parties. we will now see both
parties calling for a unification of our "indispensable nation". more than likely some false
flag will provide the necessary impetus to bury the hatchet and focus us all on our new/old
enemy. the only hope i see is an outside chance that so many republicans have been redpilled
that the party becomes the new whigs and fades into obscurity, leaving room for new parties
to rise from the ash. the dems are ripe for a schism themselves with aoc champing at the bit
to kick the boomers to the curb and the bernie bros finally realizing that three card monty
is a rigged game. i would love to see the destruction of both of these hopelessly corrupt
parties but the deep state cthulhu has its tentacles thoroughly wrapped around our poor
planet and anything emerging out of this toxic mess would most likely be even worse. the
situation reminds me of voltaire's candide and his sage advice to cultivate your garden.
I'd advise the young to develop a "plan B". Pick another country you find bearable amd
study it. Find out what jobs are in demand there. Develop those skills in your spare time
(computers, electricians, mechanics, etc.). Practice their language an hour or two per week
with online resources/dvd's/books. Research their immigration laws and perhaps contact their
embassy.
If it gets really awful for whites here, you may be able to take your family some place
more hospitable. Hopefully none of this will be neccessary and the rhetoric will tone down.
Trump personally really got under the left's skin. Don't umderestimate Hillary's supporters
influence here. They were ticked off. The Obama's too. Perhaps they will calm down a notch
now. Have a plan B though young whites.
Another insightful article by PCR. However, I must somewhat disagree on some points.
What would the US military do?
The military would support whomever pays their salary and their pensions, i.e. the
Establishment. However, as Iraq and Afghanistan has shown, the U.S. military, while
possessing remarkable firepower when taken on directly and openly, is quite vulnerable. The
U.S. military is essentially mercenaries. Mercenaries work for pay. Mercenaries are not
willing to die for a cause. You can't spend money if you're dead.
Think of the Troubles in Ireland.
The Establishment absolutely can deliver a punch to an identifiable opponent, but it can't
take a punch. Low level violence directed at officers and politicians would bring them to
their knees.
Controlling the media, the Establishment, knowing of the patriotism of its opponents,
would portray the "rebels" as foreign agents seeking to overthrow American Democracy.
I agree that they will try. However, I suspect that PCR is underestimating how little
faith many whites have in the media.
The Establishment will never be more powerful than it is today. They have inherited
institutions, the people to man those institutions and a generally functioning economy.
Basically, they stole the keys to car that they didn't create. But the Establishment run
those institutions and economy into ground. They will slowly start to show cracks.
Whites need to stay low, start forming small groups and begin preparing for the openings
that will come.
The racial right has been fantasizing about a civil war since forever, but I can't see it.
Too many people have too much to lose, there's no real desire for blood, and the people are
anyway too soft to initiate or withstand the violence real war would unleash upon them.
Further, and in stark contrast to the SJWs and antifa, the few racially conscious whites who
fantasize about this are mostly too old to make good soldiers. Also, just like the "God
emperor" himself, Trumpers are some of the stupidest people on the face of the earth, largely
down with their own enslavement, nauseatingly fond of "law and order", sporting "Blue Lives
Matter" badges, etc. Despite being preyed upon by blacks and browns for decades now, they
still refuse to become racist. Most of them are Bible thumpers who really believe that race
is just skin color, that all are equal before their imaginary friend called God, and that
Israel is America's greatest ally. Then too, vast numbers of whites work for the government
or its many offshoots such as education, law enforcement, the military, and the defense
industry. Civil war would mean they'd be revolting against themselves.
Will America become a police state? In case you haven't noticed, Americans already
live in a police state, and have for decades. PCR should know this as well as anyone, as he
was part of it during the Reagan years. America is an open-air prison Americans built
themselves, and they rat each other out and betray each other to keep themselves
ideologically in line. When someone white is doxxed and fired for having bad thoughts, who do
you think does the enforcing? For the most part, it's other white people. Fake president and
China asset Biden is just the new warden.
As a person who grew up in the glorious aftermath of World War II, it never occurred to
me that in my later years I would be pondering whether the United States would end in civil
war or a police state. In the aftermath of the stolen presidential election, it seems a
50-50 toss up.
In a very meaningful sense we already have a "police state." Why do we have a police
state? Because our masters realize that they can't run the whole world from anything
resembling a constitutional republic (as the Founders and Framers envisioned it). It's the
agenda for complete world domination and control that's driving the domestic oppression. As
they continue to squander everything of value on the agenda and take more risks, etc., while
the corruption and rot continue to take a toll and the country crumbles, the boot will need
to come down ever harder on the neck.
And please stop kidding yourself about Trump. It wasn't for the benefit of Joe and Jill
Sixpack that he seized Syrian oilfields, tried to start a war with Iran, tried to overthrow
the Maduro government in Venezuela, tried to stop Nord Stream 2, started a trade war with
China, pulled out of all the nuclear treaties, etc. Trump wasn't just fully onboard with the
agenda, he pursued it enthusiastically.
If Trump's nuclear brinkmanship and aggressive foreign policies aren't promptly reversed,
the U.S. may end as a pile of nuclear ash. Comments coming out of Moscow recently seem to
suggest that Russia is finally losing its patience with interminable U.S. hostility and may
soon start responding more forcefully to U.S./NATO provocations (and Biden's tough talk on
Russia isn't helping matters any).
Neither Russia, China nor Iran are going to surrender to the USraeli empire and start
taking orders, so either the U.S. "government" must back off and accept a multipolar world or
WW3 is still on the table, even by accident.
From Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War.
The Civil War in Corcyra
"So savage was the progress of this revolution, and it seemed all the more so because it
was one of the first which had broken out. Later, of course, practically the whole of the
Hellenic world was convulsed, with rival parties in every state – democratic leaders
trying to bring in the Athenians, and oligarchs trying to bring in the Spartans. In peacetime
there would have been no excuse and no desire for calling them in, but in time of war, when
each party could always count upon an alliance which would do harm to its opponents and at
the same time strengthen its own position, it became a natural thing for anyone who wanted a
change of government to call in help from outside.
So revolutions broke out in city after city, and in places where the revolutions occurred
late the knowledge of what had happened previously in other places caused still new
extravagances of revolutionary zeal, expressed by an elaboration in the methods of seizing
power and by unheard-of atrocities in revenge. To fit in with the change of events, words,
too, had to change their usual meanings . What used to be described as a thoughtless act
of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to
think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea
of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one's unmanly character ; ability to
understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action.
Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man, and to plot against an enemy behind his back
was perfectly legitimate self-defence. Anyone who held violent opinions could always be
trusted, and anyone who objected to them became a suspect. To plot successfully was a sign of
intelligence, but it was still cleverer to see that a plot was hatching. If one attempted to
provide against having to do either, one was disrupting the unity of the party and acting out
of fear of the opposition. In short, it was equally praiseworthy to get one's blow in first
against someone who was going to do wrong, and to denounce someone who had no intention of
doing any wrong at all. Family relations were a weaker tie than party membership ,
since party members were more ready to go to any extreme for any reason whatever. These
parties were not formed to enjoy the benefits of the established laws, but to acquire power
by overthrowing the existing regime ; and the members of these parties felt confidence in
each other not because of any fellowship in a religious communion, but because they were
partners in crime. If an opponent made a reasonable speech, the party in power, so far from
giving it a generous reception, took every precaution to see that it had no practical
effect.
As the result of these revolutions, there was a general deterioration of character
throughout the Greek world . The simple way of looking at things, which is so much the
mark of a noble nature, was regarded as a ridiculous quality and soon ceased to exist.
Society had become divided into two ideologically hostile camps , and each side viewed
the other with suspicion. As for ending this state of affairs, no guarantee could be given
that would be trusted, no oath sworn that people would fear to break; everyone had come to
the conclusion that it was hopeless to expect a permanent settlement and so, instead
of being able to feel confident in others, they devoted their energies to providing against
being injured themselves."
Whether civil war as we may imagine it, or something equally unappealing to our every day
lives, something bad is about to happen.
I'm curious though, regarding what I do believe was unprecedented election fraud. How is
it possible, after watching the Georgia State Farm arena video, that the President of the
United States, with all the power that office should hold, could not force the woman
identified in that video, one Ruby Freeman, to answer questions about what we saw? Ruby
Freeman was never questioned as far as I can find. How is this possible? Nothing makes sense.
Before we begin killing one another, can we do two things; 1. Interrogate Ruby Freeman and 2.
Interrogate the killer of Ashli Babbit?
Little bit feverish article. And I do have to say no.
Civil war can happen only after hyperinflation accompanied with lawlessness.
And that will happen only if US looses its international position.
Everything depend now on Germany.
If Germany joins China Russia camp than US as a world leader will not mean anything
anymore.
China now is courting Europe intensively. Particularly is courting Germany.
Nothing is set yet.
So everybody can relax.
.
Biden is out of his mind. In his speech he said that he wants to increase minimum wage and
reestablish unions. That could be a little help also.
People living in the core areas of Ziocorporate globalism, like the US/EU, remain mostly
oblivious about the nature of their ruling regime than those living in the direct periphery
of globalist power. Take Colombia for an example, like Mexico's, all its presidents are
subservient to US Ziocorporate power. Last one, a Nobel peace prize winner under whose
pre-presidential stint as "Defense" minister oversaw the US-serving Colombian military's
systematic massacre of tens of thousands of lower class Colombian youths who were then
disguised as guerrillas to cash in rewards paid US Plan Colombia dollars, proceeded, now as
president, to negotiate the disarmament of the actual guerrillas under the Obama/Biden
regime's orders. Massmurder and massacres maintained an average level.
Then, in 2018, right after the Trumpet, a shamelessly pro-US regime, even for Colombian
standards, took over and massacres and massmurder picked right up again, to an average of 2
or 3 per week, with exploding cocaine production even for Colombia standards as well, and
extreme political polarisation, and all the while the Ziocorporate mother ship in Washington,
with its Qtard and MAGA bullshit, looked the other way except to accuse Venezuela of being
undemocratic and of human rights violations.
If Americans weren't so stupid and daydreaming like fucktards that they live in "muh
democracy/republic" instead of the Ziocorporate conglomerate regime that rules over them,
they could take a clue or two from their own regime's foreign policy, not only did Trumpet do
things like transferring $400 billion in weapons to ISIS/al-Qaeda royal Salafi patrons in
Ziodi Wahhabia, he doubled-down on the Obama/Biden policy of Venezuela "is a national
security threat to muh democracy and freedom"; to start pondering about the kind of
manipulation and radicalisation Ziocorporate agents Trump/Republicans and Biden/Democrats
have in store for them. Cointelpro certainly mutates far faster than Covid-1984.
