"... Americans were the victims of an elaborate con job, pelted with a daily barrage of threat inflation, distortions, deceptions and lies, not about tactics or strategy or war plans, but about justifications for war. The lies were aimed not at confusing Saddam's regime, but the American people. By the start of the war, 66 per cent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 and 79 per cent thought he was close to having a nuclear weapon. ..."
"... This charade wouldn't have worked without a gullible or a complicit press corps. Victoria Clarke, who developed the Pentagon plan for embedded reports, put it succinctly a few weeks before the war began: "Media coverage of any future operation will to a large extent shape public perception." ..."
"... During the Vietnam War, TV images of maimed GIs and napalmed villages suburbanized opposition to the war and helped hasten the U.S. withdrawal. The Bush gang meant to turn the Vietnam phenomenon on its head by using TV as a force to propel the U.S.A. into a war that no one really wanted. ..."
"... When the Pentagon needed a heroic story, the press obliged. Jessica Lynch became the war's first instant celebrity. Here was a neo-gothic tale of a steely young woman wounded in a fierce battle, captured and tortured by ruthless enemies, and dramatically saved from certain death by a team of selfless rescuers, knights in camo and night-vision goggles. ..."
"... Back in 1988, the Post felt much differently about Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction. When reports trickled out about the gassing of Iranian troops, the Washington Post's editorial page shrugged off the massacres, calling the mass poisonings "a quirk of war." ..."
"... The Bush team displayed a similar amnesia. When Iraq used chemical weapons in grisly attacks on Iran, the U.S. government not only didn't object, it encouraged Saddam. ..."
"... Nothing sums up this unctuous approach more brazenly than MSNBC's firing of liberal talk show host Phil Donahue on the eve of the war. The network replaced the Donahue Show with a running segment called Countdown: Iraq, featuring the usual nightly coterie of retired generals, security flacks, and other cheerleaders for invasion. ..."
The war on Iraq won't be remembered for how it was waged so much as for how it was sold. It
was a propaganda war, a war of perception management, where loaded phrases, such as "weapons of
mass destruction" and "rogue state" were hurled like precision weapons at the target audience:
us.
To understand the Iraq war you don't need to consult generals, but the spin doctors and PR
flacks who stage-managed the countdown to war from the murky corridors of Washington where
politics, corporate spin and psy-ops spooks cohabit.
Consider the picaresque journey of Tony Blair's plagiarized dossier on Iraq, from a grad
student's website to a cut-and-paste job in the prime minister's bombastic speech to the House
of Commons. Blair, stubborn and verbose, paid a price for his grandiose puffery. Bush, who
looted whole passages from Blair's speech for his own clumsy presentations, has skated freely
through the tempest. Why?
Unlike Blair, the Bush team never wanted to present a legal case for war. They had no
interest in making any of their allegations about Iraq hold up to a standard of proof. The real
effort was aimed at amping up the mood for war by using the psychology of fear.
Facts were never important to the Bush team. They were disposable nuggets that could be
discarded at will and replaced by whatever new rationale that played favorably with their polls
and focus groups. The war was about weapons of mass destruction one week, al-Qaeda the next.
When neither allegation could be substantiated on the ground, the fall back position became the
mass graves (many from the Iran/Iraq war where the U.S.A. backed Iraq) proving that Saddam was
an evil thug who deserved to be toppled. The motto of the Bush PR machine was: Move on. Don't
explain. Say anything to conceal the perfidy behind the real motives for war. Never look back.
Accuse the questioners of harboring unpatriotic sensibilities. Eventually, even the cagey
Wolfowitz admitted that the official case for war was made mainly to make the invasion
palatable, not to justify it.
The Bush claque of neocon hawks viewed the Iraq war as a product and, just like a new pair
of Nikes, it required a roll-out campaign to soften up the consumers. The same techniques (and
often the same PR gurus) that have been used to hawk cigarettes, SUVs and nuclear waste dumps
were deployed to retail the Iraq war. To peddle the invasion, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell
and company recruited public relations gurus into top-level jobs at the Pentagon and the State
Department. These spinmeisters soon had more say over how the rationale for war on Iraq should
be presented than intelligence agencies and career diplomats. If the intelligence didn't fit
the script, it was shaded, retooled or junked.
Take Charlotte Beers whom Powell picked as undersecretary of state in the post-9/11 world.
Beers wasn't a diplomat. She wasn't even a politician. She was a grand diva of spin, known on
the business and gossip pages as "the queen of Madison Avenue." On the strength of two
advertising campaigns, one for Uncle Ben's Rice and another for Head and Shoulder's dandruff
shampoo, Beers rocketed to the top of the heap in the PR world, heading two giant PR houses:
Ogilvy and Mathers as well as J. Walter Thompson.
At the State Department Beers, who had met Powell in 1995 when they both served on the board
of Gulf Airstream, worked at, in Powell's words, "the branding of U.S. foreign policy." She
extracted more than $500 million from Congress for her Brand America campaign, which largely
focused on beaming U.S. propaganda into the Muslim world, much of it directed at teens.
"Public diplomacy is a vital new arm in what will combat terrorism over time," said Beers.
"All of a sudden we are in this position of redefining who America is, not only for ourselves,
but for the outside world." Note the rapt attention Beers pays to the manipulation of
perception, as opposed, say, to alterations of U.S. policy.
Old-fashioned diplomacy involves direct communication between representatives of nations, a
conversational give and take, often fraught with deception (see April Glaspie), but an exchange
nonetheless. Public diplomacy, as defined by Beers, is something else entirely. It's a one-way
street, a unilateral broadcast of American propaganda directly to the public, domestic and
international, a kind of informational carpet-bombing.
The themes of her campaigns were as simplistic and flimsy as a Bush press conference. The
American incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were all about bringing the balm of "freedom" to
oppressed peoples. Hence, the title of the U.S. war: Operation Iraqi Freedom, where cruise
missiles were depicted as instruments of liberation. Bush himself distilled the Beers equation
to its bizarre essence: "This war is about peace."
Beers quietly resigned her post a few weeks before the first volley of tomahawk missiles
battered Baghdad. From her point of view, the war itself was already won, the fireworks of
shock and awe were all after play.
Over at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld drafted Victoria "Torie" Clarke as his director of
public affairs. Clarke knew the ropes inside the Beltway. Before becoming Rumsfeld's
mouthpiece, she had commanded one of the world's great parlors for powerbrokers: Hill and
Knowlton's D.C. office.
Almost immediately upon taking up her new gig, Clarke convened regular meetings with a
select group of Washington's top private PR specialists and lobbyists to develop a marketing
plan for the Pentagon's forthcoming terror wars. The group was filled with heavy-hitters and
was strikingly bipartisan in composition. She called it the Rumsfeld Group and it included PR
executive Sheila Tate, columnist Rich Lowry, and Republican political consultant Rich
Galen.
The brain trust also boasted top Democratic fixer Tommy Boggs, brother of NPR's Cokie
Roberts and son of the late Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana. At the very time Boggs was
conferring with top Pentagon brass on how to frame the war on terror, he was also working
feverishly for the royal family of Saudi Arabia. In 2002 alone, the Saudis paid his Qorvis PR
firm $20.2 million to protect its interests in Washington. In the wake of hostile press
coverage following the exposure of Saudi links to the 9/11 hijackers, the royal family needed
all the well-placed help it could buy. They seem to have gotten their money's worth. Boggs'
felicitous influence-peddling may help to explain why the references to Saudi funding of
al-Qaeda were dropped from the recent congressional report on the investigation into
intelligence failures and 9/11.
According to the trade publication PR Week, the Rumsfeld Group sent "messaging advice" to
the Pentagon. The group told Clarke and Rumsfeld that in order to get the American public to
buy into the war on terrorism, they needed to suggest a link to nation states, not just
nebulous groups such as al-Qaeda. In other words, there needed to be a fixed target for the
military campaigns, some distant place to drop cruise missiles and cluster bombs. They
suggested the notion (already embedded in Rumsfeld's mind) of playing up the notion of
so-called rogue states as the real masters of terrorism. Thus was born the Axis of Evil, which,
of course, wasn't an "axis" at all, since two of the states, Iran and Iraq, hated each other,
and neither had anything at all to do with the third, North Korea.
Tens of millions in federal money were poured into private public relations and media firms
working to craft and broadcast the Bush dictat that Saddam had to be taken out before the Iraqi
dictator blew up the world by dropping chemical and nuclear bombs from long-range drones. Many
of these PR executives and image consultants were old friends of the high priests in the Bush
inner sanctum. Indeed, they were veterans, like Cheney and Powell, of the previous war against
Iraq, another engagement that was more spin than combat .
At the top of the list was John Rendon, head of the D.C. firm, the Rendon Group. Rendon is
one of Washington's heaviest hitters, a Beltway fixer who never let political affiliation stand
in the way of an assignment. Rendon served as a media consultant for Michael Dukakis and Jimmy
Carter, as well as Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Whenever the Pentagon wanted to go to war, he
offered his services at a price. During Desert Storm, Rendon pulled in $100,000 a month from
the Kuwaiti royal family. He followed this up with a $23 million contract from the CIA to
produce anti-Saddam propaganda in the region.
As part of this CIA project, Rendon created and named the Iraqi National Congress and tapped
his friend Ahmed Chalabi, the shady financier, to head the organization.
Shortly after 9/11, the Pentagon handed the Rendon Group another big assignment: public
relations for the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. Rendon was also deeply involved in the planning
and public relations for the pre-emptive war on Iraq, though both Rendon and the Pentagon
refuse to disclose the details of the group's work there.
But it's not hard to detect the manipulative hand of Rendon behind many of the Iraq war's
signature events, including the toppling of the Saddam statue (by U.S. troops and Chalabi
associates) and videotape of jubilant Iraqis waving American flags as the Third Infantry rolled
by them. Rendon had pulled off the same stunt in the first Gulf War, handing out American flags
to Kuwaitis and herding the media to the orchestrated demonstration. "Where do you think they
got those American flags?" clucked Rendon in 1991. "That was my assignment."
The Rendon Group may also have had played a role in pushing the phony intelligence that has
now come back to haunt the Bush administration. In December of 2002, Robert Dreyfuss reported
that the inner circle of the Bush White House preferred the intelligence coming from Chalabi
and his associates to that being proffered by analysts at the CIA.
So Rendon and his circle represented a new kind of off-the-shelf PSYOPs , the privatization
of official propaganda. "I am not a national security strategist or a military tactician," said
Rendon. "I am a politician, and a person who uses communication to meet public policy or
corporate policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception
manager."
What exactly, is perception management? The Pentagon defines it this way: "actions to convey
and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their
emotions, motives and objective reasoning." In other words, lying about the intentions of the
U.S. government. In a rare display of public frankness, the Pentagon actually let slip its plan
(developed by Rendon) to establish a high-level den inside the Department Defense for
perception management. They called it the Office of Strategic Influence and among its many
missions was to plant false stories in the press.
Nothing stirs the corporate media into outbursts of pious outrage like an official
government memo bragging about how the media are manipulated for political objectives. So the
New York Times and Washington Post threw indignant fits about the Office of Strategic
Influence; the Pentagon shut down the operation, and the press gloated with satisfaction on its
victory. Yet, Rumsfeld told the Pentagon press corps that while he was killing the office, the
same devious work would continue. "You can have the corpse," said Rumsfeld. "You can have the
name. But I'm going to keep doing every single thing that needs to be done. And I have."
At a diplomatic level, despite the hired guns and the planted stories, this image war was
lost. It failed to convince even America's most fervent allies and dependent client states that
Iraq posed much of a threat. It failed to win the blessing of the U.N. and even NATO, a wholly
owned subsidiary of Washington. At the end of the day, the vaunted coalition of the willing
consisted of Britain, Spain, Italy, Australia, and a cohort of former Soviet bloc nations. Even
so, the citizens of the nations that cast their lot with the U.S.A. overwhelmingly opposed the
war.
Domestically, it was a different story. A population traumatized by terror threats and
shattered economy became easy prey for the saturation bombing of the Bush message that Iraq was
a terrorist state linked to al-Qaeda that was only minutes away from launching attacks on
America with weapons of mass destruction.
Americans were the victims of an elaborate con job, pelted with a daily barrage of
threat inflation, distortions, deceptions and lies, not about tactics or strategy or war plans,
but about justifications for war. The lies were aimed not at confusing Saddam's regime, but the
American people. By the start of the war, 66 per cent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was
behind 9/11 and 79 per cent thought he was close to having a nuclear weapon.
Of course, the closest Saddam came to possessing a nuke was a rusting gas centrifuge buried
for 13 years in the garden of Mahdi Obeidi, a retired Iraqi scientist. Iraq didn't have any
functional chemical or biological weapons. In fact, it didn't even possess any SCUD missiles,
despite erroneous reports fed by Pentagon PR flacks alleging that it had fired SCUDs into
Kuwait.
This charade wouldn't have worked without a gullible or a complicit press corps.
Victoria Clarke, who developed the Pentagon plan for embedded reports, put it succinctly a few
weeks before the war began: "Media coverage of any future operation will to a large extent
shape public perception."
During the Vietnam War, TV images of maimed GIs and napalmed villages suburbanized
opposition to the war and helped hasten the U.S. withdrawal. The Bush gang meant to turn the
Vietnam phenomenon on its head by using TV as a force to propel the U.S.A. into a war that no
one really wanted.
What the Pentagon sought was a new kind of living room war, where instead of photos of
mangled soldiers and dead Iraqi kids, they could control the images Americans viewed and to a
large extent the content of the stories. By embedding reporters inside selected divisions,
Clarke believed the Pentagon could count on the reporters to build relationships with the
troops and to feel dependent on them for their own safety. It worked, naturally. One reporter
for a national network trembled on camera that the U.S. Army functioned as "our protectors."
The late David Bloom of NBC confessed on the air that he was willing to do "anything and
everything they can ask of us."
When the Pentagon needed a heroic story, the press obliged. Jessica Lynch became the
war's first instant celebrity. Here was a neo-gothic tale of a steely young woman wounded in a
fierce battle, captured and tortured by ruthless enemies, and dramatically saved from certain
death by a team of selfless rescuers, knights in camo and night-vision goggles. Of course,
nearly every detail of her heroic adventure proved to be as fictive and maudlin as any
made-for-TV-movie. But the ordeal of Private Lynch, which dominated the news for more than a
week, served its purpose: to distract attention from a stalled campaign that was beginning to
look at lot riskier than the American public had been hoodwinked into believing.
The Lynch story was fed to the eager press by a Pentagon operation called Combat Camera, the
Army network of photographers, videographers and editors that sends 800 photos and 25 video
clips a day to the media. The editors at Combat Camera carefully culled the footage to present
the Pentagon's montage of the war, eliding such unsettling images as collateral damage, cluster
bombs, dead children and U.S. soldiers, napalm strikes and disgruntled troops.
"A lot of our imagery will have a big impact on world opinion," predicted Lt. Jane Larogue,
director of Combat Camera in Iraq. She was right. But as the hot war turned into an even hotter
occupation, the Pentagon, despite airy rhetoric from occupation supremo Paul Bremer about
installing democratic institutions such as a free press, moved to tighten its monopoly on the
flow images out of Iraq. First, it tried to shut down Al Jazeera, the Arab news channel. Then
the Pentagon intimated that it would like to see all foreign TV news crews banished from
Baghdad.
Few newspapers fanned the hysteria about the threat posed by Saddam's weapons of mass
destruction as sedulously as did the Washington Post. In the months leading up to the war, the
Post's pro-war op-eds outnumbered the anti-war columns by a 3-to-1 margin.
Back in 1988, the Post felt much differently about Saddam and his weapons of mass
destruction. When reports trickled out about the gassing of Iranian troops, the Washington
Post's editorial page shrugged off the massacres, calling the mass poisonings "a quirk of
war."
The Bush team displayed a similar amnesia. When Iraq used chemical weapons in grisly
attacks on Iran, the U.S. government not only didn't object, it encouraged Saddam.
Anything to punish Iran was the message coming from the White House. Donald Rumsfeld himself
was sent as President Ronald Reagan's personal envoy to Baghdad. Rumsfeld conveyed the bold
message than an Iraq defeat would be viewed as a "strategic setback for the United States."
This sleazy alliance was sealed with a handshake caught on videotape. When CNN reporter Jamie
McIntyre replayed the footage for Rumsfeld in the spring of 2003, the secretary of defense
snapped, "Where'd you get that? Iraqi television?"
The current crop of Iraq hawks also saw Saddam much differently then. Take the writer Laura
Mylroie, sometime colleague of the New York Times' Judy Miller, who persists in peddling the
ludicrous conspiracy that Iraq was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
How times have changed! In 1987, Mylroie felt downright cuddly toward Saddam. She wrote an
article for the New Republic titled "Back Iraq: Time for a U.S. Tilt in the Mideast," arguing
that the U.S. should publicly embrace Saddam's secular regime as a bulwark against the Islamic
fundamentalists in Iran. The co-author of this mesmerizing weave of wonkery was none other than
Daniel Pipes, perhaps the nation's most bellicose Islamophobe. "The American weapons that Iraq
could make good use of include remotely scatterable and anti-personnel mines and
counterartillery radar," wrote Mylroie and Pipes. "The United States might also consider
upgrading intelligence it is supplying Baghdad."
In the rollout for the war, Mylroie seemed to be everywhere hawking the invasion of Iraq.
She would often appear on two or three different networks in the same day. How did the reporter
manage this feat? She had help in the form of Eleana Benador, the media placement guru who runs
Benador Associates. Born in Peru, Benador parlayed her skills as a linguist into a lucrative
career as media relations whiz for the Washington foreign policy elite. She also oversees the
Middle East Forum, a fanatically pro-Zionist white paper mill. Her clients include some of the
nation's most fervid hawks, including Michael Ledeen, Charles Krauthammer, Al Haig, Max Boot,
Daniel Pipes, Richard Perle, and Judy Miller. During the Iraq war, Benador's assignment was to
embed this squadron of pro-war zealots into the national media, on talk shows, and op-ed
pages.
Benador not only got them the gigs, she also crafted the theme and made sure they all stayed
on message. "There are some things, you just have to state them in a different way, in a
slightly different way," said Benador. "If not, people get scared." Scared of intentions of
their own government.