What do Qtarts and the like need to realise this simple, evident facts? That the Trumpet
himself comes on national TV telling you all "I and the Democrats have been playing divide
and conquer with you dumbfucks for 4 years"?
The American Establishment is doing to President Trump exactly what it did to Ukrainian
President Yanukovych in Washington's orchestrated "Maidan Revolution," called "the
Revolution of Dignity" by the liars at Wikipedia, and precisely what it did to Chavez,
Maduro, and would like to do to Putin.
What Trump and his supporters, and perhaps the Kremlin, do not understand is that
real evidence no longer counts . The Establishment makes up the evidence that it
needs for its agendas.
Their playbook "Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals" by Saul D.
Alinsky, makes it clear that it's necessary to play dirty. This covers all aspects of their
Regime Change projects and the current US project surely isn't any different.
It's a cocktail of lies, fabrications, subversion, threats, blackmail, false friendships
– in fact any means to advance themselves.
For example: From Alinsky – "Means and Ends" His take on morality:
Rule 10) You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.
Rule 11) Goals must be phrased in general terms like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity", "Of
the Common Welfare, "Pursuit of Happiness" or "Bread and Peace".
So yes, this is why the most unpatriotic Patriot Act is called the Patriot Act and they
operate from patriotic sounding places like the American Enterprise Institute.
If traditional America is going to get anywhere in the upcoming conflict they have to get
used to playing by the same rules – difficult for them – but they have to do it.
It's inevitably going to be a dirty war.
Point of order- Russia is not the historic enemy, but the orchestrated one, rather it was
the Soviet Union which is the historic enemy, as the sponsors of the destruction of Russia
are behind the destruction of America.
We are already in a police state and you can kiss goodbye to the 1st and 2nd amendment
soon as free speech becomes hate speech just like they did in Europe.
So this site and many others in the alt news universe will soon be gone.
There's not going to be a civil war as the current generation of young people are too weak
and distracted and have been brainwashed into hating themselves.
There's a big elephant in the room and wild card that's been missed too and that's the new
covid vaccines who's long term effects on health are unknown.
Vaccines need to be studied for about 10 years before their safety can be guaranteed.
If tens / hundreds of millions are willing to be injected with a new untested genetic
engineered substance that could make them disabled or kill them in 5 years to save them
against something with a 99% survival rate what does that tell you about the mental state of
the Population?
The US as you once knew it is finished it's just that many are still in denial or haven't
realized it yet.
I see no civil war in the USA. I see no organisation amongst the people in order to carry
it out. They have no leader, they have no Hannibal, Boadicea or Adolf to rally them together
for a major insurrection against The Beast Empire. Unless of course something is brewing
secretly.
A French style form of resistance, as previously mentioned in these comments, also takes a
lot of planning and organisational skills, and I see no inkling of that taking place amongst
American patriots.
I also believe many do not realise how serious the matter is, they still, being bogged
down in irrelevant party politics.
If however a large swathe of the police and US Military including officers were to desert
their corrupt masters, things would look very different and a civil war could happen.
The civil was has been on since Crossfire Hurricane, the usurpers of the constitution
simply kept it cold because they thought they could enforce their tyranny silently.
And if Trump surrenders then they would have been proven right, at least for the
leadership fight.
Biden will likely launch a war because he already has his bay of pigs with his graft, and
will need a moonshot for the misdirection.
I don't think they can fight half the nation (and the military will split), and Russia at
the same time, so the only question is on whom the war will be launched. I still think the
odds are higher that it will be a civil war, but the Russia option looms strong for sure.
The US military is the most "woke" diverse incompetent organization in America.
Remember- contractors do all the heavy lifting "in theater"- from cooking to plumbing to
firefighting to IT to combat.
This knowledge is hidden from view- kept on the down low.I only know because my brother
has worked in Iraq and Afghanistan for KBR for the past 15 years. I have seen him accumulate
well over Half a million in cash. What does he do? He makes sure the troops have water and
food. He is in logistics. For the past decade I have heard hundreds if not thousands of
stories of the jaw dropping incompetence, insouciance and laziness of the American
military.
Rank-and-file Americans, indeed no one, talks about this very real infrastructure that
props up every dumb, overweight enlisted. About 4 contractors to every enlisted.
Most of the contractors in theater are from Eastern Europe and sub Sahara Africa. If they
were given orders to release biological or chemical weapons on the American populace, as long
as the huge checks were hitting their account they would do it in a heartbeat
More than the military- fear the shadow military that knows the systems, does the work ..
And will do whatever it is asked as long as they are paid.
Their mother doesn't live here.
Everywhere we turn, diversity and hiring people from the "other" never works out.
*** Side note: My brother revealed that when blacks came back from their R&R after the
George Floyd insanity, most of them became more aggressive and entitled. Unable to do their
work because they could not stop going to report others for incidence of racism.
This includes the American black contractors and enlisted.
These are dumb young black men and women who are making $92,000 a year to move pallets
around. If they were asked to stop calling in sick every day, they would run to report their
supervisor for-
Racism.
Many whites have lost their lucrative positions or been subject to discipline for having
the audacity to ask blacks to come to work.
We are about to participate in "The Great Experiment V. 2.0" in my opinion. This decides
which of the Georges, Washington and Orwell, is right. My money is on Orwell for a reason I
will tell you later.
...The checks and balances have been replaced with (Bank) checks and (Bank) balances. The
richest men in the world are overseeing this experiment which is going global quicker than you
can say"Google". They are enabled by the University academics who as Raymond Asquith once
observed are always prepared to provide an intellectual justification for vile acts if the
price is right and journalists will laud said acts to the heavens as decent, moral doings if
they want a paycheck next week from their masters.
The Legislature is bought. The Executive is bought. The Supreme Court are ninnies...
... And you enabled all this yourselves. When you applauded the Patriot Act. When you
cheered at the vilification of muslims, "sand niggers", "rag heads". When you justified the use
of torture. When you masturbated watching targeting videos of drone strikes on Afghans. When
you credulously watched fantasies on television about "Irans nuclear threat". When you listened
and watched uncritically (or perhaps with secret pleasure) as the media lied to you
breathlessly about the President disporting himself on a urine soaked bed with Russian hookers.
Where was your sense of outrage then? Every time you deny the humanity and human rights of
anyone, no matter how vile they be, you are destroying your own rights.
Georgi Dimitrov. The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the
Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism
Comrades, fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the
Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the
most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.
...
Fascism is not a form of state power "standing above both classes -- the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie," as Otto Bauer, for instance, has asserted. It is not "the revolt of the petty
bourgeoisie which has captured the machinery of the state," as the British Socialist
Brailsford declares. No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the
petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. Fascism is the power of
finance capital itself. It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working
class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia. In foreign policy,
fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations.
When neoliberal ideology is crumbling and the US neoliberal empire is in trouble, more tight
censorship is logical step for neoliberal elite, who does not care and never believed in
democracy for prols in any case. They are Trotskyites and their ideology is neoliberalism aka
"Trotskyism for the rich". Which like was the case with Bolshevism in the USSR means that it is
neo-feudalism for everybody else.
I never heard that feudal were concerned about freedom of speech for "deplorable". Only for
their own narrow circle.
Also the stability of the society is often more important then individual freedoms. That's
why in time of war, the press is forced to publish only official propaganda. So it is naive to
expect that in crisis, and the US society is currently in crisis, freedom of speech would be
respected. It will not. And Trump ban while cynical and illogical makes perfect sence for
neoliberal oligarchy.
The problem is that the US elite has not plan other the kicking the neoliberal can down the
road. And they intentionally polarized the society by promoting identity politics as a way to
preserve thier power and split masses into warring ethic or other groups.
Tech companies were once the primary tools of US "soft power" used to overthrow
authoritarian regimes by exporting 'digital democracy'. Now they employ the same tactics of
suppression as those regimes to silence dissent at home.
The permanent suspension of President Trump's Twitter account, carried out unilaterally and
devoid of any pretense of due process or appreciation of the First Amendment rights of Donald
Trump, represents a low moment in American history. Trump's ban was followed by a decision by
Google to de-platform Parler.com, a social media alternative to Twitter favored by many of
Trump's supporters. Apple also gave Parler a "24 hour warning" asking it to provide a
detailed moderation plan. Twitter, Google, Facebook (who also banned Trump) and the political
supporters of President-elect Joe Biden cite concerns that the content of the president's
Twitter account, along with exchanges among pro-Trump users of Parler, constituted an
"incitement of violence" risk that justified the actions taken.
In the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol by protesters seemingly motivated by the
words of President Trump, there is legitimate justification for concern over the link between
political violence and social media. But if history has taught us anything, the cure can be
worse than the disease, especially when it comes to the issue of constitutionally protected
freedom of speech.
This danger is illustrated by the actions of the former First Lady Michelle Obama who
has
publicly called for tech companies like Twitter and Facebook to permanently ban Trump from
their platforms and enact policies designed "to prevent their technology from being used by the
nation's leaders to fuel insurrection." The irony of the wife of the last American President
Barack Obama, who weaponized so-called digital democracy to export "Western democratic values"
in the struggle against authoritarian regimes, to turn to Twitter to release her message of
internet suppression, is striking. The fact that neither Michelle Obama nor those who extoll
her message see this irony is disturbing.
The Obama administration first sought to use 'digital democracy', the name given to policies
which aim to use web-based social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter as vehicles to
enhance the organization and activism of young people in repressive regimes to achieve American
policy objectives of regime change, during the 2009 Iranian presidential election. US 'digital
democracy' efforts anchored a carefully orchestrated campaign to promote the candidacy of Mir
Hossein Mousavi. These efforts included a phone call from a US State Department official, Jared
Cohen, to executives at Twitter to forgo a scheduled maintenance period and keep the lines in
and out of Iran open, under the premise that it was essential to make sure that digital
messages sent by Iranian dissidents got out to an international audience. 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.
The Iranian and Egyptian experiences in digital democracy-inspired regime change represent
the nexus of the weaponization of social media by tech giants such as Twitter and Google, and
the US government, which at the time was under the stewardship of Barack Obama and then-Vice
President Joe Biden. The fact that both the Iranian and Egyptian efforts failed only
underscores the nefarious nature of this relationship. The very tools and methodologies used by
Iranian and Egyptian authorities to counter US-sponsored "digital democracy" –
suppression through de-platforming – have now been taken up by Twitter, Google, and the
political allies of Joe Biden to silence Donald Trump and his supporters from protesting an
election they believe was every bit as "stolen" as the 2009 Iranian presidential election that
gave birth to 'digital democracy' in the first place.
In a recently published
report addressing the issue of internet freedom, Freedom House, a US government-funded
non-profit, non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on democracy,
political freedom, and human rights, observed that internet connectivity "is not a
convenience, but a necessity." Virtually all human activities, including political
socialization, have moved online. This new 'digital world', the report noted, "presents
distinct challenges for human rights and democratic governance" with "State and nonstate
actors shape online narratives, censor critical speech, and build new technological systems of
social control."
Freedom House was one of the supporters of 'digital democracy' in Iran and has been highly critical of
the actions by Iranian authorities to shut down and otherwise control internet connectivity
inside Iran. It noted that such tactics are indicative of a system that is "fearful of their
own people and worr[ies] that they cannot control the information space." In its report,
Freedom House wrote that "when civic organizing and political dissent overflow from the
realm of social media onto the streets dictators shut down networks to choke off any calls for
greater democracy and human rights."
In July 2019, the US 2nd District Court of Appeals ruling on Knight
First Amendment Institute v. Trump determined that President Trump's Twitter account
"bear[s] all the trappings of an official, state-run account," meaning that the First Amendment
governed the conduct of the account. As such, "the First Amendment does not permit a public
official who utilizes a social media account for all manner of official purposes to exclude
persons from an otherwise open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the
official disagrees."
By banning Trump from their platform, the unelected employees of Twitter have done to the
president of the United States what he was accused of doing in Knight First Amendment Institute
v. Trump. If it was a violation of First Amendment-protected free speech for Trump to exclude
persons from an otherwise open online dialogue, then the converse is obviously also
true.
The notion that Trump's tweets somehow represented a "clear and present danger" that
required suppression is not supported by the law. In 1919 Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
wrote the majority opinion in Schenck v. United
States , a case which examined the limits of free speech protections under the First
Amendment, and famously observed that "The most stringent protection of free speech would
not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic [t]he question in
every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as
to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that
Congress has a right to prevent."
Holmes' opinion in Schenck was later limited by the Supreme Court in its 1969 decision in
Brandenburg v. Ohio ,
which replaced the "clear and present danger" standard with what is known as
"imminent lawless action," which holds that speech is not protected if it is likely to
cause violation of the law "more quickly than an officer of the law reasonably can be
summoned." By suppressing the social media expressions of Donald Trump and his supporters,
Twitter, Facebook, and Google – egged on by the political supporters of Joe Biden –
appear to have unilaterally adopted the "clear and present danger" standard which
deviates from the constitutionally-mandated norms, as established by Supreme Court precedent,
that govern the protection of speech in America.
Political speech is not just a human right – in America, it is an essential
constitutionally guaranteed freedom. When the political supporters of Joe Biden, along with the
unelected heads of media giants such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google, actively collaborate to
silence the ability of Donald Trump and the tens of millions of Americans who support him to
express themselves on social media, they become no better than the authoritarian regimes they
once sought to remove from power.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of '
SCORPION
KING : America's Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the
Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during
the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter
"... 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.
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."
Michael Kellogg The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National
Socialism, 1917–1945
Cambridge University Press, 2005
With the near-universal demonization of the Third Reich, historians have developed a blind
spot for the genesis of German anti-Semitism. Michael Kellogg, in his 2005 work The Russian
Roots of Nazism, sheds a sharp light on this topic and points our attention eastward. He
reveals how the post-World War I atrocities of the Soviet Union along with the presence of a
large, vengeful, and politically active White émigré population in Weimar Germany
played a critical role in developing National Socialist attitudes on Jews and Bolshevism. And
in making this argument, he not only addresses the errors of other historians, but he also
makes an indirect case for much of Nazism itself.
Kellogg's work is crucial for several reasons, most prominent being the facts themselves.
The interwar period in Germany, the Baltic states, and Ukraine were roiled in conflict,
intrigue, revolution, and, most of all, uncertainty. It was an interesting time. More
importantly, it was consequential. Any history that discloses previously unknown or overlooked
events from that time and place will have value.
Kellogg also exhibits remarkable academic discipline by not taking sides in the political
drama he unfolds. There is nothing tendentious about The Russian Roots of Nazism aside
from its pointed historiography. This is good since it lets the facts speak for themselves. On
the other hand, Kellogg's avoidance of a broader political schema makes the book a bit of a
slog. It's not biased, but it's not sexy, either. But Kellogg's prose is tight and serviceable,
and he offers concise summaries at the end of each chapter and at the end of the book for those
who wish to skim.
The Russian Roots of Nazism can also be viewed as a strike against the anti-German
racism of Jewish writers such as Daniel Goldhagen. In his 1996 work, Hitler's Willing
Executioners , Goldhagen accuses the Germans of being inherently racist, anti-Semitic, and
"eliminationist." This takes the extreme form of what's known as the Sonderweg (special
path) thesis, which posits the inevitability of the Third Reich, given the weakness of the
German bourgeoisie. Kellogg demolishes this idea by uncovering the foreign influences of
National Socialism during its formative years and also by portraying Adolf Hitler in his
mid-thirties and other early-period Nazis as three-dimensional human beings rather than comic
book villains.
Most importantly, Kellogg demonstrates how the Nazis may have had excellent reasons for
their anti-Semitism and their anti-Bolshevism, thereby justifying much of what they did during
the interwar period. This may not have been Kellogg's intention. Regardless, by eschewing a
political agenda and by relying so heavily upon National Socialist primary sources (rather than
the mountain of secondary sources that condemn the Nazis), Kellogg leaves the door open for a
revisionist, and much more positive, interpretation of National Socialism.
Our story may as well begin in German-occupied Ukraine in 1918. After Soviet Russia's
capitulation in the war, many disaffected Russian and Ukrainian officers began cooperating with
their German counterparts, bonding over their shared sense of nationalism and their mutual
hatred for the Bolsheviks. When the Germans abandoned Ukraine the following year, they took
thousands of these so-called "White" officers with them, including some, such as Vladimir
Biskupsky, Ivan Poltavets-Ostranitsa, Pavel Bermondt-Avalov, Fedor Vinberg, and Piotr
Shabelsky-Bork, who would work closely with the Nazis in years to come. Shabelsky-Bork deserves
special mention because he was the first to transfer the forgery The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion to the West, thereby unleashing one of the most famous conspiracy theories upon the
world.
As the Ukrainian Biskupsky became a leader among the 600,000 White émigrés in
Weimar Germany, he also became one of two de facto leaders of a secret, conspiratorial
organization known as Aufbau (or, Reconstruction) which promoted a particularly urgent strain
of apocalyptic anti-Semitism. Max von Scheubner-Richter, a Baltic German émigré
from Latvia, was the other, and soon this organization had had great influence upon the nascent
Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler himself. In fact, Scheubner-Richter grew quite close to Hitler and
marched arm-in-arm with him during the failed 1923 Putsch in Munich where he was shot and
killed. Thereafter, Hitler considered him a martyr for National Socialism.
Two other White émigrés, Alfred Rosenberg, another Baltic German, and the
Russian Fedor Vinberg, became leading theorists of National Socialism, with Rosenberg
ultimately gaining the most stature in the Nazi Party. Publisher and early Hitler mentor
Dietrich Eckart introduced Rosenberg to Hitler, and the men quickly grew to admire each other.
When Hitler was imprisoned after the Munich Putsch, he appointed Rosenberg as his successor. By
World War II, this émigré was so embedded in high-level Nazi operations that the
Allies rewarded him at Nuremburg with a sentence of hanging.
Bavaria in the early 1920s was a unique petri dish of nationalist and anti-Semitic ideas and
action. Stirred into the mix were the völkisch Germans. These were Aryan
identitarians, Teutonic traditionalists, and Thule Society people who drew racialist ideas from
the likes of Arthur Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Many of
these people were still smarting over the revolution of 1918, which forced the Kaiser to
abdicate, and shared a distrust of Jews for their materialistic and "world-affirming" (that is,
non-heroic, non-transcendent) behavior.
Add to this the White émigrés who brought with them not only The
Protocols but the hyper-nationalist ideas of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vladimir Solovev. A
militaristic form of Christianity played into this as well, with the great Jew-Gentile struggle
often being portrayed in Biblical terms. These were people who had witnessed firsthand Red
atrocities during the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War and had experience in
the Tsar's army or in the reactionary organization, the Black Hundreds. It's no wonder they
blamed the Jews for upending their world. Their world had been upended, and they
couldn't help but notice how a disproportionate number of Bolsheviks were Jews, especially at
the top.
The result was an explosive burst of national and anti-Jewish sentiment which culminated in
1933 when Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany. Kellogg repeatedly stresses that
without the Whites who were more anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik than the Germans after
World War I, the National Socialists would likely not have been as successful as they were. No
so-called "far-Right" organization in Germany before the Nazis had garnered popular support.
This does away with the notion that the Germans were somehow inherently anti-Semitic. Where
Goldhagen insists that "German antisemitism was sui generis, " Kellogg demonstrates that
it was the powerful gestalt of the German völkisch movement and the White fear and
fascination with Jewish Bolshevism which was sui generis .
Hitler harbored standard socialist views well into 1919. Hitler's former immediate
commander on the Western Front in World War I, Aide-de-Camp Hans Mend, asserted that his
earlier underling had exclaimed towards the end of 1918 in Munich, "Thank God that the kings'
crowns have fallen from the tree. Now we proletarians have something to say". . .
Hitler only began to develop a detailed anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic ideology beginning in
the second half of 1919 through his collaboration with Eckart and Rosenberg, who served as
his early mentors. Mend confirmed Hitler's rapid political lurch from the far left to the far
right in postwar Munich. When he heard Hitler speak publicly at the beginning of 1920, he
thought, "Adi has changed his colors, the red lad!" In addition to borrowing anti-Bolshevik,
anti-Semitic ideas from Eckart and Rosenberg, Hitler soon learned far-right concepts that
castigated "Jewish Bolshevism" from the Aufbau ideologues Scheubner-Richter and Vinberg as
well.