It could have been different. All of the holes in the Bush administration's gossamer case
for war were right there for the mainstream press to expose. Instead, the U.S. press, just like
the oil companies, sought to commercialize the Iraq war and profit from the invasions. They
didn't want to deal with uncomfortable facts or present voices of dissent.
Nothing sums up this unctuous approach more brazenly than MSNBC's firing of liberal talk
show host Phil Donahue on the eve of the war. The network replaced the Donahue Show with a
running segment called Countdown: Iraq, featuring the usual nightly coterie of retired
generals, security flacks, and other cheerleaders for invasion. The network's executives
blamed the cancellation on sagging ratings. In fact, during its run Donahue's show attracted
more viewers than any other program on the network. The real reason for the pre-emptive strike
on Donahue was spelled out in an internal memo from anxious executives at NBC. Donahue, the
memo said, offered "a difficult face for NBC in a time of war. He seems to delight in
presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's
motives."
The memo warned that Donahue's show risked tarring MSNBC as an unpatriotic network, "a home
for liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every
opportunity." So, with scarcely a second thought, the honchos at MSNBC gave Donahue the boot
and hoisted the battle flag.
It's war that sells.
There's a helluva caveat, of course. Once you buy it, the merchants of war accept no
returns.
In any case withdrawal from Syria was a surprising and bold move on the Part of the Trump. You can criticizes Trump for not doing
more but before that he bahvaves as a typical neocon, or a typical Republican presidents (which are the same things). And he started
on this path just two month after inauguration bombing Syria under false pretences. So this is something
I think the reason of change is that Trump intuitively realized the voters are abandoning him in droves and the sizable faction
of his voters who voted for him because of his promises to end foreign wars iether already defected or is ready to defect. So this is
a move designed to keep them.
Notable quotes:
"... "America shouldn't be doing the fighting for every nation on earth, not being reimbursed in many cases at all. If they want us to do the fighting, they also have to pay a price," Trump said. ..."
President Trump's big announcement to pull US troops out of Syria and Afghanistan is now emerging less as a peace move, and more
a rationalization of American military power in the Middle East. In a surprise visit to US forces in Iraq this week, Trump
said he had no intention of withdrawing the troops in that country, who have been there for nearly 15 years since GW Bush invaded
back in 2003.
Hinting at private discussions with commanders in Iraq, Trump boasted that US forces would in the future launch attacks from there
into Syria if and when needed. Presumably that rapid force deployment would apply to other countries in the region, including Afghanistan.
In other words, in typical business-style transactional thinking, Trump sees the pullout from Syria and Afghanistan as a cost-cutting
exercise for US imperialism. Regarding Syria, he has bragged about Turkey being assigned, purportedly, to "finish off" terror
groups. That's Trump subcontracting out US interests.
Critics and supporters of Trump are confounded. After his Syria and Afghanistan pullout call, domestic critics and NATO allies
have accused him of walking from the alleged "fight against terrorism" and of ceding strategic ground to US adversaries Russia
and Iran.
Meanwhile, Trump's supporters have viewed his decision in more benign light, cheering the president for "sticking it to"
the deep state and military establishment, assuming he's delivering on electoral promises to end overseas wars.
However, neither view gets what is going on. Trump is not scaling back US military power; he is rationalizing it like a cost-benefit
analysis, as perhaps only a real-estate-wheeler-dealer-turned president would appreciate. Trump is not snubbing US militarism or
NATO allies, nor is he letting loose an inner peace spirit. He is as committed to projecting American military as ruthlessly and
as recklessly as any other past occupant of the White House. The difference is Trump wants to do it on the cheap.
Here's what he said to reporters on Air Force One before touching down in Iraq:
"The United States cannot continue to be the policeman of the world. It's not fair when the burden is all on us, the United
States We are spread out all over the world. We are in countries most people haven't even heard about. Frankly, it's ridiculous."
He added: "We're no longer the suckers, folks."
Laughably, Trump's griping about US forces "spread all over the world" unwittingly demonstrates the insatiable, monstrous
nature of American militarism. But Trump paints this vice as a virtue, which, he complains, Washington gets no thanks for from the
150-plus countries around the globe that its forces are present in.
As US troops greeted him in Iraq, the president made explicit how the new American militarism would henceforth operate.
"America shouldn't be doing the fighting for every nation on earth, not being reimbursed in many cases at all. If they want
us to do the fighting, they also have to pay a price," Trump said.
This reiterates a big bugbear for this president in which he views US allies and client regimes as "not pulling their weight"
in terms of military deployment. Trump has been browbeating European NATO members to cough up more on military budgets, and he has
berated the Saudis
and other Gulf Arab regimes to pay more for American interventions.
Notably, however, Trump has never questioned the largesse that US taxpayers fork out every year to Israel in the form of nearly
$4 billion in military aid. To be sure, that money is not a gift because much of it goes back to the Pentagon from sales of fighter
jets and missile systems.
The long-held notion that the US has served as the "world's policeman" is, of course, a travesty.
Since WWII, all presidents and the Washington establishment have constantly harped on, with self-righteousness, about America's
mythical role as guarantor of global security.
Dozens of illegal wars on almost every continent and millions of civilian deaths attest to the real, heinous conduct of American
militarism as a weapon to secure US corporate capitalism.
But with US economic power in historic decline amid a national debt now over $22 trillion, Washington can no longer afford its
imperialist conduct in the traditional mode of direct US military invasions and occupations.
Perhaps, it takes a cost-cutting, raw-toothed capitalist like Trump to best understand the historic predicament, even if only
superficially.
This gives away the real calculation behind his troop pullout from Syria and Afghanistan. Iraq is going to serve as a new regional
hub for force projection on a demand-and-supply basis. In addition, more of the dirty work can be contracted out to Washington's
clients like Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia, who will be buying even more US weaponry to prop the military-industrial complex.
This would explain why Trump made his hurried, unexpected visit to Iraq this week. Significantly, he
said
: "A lot of people are going to come around to my way of thinking", regarding his decision on withdrawing forces from Syria
and Afghanistan.
Since his troop pullout plan announced on December 19, there has been serious pushback from senior Pentagon figures, hawkish Republicans
and Democrats, and the anti-Trump media. The atmosphere is almost seditious against the president. Trump flying off to Iraq on Christmas
night was
reportedly his first visit to troops in an overseas combat zone since becoming president two years ago.
What Trump seemed to be doing was reassuring the Pentagon and corporate America that he is not going all soft and dovish. Not
at all. He is letting them know that he is aiming for a leaner, meaner US military power, which can save money on the number of foreign
bases by using rapid reaction forces out of places like Iraq, as well as by subcontracting operations out to regional clients.
Thus, Trump is not coming clean out of any supposed principle when he cuts back US forces overseas. He is merely applying his
knack for screwing down costs and doing things on the cheap as a capitalist tycoon overseeing US militarism.
During past decades when American capitalism was relatively robust, US politicians and media could indulge in the fantasy of their
military forces going around the world in large-scale formations to selflessly "defend freedom and democracy."
Today, US capitalism is broke. It simply can't sustain its global military empire. Enter Donald Trump with his "business solutions."
But in doing so, this president, with his cheap utilitarianism and transactional exploitative mindset, lets the cat out of the
bag. As he says, the US cannot be the world's policeman. Countries are henceforth going to have to pay for "our protection."
Inadvertently, Trump is showing up US power for what it really is: a global thug running a protection racket.
It's always been the case. Except now it's in your face. Trump is no Smedley Butler, the former Marine general who in the 1930s
condemned US militarism as a Mafia operation. This president is stupidly revealing the racket, while still thinking it is something
virtuous.
Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages.
Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor
for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For over 20 years he worked
as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Now a freelance journalist
based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation and Press TV.
dnm1136
Once again, Cunningham has hit the nail on the head. Trump mistakenly conflates fear with respect. In reality, around the world,
the US is feared but generally not respected.
My guess is that the same was true about Trump as a businessman, i.e., he was not respected, only feared due to his willingness
to pursue his "deals" by any means that "worked" for him, legal or illegal, moral or immoral, seemingly gracious or mean-spirited.
William Smith
Complaining how the US gets no thanks for its foreign intervention. Kind of like a rapist claiming he should be thanked for
"pleasuring" his victim. Precisely the same sentiment expressed by those who believe the American Indians should thank the Whites
for "civilising" them.
Phoebe S,
"Washington gets no thanks for from the 150-plus countries around the globe that its forces are present in."
That might mean they don't want you there. Just saying.
ProRussiaPole
None of these wars are working out for the US strategically. All they do is sow chaos. They seem to not be gaining anything,
and are just preventing others from gaining anything as well.
Ernie For -> ProRussiaPole
i am a huge Putin fan, so is big Don. Please change your source of info Jerome, Trump is one man against Billions of people
and dollars in corruption. He has achieved more in the USA in 2 years than all 5 previous parasites together.
Truthbetold69
It could be a change for a better direction. Time will tell. 'If you do what you've always been doing, you'll get what you've
always been getting.'
On January 8, 2018, former government advisor Edward Luttwak wrote an opinion piece for
Foreign Policy titled "It's Time to Bomb North Korea."
Luttwak's thesis is relatively straightforward. There is a government out there that may
very soon acquire nuclear-weapons capabilities, and this country cannot be trusted to
responsibly handle such a stockpile. The responsibility to protect the world from a rogue
nation cannot be argued with, and we understandably have a duty to ensure the future of
humanity.
However, there is one rogue nation that continues to hold the world ransom with its nuclear
weapons supply. It is decimating non-compliant states left, right, and center. This country
must be stopped dead in its tracks before anyone turns to the issue of North Korea.
In August of 1945, this rogue nation dropped two atomic bombs on civilian targets, not
military targets, completely obliterating between 135,000 and
300,000 Japanese civilians in just these two acts alone. Prior to this event, this country
killed even more civilians in the infamous
firebombing of Tokyo and other areas of Japan, dropping close to 500,000 cylinders of
napalm and petroleum jelly on some of Japan's most densely populated areas.
Recently, historians have become more open to the possibility that dropping the atomic bombs
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not actually necessary to end World War II. This has also been
confirmed by those who actually took part in it. As the Nation
explained:
Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, stated in a public
address at the Washington Monument two months after the bombings that 'the atomic bomb played
no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan ' Adm. William
"Bull" Halsey Jr., Commander of the US Third Fleet, stated publicly in 1946 that 'the first
atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment . It was a mistake to ever drop it . [the
scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it
A few months' prior, this rogue country's
invasion of the Japanese island of Okinawa also claimed at least one quarter of Okinawa's
population. The Okinawan people have been protesting this country's military presence ever
since. The most recent ongoing protest
has lasted well over 5,000 days in a row.
This nation's bloodlust continued well after the end of World War II. Barely half a decade
later, this country bombed North Korea into complete oblivion, destroying over 8,700 factories,
5,000 schools, 1,000 hospitals, 600,000 homes, and
eventually killing off as much as 20 percent of the country's population. As the Asia
Pacific Journal has noted, the assaulting country dropped so many bombs that they eventually
ran out of targets to hit, turning to bomb the irrigation systems, instead:
By the fall of 1952, there were no effective targets left for US planes to hit. Every
significant town, city and industrial area in North Korea had already been bombed. In the
spring of 1953, the Air Force targeted irrigation dams on the Yalu River, both to destroy the
North Korean rice crop and to pressure the Chinese, who would have to supply more food aid to
the North. Five reservoirs were hit, flooding thousands of acres of farmland, inundating
whole towns and laying waste to the essential food source for millions of North Koreans."
This was just the beginning. Having successfully destroyed the future North Korean
state, this country moved on to the rest of East Asia and Indo-China, too. As Rolling Stone's
Matt Taibbi
has explained :
We [this loose cannon of a nation] dumped 20 million gallons of toxic herbicide on Vietnam
from the air, just to make the shooting easier without all those trees, an insane plan to win
'hearts and minds' that has left about a million still disabled from defects and disease
– including about 100,000 children, even decades later, little kids with misshapen
heads, webbed hands and fused eyelids writhing on cots, our real American legacy, well out of
view, of course.
This mass murder led to the deaths of between 1.5 million and 3.8 million people,
according to the Washington Post. More bombs were dropped on Vietnam than were unleashed
during the entire
conflict in World War II . While this was going on, this same country was also
secretly bombing Laos and Cambodia, too, where there are over 80 million
unexploded bombs still killing people to this day.
This country also decided to bomb Yugoslavia ,
Panama
, and
Grenada before invading Iraq in the early 1990s. Having successfully bombed Iraqi
infrastructure, this country then punished Iraq's entire civilian population with brutal
sanctions. At the time, the U.N.
estimated that approximately 1.7 million Iraqis had died as a result, including
500,000 to 600,000 children . Some years later, a prominent medical journal attempted
to absolve the cause of this infamous history by refuting the statistics involved despite
the fact that, when interviewed during the sanctions-era, Bill Clinton's secretary of state,
Madeleine Albright, intimated that to this rogue government, the
deaths of half a million children were "worth it" as the "price" Iraq needed to pay. In other
words, whether half a million children died or not was irrelevant to this bloodthirsty nation,
which barely blinked while carrying out this murderous policy.
This almighty superpower then invaded Iraq again in 2003 and plunged the entire region
into chaos . At the end of May 2017, the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR)
released a study
concluding that the death toll from this violent nation's 2003 invasion of Iraq had led to over
one million deaths and that at least one-third of them were caused directly by the invading
force.
Not to mention this country also invaded Afghanistan prior to the invasion of Iraq (even
though the militants plaguing Afghanistan were
originally trained and financed by this warmongering nation). It then
went on to bomb Yemen, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and the
Philippines .
Libya famously
had one of the highest standards of living in the region. It had state-assisted healthcare,
education, transport, and affordable housing. It is now a lawless war-zone
rife with extremism where slaves are openly traded like commodities
amid the power vacuum created as a direct result of the 2011 invasion.
In 2017, the commander-in-chief of this violent nation took the monumental death and
destruction to a new a level by removing
the restrictions on delivering airstrikes, which resulted in thousands upon
thousands of civilian deaths. Before that, in the first six months of 2017, this country
dropped
over 20,650 bombs , a monumental increase from the year that preceded it.
Despite these statistics, all of the above conquests are mere child's play to this nation.
The real prize lies in some of the more defiant and more powerful states, which this country
has already unleashed a containment strategy upon. This country has deployed its own troops all
across the border
with Russia even though it promised in the early 1990s it
would do no such thing. It also has a specific policy of
containing Russia's close ally, China, all the while threatening China's borders with talks
of direct strikes on North Korea (again, remember it already did so in the 1950s).
This country also elected a president who not only believes it is okay to embrace this rampantly violent
militarism but who openly calls other
countries "shitholes" – the very same term that aptly describes the way this country
has treated the rest of the world for decades on end. This same president also reportedly once
asked three times in a meeting
, "If we have nuclear weapons, why don't we use them?" and shortly after proposed a policy to
remove the constraints protecting the world from his dangerous supply of advanced nuclear
weaponry.
If we have any empathy for humanity, it is clear that this country must be stopped. It
cannot continue to act like this to the detriment of the rest of the planet and the safety and
security of the rest of us. This country
openly talks about using its nuclear weapons, has used them before, and has continued to
use all manner of weapons unabated in the years since while threatening to expand the use of
these weapons to other countries.
Seriously, if North Korea seems like a threat, imagine how the rest of the world feels while
watching one country violently take on the rest of the planet single-handedly, leaving nothing
but destruction in its wake and promising nothing less than a nuclear holocaust in the years to
come.
There is only one country that has done and that continues to do the very things North Korea
is being accused of doing.
Take as much time as you need for that to resonate.
"... Now consider the notion of "anti-Semitism." Google searches for that word and its close variants reveal over 24 million hits, and over the years I'm sure I've seen that term tens of thousands of times in my books and newspapers, and heard it endlessly reported in my electronic media and entertainment. But thinking it over, I'm not sure that I can ever recall a single real-life instance I've personally encountered, nor have I heard of almost any such cases from my friends or acquaintances. Indeed, the only persons I've ever come across making such claims were individuals who bore unmistakable signs of serious psychological imbalance. When the daily newspapers are brimming with lurid tales of hideous demons walking among us and attacking people on every street corner, but you yourself have never actually seen one, you may gradually grow suspicious. ..."
"... It has also become apparent that a considerable fraction of what passes for "anti-Semitism" these days seems to stretch that term beyond all recognition. A few weeks ago an unknown 28-year-old Democratic Socialist named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez scored a stunning upset primary victory over a top House Democrat in New York City, and naturally received a blizzard of media coverage as a result. However, when it came out that she had denounced the Israeli government for its recent massacre of over 140 unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza, cries of "anti-Semite" soon appeared, and according to Google there are now over 180,000 such hits combining her name and that harsh accusatory term. Similarly, just a few days ago the New York Times ran a major story reporting that all of Britain's Jewish newspapers had issued an "unprecedented" denunciation of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, describing it as an "existential threat" to the Jewish community for the anti-Semitism it was fostering; but this apparently amounted to nothing more than its willingness to sharply criticize the Israeli government for its long mistreatment of the Palestinians. ..."
I recently published a couple of long essays, and although they primarily focused on other
matters, the subject of anti-Semitism was a strong secondary theme. In that regard, I mentioned
my shock at discovering a dozen or more years ago that several of the most self-evidently
absurd elements of anti-Semitic lunacy, which I had always dismissed without consideration,
were probably correct. It does seem likely that a significant number of traditionally-religious
Jews did indeed occasionally commit the ritual murder of
Christian children in order to use their blood in certain religious ceremonies, and also
that powerful Jewish international bankers did play a large
role in financing the establishment of Bolshevik Russia .
When one discovers that matters of such enormous moment not only apparently occurred but
that they had been successfully excluded from nearly all of our histories and media coverage
for most of the last one hundred years, the implications take some time to properly digest. If
the most extreme "anti-Semitic canards" were probably true, then surely the whole notion of
anti-Semitism warrants a careful reexamination.
All of us obtain our knowledge of the world by two different channels. Some things we
discover from our own personal experiences and the direct evidence of our senses, but most
information comes to us via external sources such as books and the media, and a crisis may
develop when we discover that these two pathways are in sharp conflict. The official media of
the old USSR used to endlessly trumpet the tremendous achievements of its collectivized
agricultural system, but when citizens noticed that there was never any meat in their shops,
"Pravda" became a watchword for "Lies" rather than "Truth."