The White émigrés from 1918 to 1923 lent a sense of Manichean urgency to the
postwar German zeitgeist. It was, in effect, good versus evil, Christ versus Anti-Christ, and
the slew of conspiracy theories emanating from the Aufbau circle painted this struggle in the
starkest black and white. For example, one theory posited that Leon Trotsky was a Satanist who
practiced Black Mass rituals in the Kremlin and prayed to the Devil for the defeat of the
Whites. But this alliance was also practical. If the v ölkisch Germans and the
émigré Whites didn't have the exact same enemies, their shared
ethnocentrism gave them similar goals. Whereas the Whites aimed to conquer the Soviet Union and
remove the Jewish yoke from the Slavic peoples, the Germans needed to defy the Entente and
overthrow the socialist, pro-Soviet Weimar government. There was quite of bit of overlap here,
and Hitler's Nazi Party approved of the White plan to invade the Soviet Union and liberate
independent republics such as Russia and Ukraine. Hitler indeed had a great interest in
Nazifying Ukraine, which Kellogg believes was the deciding factor behind his disastrous order
for the Wehrmacht to strike south in August 1941 when it was a mere 200 miles from
Moscow.Hitler only began to develop a detailed anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic ideology beginning
in the second half of 1919 through his collaboration with Eckart and Rosenberg, who served as
his early mentors. Mend confirmed Hitler's rapid political lurch from the far left to the far
right in postwar Munich. When he heard Hitler speak publicly at the beginning of 1920, he
thought, "Adi has changed his colors, the red lad!" In addition to borrowing anti-Bolshevik,
anti-Semitic ideas from Eckart and Rosenberg, Hitler soon learned far-right concepts that
castigated "Jewish Bolshevism" from the Aufbau ideologues Scheubner-Richter and Vinberg as
well.
The Whites contributed more than energy and ideas to the National Socialist cause before
1923. It also provided money and manpower. Many who marched during the doomed Munich Putsch
were Whites, as were many of the soldiers who fought alongside the Germans against the
Bolsheviks during the Latvian Intervention of 1919. Boris Brazol, a white émigré
in the United States funneled much-needed funds from industrialist Henry Ford and worked
closely with Scheubner-Richter. Brazol, notably, was a contributor to Ford's anti-Semitic
newspaper The Dearborn Independent and also translated Dostoevsky's Diary of a
Writer into English. More importantly, Kirill Romanov, exiled heir apparent to Tsardom in
Russia, gave tremendous sums to the White-Nazi alliance. Many Whites supported his bid for
power, and so did Hitler.
Sadly, many White émigrés opposed Kirill in favor of his cousin Nikolai who
also aspired to Tsardom. The Nikolai faction, led by the émigré Nikolai Markov
II, was Russian imperialist in nature and supported restoring Russia to its pre-1917 borders.
Hitler and the Aufbau contingent preferred the more ethnocentric solution of petty nationalism
in the defeated Soviet Union, with Russia, Ukraine, and other republics becoming independent
entities. This impasse festered into acrimony and hatred among the Whites, and effectively
prevented the invasion of the Soviet Union that they all so desperately wanted.
After the failed Putsch in 1923, White influence began to wane. Regardless, it never went
away and, in some ways, enjoyed a resurgence in the 1930s with Alfred Rosenberg's success in
the Nazi Party. However, if there is a flaw to The Russian Roots of Nazism , in my mind,
it's that Kellogg fails to adequately address the issue of Lebensraum , or living space.
He gives it minimal attention and quotes the famous passage in Mein Kampf Volume II
(1926) in which Hitler insists the Germans " . . . shift to the soil policy of the future" and
"have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states." Lebensraum, with its all
imperial implications, clearly violates Aufbau 's ethnocentric notions of Nazifying
Ukraine for the sake of the Ukrainians.
Kellogg seems to think it adequate to demonstrate that Hitler fully developed his
Lebensraum ideas only after the 1923 Putsch. Thus, Kellogg abides by his thesis
of the Russian roots of Nazism, that is, of how White émigré thought
influenced early -- and not middle or late -- National Socialism. But this is too easy. If
Aufbau ideas were truly the roots of Nazism, then why did Hitler reverse some of these ideas by
the late 1920s? Kellogg doesn't quite tell us.
Overshadowing this, however, is Kellogg's assertion that Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in
1941 after his 1939 non-aggression pact with Stalin in part because of the feverish
anti-Bolshevism and anti-Semitism of the pre-Putsch White émigrés. The pact had
devastated the Whites that were still living in Germany at that time. However,
[T]he cooperation between Hitler and Stalin that so discomfited Germany's White
émigré community did not last long. Hitler soon returned to his intense
anti-Bolshevik roots, which he had largely developed during his close interaction with Aufbau
in the early 1920s. Even while German armed forces were still engaged in the French campaign in
June 1940, Hitler expressed his intention "to take action against the menace of the Soviet
Union the moment our military position makes it at all possible." He issued the first directive
for the invasion of the Soviet Union in August 1940 under the telling name Aufbau Ost
(Reconstruction East). In titling his planned Soviet campaign Aufbau Ost, Hitler demonstrated
the lasting impression that Aufbau's warnings against "Jewish Bolshevism" had made on his
thinking.
Adding to this was how Rosenberg himself had urged Hitler to invade the Soviet Union as
well.
Kellogg's most valuable and revolutionary contribution to our understanding of this time
involves his admirable academic restraint. Rarely does he pass judgment on his subjects, and
certainly never during the 1918-1923 period on which his book mostly focuses -- except in the
few cases in which certain émigrés committed crimes such as embezzlement. Yes, in
the last few pages, Kellogg rightly deplores the mass murder and extermination of Jews at the
hand of Hitler -- although, interestingly, he very rarely uses the term "Holocaust." Rosenberg,
who served as the State Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories during the war, greatly
facilitated these horrific actions. But note how Kellogg insists on placing these actions
within the larger context of Soviet atrocities from decades prior:
Rosenberg viewed his genocidal anti-Semitic actions in the occupied East as retaliation
for the depredations of "Jewish Bolshevism." The November 18, 1941 press release dealing with
Rosenberg's public assumption of the State Minister post stressed that the White
émigré had entered politics since "he wanted to protect the German people from
the same fate that he had lived through in Moscow."
And what were these depredations?
In Mein Kampf , Hitler again treated the "Jewish Bolshevik" annihilation of the
nationalist Russian intelligentsia. He drew upon Aufbau and Eckartian thought to describe a
ruthless Jewish drive for world domination. With the stage set for the "last great
revolution," Hitler argued:
The democratic people's Jew becomes the blood-Jew and tyrant over people. In a few years
he tries to exterminate the national intelligentsia and by robbing the peoples of their
natural intellectual leadership makes them ripe for the slave's lot of permanent
subjugation.
He further asserted, "The most frightful example of this kind is offered by Russia, where
[the Jew] killed or starved about thirty million people with positively fanatical savagery,
in part amid inhuman tortures."
Kellogg later quotes Mein Kampf , demonstrating how Hitler "combined
völkisch German and anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic White émigré
beliefs" when stating of "the Jew" that
[H]is ultimate goal is denationalization, the muddled half-breeding of the other peoples,
the lowering of the racial level of the most superior, as well as the domination of this
racial mush through the extermination of the völkisch intelligentsias and their
replacement by the members of his own people.
Now, is any of this true? Kellogg doesn't say -- indeed, it's not his job to say. And we
should be thankful for that. A Goldhagian approach, however, would be to dismiss it all as
anti-Semitic lies and canards (just like The Protocols! ) and smear anyone swayed by
them as being irredeemably racist and anti-Semitic.
But with enough research under our belt from historians such as Robert Conquest, Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn, Kevin MacDonald, and others, we now know that Hitler and the White
émigrés were much closer to the truth than not. Tens of millions were starved or
murdered in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s, and millions more died in the Great
Terror and the Gulag Archipelago. From such authors, we have also learned that a
disproportionate amount of the Soviet leadership in all facets of its military and government
was indeed Jewish. Soviet Jews as a bloc remained enthusiastic for the Soviet Union even when
it was committing its greatest atrocities. Lenin himself (as reported by Yuri Slezkine in
The Jewish Century ) attributed much of the success of the October Revolution to the
Jews:
The fact that there were many Jewish intelligentsia members in the Russian cities was of
great importance to the revolution. They put an end to the general sabotage that we were
confronted with after the October Revolution. . . . The Jewish elements were mobilized . . .
and thus saved the revolution at a difficult time. It was only thanks to this pool of a
rational and literate labor force that we succeeded in taking over the state apparatus.
The Whites and the Nazis may have somewhat exaggerated Soviet crimes and often entertained
fanciful conspiracy theories, but they were not wrong in linking Bolshevism to Jews and
believing that the Soviet Union posed a dire threat to the West. By not shutting the door on
such an interpretation of history, Kellogg indirectly allows the reader to develop a
revisionist view of the Nazis as protectors rather than destroyers of civilization. Of course,
it's extremely difficult to justify Nazi atrocities during World War II (and Kellogg does no
such thing), but after we read The Russian Roots of Nazism we learn that it was even
more difficult to justify the Soviet atrocities which were greater, took place beforehand, and
caused millions of Whites to emigrate westward to begin with.
The Whites knew this and they made sure the Nazi knew this. And thanks to Michael Kellogg,
we know it too.
As an ethnic German of Russia and (against all reason perhaps) a Tsarist, I agree that
this White influence on Nazis is an important story to tell. But there is a glaring gap in
the chain of logic in this article. "they were not wrong in linking Bolshevism to Jews and
believing that the Soviet Union". "Linked" is a very vague word. Yes, many Old Bolsheviks
were jews, many of whom were precisely the ones purged and killed in the Great Terror. I'm
sure there are those who claim Stalin was a jew, but come on. The famines we ordered
personally by this non-Jewish Georgian dictator who surrounded himself with a
disproportionate number of other Georgians/Transcaucasians in the halls of power. The famines
were arranged/permitted as you like by confiscating grain to export and fund rapid
industrialization in preparation for war, and, to discipline the peasantry as a class from
Ukraine to Kazakhstan whatever their ethnic makeup. Jews were overrepresented earlier on
largely because they didn't have any other options, they were banned from academia and
various professions. Don't under-estimate the proportion of really poor jews in the Russian
Empire up to this time who had no schemes but getting by. The biases of a bunch of pogromists
shouldn't be taken as gospel truth. It's always easy to blame someone else for your defeat.
In the same way, my fiercly anti-soviet orthodox co-religionists need to consider how the
conduct of the pre-revolutionary church establishment allowed it's virtual abolishment to be
broadly accepted. The church has always been flawed because it is made up of human beings,
but people were truly sick of everything establishmentarian by 1917 and were, as a Tsarist
one must admit, broadly apathetic or even happy when the last Emperor abdicated. Also
remember that there are other far more intellectually interesting movements within the whites
like the Eurasianists.