Now consider the notion of "anti-Semitism." Google searches for that word and its close
variants reveal over 24 million hits, and over the years I'm sure I've seen that term tens of
thousands of times in my books and newspapers, and heard it endlessly reported in my electronic
media and entertainment. But thinking it over, I'm not sure that I can ever recall a single
real-life instance I've personally encountered, nor have I heard of almost any such cases from
my friends or acquaintances. Indeed, the only persons I've ever come across making such claims
were individuals who bore unmistakable signs of serious psychological imbalance. When the daily
newspapers are brimming with lurid tales of hideous demons walking among us and attacking
people on every street corner, but you yourself have never actually seen one, you may gradually
grow suspicious.
Indeed, over the years some of my own research has uncovered a sharp contrast between image
and reality. As recently as the late 1990s, leading mainstream media outlets such as The
New York Times were still denouncing a top Ivy League
school such as Princeton for the supposed anti-Semitism of its college admissions policy,
but a few years ago when I carefully investigated that issue in quantitative terms for my
lengthy Meritocracy
analysis I was very surprised to reach a polar-opposite conclusion. According to the best
available evidence, white Gentiles were over 90% less likely to be enrolled at Harvard and the
other Ivies than were Jews of similar academic performance, a truly remarkable finding. If the
situation had been reversed and Jews were 90% less likely to be found at Harvard than seemed
warranted by their test scores, surely that fact would be endlessly cited as the absolute
smoking-gun proof of horrendous anti-Semitism in present-day America.
It has also become apparent that a considerable fraction of what passes for "anti-Semitism"
these days seems to stretch that term beyond all recognition. A few weeks ago an unknown
28-year-old Democratic Socialist named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez scored a stunning upset primary
victory over a top House Democrat in New York City, and naturally received a blizzard of media
coverage as a result. However, when it came out that she had denounced the Israeli government
for its recent massacre of over 140 unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza, cries of
"anti-Semite" soon appeared, and according to Google there are now over 180,000 such hits
combining her name and that harsh accusatory term. Similarly, just a few days ago the New
York Times ran a
major story reporting that all of Britain's Jewish newspapers had issued an "unprecedented"
denunciation of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, describing it as an "existential threat" to the
Jewish community for the anti-Semitism it was fostering; but this apparently amounted to
nothing more than its willingness to sharply criticize the Israeli government for its long
mistreatment of the Palestinians.
One plausible explanation of the strange contrast between media coverage and reality might
be that anti-Semitism once did loom very large in real life, but dissipated many decades ago,
while the organizations and activists focused on detecting and combating that pernicious
problem have remained in place, generating public attention based on smaller and smaller
issues, with the zealous Jewish activists of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) representing a
perfect example of this situation. As an even more striking illustration, the Second World War
ended over seventy years ago, but what historian Norman Finkelstein has so aptly labeled "the
Holocaust Industry" has grown ever larger and more entrenched in our academic and media worlds
so that scarcely a day passes without one or more articles relating to that topic appearing in
my major morning newspapers. Given this situation, a serious exploration of the true nature of
anti-Semitism should probably avoid the mere media phantoms of today and focus on the past,
when the condition might still have been widespread in daily life.
Many observers have pointed to the aftermath of the Second World War as marking a huge
watershed in the public acceptability of anti-Semitism both in America and Europe, so perhaps a
proper appraisal of that cultural phenomenon should focus on the years before that global
conflict. However, the overwhelming role of Jews in the Bolshevik Revolution and other bloody
Communist seizures of power quite naturally made them objects of considerable fear and hatred
throughout the inter-war years, so the safest course might be to push that boundary back a
little further and confine our attention to the period prior to the outbreak of the First World
War. The pogroms in Czarist Russia, the Dreyfus Affair in France, and the lynching of Leo Frank
in the American South come to mind as some of the most famous examples from that period.
Lindemann's discussion of the often difficult relations between Russia's restive Jewish
minority and its huge Slavic majority is also quite interesting, and he provides numerous
instances in which major incidents, supposedly demonstrating the enormously strong appeal of
vicious anti-Semitism, were quite different than has been suggested by the legend. The famous
Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 was obviously the result of severe ethnic tension in that city, but
contrary to the regular accusations of later writers, there seems absolutely no evidence of
high-level government involvement, and the widespread claims of 700 dead that so horrified the
entire world were grossly exaggerated, with only 45 killed in the urban rioting. Chaim
Weizmann, the future president of Israel, later promoted the story that he himself and some
other brave Jewish souls had personally defended their people with revolvers in hand even as
they saw the mutilated bodies of 80 Jewish victims. This account was totally fictional since
Weizmann happened to have been be hundreds of miles away when the riots occurred.
Although a tendency to lie and exaggerate was hardly unique to the political partisans of
Russian Jewry, the existence of a powerful international network of Jewish journalists and
Jewish-influenced media outlets ensured that such concocted propaganda stories might receive
enormous worldwide distribution, while the truth followed far behind, if at all.
For related reasons, international outrage was often focused on the legal confinement of
most of Russia's Jews to the "Pale of Settlement," suggesting some sort of tight imprisonment;
but that area was the traditional home of the Jewish population and encompassed a landmass
almost as large as France and Spain combined. The growing impoverishment of Eastern European
Jews during that era was often assumed to be a consequence of hostile government policy, but
the obvious explanation was extraordinary Jewish fecundity, which far outstripped that of their
Slavic fellow countrymen, and quickly led them to outgrow the available spots in any of their
traditional "middleman" occupations, a situation worsened by their total disinclination to
engage in agriculture or other primary-producer activities. Jewish communities expressed horror
at the risk of losing their sons to the Czarist military draft, but this was simply the
flip-side of the full Russian citizenship they had been granted, and no different from what was
faced by their non-Jewish neighbors.
Certainly the Jews of Russia suffered greatly from widespread riots and mob attacks in the
generation prior to World War I, and these did sometimes have substantial government
encouragement, especially in the aftermath of the very heavy Jewish role in the 1905
Revolution. But we should keep in mind that a Jewish plotter had been implicated in the killing
of Czar Alexander II, and Jewish assassins had also struck down several top Russian ministers
and numerous other government officials. If the last decade or two had seen American Muslims
assassinate a sitting U.S. President, various leading Cabinet members, and a host of our other
elected and appointed officials, surely the position of Muslims in this country would have
become a very uncomfortable one.
As Lindemann candidly describes the tension between Russia's very rapidly growing Jewish
population and its governing authorities, he cannot avoid mentioning the notorious Jewish
reputation for bribery, corruption, and general dishonesty, with numerous figures of all
political backgrounds noting that the remarkable Jewish propensity to commit perjury in the
courtroom led to severe problems in the effective administration of justice. The eminent
American sociologist E.A. Ross, writing in 1913, characterized
the regular behavior of Eastern European Jews in very similar terms .
Lindemann also allocates a short chapter to discussing the 1911 Beilis Affair, in which a
Ukrainian Jew was accused of the ritual murder of a young Gentile boy, an incident that
generated a great deal of international attention and controversy. Based on the evidence
presented, the defendant seems likely to have been innocent, although the obvious lies he
repeatedly told police interrogators hardly helped foster that impression, and "the system
worked" in that he was ultimately found innocent by the jurors at his trial. However, a few
pages are also given to a much less well-known ritual murder case in late 19th century Hungary,
in which the evidence of Jewish guilt seemed far stronger, though the author hardly accepted
the possible reality of such an outlandish crime. Such reticence was quite understandable since
the publication of Ariel Toaff's remarkable volume
on the subject was still a dozen years in the future.
Lindemann subsequently expanded his examination of historical anti-Semitism into a much
broader treatment, Esau's Tears , which appeared in 1997. In this volume, he added
comparative studies of the social landscape in Germany, Britain, Italy, and several other
European countries, and demonstrated that the relationship between Jews and non-Jews varied
greatly across different locations and time periods. But although I found his analysis quite
useful and interesting, the extraordinarily harsh attacks his text provoked from some outraged
Jewish academics seemed even more intriguing.
For example, Judith Laikin Elkin opened her discussion in The American Historical
Review by describing the book as a "545-page polemic" a strange characterization of a book
so remarkably even-handed and factually-based in its scholarship. Writing in
Commentary , Robert Wistrich was even harsher, stating that merely reading the book
had been a painful experience for him, and his review seemed filled with spittle-flecked rage.
Unless these individuals had somehow gotten copies of a different book, I found their attitudes
simply astonishing.
I was not alone in such a reaction. Richard S. Levy of the University of Illinois, a noted
scholar of anti-Semitism, expressed amazement at Wistrich's seemingly irrational outburst,
while Paul Gottfried, writing in Chronicles , mildly suggested that Lindemann had
"touched raw nerves." Indeed, Gottfried's own evaluation quite reasonably criticized Lindemann
for perhaps being a little too even-handed, sometimes presenting numerous conflicting analyzes
without choosing between them. For those interested, a good discussion of the book by Alan
Steinweis, a younger scholar specializing in the same topic,
is conveniently available online .
The remarkable ferocity with which some Jewish writers attacked Lindemann's meticulous
attempt to provide an accurate history of anti-Semitism may carry more significance than merely
an exchange of angry words in low-circulation academic publications. If our mainstream media
shapes our reality, scholarly books and articles based upon them tend to set the contours of
that media coverage. And the ability of a relatively small number of agitated and energetic
Jews to police the acceptable boundaries of historical narratives may have enormous
consequences for our larger society, deterring scholars from objectively reporting historical
facts and preventing students from discovering them.
The undeniable truth is that for many centuries Jews usually constituted a wealthy and
privileged segment of the population in nearly all the European countries in which they
resided, and quite frequently they based their livelihood upon the heavy exploitation of a
downtrodden peasantry. Even without any differences in ethnicity, language, or religion, such
conditions almost invariably provoke hostility. The victory of Mao's Communist forces in China
was quickly followed by the brutal massacre of a million or more Han Chinese landlords by the
Han Chinese poor peasants who regarded them as cruel oppressors, with William Hinton's classic
Fanshen describing the unfortunate history that unfolded in one particular village.
When similar circumstances led to violent clashes in Eastern Europe between Slavs and Jews,
does it really make logical sense to employ a specialized term such as "anti-Semitism" to
describe that situation?
Furthermore, some of the material presented in Lindemann's rather innocuous text might also
lead to potentially threatening ideas. Consider, for example, the notorious Protocols of
the Learned Elders of Zion , almost certainly fictional, but hugely popular and
influential during the years following World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. The fall of so
many longstanding Gentile dynasties and their replacement by new regimes such as Soviet Russia
and Weimar Germany, which were heavily dominated by their tiny Jewish minorities, quite
naturally fed suspicions of a worldwide Jewish plot, as did the widely discussed role of Jewish
international bankers in producing those political outcomes.
Over the decades, there has been much speculation about the possible inspiration for the
Protocols , but although Lindemann makes absolutely no reference to that document, he
does provide a very intriguing possible candidate. Jewish-born British Prime Minister Benjamin
Disraeli certainly ranked as one of the most influential figures of the late 19th century, and
in his novel Coningsby , he has the character representing Lord Lionel Rothschild
boast about the existence of a vast and
secret network of powerful international Jews , who stand near the head of almost every
major nation, quietly controlling their governments from behind the scenes. If one of the
world's most politically well-connected Jews eagerly promoted such notions, was Henry Ford
really so unreasonable in doing the same?
Lindemann also notes Disraeli's focus on the extreme importance of race and racial origins,
a central aspect of traditional Jewish religious doctrine. He reasonably suggests that this
must surely have had a huge influence upon the rise of those political ideas, given that
Disraeli's public profile and stature were so much greater than the mere writers or activists
whom our history books usually place at center stage. In fact, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a
leading racial theorist, actually cited Disraeli as a key source for his ideas. Jewish
intellectuals such as Max Nordau and Cesare Lombroso are already widely recognized as leading
figures in the rise of the racial science of that era, but Disraeli's under-appreciated role
may have actually been far greater. The deep Jewish roots of European racialist movements are
hardly something that many present-day Jews would want widely known.
One of the harsh Jewish critics of Esau's Tears denounced Cambridge University
Press for even allowing the book to appear in print, and although that major work is easily
available in English, there are numerous other cases where an important but discordant version
of historical reality has been successfully blocked from publication. For decades most
Americans would have ranked Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn as among the world's greatest
literary figures, and his Gulag Archipelago alone sold over 10 million copies. But his
last work was a massive two-volume account of the tragic 200 years of shared history between
Russians and Jews, and despite its 2002 release in Russian and numerous other world languages,
there has yet to be an authorized English translation, though various partial editions have
circulated on the Internet in samizdat form.
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At one point, a full English version was briefly available for sale at Amazon.com and I
purchased it. Glancing through a few sections, the work seemed quite even-handed and innocuous
to me, but it seemed to provide a far more detailed and uncensored account than anything else
previously available, which obviously was the problem. The Bolshevik Revolution resulted in the
deaths of many tens of millions of people worldwide, and the overwhelming Jewish role in its
leadership would become more difficult to erase from historical memory if Solzhenitsyn's work
were easily available. Also, his candid discussion of the economic and political behavior of
Russian Jewry in pre-revolutionary times directly conflicted with the hagiography widely
promoted by Hollywood and the popular media. Historian Yuri Slezkine's award-winning 2004 book
The Jewish Century provided many similar facts, but his treatment was far more cursory
and his public stature not remotely the same.
Near the end of his life, Solzhenitsyn gave his political blessing to Russian President
Vladimir Putin, and Russia's leaders honored him upon his death, while his Gulag
volumes are now enshrined as mandatory reading in the standard high school curriculum of
today's overwhelmingly Christian Russia. But even as his star rose again in his own homeland,
it seems to have sharply fallen in our own country, and his trajectory may eventually relegate
him to nearly un-person status.
A couple of years after the release of Solzhenitsyn's controversial final book, an American
writer named Anne Applebaum published a thick history bearing the same title Gulag ,
and her work received enormously favorable media coverage and won her a Pulitzer Prize; I have
even heard claims that her book has been steadily replacing that earlier Gulag on many
college reading lists. But although Jews constituted a huge fraction of the top leadership of
the Soviet Gulag system during its early decades, as well as that of the dreaded NKVD which
supplied the inmates, nearly her entire focus on her own ethnic group during Soviet times is
that of victims rather than victimizers. And by a remarkable irony of fate, she shares a last
name with one of the top Bolshevik leaders, Hirsch Apfelbaum, who concealed his own ethnic
identity by calling himself Grigory Zinoviev.
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The striking decline in Solzhenitsyn's literary status in the West came just a decade or two
after an even more
precipitous collapse in the reputation of David Irving , and for much the same reason.
Irving probably ranked as the most internationally successful British historian of the last one
hundred years and a renowned scholar of World War II, but his extensive reliance on primary
source documentary evidence posed an obvious threat to the official narrative promoted by
Hollywood and wartime propaganda. When he published his magisterial Hitler's War ,
this conflict between myth and reality came into the open, and an enormous wave of attacks and
vilification was unleashed, gradually leading to his purge from respectability and eventually
even his imprisonment.
These important examples may help to explain the puzzling contrast between the behavior of
Jews in the aggregate and Jews as individuals. Observers have noticed that even fairly small
Jewish minorities may often have a major impact upon the far larger societies that host them.
But on the other hand, in my experience at least, a large majority of individual Jews do not
seem all that different in their personalities or behavior than their non-Jewish counterparts.
So how does a community whose individual mean is not so unusual generate what seems to be such
a striking difference in collective behavior? I think the answer may involve the existence of
information choke-points, and the ability of relatively small numbers of particularly zealous
and agitated Jews in influencing and controlling these.
We live our lives constantly immersed in media narratives, and these allow us to decide the
rights and wrongs of a situation. The vast majority of people, Jew and Gentile alike, are far
more likely to take strong action if they are convinced that their cause is a just one. This is
obviously the basis for war-time propaganda.
Now suppose that a relatively small number of zealous Jewish partisans are known to always
attack and denounce journalists or authors who accurately describe Jewish misbehavior. Over
time, this ongoing campaign of intimidation may cause many important facts to be left on the
cutting-room floor, or even gradually expel from mainstream respectability those writers who
refuse to conform to such pressures. Meanwhile, similar small numbers of Jewish partisans
frequently exaggerate the misdeeds committed against Jews, sometimes piling their exaggerations
upon past exaggerations already produced by a previous round of such zealots.
Eventually, these two combined trends may take a complex and possibly very mixed historical
record and transform it into a simple morality-play, with innocent Jews tremendously injured by
vicious Jew-haters. And as this morality-play becomes established it deepens the subsequent
intensity of other Jewish-activists, who redouble their demands that the media "stop vilifying
Jews" and covering up the supposed evils inflicted upon them. An unfortunate circle of
distortion following exaggeration following distortion can eventually produce a widely accepted
historical account that bears little resemblance to the reality of what actually happened.
So as a result, the vast majority of quite ordinary Jews, who would normally behave in quite
ordinary ways, are misled by this largely fictional history, and rather understandably become
greatly outraged at all the horrible things that had been done to their suffering people, some
of which are true and some of which are not, while remaining completely ignorant of the other
side of the ledger.
Furthermore, this situation is exacerbated by the common tendency of Jews to "cluster"
together, perhaps respresenting just one or two percent of the total population, but often
constituting 20% or 40% or 60% of their immediate peer-group, especially in certain
professions. Under such conditions, the ideas or emotional agitation of some Jews probably
permeates others around them, often provoking additional waves of indignation.
As a rough analogy, a small quantity of uranium is relatively inert and harmless, and
entirely so if distributed within low-density ore. But if a significant quantity of
weapons-grade uranium is sufficiently compressed, then the neutrons released by fissioning
atoms will quickly cause additional atoms to undergo fission, with the ultimate result of that
critical chain-reaction being a nuclear explosion. In similar fashion, even a highly agitated
Jew may have no negative impact, but if the collection of such agitated Jews becomes too
numerous and clusters together too closely, they may work each other into a terrible frenzy,
perhaps with disastrous consequences both for themselves and for their larger society. This is
especially true if those agitated Jews begin to dominate certain key nodes of top-level
control, such as the central political or media organs of a society.