When there are Ghosts in the Closet, one has to be very very careful about keeping them
there. When other people know about those ghosts – they can use them – against
you. I've hinted to a few Russian friends concerning the fact that Germany had been under the
Jewish yoke and that Germany was under the impression that the Bolsheviks, that murdered and
tortured millions, were in fact Jews – and some were from the US and helped fund the
Revolution. I stopped my conversation after saying Hitler was very afraid of this Bolshevik
Jewish – Soviet Union. I've never gotten a response from my friends , so I dropped it.
Maybe, the Russian people are aware of these facts , but don't wish to bring up the past .
Afterall, I'm a Gringo in Russia – what do I know look at all the skeletons in
Washington's closet .
It doesn't really matter where the concept of Nazism started. What matters was/is the idea
worked until the bankers/Jews started WW2 and we didn't get to see the outcome of how
Hitler's revolution would have worked. I my own mind, it would he worked well and the Jews
couldn't allow that because their game would have been up. That's why all these years later
after the end of WW2, the anti Nazi/Hitler propaganda is still so intense.
In WW I Germany was not anti-Semitic to any significant degree. Jews had full rights in
Germany which was in marked contrast to Tsarist Russia. East European Jews tended to regard
the Germans as liberators when they advanced into parts of the Russian Empire.
Lloyd George later admitted one of the reasons for the Balfour Declaration was to secure
support among east European Jews for the allies and prevent them supporting Germany.
Russia is starting to recover from over 70 years of Bolshevik looting of her wealth, then
anudda 112+ or so years of organized looting by Wall Street financial sharpies that helped
those 'Russian' oligarchs steal hundreds of billions more.
Damn near everyone was a Jew, but we can't speak truths like that in the USA anymore, why
that would be anti-Semitic!
The Silence of the Jews
After the collapse of the Soviet empire, a group of Zionists in Russia seemingly steeped
in 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', lied, cheated, stole, and murdered, their way
into virtually all positions of power throughout the country. They used gangs (some of
which probably included mossad agents) to intimidate and murder their opponents in order to
gain control of between 70-85% of Russia's industries including most of its natural
resources. They also took control of Russia's media which they then used to elect Boris
Yeltsin as President of Russia despite the fact that he was a brain-dead, vodka soaked,
alcoholic.
Within a matter of years these Russian traitors had become billionaires having stolen
vast quantities of Russian assets. They exported as much as possible of their ill-gotten
wealth to the Zionist state in Palestine just in case the Russians might ask for their
money back.
As for me, I'm still trying to figure out how one gets NAZI from the term National
Socialist?
But you can get NAZI from this term, Ashke nazi.
While Russia's infrastructure has vastly improved over the last decade, the USA's has went
to hell, since we spend that on propping up those Wall Street Casinos–owned by
whom?–and fighting endless wars for the glory of Apartheid Israel.
@stozi
mp; similar cultures). This segment is very influential (or has become) & it is incurable
in its hatred towards the Western historical identity (under West, I include all European
Christendom, east & west, as well as their descendants).
There is no grand plan for anything. It's just that tribal Jewish activists, when they
acquire power, tend to be bad news & they may form a hostile elite or sub-elite. Some
Jewish persons have noticed that, too: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/american-jewrys-disgraceful-hypocrisy/
The Russian Roots of Nazism perhaps would be more about the millions of Deaths caused by
the Bolsheviks and inflicted on a seemingly passive population(much like US YTs now) from
1917 to 1935.R.J. Rummel, researched 'Democide' or 'the murder of a people by their own
government' has the Bolseviks Communists murdering over 16 million of their own people.
Perhaps Hitler had a reason to fear the Communists and invade the Bolshevik Bloodlands.
Hitler wanted to prevent the Communist takeover of Germany and the ensuing Democide of
Germans. Thus the real Russian roots of Nazism.
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM
Chapter 2. 3,284,000 Victims: The Civil War Period 1917 to 1922 Figure 2.1. Range in Civil
War Democide EstimatesTable 2.1. Civil War Period Democide and Other KilledFigure 2.2.
Democide Components and Soviet War/RebellionKilled 1917-1922Appendix 2.1Table 2.A. 3,284,000
Victims: SourcesChapter 3. 2,200,000 Victims: The NEP Period 1923-1928Figure 3.1. Range in
NEP Democide EstimatesTable 3.1. NEP Period DemocideFigure 3.2. Democide Components for Civil
War andNEP PeriodsFigure 3.3. Soviet Democide and Annual Rate by PeriodAppendix 3.1Table 3.A.
2,200,000 Victims During the NEP Period: Sources, Calculations, and EstimatesChapter 4.
11,440,000 Victims: The Collectivization Period 1928-1935 Figure 4.1. Range of
Collectivization Democide EstimatesTable 4.1. Collectivization Period DemocideFigure 4.2.
Democide Components for Three PeriodsFigure 4.3. Soviet Democide and Annual Rate by
Period
The ideas that formed the German National Socialist Worker's Party were all in place long
before WW! started, which means that even if all (rather than a small minority of)
Russian emigres had gone to Germany and had done so by 1918, the Russian impact on the
formation of the Nazis would have been minimal.
The roots of Hitler are also in: Hegel, Bismarck, Frederick the Great, Luther, the late
19th century German 'back to nature/nudist/proto-hippie' movement, Germanic romanticizing of
Germanic paganism.
The roots of Hitler also are set firmly in his Germanic adoration of the Anglo-Saxon
empire, his desire to have a Continental Germanic version.
This writer recasts Slezkine's "many Jewish intelligentsia members" as "the Jews", which
is typical for Hitler-worshiping genocide inciters.
They will never write an honest word about the origins of Russian socialism, both
intellectual and activist, which trace back to the 1850's and earlier, even before Marxism
emerged. The members of these radical literary clubs were gentile blue-bloods; they came from
army families and large landowning families, and had the best religious educations. They were
disgusted by the misery of the peasants in the face of the opulence of manor and church.
Decades later, with the empire continuing to decline, some secular Jews politicized,
joining many anti-tsarist liberal and socialist movements. Around the time of the revolution,
some threw in with Lenin's Bolsheviks, while others, such as Lenin's would-be assassin, did
not. After the revolution, being literate and good at logistics, they filled important roles.
In a context of civil war, with much savagery on both sides, not to mention experience of
pogroms and predations of such as the Black Hundreds, some of these Jews became terrible
butchers.
But what of "the Jews"? Both before and after the revolution, they were fleeing by the
hundred thousand. (A rapid influx of often dishevelled and not sweet-smelling Jews into
Germany in the inter-war years created problems.)
This is not what people do when they feel their co-ethnics are assuming prominence,
bringing hopes of good treatment and opportunity.
The "Judeo-Bolshevism" lie is deployed by those with dreams of personal advancement
through butchery and piracy, in order to mesmerize the frustrated, disenchanted and
ignorant.
@Carlton
Meyer t even in 1915 (during the World War I anti-Germanism), 16 of the 53 top officials
in the Minindel [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] had German names" In the 1880s, the Russian
Germans (1.4 percent of the population) made up 62 percent of the high officials in the
Ministry of Posts and Commerce and 46 percent in the War Ministry.
Germans were, occupationally and conceptually, the Jews of ethnic Russia (as well as much
of Eastern Europe). Or rather, the Russian Germans were to Russia what the German Jews were
to Germany -- only much more so.
The Russian Revolution, according to Slezkine, essentially served to replace the German
elite by a Jewish one.
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.
"... 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.
"... I don't disagree with the idea that Trump should go (he is clearly incompetent for this position), but to think that Biden (personally also completely incompetent due to his health condition, and even before that; can you imagine this second rate politician summit with Macron, Merkel, or Putin even if we ignore his current health problems ), in some ways, will be an improvement is pretty optimistic. ..."
"... Biden administration will be especially dangerous in foreign policy where Russiagaters mafia clearly returned to power, (and chickenhawks like Nuland are in demand again; as well several other flavors of "national security parasites".) ..."
"... Both are puppets of approximately the same social force -- the union on neoliberal oligarchy and MIC (aka Uniparty.) Biden mafia simply will be slightly more polished, and less "in your face." But both are brutal gangsters, both domestically and on foreign arena. And that's pretty depressing. And one great service of Trump administration was that it exposed what is behind the fake facade. Biden will try to rebuild this fake facade, this Potemkin village again. that's all the difference. ..."
When left becomes right, progressive become regressive, and fascist becomes anti-fascist,
then we have to invent whole new vocabularies just to discuss the problems that humanity is
facing. What is worse though is that upending the language of political society in this
manner makes the amassed knowledge from the past less accessible to the present. I suppose
that is the point though.
This is pretty interesting thought, thank you very much. Kind of Orwellian ""War
is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength," on a new, more sinister level as in
"this manner makes the amassed knowledge from the past less accessible to the present."
But is reality Henry Ford quote "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he
wants so long as it is black." is perfectly applicable to any US elections and political life
in general.
Some commentators here for some reason think that Biden (yes, this semi-senile Biden, a
marionette from the very beginning; senator from credit card companies; the worst enemy of
working class in Congress ) is somehow preferable to Trump (yes, this Trump, a marionette of
Zionists, the President who completely betrayed his electorate, best friend of billionaires
and Pentagon; kind of Bush III replicating both intellectual level of Bush II and his
policies, including a tax cut for the rich).
I don't disagree with the idea that Trump should go (he is clearly incompetent for
this position), but to think that Biden (personally also completely incompetent due to his
health condition, and even before that; can you imagine this second rate politician summit
with Macron, Merkel, or Putin even if we ignore his current health problems ), in some ways,
will be an improvement is pretty optimistic.
Biden administration will be especially dangerous in foreign policy where Russiagaters
mafia clearly returned to power, (and chickenhawks like Nuland are in demand again; as well
several other flavors of "national security parasites".)
Both are puppets of approximately the same social force -- the union on neoliberal
oligarchy and MIC (aka Uniparty.) Biden mafia simply will be slightly more polished, and less
"in your face." But both are brutal gangsters, both domestically and on foreign arena. And
that's pretty depressing. And one great service of Trump administration was that it exposed
what is behind the fake facade. Biden will try to rebuild this fake facade, this Potemkin
village again. that's all the difference.
"When left becomes right, progressive become regressive, and fascist becomes
anti-fascist, then we have to invent whole new vocabularies just to discuss the problems that
humanity is facing. What is worse though is that upending the language of political society
in this manner makes the amassed knowledge from the past less accessible to the present. I
suppose that is the point though."
Yes, that's what the gaslighing is all about, but the problem - as our self-designated
betters are finding out now - is that you cannot run a sucessful competitive modern society
that way, banana republics do not get to rule the world.