Whereas most living organizations exist solely in physical reality, human beings also occupy
an ideational space, with the interaction of human consciousness and perceived reality playing
a major role in shaping behavior. Just as the pheromones released by mammals or insects can
drastically affect the reactions of their family members or nest-mates, the ideas secreted by
individuals or the media-emitters of a society can have an enormous impact upon their
fellows.
A cohesive, organized group generally possesses huge advantages over a teeming mass of
atomized individuals, just as a Macedonian Phalanx could easily defeat a vastly larger body of
disorganized infantry. Many years ago, on some website somewhere I came across a very
insightful comment regarding the obvious connection between "anti-Semitism" and "racism," which
our mainstream media organs identify as two of the world's greatest evils. Under this analysis,
"anti-Semitism" represents the tendency to criticize or resist Jewish social cohesion, while
"racism" represents the attempt of white Gentiles to maintain a similar social cohesion of
their own. To the extent that the ideological emanations from our centralized media organs
serve to strengthen and protect Jewish cohesion while attacking and dissolving any similar
cohesion on the part of their Gentile counterparts, the former will obviously gain enormous
advantages in resource-competition against the latter.
Religion obviously constitutes an important unifying factor in human social groups and we
cannot ignore the role of Judaism in this regard. Traditional Jewish
religious doctrine seems to consider Jews as being in a state of permanent hostility with all
non-Jews , and the use of dishonest propaganda is an almost inevitable aspect of such
conflict. Furthermore, since Jews have invariably been a small political minority, maintaining
such controversial tenets required the employment of a massive framework of subterfuge and
dissimulation in order to conceal their nature from the larger society surrounding them. It has
often been said that truth is the first casualty in war, and surely the cultural influences of
over a thousand years of such intense religious hostility may continue to quietly influence the
thinking of many modern Jews, even those who have largely abandoned their religious
beliefs.
The notorious Jewish tendency to shamelessly lie or wildly exaggerate has sometimes had
horrifying human consequences. I very recently discovered a fascinating passage in Peter
Moreira's 2014 book The Jew Who Defeated Hitler: Henry Morgenthau Jr., FDR, and How We Won the War ,
focused on the important political role of that powerful Secretary of the Treasury.
A turning point in Henry Morgenthau Jr.'s relationship with the Jewish community came in
November 1942, when Rabbi Stephen Wise came to the corner office to tell the secretary what
was happening in Europe. Morgenthau knew of the millions of deaths and the lampshades made
from victims' skin, and he asked Wise not to go into excessive details. But Wise went on to
tell of the barbarity of the Nazis, how they were making soap out of Jewish flesh.
Morgenthau, turning paler, implored him, "Please, Stephen, don't give me the gory details."
Wise went on with his list of horrors and Morgenthau repeated his plea over and over again.
Henrietta Klotz was afraid her boss would keel over. Morgenthau later said the meeting
changed his life.
Intelligence agencies, once created, has their own development dynamics and tend to escape from the control of
civilians and in turn control them. Such an interesting dynamics. In any case, the intelligence agencies and first of all top
brass of those agencies constitute the the core of the "deep state". Unlike civiliant emplorres they are protected by the veil of
secrecy and has access to large funds. Bush the elder was probably the first deep state creature who became the president of the
USA, but "special relationship" of Obama and Brennan is also not a secret.
Another problem is that secrecy and access to surveillance, Which gives intelligence agencies the ability to blackmail politicians.
Availability of unaccounted financial
resources make them real kingmakers. In a sense, as soon as such agencies were created the tail started waging the dog.
Notable quotes:
"... Serving under nine presidents, from Calvin Coolidge to Richard Nixon, the FBI was turned into a "Gestapo by Hoover whose modus operandi was blackmail". That's how President Harry Truman (1943-53) reportedly characterized Hoover's bureau. How else do you think he survived for so long – five decades – as the nation's top law enforcer? ..."
"... One of Hoover's mainstay sources is strongly believed to be Mafia crime bosses who had lots of dirt on politicians, from bribe-taking to vote-rigging, to illicit sexual affairs. It is suspected that the Mafia had their own dossier of images on Hoover in a compromising homosexual tryst which, in turn, kept him under their thumb. ..."
"... JFK was particularly wide open to blackmail owing to his rampant promiscuity and extra-marital liaisons, including with screen idol Marilyn Monroe. Kennedy more than once confided to his aides that "the bastards" had him nailed. It was for this reason that he made the thuggish Texan Senator Lyndon B Johnson his vice president even though he detested LBJ. Hoover and Johnson were longtime associates and the former no doubt pulled a favor to get LBJ into the White House. ..."
"... However, Hoover's blackmail on JFK was not enough to curtail his defiance of rabidly anti-communist Cold War politics. Against the hostility of the Pentagon, CIA and FBI, Kennedy pursued a courageous policy of detente with the Soviet Union and Cuba. Such a policy no doubt led to his assassination by the Deep State in Dallas on November 22, 1963. There is ample evidence that Hoover and Johnson, who became the new president, then colluded with the Deep State assassins to cover up the assassination as the act of lone nut Lee Harvey Oswald – a cover-up that persists to this day. ..."
"... But Hoover and Johnson got their revenge by subsequently letting Nixon know that there was classified information on him – thanks to FBI wiretaps. The specter of incrimination is possibly a factor in Nixon becoming increasingly paranoid during this presidency, culminating in the ignominy of the Watergate scandal that ended his career. ..."
"... Hoover certainly was the devious architect of a malign Deep State machine. But he was not alone. He instilled a culture and legacy that pervades the top echelons of the bureau. And not just the FBI. The early Cold War years saw the formation of the CIA and the NSA under the Machiavellian guidance of men like Allen Dulles and Richard Helms and a host of others ..."
No other individual in modern US history has a more sinister legacy than John Edgar Hoover,
the founder and lifetime director of the FBI. He founded the bureau in 1924 and was its
director until his death in 1972 at the age of 77.
Serving under nine presidents, from Calvin Coolidge to Richard Nixon, the FBI was turned
into a "Gestapo by Hoover whose modus operandi was blackmail". That's how President Harry
Truman (1943-53) reportedly
characterized Hoover's bureau. How else do you think he survived for so long – five
decades – as the nation's top law enforcer?
J Edgar Hoover and his henchmen kept files on thousands of politicians, judges, journalists
and other public figures, according to
biographer Anthony Summers. Hoover ruthlessly used those files on the secret and often sordid
private lives of senior public figures to control their career conduct and official decisions
so as to serve his interests.
And Hoover's interests were of a rightwing, anti-communist, racist bigot.
Ironically, his own suppressed homosexuality also manifested in witch-hunts against
homosexuals in public life.
It was Hoover's secret files that largely informed the McCarthyite anti-communist
inquisitions of the 1950s, whose baleful legacy on American democracy, foreign policy and
freedom of expression continues to this day.
One of Hoover's mainstay sources is strongly believed to be Mafia crime bosses who had lots
of dirt on politicians, from bribe-taking to vote-rigging, to illicit sexual affairs. It is
suspected that the Mafia had their own dossier of images on Hoover in a compromising homosexual
tryst which, in turn, kept him under their thumb.
Absurdly, the FBI chief maintained that there was "no such thing as the Mafia" in public
statements.
Two notorious cases of how FBI wiretapping worked under Hoover can be seen in the
presidencies of John F Kennedy (1961-63) and Richard Nixon (1969-74).
As recounted by Laurent Guyénot in his 2013 book , 'JFK to 9/11: 50
Years of Deep State', Hoover made a point of letting each new president know of compromising
information he had on them. It wouldn't be brandished overtly as blackmail; the president would
be briefed subtly, "Sir, if someone were to have copies of this it would be damaging to your
career". Enough said.
JFK was particularly wide open to blackmail owing to his rampant promiscuity and
extra-marital liaisons, including with screen idol Marilyn Monroe. Kennedy more than once
confided to his aides that "the bastards" had him nailed. It was for this reason that he made
the thuggish Texan Senator Lyndon B Johnson his vice president even though he detested LBJ.
Hoover and Johnson were longtime associates and the former no doubt pulled a favor to get LBJ
into the White House.
However, Hoover's blackmail on JFK was not enough to curtail his defiance of rabidly
anti-communist Cold War politics. Against the hostility of the Pentagon, CIA and FBI, Kennedy
pursued a courageous policy of detente with the Soviet Union and Cuba. Such a policy no doubt
led to his assassination by the Deep State in Dallas on November 22, 1963. There is ample
evidence that Hoover and Johnson, who became the new president, then colluded with the Deep
State assassins to cover up the assassination as the act of lone nut Lee Harvey Oswald –
a cover-up that persists to this day.
As for Richard Nixon, it is believed that "Tricky Dicky" engaged in secret communications
with the US-backed South Vietnamese regime on the cusp of the presidential elections in 1968.
Nixon promised the South Vietnamese stronger military support if they held off entering peace
talks with communist North Vietnam, which incumbent President Johnson was trying to organize.
LBJ wanted to claim a peace process was underway in order to boost the election chances of his
vice president Hubert Humphrey.
Nixon's scheming prevailed. The Vietnam peace gambit was scuttled, the Vietnam war raged on,
and so the Democrat candidate lost. Nixon finally got into the White House, which he had long
coveted from the time he lost out to JFK back in 1960.
But Hoover and Johnson got their revenge by subsequently letting Nixon know that there was
classified information on him – thanks to FBI wiretaps. The specter of incrimination is
possibly a factor in Nixon becoming increasingly paranoid during this presidency, culminating
in the ignominy of the Watergate scandal that ended his career.
These are but only two examples of how Deep State politics works in controlling and
subverting American democracy. The notion that lawmakers and presidents are free to serve the
people is a quaintly naive one. For the US media to pretend otherwise, and to hail the FBI as
some kind of benign bastion of justice, while also deprecating claims of "Deep State" intrusion
as "conspiracy theory", is either impossibly ignorant of history – or a sign of the
media's own compromised complicity.
Nonetheless, to blame this culture of institutionalized blackmail and corruption on one
individual – J Edgar Hoover – is not fair either.
Hoover certainly was the devious architect of a malign Deep State machine. But he was not
alone. He instilled a culture and legacy that pervades the top echelons of the bureau. And not
just the FBI. The early Cold War years saw the formation of the CIA and the NSA under the
Machiavellian guidance of men like Allen Dulles and Richard Helms and a host of others.
Once formed, the Deep State – as an alternate, unaccountable, unelected government
– does not surrender its immense power willingly. It has learnt to hold on to its power
through blackmail, media control, incitement of wars, and, even ultimately, assassination of
American dissenters.
The illegal tapping of private communications is an oxygen supply for the depredations of
the American Deep State.
Thinking that such agencies are not actively warping and working the electoral system to fix
the figurehead in the White House is a dangerous delusion.
So too are claims that American democracy is being "influenced" by malign Russian enemies,
as the US intelligence chiefs once again
chorused in front of the Senate this past week. The consummate irony of it!
The real "influence campaigns" corrupting American democracy are those of the "All-American"
agencies who claim to be law enforcers and defenders of national security.
US citizens would do well to refresh on the untold history of their country to appreciate
how they are being manipulated.
We might even surmise that a good number of citizens are already aware, if only vaguely, of
the elite corruption – and that is why Washington DC is viewed with increasing contempt
by the people.
You could help yourself by learning the real history ..I suggest the foremost historian on
the subject Thomas Thompson and his ' History of Arabia'. Jerusalem was not founded by Jews,
i.e. adherents of the Jewish religion. It was founded between 3000 BCE and 2600 BCE by a West
Semitic people or possibly the Canaanites, the common ancestors of Palestinians, Lebanese,
many Syrians and Jordanians, and many Jews. But when it was founded Jews did not
exist.
Jerusalem was founded in honor of the ancient god Shalem. It does not mean City of
Peace but rather 'built-up place of Shalem." The "Jewish people" were not building Jerusalem
3000 years ago, i.e. 1000 BCE. First of all, it is not clear when exactly Judaism as a
religion centered on the worship of the one God took firm form. It appears to have been a
late development since no evidence of worship of anything but ordinary Canaanite deities has
been found in archeological sites through 1000 BCE. There was no invasion of geographical
Palestine from Egypt by former slaves in the 1200s BCE. The pyramids had been built much
earlier and had not used slave labor. The chronicle of the events of the reign of Ramses II
on the wall in Luxor does not know about any major slave revolts or flights by same into the
Sinai peninsula. Egyptian sources never heard of Moses or the 10 plagues & etc. Jews and
Judaism emerged from a certain social class of Canaanites over a period of centuries inside
Palestine. Jerusalem not only was not being built by the likely then non-existent "Jewish
people" in 1000 BCE, but Jerusalem probably was not even inhabited at that point in history.
Jerusalem appears to have been abandoned between 1000 BCE and 900 BCE, the traditional dates
for the united kingdom under David and Solomon. So Jerusalem was not 'the city of David,'
since there was no city when he is said to have lived. No sign of magnificent palaces or
great states has been found in the archeology of this period, and the Assyrian tablets, which
recorded even minor events throughout the Middle East, such as the actions of Arab queens,
don't know about any great kingdom of David and Solomon in geographical Palestine. Since
archeology does not show the existence of a Jewish kingdom or kingdoms in the so-called First
Temple Period, it is not clear when exactly the Jewish people would have ruled Jerusalem
except for the Hasmonean Kingdom. The Assyrians conquered Jerusalem in 722. The Babylonians
took it in 597 and ruled it until they were themselves conquered in 539 BCE by the
Achaemenids of ancient Iran, who ruled Jerusalem until Alexander the Great took the Levant in
the 330s BCE. Alexander's descendants, the Ptolemies ruled Jerusalem until 198 when
Alexander's other descendants, the Seleucids, took the city. With the Maccabean Revolt in 168
BCE, the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom did rule Jerusalem until 37 BCE, though Antigonus II
Mattathias, the last Hasmonean, only took over Jerusalem with the help of the Parthian
dynasty in 40 BCE. Herod ruled 37 BCE until the Romans conquered what they called Palestine
in 6 CE (CE= 'Common Era' or what Christians call AD). The Romans and then the Eastern Roman
Empire of Byzantium ruled Jerusalem from 6 CE until 614 CE when the Iranian Sasanian Empire
Conquered it, ruling until 629 CE when the Byzantines took it back.
A. The Muslims, who ruled it and built it over 1191 years.
B. The Egyptians, who ruled it as a vassal state for several hundred years in the second
millennium BCE.
C. The Italians, who ruled it about 444 years until the fall of the Roman Empire in 450
CE.
D. The Iranians, who ruled it for 205 years under the Achaemenids, for three years under the
Parthians (insofar as the last Hasmonean was actually their vassal), and for 15 years under
the Sasanids.
E. The Greeks, who ruled it for over 160 years if we count the Ptolemys and Seleucids as
Greek. If we count them as Egyptians and Syrians, that would increase the Egyptian claim and
introduce a Syrian one.
F. The successor states to the Byzantines, which could be either Greece or Turkey, who ruled
it 188 years, though if we consider the heir to be Greece and add in the time the Hellenistic
Greek dynasties ruled it, that would give Greece nearly 350 years as ruler of Jerusalem.
G. There is an Iraqi claim to Jerusalem based on the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, as
well as perhaps the rule of the Ayyubids (Saladin's dynasty), who were Kurds from Iraq.
I understand what you are saying, Jilles, but let's be accurate, shall we?
The Jews have ZERO right to "return" to Palestine one cannot go back to a place one never
left in the first place.
The story that the Romans expelled the Jews from Palestine 2000 years ago is FALSE.
See Israeli historian Shlomo Sand( the invention of the Jewish people).
At any rate, even had the story been true – and it is NOT – the notion of
modern Jews laying claim to the land 2000 years later is truly bizarre.
In short, today's Palestinians and their ancestors have been living continuously between
the River and the Sea for about 9,000 years."
Exactly.
In the preface of his book "Ten myths about Israel", Israeli historian Ilan Pappe,
writes:
Were the Jews indeed the original inhabitants of Palestine who deserved to be
supported in every way possible in their "return" to their "homeland"? The myth insists
that the Jews who arrived in 1882 were the descendants of the Jews expelled by the Romans
around 70 CE. The counterargument questions this genealogical connection. Quite a hefty
scholarly effort has shown that the Jews of Roman Palestine remained on the land and were
first converted to Christianity and then to Islam. Who these Jews were is still an open
question -- maybe the Khazars who converted to Judaism in the ninth century; or maybe the
mixture of races across a millennium precludes any answer to such a question.
Junk author, junk book of the butcher of Yugoslavia who would be hanged with Bill clinton by
Nuremberg Tribunal for crimes against peace. Albright is not bright at all. she a female bully
and that shows.
Mostly projection. And this arrogant warmonger like to exercise in Russophobia (which was the
main part of the USSR which saved the world fro fascism, sacrificing around 20 million people)
This book is book of denial of genocide against Iraqis and Serbian population where bombing with
uranium enriched bombs doubled cancer cases.If you can pass over those facts that this book is
for you.
Like Robert Kagan and other neocons Albright is waiving authoritarism dead chicken again and
again. that's silly and disingenuous. authoritarism is a method of Governance used in military.
It is not an ideology. Fascism is an ideology, a flavor of far right nationalism. Kind of
"enhanced" by some socialist ideas far right nationalism.
The view of fascism without economic circumstances that create fascism, and first of
immiseration of middle and working class and high level of unemployment is a primitive
ahistorical view. Fascism is the ultimate capitalist statism acting simultaneously as the civil
religion for the population also enforced by the power of the state. It has a lot of common with
neoliberalism, that's why neoliberalism is sometimes called "inverted totalitarism".
In reality fascism while remaining the dictatorship of capitalists for capitalist and the
national part of financial oligarchy, it like neoliberalism directed against working class
fascism comes to power on the populist slogans of righting wrong by previous regime and kicking
foreign capitalists and national compradors (which in Germany turned to be mostly Jewish)
out.
It comes to power under the slogans of stopping the distribution of wealth up and elimination
of the class of reinters -- all citizens should earn income, not get it from bond and other
investments (often in reality doing completely the opposite).
While intrinsically connected and financed by a sizable part of national elite which often
consist of far right military leadership, a part of financial oligarchy and large part of lower
middle class (small properties) is is a protest movement which want to revenge for the
humiliation and prefer military style organization of the society to democracy as more potent
weapon to achieve this goal.
Like any far right movement the rise of fascism and neo-fascism is a sign of internal problem
within a given society, often a threat to the state or social order.
Still another noted that Fascism is often linked to people who are part of a distinct ethnic
or racial group, who are under economic stress, and who feel that they are being denied rewards
to which they are entitled. "It's not so much what people have." she said, "but what they think
they should have -- and what they fear." Fear is why Fascism's emotional reach can extend to
all levels of society. No political movement can flourish without popular support, but Fascism
is as dependent on the wealthy and powerful as it is on the man or woman in the street -- on
those who have much to lose and those who have nothing at all.
This insight made us think that Fascism should perhaps be viewed less as a political
ideology than as a means for seizing and holding power. For example, Italy in the 1920s
included self-described Fascists of the left (who advocated a dictatorship of the
dispossessed), of the right (who argued for an authoritarian corporatist state), and of the
center (who sought a return to absolute monarchy). The German National Socialist Party (the
Nazis) originally came together ar ound a list of demands that ca- tered to anti-Semites,
anti-immigrants, and anti-capitalists but also advocated for higher old-age pensions, more
educational op- portunities for the poor, an end to child labor, and improved ma- ternal health
care. The Nazis were racists and, in their own minds, reformers at the same time.
If Fascism concerns itself less with specific policies than with finding a pathway to power,
what about the tactics of lead- ership? My students remarked that the Fascist chiefs we remem-
ber best were charismatic. Through one method or another, each established an emotional link to
the crowd and, like the central figure in a cult, brought deep and often ugly feelings to the
sur- face. This is how the tentacles of Fascism spread inside a democ- racy. Unlike a monarchy
or a military dictatorship imposed on society from above. Fascism draws energy from men and
women who are upset because of a lost war, a lost job, a memory of hu- miliation, or a sense
that their country is in steep decline. The more painful the grounds for resentment, the easier
it is for a Fascist leader to gam followers by dangling the prospect of re- newal or by vowing
to take back what has been stolen.
Like the mobilizers of more benign movements, these secular evangelists exploit the
near-universal human desire to be part of a meaningful quest. The more gifted among them have
an apti- tude for spectacle -- for orchestrating mass gatherings complete with martial music,
incendiary rhetoric, loud cheers, and arm-
lifting salutes. To loyalists, they offer the prize of membership in a club from which
others, often the objects of ridicule, are kept out. To build fervor, Fascists tend to be
aggressive, militaristic, and -- when circumstances allow -- expansionist. To secure the
future, they turn schools into seminaries for true believers, striv- ing to produce "new men"
and "new women" who will obey without question or pause. And, as one of my students observed,
"a Fascist who launches his career by being voted into office will have a claim to legitimacy
that others do not."
After climbing into a position of power, what comes next: How does a Fascist consolidate
authority? Here several students piped up: "By controlling information." Added another, "And
that's one reason we have so much cause to worry today." Most of us have thought of the
technological revolution primarily as a means for people from different walks of life to
connect with one another, trade ideas, and develop a keener understanding of why men and women
act as they do -- in other words, to sharpen our perceptions of truth. That's still the case,
but now we are not so sure. There is a troubling "Big Brother" angle because of the mountain of
personal data being uploaded into social media. If an advertiser can use that information to
home in on a consumer because of his or her individual interests, what's to stop a Fascist
government from doing the same? "Suppose I go to a demonstra- tion like the Women's March,"
said a student, "and post a photo
on social media. My name gets added to a list and that list can end up anywhere. How do we
protect ourselves against that?"
Even more disturbing is the ability shown by rogue regimes and their agents to spread lies
on phony websites and Facebook. Further, technology has made it possible for extremist
organiza- tions to construct echo chambers of support for conspiracy theo- ries, false
narratives, and ignorant views on religion and race. This is the first rule of deception:
repeated often enough, almost any statement, story, or smear can start to sound plausible. The
Internet should be an ally of freedom and a gateway to knowledge; in some cases, it is
neither.
Historian Robert Paxton begins one of his books by assert- ing: "Fascism was the major
political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain." Over the
years, he and other scholars have developed lists of the many moving parts that Fascism
entails. Toward the end of our discussion, my class sought to articulate a comparable list.
Fascism, most of the students agreed, is an extreme form of authoritarian rule. Citizens are
required to do exactly what lead- ers say they must do, nothing more, nothing less. The
doctrine is linked to rabid nationalism. It also turns the traditional social contract upside
down. Instead of citizens giving power to the state in exchange for the protection of their
rights, power begins with the leader, and the people have no rights. Under Fascism,
the mission of citizens is to serve; the government's job is to rule.
When one talks about this subject, confusion often arises about the difference between
Fascism and such related concepts as totalitarianism, dictatorship, despotism, tyranny,
autocracy, and so on. As an academic, I might be tempted to wander into that thicket, but as a
former diplomat, I am primarily concerned with actions, not labels. To my mind, a Fascist is
someone who identifies strongly with and claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is
unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use whatever means are necessary --
including violence -- to achieve his or her goals. In that conception, a Fascist will likely be
a tyrant, but a tyrant need not be a Fascist.
Often the difference can be seen in who is trusted with the guns. In seventeenth-century
Europe, when Catholic aristocrats did battle with Protestant aristocrats, they fought over
scripture but agreed not to distribute weapons to their peasants, thinking it safer to wage war
with mercenary armies. Modern dictators also tend to be wary of their citizens, which is why
they create royal guards and other elite security units to ensure their personal safe- ty. A
Fascist, however, expects the crowd to have his back. Where kings try to settle people down,
Fascists stir them up so that when the fighting begins, their foot soldiers have the will and
the firepower to strike first.
Hypocrisy at its worst from a lady who advocated hawkish foreign policy which included the
most sustained bombing campaign since Vietnam, when, in 1998, Clinton began almost daily
attacks on Iraq in the so-called no-fly zones, and made so-called regime change in Iraq
official U.S. policy.
In May of 1996, 60 Minutes aired an interview with Madeleine Albright, who at the time was
Clinton's U.N. ambassador. Correspondent Leslie Stahl said to Albright, in connection with
the Clinton administration presiding over the most devastating regime of sanctions in history
that the U.N. estimated took the lives of as many as a million Iraqis, the vast majority of
them children. , "We have heard that a half-million children have died. I mean, that's more
children than died in Hiroshima. And -- and, you know, is the price worth it?"
Madeleine Albright replied, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think
the price is worth it.
While I found much of the story-telling in "Fascism" engaging, I come away expecting much
more of one of our nation's pre-eminent senior diplomats . In a nutshell, she has devoted a
whole volume to describing the ascent of intolerant fascism and its many faces, but punted on
the question "How should we thwart fascism going forward?"
Even that question leaves me a bit unsatisfied, since it is couched in double-negative
syntax. The thing there is an appetite for, among the readers of this book who are looking
for more than hand-wringing about neofascism, is a unifying title or phrase which captures in
single-positive syntax that which Albright prefers over fascism. What would that be? And, how
do we pursue it, nurture it, spread it and secure it going forward? What is it?
I think Albright would perhaps be willing to rally around "Good Government" as the theme
her book skirts tangentially from the dark periphery of fascistic government. "Virtuous
Government"? "Effective Government"? "Responsive Government"?
People concerned about neofascism want to know what we should be doing right now to avoid
getting sidetracked into a dark alley of future history comparable to the Nazi brown shirt or
Mussolini black shirt epochs. Does Albright present a comprehensive enough understanding of
fascism to instruct on how best to avoid it? Or, is this just another hand-wringing exercise,
a la "you'll know it when you see it", with a proactive superficiality stuck at the level of
pejorative labelling of current styles of government and national leaders? If all you can say
is what you don't want, then the challenge of threading the political future of the US is
left unruddered. To make an analogy to driving a car, if you don't know your destination, and
only can get navigational prompts such as "don't turn here" or "don't go down that street",
then what are the chances of arriving at a purposive destination?
The other part of this book I find off-putting is that Albright, though having served as
Secretary of State, never talks about the heavy burden of responsibility that falls on a head
of state. She doesn't seem to empathize at all with the challenge of top leadership. Her
perspective is that of the detached critic. For instance, in discussing President Duterte of
the Philippines, she fails to paint the dire situation under which he rose to national
leadership responsibility: Islamic separatists having violently taken over the entire city of
Marawi, nor the ubiquitous spread of drug cartel power to the level where control over law
enforcement was already ceded to the gangs in many places...entire islands and city
neighborhoods run by mafia organizations. It's easy to sit back and criticize Duterte's
unleashing of vigilante justice -- What was Mrs. Albright's better alternative to regain
ground from vicious, well-armed criminal organizations? The distancing from leadership
responsibility makes Albright's treatment of the Philippines twin crises of gang-rule and
Islamist revolutionaries seem like so much academic navel-gazing....OK for an undergrad
course at Georgetown maybe, but unworthy of someone who served in a position of high
responsibility. Duterte is liked in the Philippines. What he did snapped back the power of
the cartels, and returned a deserved sense of security to average Philippinos (at least those
not involved with narcotics). Is that not good government, given the horrendous circumstances
Duterte came up to deal with? What lack of responsibility in former Philippine leadership
allowed things to get so out of control? Is it possible that Democrats and liberals are
afraid to be tough, when toughness is what is needed? I'd much rather read an account from an
average Philippino about the positive impacts of the vigilante campaign, than listen of
Madame Secretary sermonizing out of context about Duterte. OK, he's not your idea of a nice
guy. Would you rather sit back, prattle on about the rule of law and due process while
Islamic terrorists wrest control over where you live? Would you prefer the leadership of a
drug cartel boss to Duterte?
My critique is offered in a constructive manner. I would certainly encourage Albright (or
anyone!) to write a book in a positive voice about what it's going to take to have good
national government in the US going forward, and to help spread such abundance globally. I
would define "good" as the capability to make consistently good policy decisions, ones that
continue to look good in hindsight, 10, 20 or 30 years later. What does that take?
I would submit that the essential "preserving democracy" process component is having a
population that is adequately prepared for collaborative problem-solving. Some understanding
of history is helpful, but it's simply not enough. Much more essential is for every young
person to experience team problem-solving, in both its cooperative and competitive aspects.
Every young person needs to experience a team leadership role, and to appreciate what it
takes from leaders to forge constructive design from competing ideas and champions. Only
after serving as a referee will a young person understand the limits to "passion" that
individual contributors should bring to the party. Only after moderating and herding cats
will a young person know how to interact productively with leaders and other contributors.
Much of the skill is counter-instinctual. It's knowing how to express ideas...how to field
criticism....how to nudge people along in the desired direction...and how to avoid ad-hominem
attacks, exaggerations, accusations and speculative grievances. It's learning how to manage
conflict productively toward excellence. Way too few of our young people are learning these
skills, and way too few of our journalists know how to play a constructive role in managing
communications toward successful complex problem-solving. Albright's claim that a
journalist's job is primarily to "hold leaders accountable" really betrays an absolving of
responsibility for the media as a partner in good government -- it doesn't say whether the
media are active players on the problem-solving team (which they have to be for success), or
mere spectators with no responsibility for the outcome. If the latter, then journalism
becomes an irritant, picking at the scabs over and over, but without any forward progress.
When the media takes up a stance as an "opponent" of leadership, you end up with poor
problem-solving results....the system is fighting itself instead of making forward
progress.
"Fascism" doesn't do nearly enough to promote the teaching of practical civics 101 skills,
not just to the kids going into public administration, but to everyone. For, it is in the
norms of civility, their ability to be practiced, and their defense against excesses, that
fascism (e.g., Antifa) is kept at bay.
Everyone in a democracy has to know the basics:
• when entering a disagreement, don't personalize it
• never demonize an opponent
• keep a focus on the goal of agreement and moving forward
• never tell another person what they think, but ask (non-rhetorically) what they think
then be prepared to listen and absorb
• do not speak untruths or exaggerate to make an argument
• do not speculate grievance
• understand truth gathering as a process; detect when certainty is being bluffed;
question sources
• recognize impasse and unproductive argumentation and STOP IT
• know how to introduce a referee or moderator to regain productive collaboration
• avoid ad hominem attacks
• don't take things personally that wrankle you;
• give the benefit of the doubt in an ambiguous situation
• don't jump to conclusions
• don't reward theatrical manipulation
These basics of collaborative problem-solving are the guts of a "liberal democracy" that
can face down the most complex challenges and dilemmas.
I gave the book 3 stars for the great story-telling, and Albright has been part of a great
story of late 20th century history. If she would have told us how to prevent fascism going
forward, and how to roll it back in "hard case" countries like North Korea and Sudan, I would
have given her a 5. I'm not that interested in picking apart the failure cases of
history...they teach mostly negative exemplars. Much rather I would like to read about
positive exemplars of great national government -- "great" defined by popular acclaim, by the
actual ones governed. Where are we seeing that today? Canada? Australia? Interestingly, both
of these positive exemplars have strict immigration policies.
Is it possible that Albright is just unable, by virtue of her narrow escape from Communist
Czechoslovakia and acceptance in NYC as a transplant, to see that an optimum immigration
policy in the US, something like Canada's or Australia's, is not the looming face of fascism,
but rather a move to keep it safely in its corner in coming decades? At least, she admits to
her being biased by her life story.
That suggests her views on refugees and illegal immigrants as deserving of unlimited
rights to migrate into the US might be the kind of cloaked extremism that she is warning us
about.
Albright's book is a comprehensive look at recent history regarding the rise and fall of
fascist leaders; as well as detailing leaders in nations that are starting to mimic fascist
ideals. Instead of a neat definition, she uses examples to bolster her thesis of what are
essential aspects of fascism. Albright dedicates each section of the book to a leader or
regime that enforces fascist values and conveys this to the reader through historical events
and exposition while also peppering in details of her time as Secretary of State. The climax
(and 'warning'), comes at the end, where Albright applies what she has been discussing to the
current state of affairs in the US and abroad.
Overall, I would characterize this as an enjoyable and relatively easy read. I think the
biggest strength of this book is how Albright uses history, previous examples of leaders and
regimes, to demonstrate what fascism looks like and contributing factors on a national and
individual level. I appreciated that she lets these examples speak for themselves of the
dangers and subtleties of a fascist society, which made the book more fascinating and less of
a textbook. Her brief descriptions of her time as Secretary of State were intriguing and made
me more interested in her first book, 'Madame Secretary'. The book does seem a bit slow as it
is not until the end that Albright blatantly reveals the relevance of all of the history
relayed in the first couple hundred pages. The last few chapters are dedicated to the reveal:
the Trump administration and how it has affected global politics. Although, she never
outright calls Trump a fascist, instead letting the reader decide based on his decisions and
what you have read in the book leading up to this point, her stance is quite clear by the
end. I was surprised at what I shared politically with Albright, mainly in immigration and a
belief of empathy and understanding for others. However, I got a slight sense of
anti-secularism in the form of a disdain for those who do not subscribe to an Abrahamic
religion and she seemed to hint at this being partly an opening to fascism.
I also could have done without the both-sides-ism she would occasionally push, which seems
to be a tactic used to encourage people to 'unite against Trump'. These are small annoyances
I had with the book, my main critique is the view Albright takes on democracy. If anything,
the book should have been called "Democracy: the Answer" because that is the most consistent
stance Albright takes throughout. She seems to overlook many of the atrocities the US and
other nations have committed in the name of democracy and the negative consequences of
capitalism, instead, justifying negative actions with the excuse of 'it is for democracy and
everyone wants that' and criticizing those who criticize capitalism.
She does not do a good job of conveying the difference between a communist country like
Russia and a socialist country like those found in Scandinavia and seems okay with the idea
of the reader lumping them all together in a poor light. That being said, I would still
recommend this book for anyone's TBR as the message is essential for today, that the current
world of political affairs is, at least somewhat, teetering on a precipice and we are in need
of as many strong leaders as possible who are willing to uphold democratic ideals on the
world stage and mindful constituents who will vote them in.
The book is very well written, easy to read, and follows a pretty standard formula making
it accessible to the average reader. However, it suffers immensely from, what I suspect are,
deeply ingrained political biases from the author.
Whilst I don't dispute the criteria the author applies in defining fascism, or the targets
she cites as examples, the first bias creeps in here when one realises the examples chosen
are traditional easy targets for the US (with the exception of Turkey). The same criteria
would define a country like Singapore perfectly as fascist, yet the country (or Malaysia)
does not receive a mention in the book.
Further, it grossly glosses over what Ms. Albright terms facist traits from the US
governments of the past. If the author is to be believed, the CIA is holier than thou, never
intervened anywhere or did anything that wasn't with the best interests of democracy at
heart, and American foreign policy has always existed to build friendships and help out their
buddies. To someone ingrained in this rhetoric for years I am sure this is an easy pill to
swallow, but to the rest of the world it makes a number of assertions in the book come across
as incredibly naive. out of 5 stars
Trite and opaque
We went with my husband to the presentation of this book at UPenn with Albright before it
came out and Madeleine's spunk, wit and just glorious brightness almost blinded me. This is a
2.5 star book, because 81 year old author does not really tell you all there is to tell when
she opens up on a subject in any particular chapter, especially if it concerns current US
interest.
Lets start from the beginning of the book. What really stood out, the missing 3rd Germany
ally, Japan and its emperor. Hirohito (1901-1989) was emperor of Japan from 1926 until his
death in 1989. He took over at a time of rising democratic sentiment, but his country soon
turned toward ultra-nationalism and militarism. During World War II (1939-45), Japan attacked
nearly all of its Asian neighbors, allied itself with Nazi Germany and launched a surprise
assault on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, forcing US to enter the war in 1941. Hirohito
was never indicted as a war criminal! does he deserve at least a chapter in her book?
Oh and by the way, did author mention anything about sanctions against Germany for
invading Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Poland? Up until the Pearl Harbor USA and
Germany still traded, although in March 1939, FDR slapped a 25% tariff on all German goods.
Like Trump is doing right now to some of US trading partners.
Next monster that deserves a chapter on Genocide in cosmic proportions post WW2 is
communist leader of China Mao Zedung. Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural
history from 1958 to 1962, when the nation was facing a famine, compared the systematic
torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants compares to the Second World
War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in
China over these four years; the total worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55
million.