Even ... Henry Ford understood he had to take good care of his employees.
Biden is going to have his hands full without looking for any more trouble.
"The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and
so devastating, that Civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive
their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay
the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captives to the judgement of law, is one of
the most significant tributes that Power ever paid to reason."
-Justice Robert Jackson, Nov. 21, 1945
It is often forgotten what sort of a battle occurred after WWII to establish the Nuremberg
Trials which gave the world a revolutionary code of law which even today offers many of the
remedies to the Gordian Knots blocking our way to a peaceful future. By the end of the war,
many European leaders of the allied nations wished to simply put leading Nazis against a wall
to face a firing squad and return to "business as usual".
As I've outlined
in many recent writings , it was only through the intensive efforts of U.S. President
Franklin Roosevelt, and his leading allies in both the USA and Russia that a different course
of action was decided upon and an official international tribunal was sanctioned that generated
a total legal paradigm shift in international law that has been too easily taken for granted
(due largely to the lack of effect these laws have had on post-WWII practice).
Among those revolutionary reforms included the unprecedented mandate that wars of aggression
would henceforth be illegal in the eyes of the law. The tendency for those higher officials
carrying out inhuman orders to escape responsibility for their actions or omissions of correct
action were deemed insufficient defenses under the higher moral principle of "known or should
have known".
The underlying assumption of these Nuremberg laws are: 1) "might does not make right"
despite what generations of Hobbesians and Niescheans have chosen to believe and 2) that every
individual is responsible for their decisions based not on the arbitrary standards of whatever
degenerate society they live in but rather upon the belief in the intrinsic powers of reason
and conscience which all humans have access to and are obliged to guide our actions in
life.
Nazi philosophers and crown jurists like Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmidt whose thoughts
have penetrated the western zeitgeist over the past 70 years would obviously find such concepts
repugnant and deplorable.
The fact that the "free world" has ignored these foundations of international law has not
changed the fact that they are still true.
Today, many of those powerful unipolar ideologues who managed the disastrous Cold War and
post-Cold War geopolitical environment have attempted to erase the precedents of Nuremburg with
such atrocities as Soros' International Criminal Court, and the "Responsibility to Protect"
doctrine (R2P) in defense of "humanitarian wars" as seen in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya,
and Syria in recent years. The disturbing rise of unipolar R2P advocacy rampant among the
British ruling class like
Lord Mark Malloch Brown , Tony Blair and all of the Obama-era globalists surrounding Biden
make Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov's recent remarks at the 75 Anniversary Moscow conference
celebrating the commencement of the Nuremberg Trials that much more important.
Putin and Lavrov Celebrate the 75 th Anniversary of Nuremberg Trials
At this event, Putin reminded the attendees of the importance
of the historic tribunals which ran from November 21, 1945 to October – 1946, saying:
"We constantly refer to the lessons of the Nuremberg Trials; we understand their
importance for defending the truths of historical memory, for making a well-founded and solid
case against deliberate distortions and falsifications of World War II events, especially the
shameless and deceitful attempts to rehabilitate and even glorify Nazi criminals and their
accessories It is the duty of the entire international community to safeguard the Nuremberg
Trials' decisions, because they concern the principles that underlie the values of the post-war
world order and the norms of international law."
Putin's remarks were
amplified by Sergey Lavrov who elaborated on the new legal paradigm created at Nuremberg
which provides an obvious cure for the rise of WWII revisionism, sanitation of Nazism in
Ukraine and beyond as well as the revival of many of the practices that made Nazism a viral
threat to mankind.
"The Nuremberg Trials -- an example of international criminal justice -- proved that
justice can be achieved with a professional approach based on broad interstate cooperation,
consent and mutual respect. Clearly, the Nuremberg Tribunal's legacy is not limited to law, but
has enormous political, moral and educational value. A strong vaccination against the revival
of Nazism in all its forms and manifestations was made 75 years ago. Unfortunately, the
immunity to the brown plague that was developed in Nuremberg has seriously worn off in some
European countries. Russia will continue to vigorously and consistently oppose any attempts to
falsify history, to glorify Nazi criminals and their henchmen, and to oppose the revision of
the internationally recognized outcomes of World War II, including the Nuremberg
rulings."
So What Happened at Nuremberg?
Amidst the ashes of WWII,
a major battle was waged between those deep state forces that had funded fascism as a
"solution to the woes of the great depression" vs those genuine patriots who understood that
the very fabric of empire and its associated financial, cultural and legal paradigm had to be
destroyed and replaced with a paradigm more befitting human civilization.
Among the leading representative of the patriotic forces loyal to FDR's anti-colonial vision
was a man who has been nearly lost to history named Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954). Jackson
would serve as Franklin Roosevelt's most trusted legal advisor who first made a name for
himself working closely with
Ferdinand Pecora in prosecuting dozens of high level Wall Street financiers and pro-fascist
industrialists who orchestrated the depression of 1929 and the later coup and assassination
attempts against FDR in 1933-1934. After proving himself in combat, Jackson arose to become
U.S. Solicitor General (1938-1940), Attorney General (1940-41) and leading member of the
Supreme Court from 1941 until his death in 1954.
Knowing that the deep state coup that ousted Vice-President Henry Wallace and imposed
Anglophile tool Harry Truman onto the USA might destroy the hopes for a post-WWII order of
peaceful cooperation as outlined by the United Nations Charter, Judge Jackson took the lead and
organized the Nuremberg Tribunals delivering the opening speech on November 21, 1945:
One of the prime motives behind the hearings was the intention to give legal meaning and
action to the universal ideals conveyed in the United Nations' Charter. This charter
encapsulated the principles that FDR and Henry Wallace outlined repeatedly in the
Four Freedoms . These freedoms asserted that all humankind regardless of race, sex, creed,
or nationality would: 1) have the freedom from want, 2) freedom to worship as one's conscience
dictated, 3) freedom from fear, and 4) freedom of speech. If international law could tolerate
wars of aggression, or if abdication of responsibility for ones' criminal deeds could be
tolerated on the basis of "I was just following orders", then the UN Charter could carry little
weight indeed.
As Jackson wrote in his Summer 1945 report to the President justifying the creation of the
Nuremberg Tribunal:
"We therefore propose to charge that a war of aggression is a crime, and that modern
international law has abolished the defense that those who incite or wage it are engaged in
legitimate business. Thus, may the forces of law be mobilized on the side of peace."
During the course of the 11 month proceedings, not only were leading cabinet members,
generals, lawyers and other high officials put on trial, but the deepest facets of natural law
vs Nietschean "law of the strongest" was investigated with Platonic rigor as laid out in the
brilliant award-winning film Judgement at Nuremberg (1960).
Due to the leadership of Justice Jackson, the treatment of INTENTION and conspiracy was made
the primary focus in the pursuit of justice and cause of criminal guilt. This was not a popular
approach then or today for the simple fact that our world is shaped by many top down forces
that want their victims' minds to be forever trapped in the material bottom up world of
deductive/inductive logic where immaterial causal intentions and ideas can never be found. For
anyone wishing to pursue this fruitful line of thinking further, I suggest reading Edgar
Allan Poe's Eureka.
When one adopts the view that intentions and conspiracies (i.e.: the effect of intentions +
ideas when put into action) ARE NOT a driving force of politics and life, then we forever loose
our ability to judge truthfulness in any serious manner. This was the philosophical premise of
leading Nazi financier Hjalmar Schacht, whose moral relativism and cold calculating principles
of economics directly justified the cheap labor camps that worked millions to death in the
German war production effort. This same philosophy again found fertile soil in the post-1971
consumer society that revived the logic of cheap labor production under the age of "cheapest
price is the law" globalization.
Quoting Schacht who said "Truth is any story that succeeds", Justice Jackson quipped
"I think you can score many more successes, when you want to lead someone, if you don't tell
them the truth- than if you do tell them the truth".
"The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty
crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make
deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world
untouched .
"The case as presented by the United States will be concerned with the brains and
authority in back of all the crimes. These defendants were men of a station and rank which does
not soil its own hands with blood. They were men who knew how to use lesser folk as tools. We
want to reach the planners and designers, the inciters and leaders .
"It is not the purpose in my part of this case to deal with the individual crimes. I am
dealing with the common plan or design for crime and will not dwell upon individual offenses.
My task is only to show the scale on which these crimes occurred, and to show that these are
the men who were in the responsible positions and who conceived the plan and design which
renders them answerable, regardless of the fact that the plan was actually executed by others
.
"The Charter recognizes that one who has committed criminal acts may not take refuge in
superior orders nor in the doctrine that his crimes were acts of state .
"The real complaining party at your bar is Civilization . The refuge of the defendants
can only be their hope that International Law will lag so far behind the moral sense of mankind
that conduct which is crime in the moral sense must be regarded as innocent in law.
Civilization asks whether law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to deal with crimes of
this magnitude by criminals of this order of importance."
Today, the world sits once more on the brink of a new world order, and the emergence of a
governing system that is shaped entirely on the same social Darwinistic/Nietschean operating
system that gave rise to fascism in WWII. The same denial of universal truth that animated the
minds of a Schacht, Goebbels, Heidegger or Schmidt has become hegemonic among western academia
as well.
Very few statesmen have had the courage and insight to resist this unipolar anti-nation
state system, but among those who have we are fortunate to have found the current leader of
Russia and his allies who in many ways are playing the same historic role as the one played 75
years earlier by Justice Robert Jackson, Henry Wallace and President Roosevelt. Whether the
rest of the world wakes up in time to recognize the superiority of the multipolar alliance over
the regressive order of the unipolarists carrying us ominously towards World War 3 remains to
be seen.
[Review of Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind
Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019)]
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has a fearsome reputation. The author and executor of
countless coups and political assassinations, the CIA is notorious for waterboarding,
"extraordinary rendition," regime change, kidnapping, narcotics smuggling, financing of
guerrilla wars, and many other unsavory activities around the world, including against
Americans, even
inside the United States .
But "fearsome" does not mean "flawless." The CIA has failed at least as often as it has
succeeded, and sometimes the failures are so flagrant -- such as sending thousands of
anticommunist guerrilla fighters behind enemy lines in Korea, Eastern Europe, China, and
Southeast Asia during the Cold War, where nearly all of them died -- that CIA insiders wryly
refer to their organization as "Clowns In Action."
Which is it? Is the CIA a dastardly menace or a hotbed of horrible mistakes? If Stephen
Kinzer's new book, Poisoner in Chief , is any indication, the answer is both.