We learn that Argentina has given sanctuary to Nazi war criminals, but she forgets to
mention that 88 Nazi scientists arrived in the United States in 1945 and were promptly put to
work. For example, Wernher von Braun was the brains behind the V-2 rocket program, but had
intimate knowledge of what was going on in the concentration camps. Von Braun himself
hand-picked people from horrific places, including Buchenwald concentration camp. Tsk-Tsk
Madeline.
What else? Oh, lets just say that like Madelaine Albright my husband is Jewish and lost
extensive family to Holocoust. Ukrainian nationalists executed his great grandfather on
gistapo orders, his great grandmother disappeared in concentration camp, grandfather was
conscripted in june 1940 and decommissioned september 1945 and went through war as
infantryman through 3 fronts earning several medals. his grandmother, an ukrainian born jew
was a doctor in a military hospital in Saint Petersburg survived famine and saved several
children during blockade. So unlike Maideline who was raised as a Roman Catholic, my husband
grew up in a quiet jewish family in that territory that Stalin grabbed from Poland in 1939,
in a polish turn ukrainian city called Lvov(Lemberg). His family also had to ask for an
asylum, only they had to escape their home in Ukraine in 1991. He was told then "You are a
nice little Zid (Jew), we will kill you last" If you think things in ukraine changed, think
again, few weeks ago in Kiev Roma gypsies were killed and injured during pogroms, and nobody
despite witnesses went to jail. Also during demonstrations openly on the streets C14 unit is
waving swastikas and Heils. Why is is not mentioned anywhere in the book? is is because
Hunter Biden sits on the board of one of Ukraine's largest natural gas companies called
Burisma since May 14, 2014, and Ukraine has an estimated 127.9 trillion cubic feet of
unproved technically recoverable shale gas resources? ( according to the U.S. Energy
Information Administration (EIA).1 The most promising shale reserves appear to be in the
Carpathian Foreland Basin (also called the Lviv-Volyn Basin), which extends across Western
Ukraine from Poland into Romania, and the Dnieper-Donets Basin in the East (which borders
Russia).
Wow, i bet you did not know that. how ugly are politics, even this book that could have been
so much greater if the author told the whole ugly story. And how scary that there are
countries where you can go and openly be fascist.
To me, Fascism fails for the single reason that no two fascist leaders are alike. Learning
about one or a few, in a highly cursory fashion like in this book or in great detail, is
unlikely to provide one with any answers on how to prevent the rise of another or fend
against some such. And, as much as we are witnessing the rise of numerous democratic or
quasi-democratic "strongmen" around the world in global politics, it is difficult to brand
any of them as fascist in the orthodox sense.
As the author writes at the outset, it is difficult to separate a fascist from a tyrant or
a dictator. A fascist is a majoritarian who rouses a large group under some national, racial
or similar flag with rallying cries demanding suppression or exculcation of those excluded
from this group. A typical fascist leader loves her yes-men and hates those who disagree: she
does not mind using violence to suppress dissidents. A fascist has no qualms using propaganda
to popularize the agreeable "facts" and theories while debunking the inconvenient as lies.
What is not discussed explicitly in the book are perhaps some positive traits that separate
fascists from other types of tyrants: fascists are rarely lazy, stupid or prone to doing
things for only personal gains. They differ from the benevolent dictators for their record of
using heavy oppression against their dissidents. Fascists, like all dictators, change rules
to suit themselves, take control of state organizations to exercise total control and use
"our class is the greatest" and "kick others" to fuel their programs.
Despite such a detailed list, each fascist is different from each other. There is little
that even Ms Albright's fascists - from Mussolini and Hitler to Stalin to the Kims to Chavez
or Erdogan - have in common. In fact, most of the opponents of some of these
dictators/leaders would calll them by many other choice words but not fascists. The
circumstances that gave rise to these leaders were highly different and so were their rules,
methods and achievements.
The point, once again, is that none of the strongmen leaders around the world could be
easily categorized as fascists. Or even if they do, assigning them with such a tag and
learning about some other such leaders is unlikely to help. The history discussed in the book
is interesting but disjointed, perfunctory and simplistic. Ms Albright's selection is also
debatable.
Strong leaders who suppress those they deem as opponents have wreaked immense harms and
are a threat to all civil societies. They come in more shades and colours than terms we have
in our vocabulary (dictators, tyrants, fascists, despots, autocrats etc). A study of such
tyrant is needed for anyone with an interest in history, politics, or societal well-being.
Despite Ms Albright's phenomenal knowledge, experience, credentials, personal history and
intentions, this book is perhaps not the best place to objectively learn much about the risks
from the type of things some current leaders are doing or deeming as right.
Each time I get concerned about Trump's rhetoric or past actions I read idiotic opinions,
like those of our second worst ever Secretary of State, and come to appreciate him more.
Pejorative terms like fascism or populism have no place in a rational policy discussion. Both
are blatant attempts to apply a pejorative to any disagreeing opinion. More than half of the
book is fluffed with background of Albright, Hitler and Mussolini. Wikipedia is more
informative. The rest has snippets of more modern dictators, many of whom are either
socialists or attained power through a reaction to failed socialism, as did Hitler. She
squirms mightily to liken Trump to Hitler. It's much easier to see that Sanders is like
Maduro. The USA is following a path more like Venezuela than Germany.
Her history misses that Mussolini was a socialist before he was a fascist, and Nazism in
Germany was a reaction to Wiemar socialism. The danger of fascism in the US is far greater
from the left than from the right. America is far left of where the USSR ever was. Remember
than Marx observed that Russia was not ready for a proletarian revolution. The USA with ready
made capitalism for reform fits Marx's pattern much better. Progressives deny that Sanders
and Warren are socialists. If not they are what Lenin called "useful idiots."
Albright says that she is proud of the speech where she called the USA the 'Indispensable
Nation.' She should be ashamed. Obama followed in his inaugural address, saying that we are
"the indispensable nation, responsible for world security." That turned into a policy of
human rights interventions leading to open ended wars (Syria, Yemen), nations in chaos
(Libya), and distrust of the USA (Egypt, Russia, Turkey, Tunisia, Israel, NK). Trump now has
to make nice with dictators to allay their fears that we are out to replace them.
She admires the good intentions of human rights intervention, ignoring the results. She says
Obama had some success without citing a single instance. He has apologized for Libya, but
needs many more apologies. She says Obama foreign policy has had some success, with no
mention of a single instance. Like many progressives, she confuses good intentions with
performance. Democracy spreading by well intentioned humanitarian intervention has resulted
in a succession of open ended war or anarchy.
The shorter histories of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Venezuela are much more
informative, although more a warning against socialism than right wing fascism. Viktor Orban
in Hungary is another reaction to socialism.
Albright ends the book with a forlorn hope that we need a Lincoln or Mandela, exactly what
our two party dictatorship will not generate as it yields ever worse and worse candidates for
our democracy to vote upon, even as our great society utopia generates ever more power for
weak presidents to spend our money and continue wrong headed foreign policy.
The greatest danger to the USA is not fascism, but of excessively poor leadership
continuing our slow slide to the bottom.
Something tells me he doesn't want to push this too much as money for this film came from
French and German sources. It is nice to see him sticking his neck out to uphold the Truth.
When I watched the US rep. who supposedly investigated this Magnitzky affair for the US
gov. state under oath that he never verified any of the info that Browder gave him, I kept
thinking "Is this guy serious ?" But when you realize that they never did any investigation
then it all seems logical.
"... Poor General Kelly, one of the generals who let 911 happen, is probably going to be promoted to Bechtel. I say poor because he's only worth about $5 Million, which is a low figure for the super rich who own the military industrial complex. ..."
Everything about this CIA agent's history lesson sounds fake. The blood sucking military
runs the White House. ISIS or ISIL or whatever the CIA calls itself today poses no
threat.
Poor General Kelly, one of the generals who let 911 happen, is probably going to be
promoted to Bechtel. I say poor because he's only worth about $5 Million, which is a low
figure for the super rich who own the military industrial complex.
You can find original interview at using the lisnk above, or if it disappeared, in Humor
section of this site
Notable quotes:
"... I will say that, just as Marxism provides an essential way of examining capitalism, libertarianism provides a filter for examining and criticizing stateist impulses. But a society organized around libertarian principles, just silly. ..."
"... The one thing libertarians want desperately to ignore is that imposing their vision of an utopian society is that while no one is "coerced" and will have equal rights, the inequalities that exist today will be cemented into society. ..."
What puzzles me about the Libertarian Dream is their ability to ignore the Dark Ages in
Western Europe.
It fulfills all their requirements, and by what accounts survive, was remarkably
unsuccessful. Life was poor, nasty, brutish and short.
I've has the discussion of rule of law with libertarians, and it went like this:
Lb: We could have a farming society without rule of law.
Me: How are disputes resolved?
Lb: We all get together and resolve the dispute.
Me: How is the dispute resolution enforced?
Lb: Everybody agrees to the resolution.
Me: What happens if some do not agree? What happens if someone cheats?
Lb: ..
Me: We've used this mechanism before, Hatfields vs McCoy' in the US, and Campbells Vs
McDonalds in Scotland.
Lb: ..
Those who don't know their History, are condemned to repeat it.
Winston Churchill in his "History of the English Speaking Peoples" refers to the desire
of the People in England to have "The King's Peace," otherwise known as "The Rule of Law"
with all it's apparatus, Police, Courts, etc.
The Libertarians appear to want "Rule by the Rich and Powerful" and do not understand
that that includes few, if any, of the current libertarians, except perhaps for the Koch
Brothers.
In the 90's when encountering a want-to-be business tycoon spouting Libertarian
nonsense, I would encourage them to seek their fortune in Somalia, where no government
existed.
I will say that, just as Marxism provides an essential way of examining capitalism,
libertarianism provides a filter for examining and criticizing stateist impulses. But a
society organized around libertarian principles, just silly.
Tom DiLorenzo pointed out on the Lew Rockwell website that the crisis was actually the
result of the government forcing banks to make risky loans to low-income borrowers.
Oh the poor banks, forced to loan money for houses aka: The Brer Rabbit Loan Origination
philosophy.
"Forced "the banks were not. They juiced the bankruptcy laws, and bundle up the loans
and sold then to a willing set of buyers, Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, "Government
Corporations", who were re-nationalized when they fell into trouble.
The Bank's happily took the loan origination fees, and survived when they were then
"forced" to accept Government bail outs.
Why some senior bank executives even took a cut in Bonuses – the misery of it all!
/s
That was the first thing that leaped out at me too.
Are you kidding? the banks were "forced" by the government where to start with that
one?
The only thing that fits was said here not to long ago.
" arguing with an idiot is like playing chess with a pigeon. They just knock over the
pieces, shit on the board, and strut around like they won anyway."
The one thing libertarians want desperately to ignore is that imposing their vision of
an utopian society is that while no one is "coerced" and will have equal rights, the
inequalities that exist today will be cemented into society. Until someone can explain to
me what my recourse is when my right to breathe clean air and drink clean water or to speak
my mind freely is destroyed by a polluter or someone who doesn't like what I have to say, I
will view libertarianism as the worst of all possible worlds.
when i was still on faceborg, years ago, I would often be confronted by wandering
libertarians.
one way to send them into conniptions was to say, "fine. let's run your experiment of
lawlessness and "freedom" but first, in order to adhere to good experimental methodology,
shouldn't we first redistribute the wealth?"
a race hardly proves anything if it's between a fighter jet and a rickshaw.
the resulting frothing fits were entertaining. They believe that they are paragons of
logical thinking as opposed to us silly lefties.
and , like the neoreactionaries that threaten to take their place in corporate philosophy,
they seem to believe that they will naturally be the Lords of the Manor.
Libertarians hate to hear about Rawls' Veil of Ignorance.
Cain's libertarian views have the depth and breadth of a bunch of mutually contradictory
bumper stickers. The views lack a grasp of system interactions and impacts, and display a
narrow rigid simplicity that neglects scads of important social, economic and environmental
factors. The views are so inept it makes me wonder, was this interview satire?
The interview is based on the works of Hans-Hermann Hoppe; the parts in red either links
or when they have numbers, direct quotes with page references.
In my experience (from Usenet days, mostly) libertarians vary quite a bit in their
views. Mr. Hoppe's seem to be of the anarcho-capitalist flavor, similar to David
Friedman's, but many libertarians would disagree with them and some would say they are
crazy. Libertarianism seems to be a tendency, an attitude, a sensibility, rather than an
explicit set of principles cast in the form of propositions and rules. It is more aesthetic
than logical, in spite of the way they regard themselves; see Thus Spake
Zarathustra, on 'the coldest of all cold monsters' for a taste.
In regard to libertarianism on the ground: as with other marginal ideologies, there have
been some experiments; for example, there was a project of getting libertarians to move to
some county in New Hampshire where their numbers would enable them to have some influence
on the social order and its government. None that I know about have been very
successful.
> The views are so inept it makes me wonder, was this interview satire?
The interview is satire, but as you can imagine, libertarianism is extremely hard to
satirize; the author faced technical challenges in making the self-ownage even more obvious
than it already is.
More perhaps a caper, frolic, or prank -- of which are extended in time with no single
punchline (except for the running gag of "in a rights-respecting manner"). It's
satirical.
I have to admit that nowadays when someone says they are a libertarian, my 1st
assumption is that they are an idiot, who doesn't realize they are just a tool for the
republican/neoliberal overlords/industrialists who just want to go back to pre-regulatory
and pre-taxation years as were 120 years ago.Back when snake oil salesmen were free to
peddle their wares, any how they saw fit.
Thirty years ago, being a libertarian at least had some logic behind it. they were anti-
drug war and anti- police state and things that actually make sense. They realized there
had to be SOME laws, and Some civic responsibility.
anyone who has crazy ideas like this today are actual and factual "conspiracy theorists".
Talk about crazy. There isn't any substance here to refute . this is all total BS.
Again, we find the "information age" taken up by peoples opinions of "fact" that are pure
propaganda.
I've had close contact with libertarians. One is a medical doctor. A primary goal is to
eliminate democracy entirely. The people would have no input in determining the conditions
under which they live. A market unpreturbed by taxes and regulations would yield the most
optimum rusults which benefit the society. People who are lazy and who lack ambition, which
is proven by their low economic status, would be isolated and cast aside into favelas
because they are undeserving of anything better. The greatest threat is not global warming,
or the threat of nuclear war but tyranny. He and his son are armed and expect to be able to
defeat the government when the time comes. Based on a discussion where I used the term
social justice, the good doctored recoiled and said social justice is communism. He was
also against helping ( I suppose via the givernment) victims of natural catastrophies such
as floods, hurricanes, fires, earth quakes etc. When asked what kind of society would
result from these beliefs, they don't have a clue except to say that when one persues a
just and moral cause the outcome is of no consequence. When asked about global warming they
emphasized their right to have all the plastic straws they want. A tyrannical government
imposing rules is the greatest threat.
All very logical. Yes? Another doctor, my primary care physician welcomes global warming
because he thinks we can deal with it very easily and feels that it is most fortunate that
we don't have global cooling.
Another retired doctor I talk to expressed the view that all Muslim mosques in the US
should be blown up and all Muslims should leave the country or be killed.
hell no!
But they have a different "schtik" .. like cinton/obama doing the same thing but they use
different words . appealing to different people.
for clarity, i suppose I should have used some better punctuation.
"republican/neoliberal" meaning "the deregulation crowd"
""overlords/industrialist" meaning the powers that be who make money in manufacturing and
other related industries who have liabilities in relation to their waste/pollution
disposal, working conditions,safety standards/practices/costs,etc . who are the funders of
this type of propaganda.
I have no illusions that the deregulation gang didn't gain ascension to our gov't as of
late; with carter, and has been in EVERY administration since.
The absence of a thriving libertarian polity across all human history and geography
implies a fundamental incompatibility with human nature.
My guess is that any human group which tries it is simply destroyed and/or absorbed by
neighbouring human groups which employ more effective arrangements (whatever defects those
particular arrangements may have).
Libertarians aren't much for empiricism, I suppose .
Most of the last 10k years are feudal and libertarianism is just feudalism. Even the
Roman states were mostly run on a private law basis – aka libertarianism. Mass
slavery, citizenship limited to an elite who personally acted as enforcers, courts and
legislators.
Libertarianism is the perennial philosophy, horribly compatible with human nature.
It's interesting that this post is generating separate comment threads 7 years apart. I
started reading the 2011 comments thinking they were current and was immediately struck by
the thoroughness and passion of the debate, occurring around the time of the Obamacare
rollout and closer to the 2008 crash. Possibly more people had a stake in libertarianism
back then and found this interview threatening? In any event, one thing common to both
threads is the tendency not to recognize the interview as satire. Compliments to Mr.
Dittmer for his enduring dry wit (even though the internet makes irony hard to
recognize).
so what happens when the GLOs from different customers are pulled into a battle between
them? and how does this work when some one who hired them to protect them dies from a
business ?
At the inception of this entire RussiaGate spectacle I suggested that it was a political
distraction to take the attention away from the rejection by the people of neoliberalism which
has been embraced by the establishments of both political parties.
And that the result of the investigation would be indictments for perjury in the covering up
of illicit business deals and money laundering. But that 'collusion to sway the election' was
without substance, if not a joke.
Everything that has been revealed to date tends to support that.
One thing that Aaron overlooks is the evidence compiled by William Binney and associates
that strongly suggests the DNC hack was no hack at all, but a leak by an insider who was
appalled by the lies and double dealing at the DNC.
In general, RussiaGate is a farcical distraction from other issues as they say in the video.
And this highlights the utterly Machiavellian streak in the corporate Democrats and the Liberal
establishment under the Clintons and their ilk who care more about money and power than the
basic principles that historically sustained their party. I have lost all respect for them.
But unfortunately this does open the door for those who use this to approve of the
Republican establishment, which is 'at least honest' about being substantially corrupt servants
to Big Money who care nothing about democracy, the Constitution, or the public. The best of
them are leaving or have already left, and their party is ruined beyond repair.
This all underscores the paucity of the Red v. Blue, monopoly of two parties, 'lesser of two
evils' model of political thought which has come to dominate the discussion in the US.
We are heavily propagandized by the owners of the corporate media and influencers of the
narrative, and a professional class that has sold its soul for economic advantage and access to
money and power.
Throughout its existence the Soviet Union was hobbled by the sanctions imposed on it by
the capitalist world. Despite being uniquely qualified, by virtue of its geography and
culture, to survive without being part of the international economy, it had to pay much more,
by being forced to rely on its own resources, than other countries for every advance that it
made economically.
And then it was constantly under threat of coordinated military attack by the richest and
most technically advanced powers, led by the anglo-US empire. Twice it was invaded by massive
international coalitions, in 1918 and 1041. Twice its industrial base and its infrastructure
were reduced to smoking ruins.Twice it had to rebuild, from the ground up without the
assistance of foreign capital.
By contrast the imperial powers, bent on crushing it by economic or military means,
throughout its existence came through the period virtually unscathed-its great rival the US
actually thrived from threw two world wars.
It was this fate which China, under imperial pressure after the 1949 Revolution, was
determined to escape. And so far, since it changed course and played the US and the Soviet
Union off against each other, it has made great strides forward-advances complementing the
enormous gains made after 1949, during which period all the basic indicators of well being,
life expectancy included, rose and a firm base was established for future improvement. And
this at a time when the US used every means in its power, including biological warfare, to
weaken China and reduce its people to starvation.
For example China-well known for its polluted air-is well in advance of North America in its
development of renewable energy sources and seems genuinely committed to replacing fossil
fuels.
Nor is it using its growing strength to engage in military adventures and impose its rule on
others.
It is important when considering China not to repeat the mistakes of some of the
neo-Trotskyist factions whose theory that the Soviet Union was just another capitalist
society (something that most Russians disagree with) was an important part of the Empire's
ideological struggle against the Soviet Union in the world and socialism everywhere. China is
not a communist country but it serves its people much better than, for example, India. And it
certainly plays a vital role, together with Russia in resisting the Imperial ruling class's
campaigns to reduce the globe to accepting the diktats of Washington, Wall St and
Hollywood.
LinkedIn
co-founder 'sorry' for funding fake Russian tweets for Democrats
(RT video). Admiited producing 200 fake Russian twits.
Notable quotes:
"... Reid Hoffman is a Billionaire, who is a member of the Bilderburg Group, & is on the Council of Foreign Relations. Obviously 'above the law'. His sorry apology will be good enough. ..."
"... Oh he is only sorry after he got caught. ..."
Imagine that ?...we knew... They owe Putin and the Russian people a apology....hmmm...would rather send all demoncrats to
Putin for their punishments...
Are you kidding me?! Man and here I was starting to think democrats weren't as bad. As an American I feel bad for how bad
many of my countrymen have tried to make Russia look
bad...
Reid Hoffman is a Billionaire, who is a member of the Bilderburg Group, & is on the Council of Foreign Relations. Obviously
'above the law'. His sorry apology will be good enough.
Nothing will happen to him, & RT is probably the only media outlet
that will even tell Americans about this. THX RT.
How about reposting 'Who owns the Media in less than 30 seconds'?
Are you updating the info because Rupert Murdoch
sold his media corps to Bob Iger?? THAT was your BEST video Ever!!
PLEASE REPOST IT!!
They create fakes themselves, investigate them themselves, and after finding the sources themselves they apologize. And we
are "guilty" of everything ... You look and wonder!
Marxist playbook 101, exactly what the democrats have been using on the American people. Accuse those of the very thing
that they themselves are guilty of!👍
This comes as no surprise of course. But, when you apologise for meddling/interfering in a state and or a federal election,
this is all one has to do, to not be charged for a possible crime, just apologise? Oh, and be a Democrat of course. Im an
American. But why has no other country came out and stated, that the US meddled in their elections? At least have come out
in the last 3 years and stated that? Most know, every country spies on and meddles in one anothers elections. It's not ok
but, we know and it happens.
The "liberal" Left can do whatever they want. ....no worries. All others do not get away with anything. If ever there was a
double standard, there you have it.
Linkedin is also biassed, there is no middle ground...one can establish highly sophisticated network linking each
individual and finding the most influentials...data is worth billions upon billions...and people, mainly highly educated
and skilled do have Linkedin account...so there is no "honest business", the co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, is among
ones that are not "honest"...big money, bigger lies...once one tells a lie, he, or she is alway liar...
Lots of complete morons in the comments who believe in the fake two party paradigm. Both parties believe you should suffer
at the dictates of multinational corporations and the banking industry.
I am getting a lot of SPAM from somebody who disguises himself as "RUSSIAN BOT" including Cyrillic characters in the
message and also in the metadata (!). Does anybody know who this could be?
Defending Roy Moore....lol also anyone see a conflict of interest when the Russian government funds this news program. And
basically is putting a story saying that Russian bots are fake and paid by dems.
When are arrests going to me made? We ALL know that the DNC is a criminal organisation and that the USA is on borrowed
time. The farce of American Democracy is getting more obvious by the day. There just aren't anywhere near enough people,
among the overall pool of American voters, that even know how their government is theoretically supposed to work to have a
functional self-governing nation state. Morons don't pick good government!
This is nothing new. Democrats are using Russian propaganda and Republicans like to use China propaganda. Both parties are
rothschild puppets and love to use propaganda for political agendas.
I can not remember the guy's name, but the guest that was speaking on the MSNBC panel at the
2:11
mark was pro -Trump earlier this year. I remember him saying that he was former Secret Service or something to that effect
on Youtube. Now, we see him on a panel alledging Russian speculation moving it's way to the White House. I guess he
couldn't become famous as pro-Trump, so he's went to the dark side
sorry for creating false evidence in a federal investigation is a huge crime and makes him a conspirator in coup to the
takedown of the presidency of the US.
He isn't a Democrat. But I know that Americans were using fake bots before, during, and after 2016. All Dems aren't Dems.
All GOP aren't GOP. There are a lot of coming out the closet for politicians going on in this day and age. Why now are we
hearing this? 2020. You are not dealing with dummy's just deviants.
What Hoffman did is totally understandable. I myself frequently donate $100,000 amounts to causes about which I know
nothing. Especially when I know that a minuscule amount like that won't really have any real impact on a Congressional
election. Kidding aside, may we look forward to indictments of Hoffman, New Knowledge, Morgan, and Fox in this matter -- a
case of real tampering and collusion? Glad I dumped Facebook AND LinkedIn on the same day last year.
Like anyone really thought it was true, well actually as if anyone who doesn't get the bulk of their news from CNN, MSNBC,
and the like, really thought it was true. Funny part is those idiots (CNN ect. veiwers) were screaming about how Russia was
tearing apart American society, and as though out the history of mankind, you only have yourselves to blame.
RT is funded by the Russian government btw so of course they're saying this I hope you all stop letting hate anger anger
control your life when it should be dragging your nuts across broken glass only to fart in a walkie talkie to have a
spiritual enlightenment experience and see all that is true thank you
This report is not the whole truth of what happened. You should look up the facts of this case before you get all partisan
happy. Or you can just be a traitor and take Russia's (RT) word on election tampering.
Even Gazdiev is fake. RT PLEASE STOP THE INFOTAINMENT. Gazdiev wants to be in theatre. Don't hold him back. Get a
journalist who can deliver the news without all the fake pauses and arm waving.
If you want to destroy the worlds SuperPower and know you can't do it military, then infiltration into the minds of its
people is a perfect way to destroy them when clearly America has a dumbed down population.
Kushner is responsible for setting up fake proTrump republican twitter accounts to help Trump get elected. Why would
democrats want to help Trump? That's another republican lie to fool the sheeple.
"
Nation
states must today be prepared to give up their sovereignty
",
according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel,
who told an audience in Berlin that sovereign nation states must not listen to the will of their citizens when it comes
to questions of immigration, borders, or even sovereignty.
No this wasn't something Adolf Hitler said many decades ago, this is what German Chancellor Angela Merkel
told
attendants
at an event by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin. Merkel has announced she won't seek re-election
in 2021 and it is clear she is attempting to push the globalist agenda to its disturbing conclusion before she stands
down.
"
In
an orderly fashion of course,
" Merkel joked, attempting to lighten the mood. But Merkel has always had a tin ear
for comedy and she soon launched into a dark speech condemning those in her own party who think Germany should have
listened to the will of its citizens and refused to sign the controversial UN migration pact:
"
There
were [politicians] who believed that they could decide when these agreements are no longer valid because they are
representing The People
".
"
[But]
the people are individuals who are living in a country, they are not a group who define themselves as the [German]
people
," she stressed.
Merkel has previously accused critics of the UN Global Compact for Safe and Orderly Migration of not being patriotic,
saying "
That
is not patriotism, because patriotism is when you include others in German interests and accept win-win situations
".
Her words echo recent comments by the deeply unpopular French President Emmanuel Macron who stated in a Remembrance Day
speech that "
patriotism
is the exact opposite of nationalism [because] nationalism is treason
."
The French president's words were deeply unpopular with the French population and his approval rating nosedived even
further after the comments.
Macron, whose lack of leadership is proving unable to deal with growing protests in France, told the Bundestag that
France and Germany should be at the center of the emerging New World Order.
"
The
Franco-German couple [has]the obligation not to let the world slip into chaos and to guide it on the road to peace"
.
"
Europe
must be stronger and win more sovereignty
," he went on to demand, just like Merkel, that
EU
member states surrender national sovereignty to Brussels
over "
foreign
affairs, migration, and development
" as well as giving "
an
increasing part of our budgets and even fiscal resources".
"... Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer before working as a CIA analyst for the next 27 years. Ray admits to a modicum of bias against Marine officers, but not those with whom he worked back in the day. He is co-creator of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, which includes Marines who remember what Semper Fi means. ..."
"... A case in point is when you hear members of congress criticize Trump decision to withdraw the US army personals from Syria and Afganistan. These members forget that the US army in Syria is in violation of international laws and US laws as well. ..."
utgoing Defense Secretary Gen. James "Mad Dog" Mattis was famous for quipping , "It's fun to shoot some
people." It remains a supreme irony that Mattis was widely considered the only "adult in the
room" in the Trump administration. Compared to whom? John Bolton, the rabid neocon serving as
national security adviser? That would be the epitome of "condemning with faint praise."
With his ramrod-straight image, not to mention his warrior/scholar reputation extolled in
the media, Mattis was able to disguise the reality that he was, as Col. Andrew Bacevich
put it on
Democracy Now! this morning, "totally unimaginative." Meaning that Mattis was simply incapable
of acknowledging the self-destructive, mindless nature of U.S. "endless war" in the Middle
East, which candidate-Trump had correctly called "stupid." In his resignation letter, Mattis
also peddled the usual cant about the indispensable nation's aggression being good for the
world.
Mattis was an obstacle to Trump's desire to pull troops out of Syria and Afghanistan (and
remains in position to spike Trump's orders). Granted, the abrupt way Trump announced his
apparently one-man decision was equally stupid. But the withdrawal of ground troops is
supremely sane, and Mattis was and is a large problem. And, for good or ill, Trump -- not
Mattis -- was elected president.
Marine Wisdom
Historically, Marines are the last place to turn for sound advice. Marine Gen. Smedley
Butler (1881-1940), twice winner of the Medal of Honor, was brutally candid about this after he
paused long enough to realize, and write, "War is a Racket":
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members
of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My
mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-
ups. "
Shortly after another Marine general, former CENTCOM commander Anthony Zinni, retired, he
stood by silently as he personally watched then-Vice President Dick Cheney give his most
important speech ever (on August 26, 2002). Cheney blatantly lied about Iraq's (non-existent)
WMD, in order to grease the skids for the war of aggression against Iraq. Zinni had kept his
clearances and was "back on contract." He was well read-in on Iraq, and knew immediately that
Cheney was lying.
A few years later, Zinni admitted that he decided that his lips would be sealed. Far be it
for a Marine to play skunk at the picnic. And, after all, he was being honored that day at the
same Veterans of Foreign Wars convention where Cheney spoke. As seems clear now, Zinni was also
lusting after the lucrative spoils of war given to erstwhile generals who offer themselves for
membership on the corporate Boards of the arms makers/merchants that profiteer on war.
Marine officer, now Sen. Pat Roberts, R, Kansas, merits "dishonorable mention" in this
connection. He never rose to general but did become Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee
at an auspicious time for Cheney and Bush. Roberts kowtowed, like a "good Marine," to their
crass deceit, when a dollop of honesty on his part could have prevented the 2003 attack on Iraq
and the killing, maiming, destruction, and chaos that continues to this day. Roberts knew all
about the fraudulent intelligence and covered it up -- together with other lies -- for as long
as he remained Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman
Scott Ritter on Pat Roberts
Roberts's unconscionable dereliction of duty enraged one honest Marine, Maj. Scott Ritter,
who believes "Semper Fi" includes an obligation to tell the truth on matters of war and peace.
Ritter, former UN chief weapons inspector for Iraq, who in April 2005 wrote, "Semper Fraud,
Senator Roberts," based partly on his own experience
with that complicit Marine.
Needless to say, higher ranking, more malleable Marines aped Zinni in impersonating Uncle
Remus's Tar Baby -- not saying nuttin'.
It is conceivable that yet another sharply-saluting Marine, departing Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford, may be tapped by Trump to take Mattis's job. If that happens,
it will add to President Trump's bizarre penchant for picking advisers hell-bent on frustrating
the objectives he espoused when he was running for office, some of which -- it is becoming
quite clear -- he genuinely wants to achieve.
Trump ought to unleash Mattis now, and make sure Mattis keeps his distance from the Pentagon
and the Military-Industrial Complex before he is asked to lead an insurrection against a highly
vulnerable president -- as Gen. Smedley Butler was asked to do back in the day. Butler said
no.
Top Photo | U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, sits on stage during a change of command
ceremony at the U.S. Southern Command headquarters on Nov. 26, 2018, in Doral, Fla. Brynn
Anderson | AP
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church
of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer before
working as a CIA analyst for the next 27 years. Ray admits to a modicum of bias against Marine
officers, but not those with whom he worked back in the day. He is co-creator of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, which includes Marines who remember what Semper Fi
means.
I am not so much surprised that military generals keep their mouths shot rather than tell
the truth when the truth is needed to avoid wars. But worse is that the US congress which are
supposed to overlook over the government misbehavior to make the government abide by the laws
and protect the interests of the people against government wrongs.
A case in point is when you hear members of congress criticize Trump decision to
withdraw the US army personals from Syria and Afganistan. These members forget that the US
army in Syria is in violation of international laws and US laws as well.
The congress are supposed the authority to declare war but the US is engaged in multiple
wars without US Congress authorization. Worse off these idiots want to force the Trump
administration to keep its illegal wars going on? What is the role of the congress??? To
correct and force the Administration to abide by the rule of laws of the force them to keep
violating international laws and US laws as well????
Trump's bizarre penchant for picking advisers hell-bent on frustrating the objectives
he espoused when he was running for office
It's bizarre that he's hired so many Bill Kristol approved neocons when they abandoned him
for Hillary in 2016. Or not so bizarre when one remembers what Russ Tice said about Cheney
using the NSA to get blackmail dirt. Now they've lost control, so it will be interesting to
see how they try to regain it.
My impression is, ISIS is a mossad-Jewish lobby creation to win the PR war against Muslims
and to keep the US attacking and "containing" Israel's geopolitical adversaries and eternally
occupying Arab lands, and well, to Make Israel Safe Again ™
Apart from the questions raised by some from the alternative media:
The fact is the mossad could easily pull this off, having so many Israelis from
Northern-African and Middle Eastern extraction, fluent in Arab and looking exactly like well,
Arabs. They could infiltrate and recruit Arab salafist patsies and easily organize terrorist
attacks without executing the hits themselves. And it is actually a genius move:
1) Create a terrorist thread in Europe, making Westerners wary of Arabs, ie more likely to
understand Israel policies towards Palestinians and side with Israel (message being:
apartheid State? what else can we Israelis do? Palestinians are all gropers, misogynists,
homophobes and potential terrorists FYI)
2) Hit the countries with the most Jews (France, Germany and UK) so they are more likely
to start packing up to make Aliyah, so Israel's demographic problem is at least temporarily
solved, retaining a majority population of Jews.
3) Make the US, through the Jewish lobby in the US, attack strategic countries such as
Libya, Iraq and Syria, creating a migrant tsunami to flood Europe, making Europeans even more
wary of Arabs and understanding of Israeli's treatment of Palestinians (Arabs) and also
making European Jews even more likely to make Aliyah. I even have heard of Israeli NGOs
funded by the Israeli Ministry of FA operating in Lesbos and helping "refugees" to flood
Europe. After a public outcry the Ministry logo vanished from the NGOs sponsors page.
Even the Cologne issue with the gropings, and I am getting too conspiratorial here, could
have been a group of Israeli provocateurs kickstarting the whole assaults wave. Let's say, a
group of mossad operatives, composed of Israelis from Northern-African and/or Middle Eastern
extraction, with false documentation and fluent in Arab, start groping and assaulting German
women, taking advantage of the total chaos offered and facilitated by moronic Merkel. They
get caught? no problem, false passports or even no passports at all, just give false names
and disappear. Not that Arabs need that much help to make themselves look bad, after all some
American reporter was assaulted *live* and for what I have read the lecherous groping of
women walking alone is a well documented problem in all the ME. But maybe thanks to a little
push by provocateurs, an incident big enough was engineered and the image of Arabs in the
West reached historic lows thanks to the Cologne affair.
And creating phoney terrorist groups to use them for false flags is not something new at
all for the mossad, let's all remember what the FLLF was and how almost executed an US
Ambassador.
Filmmaker Rob Reiner tweeted on Thursday that the president is a "childish moronic
mentally unstable malignant narcissist" who is "committing Treason" against the United
States.
Oh my – the Jew "meathead" is a "childish moronic mentally unstable malignant
narcissist" who is "committing Treason" against the United States.
"Filmmaker Rob Reiner tweeted on Thursday that the president is a "childish moronic mentally
unstable malignant narcissist" who is "committing Treason" against the United States."
He and fellow tribesmen are welcome to sign up and go fight Israel's wars themselves, just
not with white male republican blood. The guy is good at border skirmishes, too. He led an
effort to keep poor Mexicans out of his rich Malibu neighborhood back in 2014 by refusing
Whole Foods a building location. Like most of his kind, he's a sociopathic hypocrite and a
liar.