A veteran reporter on foreign conflicts such as those in Rwanda, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and
Iran, Kinzer is a former New York Times correspondent and, most famously, the author of the
2006 bestseller Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq . In his
latest effort he brings his analytical skills to bear on perhaps the most disturbing CIA
project of them all: MKULTRA, the top-secret, long-running effort to find a method for
controlling the human mind.
"History's most systematic search for techniques of mind control," Kinzer writes, was a
by-product of World War II.
At the end of 1942, a University of Wisconsin bacteriologist named Ira Baldwin - "America's
first bio-warrior" and a part-time Quaker preacher - was loaned to Washington (with the
blessing of the University of Wisconsin president) in order to set up and run a bioweapons
program for the United States military (p. 16). Based out of Camp Detrick in Maryland, the
Baldwin lab cranked out bioweapons for possible use against Allied enemies. In one of Baldwin's
bigger projects, shipment of tons of anthrax spores, ordered by Winston Churchill for potential
use against the Nazis, was approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and almost ready for
delivery when the Germans surrendered on May 7, 1945 (p. 19).
For many, even for Quaker preachers, World War II cleared away the last of the psychological
hurdles against unleashing bioweapons against an enemy. Kinzer's book tells the tale of how the
targeting of unsuspecting populations was later justified by the bigger war, the Cold War,
which followed the demise of the Third Reich.
The ruined Third Reich provided much of the original brainpower for MKULTRA. Immediately
after World War II, the CIA -- formed out of the Office of War Information in 1945 -- was faced
with a choice. The Germans and the Japanese had been conducting advanced experiments on germ
warfare and other forms of biological weaponry. Should the Allies prosecute as war criminals
the scientists involved with such projects, or hire them as expert advisors? With the Cold War
starting and the Soviets looming as an unpredictable enemy, the CIA, with the tacit approval of
the few members of the United States Congress who were allowed to know even the existence of
the Central Intelligence Agency, decided to make use of the bioweapon expertise of erstwhile
foes in order to counter the new adversary in Moscow.
For example, Kurt Blome, the Nazis' director of biowarfare research and development whose
work had been championed by Heinrich Himmler, was acquitted, by American political fiat, at the
Doctors' Trial in Nuremberg in 1947 and sent to work - as part of Operation Paperclip designed
mainly to bring German rocket scientists to the US - at Camp Detrick (pp. 20 -- 24).
It was at Camp Detrick that Blome encountered a rising star in the CIA, Sidney Gottlieb.
Gottlieb, a bacteriological specialist who had been a star student of Ira Baldwin's at
Wisconsin, is the main figure in Kinzer's book. His career is virtually synonymous with
MKULTRA. Under the direction of Gottlieb, the CIA's laboratories at Camp Detrick transitioned
from R&D on bioweapons -- often using unwitting American subjects, such as in 1950 when a
US Navy minesweeper "specially equipped with large aerosol hoses" spent six days spraying the
Serratia marcescens bacterium into the San Francisco fog, infecting some eight hundred thousand
people (pp. 37 -- 38) -- to drugs which could be used for mind control. (MKNAOMI, MKULTRA's
sister CIA project, was also tasked with finding poisons and biotoxins which the CIA and the US
government could use in various operations.) Gottlieb provided the big ideas into which to fit
Blome's nefarious knowledge of mass murder by bacillus. Gottlieb became, virtually overnight
and with the help of former Nazi doctors, America's "poisoner in chief."
The CIA's mind control program, which was assuming a bigger and bigger importance as fears
of Soviet brainwashing grew in the US, was originally called Operation Bluebird and was
personally overseen by CIA higher-up Allen Dulles. (47)
At first, the Bluebird team experimented with "hypnosis, electroshock, and sensory
deprivation," along with drugs like sodium amytal, at CIA sites in "secret prisons in Germany
and Japan," looking for a way to extract information out of POWs and captured spies (pp. 44, 48
-- 49). But Dulles was unsatisfied with the results and decided to give the young CIA recruit
Sidney Gottlieb control of Bluebird's updated iteration: Operation Artichoke (pp. 51 -- 52).
The goal of Artichoke was to do whatever it took to get prisoners to divulge military and state
secrets to the CIA. The Cold War would brook nothing short of full-scale war against the human
mind.
Dulles became deputy director of central intelligence three days after launching Artichoke
in 1951, and Gottlieb, invisible to the outside world, was given virtually unlimited rein to
carry out any experiments thought necessary to achieve mind control (p. 51). This drive to
achieve total operational control over the human psyche eclipsed all reality and tactical
limitation . If the US didn't win the race to the mind control method, many in the CIA thought,
the entire American population lay vulnerable to mental enslavement by the Soviets. Dulles,
Kinzer writes, despite a disastrously unsuccessful three-year "Artichoke" attack on a Bulgarian
political prisoner named Dmitri Dimitrov, "had convinced himself not only that mind control
techniques exist but that Communists had discovered them, and that this posed a mortal threat
to the rest of the world" (pp. 52 -- 53).
Mind control was the pressing need, but nothing brought it within reach. Technique after
technique, drug after drug, was tried on prisoners, but to no avail. In frustration, Artichoke
agents under Gottlieb upped the ante, turning to marijuana, cocaine, and then heroin as
possible catalysts of CIA-directed, anti-Soviet brainwashing. As part of Artichoke, a
University of Rochester psychology professor was given a grant by the US Navy to test heroin on
his students. The control of the mind remained as elusive as ever, despite the massive dosing
of the Rochester student population with opiates. Nothing seemed to have the potential to crack
open the mind for the CIA (p. 59).
Someone in Artichoke suggested using mescaline after the other narcotics failed, and this
gave Sidney Gottlieb an idea. He remembered hearing about a drug called LSD which Dr. Albert
Hofmann had discovered during an experiment at Sandoz laboratories in Basel, Switzerland, in
1943. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), an ergot enzyme, produced extraordinary and disturbing
psychological effects, Dr. Hofmann found when he ingested some and recorded the drug's effects.
Washington learned of Hofmann's discovery in 1949, and one of the chemical specialists in the
US military complex told Gottlieb of the new substance (pp. 34 -- 35) In 1951, Gottlieb asked
Harold Abramson, who had been a physician in the Chemical Warfare Service during World War II,
to administer LSD to him. Gottlieb experienced the same psychedelic state as Dr. Hofmann had
described. Other subjects were tested, as well, not all of them wittingly, and all seemed to
exhibit similar reactions. LSD most definitely altered the mind (pp. 60 -- 61). Gottlieb was
convinced that he had found the magical drug which would allow the CIA to control the psyche ,
and therefore to beat the Soviets at (what Allen Dulles, Gottlieb, and many others at CIA
thought, at least, was) the Soviets' own game.
The experiments on human subjects followed rapidly after Gottlieb's conversion to belief in
the powers of LSD. These experiments often ended in death, often by murder. One study quoted by
Kinzer reports that
in 1951 a team of CIA scientists led by Dr. Gottlieb flew to Tokyo .Four Japanese
suspected of working for the Russians were secretly brought to a location where the CIA
doctors injected them with a variety of depressants and stimulants .Under relentless
questioning, they confessed to working for the Russians. They were taken out into Tokyo Bay,
shot and dumped overboard. (p. 64)
The CIA carried out similar experimentation and executions in Korea and Germany (p. 64).
Gottlieb was usually personally involved.
Throughout the 1950s the experimentation continued. An American artist named Stanley
Glickman was lured to a bar near his studio in Paris by CIA agents in 1951 and a chemical was
slipped into his drink. Glickman began to hallucinate wildly. He fled in a state of panic and
remained in his Paris apartment for the next ten months in paranoid hiding until his family
came to take him home, and then he spent the rest of his life as a near invalid. The chemical
which the CIA had slipped into Glickman's drink was almost certainly LSD, and Glickman, Kinzer
suggests, had been chosen by the CIA because he had just recovered from hepatitis and the
Artichoke team was conducting an experiment on the effects of hepatic infection on the efficacy
of LSD (pp. 66 -- 67)
Things got worse from there. In 1952, the CIA commissioned underworld denizen and former
vice cop George Hunter White to run a human-subjects experiment site at 81 Bedford Street in
Greenwich Village, New York (pp. 74 -- 75). White's job was to bring to the CIA's apartment
"expendables" on whom Gottlieb and his team could test LSD. White "knew the whores, the pimps,
the people who brought in the drugs," as one of Gottlieb's MKULTRA colleagues later explained,
and this made him invaluable for procuring the "drug users, petty criminals, and others who
could be relied upon not to complain about what had happened to them" when the CIA's
experiments were finished (pp. 76 -- 77). Many of these "expendables" suffered nervous
breakdowns, and some died.
In order to keep the supply of LSD flowing, CIA agents went to Basel, where LSD had been
discovered, and tried to buy all the LSD in stock. Allen Dulles authorized a $240,000 outlay to
pay for it (p. 86). Sandoz held the patent for Hofmann's 1943 discovery, but Sandoz wanted
nothing to do with the troublesome substance and so Gottlieb, freed of any need to scruple over
IP infringement, tasked US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly with making LSD in the States (pp.
85 -- 86) With their mind control serum in production, MKULTRA agents could focus on how to
dose experimental subjects. The CIA even hired a professional magician, John Mulholland, to
teach Gottlieb and his agents how to deliver LSD into unsuspecting subjects' drinks and food
without being detected (pp. 89 -- 94)
Gottlieb recruited a Kentucky addiction specialist, Dr. Harry Isbell, to test LSD and new
mind-altering drugs on prisoners and patients. More lives were destroyed (pp. 94 -- 96). Among
the victims of another of Gottlieb's agent-doctors was none other than James "Whitey" Bulger,
the mafioso who, along with "nineteen other inmates" at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary,
beginning in 1957 "was given LSD nearly every day for fifteen months, without being told what
it was" (pp. 98 -- 99). Bulger was plagued for the rest of his life with nightmares, suicidal
thoughts, and "deep depression" (p. 98). Bulger, who had been told that he was taking part in
experiments designed to find a cure for schizophrenia, did not learn the truth about what had
happened until 1979 (pp. 263 -- 64).
The human toll of Gottlieb's MKULTRA experiments continued to mount. One of Gottlieb's
closest associates in the project, Frank Olson -- a bacteriologist trained at the University of
Wisconsin who had also been recruited for the CIA by Gottlieb's mentor Ira Baldwin -- began to
express doubts about what the MKULTRA team was doing. He told his wife that he had made a
"terrible mistake" in his work (p. 114). He shared his misgivings with his CIA colleagues as
well. Olson's conscience appeared to be getting the better of him, and he became a liability to
the team.