@MAGAnotMISA
What I miss is destroying white cultures through mass immigration.
Though what I miss in this theory what exactly is the objective, is it whites and Muslims
annihilating each other, or just divide and rule ?
But maybe thinking in this way has not gone far enough.
Bernard Baruch's world domination plan failed miserably, but he even failed to understand
that it had failed, otherwise he had not in 1946 pleaded for a world government.
One must not underestimate the enemy, but also not overestimate him.
Jewish policies for the last 2000 years can hardly be seen as a success.
Judaism lost the battle with christianity, bolsjewism failed in Russia, getting equal rights
in W Europe led to the WWII deportations, with or without gas chambers, Israel succeeded in
surrounding itself with enemies, as neighbours, and all over the world, and jewish puppet
Hillary was not elected.
The latest statements by Netanyahu confirm my idea of a complete idiot.
I continue to be amazed that anyone gives any credibility whatsoever who claims US Mideast
military involvement is in the best interest of the nation. The above-mentioned commenters
must almost inevitably more about self-interest than anything patriotic. As for appearing
profound, well, there's Rob Reiner!
@anon
In the idea that the USA is the new zion Trump indeed commits treason.
Before Israel was established many USA rabbis were against zionism, because in their view the
USA already was zion.
As to
, the use of such words for me means utter confusion, rational analysis no longer
possible.
Arthur Koestler was of the opinion that yiddish precluded sensible discussion.
The mentioned words show that he was wrong about the cause.
As I sat in Christmas Eve service last night, an adorable little boy played quietly with his
father in the seat next to us. The little boy was probably just under 2 years of age.
In the middle of one of the Christmas Carols the thought struck me,
"I wonder if we will still be in ___________ war 17 years from now, when this
little boy becomes enlistment age . . ."
That thought alone makes me favor Trump for re-election. I think (I could be wrong, I'm no
expert) we have less war and a lesser risk of war with Trump. The "establishment" policies
of: invade the world – invite the world – in hoc with the world; are horrifically
deadly and destructive.
1. US withdrawal from Syria, and apparently all non-nato committed US troops from
Afghanistan.
2. Willingness to shutdown Government in order to force funding for the wall
3. Rumors of subpoena's being handed out at G.H.W Bush's funeral
4. Senate investigations into Clinton Foundation with auditors claiming jaw dropping
corruption
5. Grand Jury empaneled to investigate into 9/11
I don't know if Q is a psyop, but a lot of the things he has been saying appear to be
coming closer to reality. We can be certain that none of this would have happened had Clinton
been elected.
Meanwhile the deep state is not taking this lying down.
1. Netanyahu is threatening to increase operations in Syria. Perhaps he warned Trump to
get out because he is going to go nuclear or bio.
2. The global warming panic propaganda is being turned up to "broil" as weather warfare has
been unleashed across the planet.
3. Ukraine attempting to drag Nato into a war for the Kerch straight.
4. Stockmarkets tanking as the Fed keeps tightening while Mnuchin performs the "plunge
protection team rag"
5. Iran war threats and Persian gulf sabre rattling
6. Heeb financial war against Russia, Iran and China.
7. Heeb technology war against China (Huawei arrest)
Even if the US leaves Syria as Trump claims, they certainly will not just hand everything
over to Assad. The Damascus/Baghdad hiway re-opening through Al Tanf and the hand over of all
Euphrates river crossings to Syria would be indication of a true change of policy.
As usual, Giraldi is spot on with his observations. I wish him a Merry Christmas and hope to
see a lot more of his articles in the coming year.
I find Rob Reiner amusing, if not occasionally annoying. After having spent decades up to
my nose with his tribe while working in LA in the entertainment industry I can guarantee
Hollywood Jews go completely apoplectic anytime they perceive their government, the
Jewish-occupied government that rules over us all, is not following their commands.
Come to think of it, apoplexy's first definition is a stroke, its second definition is: a
state of intense and almost uncontrollable anger. One can only hope that jerks like Reiner
who indulge so heavily in the second definition will end up experiencing the first, and good
riddance.
I'd just add that few things would please me more than to have DJT draft the human
chickenhawks due to their indispensable expertise and place their backsides in-country to
dole out their words of wisdom there.
The honorable & courageous American Man endowed with precision scientific/political
wisdom wrote, with special appeal to me: "Withdrawing from Syria is the right thing to do,
though one has to be concerned that there might be some secret side deals with Israel , that
could actually result in more attacks upon Syria."
Call me crazy, but I'm still a bit leery, cautiously hopping this is not just another
charade. Is this just another way to allow the dissection of Syria to take another path?
Always remember if Trump is in opposition to his globalist master's he will be removed,
one way or the other.
Thank you for that! I now realize that the appellation chickenhawk used in reference to
the "let's you and him" fight gang is a slur on a fine little raptor. You have educated
me.
A mong hawks in N. America, Cooper's Hawk ( Accipiter cooperii ),
Red-shouldered Hawk ( Buteo lineatus ), and Red-tailed Hawk ( Buteo jamaicensis
) are the three species most likely to take domestic chickens, or yardbirds as they are
sometimes called, and it is these three species that are or have been commonly called
Chickenhawks in the United States, at least among non-birders, who are people with neither
binoculars nor field guide.
But I think most here know that Philip Giraldi is referring to the craven human variety of
warmonger known in some circles as the Yellow-tailed Chickenhawk, or its close relative the
Yellow-bellied Chickenhawk.
President Trump's announcement is a very nice Christmas present, which I choose to take a
face value pending unwrapping. As always, actions speak louder than words. Let's hope that
there isn't a booby prize or two lurking beneath the Christmas tree and hidden by the big
surprise package, or that there isn't a lump of coal at the bottom of our holiday
stockings.
@wayfarer
Not sure if the opening word's in the first video are spoken by Sheikh Imran N Hosein. It
sounds like him. I just wanted to say I have listened to a lot of his messages and find him
very enlightening. For those who believe in end time prophecy, I think you will find well
versed and extremely intelligent, as compared to many of the so called "Christian" huckster's
out there selling religion for dollars.
Pipelines to Europe for KSA and fresh water sources for Israel? Destabilising a local
rival of both? Who knows?
What we do know is that "we" have allowed our "leaders" to pimp out our military to the
rogue special interests of the world. We have the best government foreign interests can
buy.
The Zionist MSM and MIC and the Zionist AIPAC and company are the hounds of Hell baying for
war as warmongers always want war as long as they do not have to fight it and can reap the
profits from the wars!
Zionists have instigated every war that the U.S. has been in since WWI and right on down
through the Mideast slaughter house that Israel and her Zionists patrons have sent Americans
to fight and die in and by crippled for life in and the millions of civilians, men, women and
children that have been murdered in the wars fought for Zionist Israel!
The most incredible thing was that the Zionists and the Zionist controlled deep state did
911 which was the precursor to the latest Mideast wars and the war on terror where the
Zionists killed some 3000 Americans and blamed the Arabs and got away with it , when every
thinking American knows that Israel and the Zionist controlled deep state did 911!
Finally Trump has done the right thing by getting out of Syria and now should get the hell
out of the Mideast and Afghanistan and close the slaughter houses!
God bless Putin and Russia and Assad and Syria for saving the people of Syria and
defeating ISIS aka Al CIADA ie a creation of the U.S. and Israel and Britain!
Zionists and Israel will be the death of America unless we wake up and smell the
coffee!
@renfro
One hopes that Russia will have stationed its advanced air defense systems throughout Syria.
And they should not be afraid to shoot down the Israeli aggressors.
@jilles
dykstra Jilles,
Haven't you completely contradicted your prior response to @renfro about Trump? You called
him a "complete idiot, leading a country to destruction," now you are claiming he is a
"reasonable man, who understands that warfare is just a destruction of wealth." He can't be
both, can he?
@DESERT
FOX Of extreme importance, Desert Fox of"The most incredible thing was that the Zionists
and the Zionist controlled deep state did 911 which was the precursor to the latest Mideast
wars and the war on terror where the Zionists killed some 3000 Americans and blamed the Arabs
and got away with it ,"
Christmas Day greetings, Desert Fox!
Re; above sentence, a cordial question.
Is there anything you know & which you have not said (to date) that might signal that
the American-Israeli Empire's mighty military is prepped to allow the Assad and Rouhani
anti-Zionist governments to stand?
Uh perhaps, either delay or junk establishment of Greater Israel?
Am convinced Trump would only slow down international Jewry's plan. Or else no unguarded
JFK convertible limo trips for him on reelection-campaign road.
@chris
Let's think about this. The USA has not been able to defeat the Afghan Taliban forces in 17
years. It brought down Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, but, with that unfortunate country
totally destroyed, how could you call that a win (I doubt if the Iraqi's consider the US to
be liberators). Now the crack pot Obama/Hillary campaign has lost in Syria, and Trump wants
to pull out. All three countries were much smaller and weaker than Iran, and the US is much
weaker, morally and militarily, than it was after the 9/11 hoax. And, after Russia has
expended much blood and treasure in ensuring victory for Assad and the Syrian people, will it
now sit on its hands as the US Air Force dismantles Teheran? Plus there is a resurgent China,
dependent on Iranian oil, to consider.
I'm not saying that Trump will not start a war against Iran (for Israel's benefit). But,
he'd better be prepared for the consequences, which will all be devastating to the American
Empire. Be careful what you wish for.
But Israel supported by Saudi Arabia does not like Iran and has induced Washington to
follow its lead. Withdrawing from Syria recognizes that Iran is no threat in reality.
Positioning American military forces to "counter" Iran does not reduce the threat against
the United States because there was no threat there to begin with.
Yes of course, I would just add that Israel hates Iran.
Rand Paul and others have been pushing back hard against the NEOCON narrative here, good
news. The initial anti Trump tide has turned in this matter.
I briefly saw Bill Krysrol's smug mug on TV the other day. Wouldnt it be nice if that Satanic
'fellow' was harrased at home like, unfortunatley, Tucker Carlson was. (Instead of
Carlson)
Trump telling General Mattis to pack his bags and begone is the work of a good CEO. Mad Dog
could have done a lot of damage to Mr. Trump's agenda if he had been allowed to stay on until
the end of February, as he had said he would. In corporate America, if an underling is
disloyal to the CEO, he will be told to vacate the premises for good by the end of the
workday, and escorted out of the building by armed security. His keys will be taken, all
locks will be changed, and his passwords expunged. No doubt Trump, as CEO, has had to employ
such tactics many times before. He obviously relishes saying "You're Fired!"
Any competent Trump loyalist can be found to replace this worn out old soldier. I hope he
won't be yet another general. MacArthur said that "old soldier never die, they just fade
away." Time for Mattis to do just that, and never be heard from again.
@Parsnipitous
Reading my comment again, I can see where I might have misinterpreted Jilles intent. If so, I
apologize. However, if he had identified, by name, who he was referring to, perhaps I
wouldn't have been confused.
Syria is a money pit for the taxpayers and giant profit source for the super rich. 'The
United States military should only be deployed anywhere to defend the U.S. itself or vital
interests' says Trump, Obama or Bush. But war is too important to be left to politicians.
They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. Trump
was appointed by rich people only so they could have someone to blame. 100% of the voters
believe they personally have the right to kill women and children overseas with their hired
mercenaries to defend the U.S. itself or vital interests. Americans shell out taxes to pay
for US troops to guard mining operations and poppy fields in Afghanistan, oil fields in Iraq,
online propaganda and so much more. Why deploy the United States Military when there's more
profit in hiring private mercenaries? Plus you don't have to say that "vital interests" crap
anymore.
opening the door to NATO's Turkey to go after the Kurd units there
Must look to the North:
On Turkey's Northwest front, tensions are high between the Greek Military & some foreign
controllers of Greece, and the Turkish Military, and their leaders.
This article is an excellent summary of msm and neocon reaction to the planned US withdrawal
from Syria and a good survey of why getting Uncle Sam out of Syria makes sense. I would also
add that allying with the Kurds was at best a short term solution. Not only would a Kurdish
state in eastern Syria be unacceptable to Turkey but the Sunni Arabs of the Euphrates Valley
would be certain to resist Kurdish rule. Merry Christmas to all!
For once, let all nuclear arsenal be directed at the Middle East and when the smoke clears
after a thousand years, there will be no God, Jews or Arabs to deal with any of remaining
humans will be welcomed!
@ChuckOrloski
In my opinion, Zionist Israel will never stop being the agent provocateur in the Mideast and
elsewhere ie the Ukraine etc., and since the Zionists control the U.S. government I think
their satanic NWO plans are still in place, and think the U.S. military is just going to be
placed in Iraq and Jordan ie just across the border to Syria and will continue with their
proxy mercenaries aka AL CIADA aka ISIS.
Some good sites to follow are Southfront.org and Henrymakow.com and Stevequayle.com and
Thetruthseeker.co.uk etc., all things considered even Putin said that Russia will wait and
see if the U.S. really leaves the Mideast, I wish all our troops would be brought home, but
with the Zionist control of our government it will never happen.
It is snowing here in Montana so we have a white Christmas, which we could do without, but
have a Merry Christmas!
Yes to Trump and withdrawal from Mid East Wars, down with MSM, The Neocons, the 1% , the deep
state and Israel, the whole World hates these assholes. Go Donny Daddy!
If you want to know who's agitating for war, look no further than our "friends," the Brits.
This is what they do every single time a U.S. President doesn't commit troops to some war
they've approved of, or started. They terror bait, or mock, or a combination of the two. And
since a lot of people in Washington take them seriously, it has appreciable impact on our
policies.
@Z-man
Israel fears Iran, is my idea.
Norman Finkelstein once stated that Israeli jews do not see how there ever can be peace with
the Palestinians 'after all we did to them'.
Not all jews are idiots.
Forgot in which book I read that in the thirties a zionist reached Palestine, and saw that
this was not the 'land without people for people without land'.
He stated 'this is a crime'.
The destruction and destabilisation of the ME, an Israeli plan, as far as I know.
In 1921 and later years there was the enormous population exchange, without any financial
compensation, between Turkey and Greece.
To this day tensions exist between the two countries.
Iran is one of the oldest civilisations.
Twice, one might say even three time, the west overthrew Iranian democracy.
Iran knows of course quite well that the VS brought Saddam to power so that he could
subjugate Iran, that had rid itself of the USA puppet shah.
Iran also of course knows quite well jewish power in the USA, Bush' s promise to AIPAC to
destroy Iraq.
Will those leading Iran now ever trust the USA or Israel ?
So that Netanyahu and USA jewry now are in complete panic, who had expected it to be
otherwise ?
Uri Avnery wrote 'the only language zionists understand is power. Is there a problem, use
power, if it does not help, use more power, if that also fails, use even more power'.
There has never been any serious negotiation between Israel and its neighbours, or with
the Palestinians.
About the Oslo negotiations a book appeared in Israel with the title 'how we fooled the
Palestinians'?
Sharon answered any Arab League peace proposal with force, Jenin, one of them, if my
recollection is correct.
There always was the idea of overwhelming more military power, and of USA support.
Kissinger saved Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur war by flying over hundreds of the newest
USA anti tank weapons, wire guided, TOW.
What will the USA do in case Israel is attacked ?
Is Netanyahu crazy enough to provoke an attack ?
Macron is not skiing between Christmas and New Year.
French is my worst language, but 'huis clos' is curtains closed, the expression is used often
for court proceedings without an audience, closed doors.
If my idea is correct that he stays indoors because his security cannot be guaranteed, maybe
someone whose first language is French can enlighten me.
Whatever the case, the man who wants an EU army now has trouble keeping peace in his own
country.
NATO, Stoltenberg's face during the dinner with Trump, disbelief.
Trigger and restrain, at the moment the Yellow Vests have caused the impossibility for
Brussels to do anything, survival is what concerns them.
@DESERT
FOX Desert Fox with a Montana-attitude, soft side, said: "It is snowing here in Montana
so we have a white Christmas, which we could do without, but have a Merry Christmas!'
Greetings from snowless Scranton, Desert Fox!
Over decades, have reflected upon Charles Schulz's great (1965) "Charlie Brown Christmas."
Prior to it's release, I have scant memory that Mr. Schulz had to battle those who wanted the
traditional Nativity of Christ and spiritual meaning out of the way. Fyi, Charles's opponents
lost!
As Christ-trashing Hollywood "Christmas" films dominate & mis-educate our popular
culture, please, please, please look (below) at the beautiful narration of "Charlie Brown
Christmas."
This is the first sane thing Trump did in two years. Also, this is the first action he
promised his supporters in 2016. Naturally, Israel-firsters, who in 2016 backed the corrupt
mad witch to a man, are unhappy. Their unhappiness is a good sign that this action is
actually in American interests. If Trump folds and reverses, this would expose him as a 100%
fraud. If he sticks to his guns, maybe there is hope for him yet. Stay tuned.
@wayfarer
No snow here in Albuquerque, NM, but the skies are loaded with chemtrails. I guess the sky
spider's never get a day off. Here's hoping you and your's have a merry Christmas.
Trump wants Turkey to stop harassing Saudi Arabia about Kashoogi's murder and be more
complacent with Israel. He also wants Israel to become more anxious abiut its security so it
agrees on the Palestinian peace plan elaborated by Jared Kuchner and MBS.
Turkey has now promised to fight ISIS which it never did. Saudi Arabia as well as Syria wants
Turkey humiliated, defeated and out of Syria. It may well happen when the Turkish army will
be confronted with a renewedc ISIS manipulated by Saudi Arabia and Syria.
It seems that the withdrawal of the US forces from Syria may trigger the end of Erdogan's
hegemonic dreams in the region and the victorious return of Syria among the Arabs.
@follyofwar
Oh, no; I don't mean Trump will start some major ground offensive to win anything! No,
they'll just try to destroy Iran in order to give jihadist a chance to kill as many people as
possible. This will be a Libyan-style war and "victory."
"President Donald Trump's order to withdraw from Syria has been greeted, predictably, with an
avalanche of condemnation culminating in last Thursday's resignation by Defense Secretary
James Mattis. The Mattis resignation letter focused on the betrayal of allies "
Call me cynical but I think you cannot take ANYTHING our masters say or do, e.g. this, at
face value.