In late 1953, Gottlieb surreptitiously dosed Olson with LSD at a backwoods MKULTRA
gathering, "Deep Creek Rendezvous," outside Camp Detrick (p. 113). Olson spiraled into a
frightening disorientation, and early in the morning on November 28, 1953 -- a few days after
Thanksgiving -- Olson "fell or jumped" from a window of the Statler Hotel in Manhattan, dying
few moments after hitting the concrete below . Another MKULTRA agent, Gottlieb's lieutenant
Robert Lashbrook, was the only other person in the room when Olson "fell or jumped" (pp. 120 --
21). Lashbrook told the New York City police that Olson had jumped out of the window and
Olson's death was originally designated a suicide, but the Olson family eventually grew
suspicious and an investigation was carried out, including a new autopsy on Olson's body. The
forensic pathologist, after a month's examination of the corpse, declared: "I think Frank Olson
was intentionally, deliberately, with malice aforethought, thrown out of that window" (p. 250).
Wounds on Olson's body were consistent with methods taught in CIA manuals for incapacitating
people and then killing them in order to make their deaths look self-inflicted.
Gottlieb and MKULTRA were shaken by Olson's demise, but they carried on with their work.
They spent the next few years looking for magic mushrooms in Mexico (157); arranging suicide
capsules for American agents, including U-2 pilot Gary Powers (who chose not to use his when he
was shot down over the Soviet Union) (pp. 172 -- 75); attempting, at the order of then attorney
general Robert Kennedy, to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro (after exploding cigars and
exploding conch shells were ruled out, Gottlieb tried with a wetsuit laced with fungi and
bacteria) (p. 184); and hooking Allen Ginsberg and other radicals on LSD (pp. 188 -- 90).
Gottlieb personally delivered to the American embassy in Leopoldville in the Congo poisons that
Gottlieb had developed to assassinate Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, but the Belgians and the
Africans beat the CIA to it (pp. 176 -- 80).
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Gottlieb's career brought ruin and suffering to untold numbers of people, many of them
innocent. He retired from the CIA in 1973 after receiving the Distinguished Intelligence Medal
(p. 211). Lifelong devotees of folk dance, Gottlieb and his wife, Margaret, moved to the
countryside in rural Virginia and attempted to blend in with the small community there,
volunteering, dancing, and experimenting with radical ecology. However, "investigative reporter
Seymour Hersh, who had won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the My Lai massacre in Vietnam,"
learned of the MH-CHAOS program targeting Americans, and the Congress was forced to act.
Gottlieb's career, long a well-kept secret, was being brought into the open, and his retirement
would therefore be far from peaceful.
But there were still many who tried to cover up what Gottlieb and the other MKULTRA agents
had done. In 1975, after the outcry caused by the Hersh reporting, President Gerald Ford
deputized Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to chair a commission on the CIA. The new CIA
director, William Colby, was remarkably frank. Colby informed the Rockefeller Commission that
"the CIA had conducted LSD experiments that resulted in deaths. Later he referred to
assassination plots" (p. 216). Nelson Rockefeller, attempting to prevent the CIA director from
revealing too much, buttonholed Colby later: "Bill, do you really have to present all this
material to us?" (p. 216).
In 1977, in the wake of the Church Report on further American intelligence excesses, Senator
Edward Kennedy, Robert's brother, spurred on by some documents which had been discovered as the
result of a FOIA request (Gottlieb had ordered all MKULTRA files burned, but some undetected
copies remained), called Admiral Stansfield Turner to testify before Congress on MKULTRA. The
walls were closing in. Gottlieb himself was eventually forced to testify -- albeit in a
closed-room setting his lawyer had helped arrange -- but Gottlieb essentially pleaded amnesia
(nearly all of his answers to questions about MKULTRA were some version of "I do not recall")
and the matter seemed to end there.
Still, the skeletons in Gottlieb's closet would not go away. In 1984 Gottlieb agreed to meet
with the family of Frank Olson, the former MKULTRA colleague who had "fallen or jumped" from
his Manhattan hotel room in 1953. Eric Olson, Frank Olson's son, was unconvinced by Gottlieb's
explanation for the "accident," and, after Frank Olson's widow and Eric's mother passed away,
ordered Frank's body exhumed in 1994. As information about MKULTRA built in the public's
awareness, other cases were reopened, including that of Stanley Glickman. (257) The courts were
now involved and Gottlieb could not count on the CIA to get him out of his legal trouble.
Gottlieb pushed back the trial for Glickman's murder as long as he could, and then, in early
March, 1999, Sidney Gottlieb died.
Like Frank Olson, it was not officially revealed whether or not the death had been a suicide
(p. 259).
Stephen Kinzer's Poisoner in Chief is a highly readable, thoroughly researched introduction
to the life and work of one of America's most unknown, and yet infamous, government agents.
Kinzer is to be thanked for his plainspoken, courageous book. Even those who have studied the
CIA and the various schemes and crimes which "the Agency" has committed over the past
seventy-five years will be surprised by some of the information Kinzer relates. To see in one
volume a rendering of just some of the lives ruined by just one CIA program, MKULTRA, is a
sobering revelation.
Sidney Gottlieb, the person directly responsible for much, if not most, of the MKULTRA
devastation over more than twenty years, remains as mysterious at the end of Kinzer's volume as
at the beginning, however. By all accounts Gottlieb was a good student from a stable family.
Kinzer speculates that perhaps Gottlieb's having been rejected for military service in World
War II -- Gottlieb stuttered and had a clubfoot -- left him unsatisfied and impatient to prove
his patriotism, an urgent task for the son of immigrant Jews (p. 50). Gottlieb was heavily
involved in New Age mysticism and meditation and appears to have expended considerable energy
psychologically compartmentalizing his "work," so there are indications that he was aware that
the experiments he and his MKULTRA team were carrying out were, at best, unethical, and
objectively speaking often outright crimes.
But Gottlieb was hardly alone in his endeavors, and the explanation that Gottlieb, Allen
Dulles, and many others in the CIA gave -- to themselves and to each other, and to the world
around when pressed -- makes the most sense. They had a country to defend, they faced an enemy
of unprecedented cruelty in the Soviet Union, and they were willing to do whatever it took,
even sacrificing innocent people, to keep Americans as a whole from falling under the spell of
communist mind control.
~ a civilian assassination program that also included torture during the Vietnam War ~
"The Phoenix Program program designed, coordinated, and executed by the United States
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), United States special operations forces , special forces
operatives from the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam and the Republic of Vietnam's
(South Vietnam) security apparatus during the Vietnam War.
"The program was designed to identify and destroy the Viet Cong (VC) via infiltration,
torture, capture, counter-terrorism, interrogation, and assassination. The CIA described it
as "a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the
Viet Cong".The Phoenix Program was premised on the idea that infiltration had required local
support from non-combat civilian populations, which were referred to as the "political
branch" that had purportedly coordinated the insurgency.
"Phoenix "neutralized" 81,740 people suspected of VC membership, of whom 26,369 were
killed"
Moneycircus , Nov 26, 2020 5:47 PM Reply to
Moneycircus
"During the Cold War, the vast majority of states overthrown were left-leaning or
socialist governments aligned with the Eastern Bloc."
I take issue with this. The great movement after the collapse of the British Empire was
autonomy and, in attempting to throw off the plantation class, that meant land distribution
as a response to popular pressure, regardless of political colour.
In short it was nationalism, which can be left or right.
As for the U.S. it was just business. Both Allen Dulles and his brother were shareholders
in the Boston/United Fruit Company – and one of their first "happenings" was to defeat
the threat of redistribution and secure land for their own private profit .
Even more important than land distribution was equal access to natural resources ,
beginning with water and firewood and extending to minerals. That is why Bolivia's Evo
Morales came to power and why he was ousted.
U.S. regime change was primarily the CIA acting as muscle for the people who had founded
it: the Wall Street bankers, lawyer and associated corporations.
"Left leaning" was the excuse. This is why the CIA and State Department armed Castro while
halting weapon sales to Fulgencio Batista, as documented by U.S. ambassador to Cuba at the
time, Earl T. Smith.
The only explanation for this is that the CIA expected Castro to become another Batista or
it wanted a boogeyman in the western hemisphere as a justification for actions it had in
mind.
There is even a convincing argument that the Bay of Pigs was a ruse in order to provide
leverage against JFK. Nov 26, 2020 6:38 PM Reply to
Moneycircus
Agreed. At the same time that Rockefeller and Kissinger were pushing for an opening with
communist China and forging business deals with Chinese officials, they were also working to
orchestrate a coup against socialist Salvador Allende in Chile. Allende wasn't aligned with
the Eastern Bloc. He was a threat because of his nationalization program and its impact on
corporate interests in Chile, banking and copper mining among others. The 'communist' thing
was a pretext, as it had been when they overthrew Arbenz in Guatemala.
For Rockefeller, Kissinger and associates it was simply about serving Wall Street
interests, and the CIA was their enforcement arm. They have been willing to work with
communists, fascists, and anyone else who help advance their economic and global objectives.
However, I don't doubt that many CIA covert operators doing the dirty work during the Cold
War were true believers in the anti-communist crusade.
Researcher , Nov 26, 2020 6:42 PM Reply to
Moneycircus
Most of it's a ruse. I expect Bay of Pigs was some kind of intentional ruse. Didn't JFK
reject Operation Northwoods in favor of keeping Cuba communist to fuel the Cold War?
I don't even think JFK was planning to disband the CIA. I just think LBJ was far more
powerful within the cryptocracy and wanted JFK and Bobby Kennedy out of the way because he
was an ambitious psychopath. The Killing of the King was a ritual to inflict psychological
trauma on the American public and to show those working within the system that nobody is
safe.
Moneycircus , Nov 26, 2020 6:53 PM Reply to
Researcher
For all the talk about the defining role of the American corporation, the country's wealth
was largely secured by supplanting European empires. That did not happen once the "west" had
been settled or the internal opportunities exhausted -- it anticipated the decline of
European empires, starting well before the Monroe Doctrine of 1823.
To put it another way, how many of America's ruling families were not imperialists?
Grafter , Nov 26, 2020 5:13 PM
After reading that it is clear we will be entering a dark and dangerous era where those
who own and control the media , corrupt the foundations and operations of their own
government and believe in their psychopathic doctrine of "exceptionalism" will ensure that we
will be taken to the edge of a precipice. Their greed for power and financial gain is
limitless and as evidenced by the Covid scam we appear to be helpless regards whatever malign
agenda they wish to implement.
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
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